“Glass of water for me. Hydration is an excellent cure for jet lag too. Keen?”
“Sure. Why not?” he said as he watched her fuss about in the kitchen, humming beneath her breath like some cartoon princess.
If not for the fact that they had all but torn one another’s clothes off a few scant hours before, he might have believed he’d imagined the pull, the gravity, the connection he’d felt across the phone line. That he’d misread the signs.
Or, worse, been played.
Ben ran a hand through his hair. She had no reason to lie to him. It was this house—old ghosts playing tricks with his head. Yet for all that, he couldn’t discount what his gut was telling him: for all that he was drawn to her, he didn’t really know her.
Perhaps her suggestion that they were finding solace in one another’s arms wasn’t so far from the truth. Or, in fact, a bad thing. Yet, at the very thought, a wave of exhaustion swept over him, making his eyes feel heavy and his legs a little loose. “Look, I think I’ll just—”
“Oh, no.” Nora looked up from the sink, neither airy nor translucent. As if the latent energy she’d been keeping in check had spilled free; she practically glowed.
While Ben reeled from the impact, she quickly glanced over her shoulder, towards the back of the house, and said, “Um—look, I’m really sorry, but—”
“Arooo!”
Ben stilled. “What the hell...?”
“Arooo!”
Yep, it was definitely a howl. A howl of desperation and psychic pain.
Nora shot Ben a look before she fled into the darkness towards the back of the house. Towards the God-awful sound. And he heard the sound of the door creaking open. The back door that didn’t lock.
“Nora!” he called, moving after her, his hand unerringly finding the hallway light.
A desperate whimper filled the air, followed by Nora’s voice, stage-whispering from a room beyond, “Hello. I know. Good boy. Are you okay? Did you get stuck? Poor darling. Down. Yes. Good boy. No, down!”
“Nora?” he bellowed. “What the hell’s going on?”
Her murmuring stopped, and she slowly edged around the laundry door. Her face was alight with pure guilt—which, he realised with a flicker of concern, he much preferred to the blank sweetness. A huge, scruffy grey dog pulled against her grip while with all of her might she hugged it between her knees.
“This big galoot knocked a planter over, blocking off the doggy door. So they were stuck outside. All afternoon. And this one is afraid of the dark, you see.”
“They?” Ben asked, right as, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a small fluffy dog, with only one eye and a notch taken out of one ear, standing on the kitchen bench. Growling at him.
He leapt back, a hand over his heart, and swore to blue heaven. “What the hell is going on here?”
Nora glanced from the dog wriggling between her legs to the one on the bench. It would have been funny if not for the fact he could practically see her brain trying to come up with a likely story.
“Nora,” he said, his tone brooking no argument. “The truth.”
He saw her waver. He saw her decide. As if truth was a thing to be metered out, not cut and dried as it was to him.
“The truth,” he reiterated.
“Of course,” she said, shaking her head. “This one is Cutie. He’s here to befriend Pie. That one’s Pie. Pie doesn’t like people. Clancy was fostering him when she...when she died.”
When Clancy died. And Nora was there, looking after her house, her foster dog, the cooking, the cleaning. Looking after Clancy, while Ben had been going about his life, busy working, arrogantly sure he had a handle on his life, when he hadn’t had a clue.
“It’s been a whole thing,” Nora went on. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about them, but I... This is going to sound so stupid, but they are foster dogs, and I was a foster kid, and I’ve felt like a hypocrite, wanting to send them back.”
Ben swore beneath his breath. And took a moment as his heart began to recover from its caveman-about-to-battle-a-sabre-tooth-tiger rate.
There was truth and there was truth. And Nora, as was her way, had hidden the small and gifted him the big. More than he’d asked. More than the timing of their relationship deserved. Unless they were more than strange bedfellows after all.
Ben looked to the small offender on Clancy’s bench. All battle scars and patchy fur. It stared at him with its one good eye and he felt a strange echo rush through him. As if he was staring down a canine version of himself, the day he’d arrived at this very house.
“Pie, is it?” he murmured, taking a step towards the bench, keeping eye contact with the ball of scruff. “How’s tricks, Pie?”
Pie huffed out a long-suffering breath.
“Like that, is it?” Ben asked, his voice gentling all the more as he approached. Then he held out a hand, palm down, a good foot away from the dog’s mouth.
“Wait!” cried Nora, shuffling closer with the big dog still stringing between her knees.
Ben curled his fingers and turned his hand over and let it stay there, near the smaller dog’s nose. “For?”
“Aren’t you allergic? Or, traumatised somehow? Humans might not be so good at telling if someone doesn’t really like them, but dogs can.”
Ben baulked. “Who doesn’t like dogs?”
Nora baulked back. “People. People who live in minimalist apartments. People who wear ridiculously nice clothes they don’t want to get dog hair all over. People who say ‘no pets’ in their lease agreements.”
Ah. Now they were getting somewhere. “Did I say that?”
“Ah, yes! Way back at the beginning. In your first email. Don’t you remember?”
Ben shook his head. “It is a common rule for renters. Yes?”
“You mean you just threw it in there as an aside?” Nora rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Ben! I’ve been terrified about you finding out about these two. Now you’re telling me it didn’t matter?”
“Oh, it matters, Nora,” said Ben. “It matters that you hid it from me. I don’t appreciate being lied to.”
She nibbled at her bottom lip. “Sometimes it’s necessary to fudge the truth a little. To stave off hurt feelings. To make your stories a little more exciting. To avoid overdue library fees. But that’s not what you mean.”
Ben shook his head even though he got that she’d had her mixed-up reasons, reasons that made it hard for him to feel truly aggrieved.
Nora cleared her throat. “Then I’d better tell you that’s how I broke the washing machine. Washing the dog blankets. There was so much fur. And maybe a tennis ball caught up in the folds. And a stick. And the old engine couldn’t cope.”
Ben’s gaze shifted from the little dog and back to Nora. To those big blue eyes. And that face. Wide open. So lovely it made his gut clench.
But he knew Nora was feeling bad for having been caught, not having done the deed in the first place. In Ben’s world, the difference was everything.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Probably.”
Ben laughed, unable to hold it back even if he’d tried.
Trouble, he thought and not for the first time.
And while that should have sent him to bed, alone, with a big caveat as to how much of himself he’d open up to this foxy, conflicting, singular woman, he moved in, placed his hands on Nora’s cheeks, tilted her lovely face to his and kissed her.
It was the only way to be sure that no more fudged truths fell from her lips. For now.
Her mouth opened on a soft sigh of surprise, before one arm, then the other reached up to wrap around his neck as she lifted onto her toes and pressed her body against his as if she’d been waiting for eons to be able to do so again.
It was over before it started as they were joined by a bag of muscle and bone, with
a tail like a leather whip, as Cutie jumped to join the embrace.
Nora pulled away laughing, her face flushed, her eyes bright, as she held the dog at bay with gentle shushing. Then, after shooting Ben a quick look of apology and bemusement, she dragged Cutie towards the laundry room.
Pie—who had somehow found a way down off the bench—now stood at Ben’s feet. Looking at him. He reached down, slowly, and gave it its own scruff behind the ear.
After a beat, the dog harrumphed, turned, and headed into the laundry room as well.
When she came out, after having fed and locked up the dogs for the night, Ben was leaning back against kitchen bench. Whatever she saw in his face, she stopped, her hands clasped together in front of her.
“We should talk.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“Quite the opposite,” he said, adding a smile. “There’s no room in my life for fiction. Or secrets. Covering up is how my clients get themselves into trouble in the first place. And while I’m not prepared to talk about what happened between Clancy and me, suffice it to say it lies down that path.”
Nora listened. Her expression was neither Stepford Wife–blank, nor mischief and trouble. It was wary. Considering. And he wondered if he was finally getting a glimpse into a side of her she rarely showed.
Nora in her truth.
Ben pushed away from the bench, not letting the weight of that stop him in his current path. “I live in London. Soon you’ll be heading off as well. The one thing bringing us together will be at an end and we’ll likely never see one another again. Still, while we are here, together, I’d like to spend time with you. And I’d like to know how you feel about that.”
Ben didn’t move as he waited for her answer. For a breath, or three, while thoughts too fast to discern raged and stormed behind her eyes, he believed it might be a no.
“Temporary,” she eventually said. “With the end in sight. Agreed upon. By the both of us.”
He nodded.
“One condition,” she said, her voice more strident now. “So long as I’m here, you continue helping out the locals with some financial advice.”
Ben’s right eye twitched. “Behind that sweet face of yours is the mind of a mercenary.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Fine,” he said. “Then I have my own addendum. You stay as long as I need help sorting out Clancy’s things.” He looked around, felt the buzz of the past biting him on the back of the neck. “Truth is, I’m finding the idea a tad...overwhelming.”
Her narrowed eyes softened, before filling with purpose. A smile nudged up a corner of her sweet mouth.
Say yes, his inner voice begged, so I can kiss that spot as soon as humanly possible.
“Deal,” she said, then held out her hand.
He took it, using it to tug her to him, before lifting her off her feet and into his arms. Kissing her till the world outside their door began to melt away.
“Where are you taking me?” Nora asked as he began to walk her down the hall.
“Your bed,” he said. “Mine’s too small for the plans I have.”
“Promises, promises,” she said, pulling back, to hold a hand to his cheek, her gaze following, before it landed back on his.
No guile therein. No faux innocence. No blank sweetness. No secrets. No lies.
Just Nora. The Nora he’d crossed oceans to find.
At the top of the stairs, he shoved her bedroom door open with a foot, and tossed her onto the bed. Both of them laughing. And he knew; if she could forgive him for not being there in what had to have been some of her darkest days, he could forgive her for hiding the truth about the dogs.
In the grand scheme of things, their ledger wasn’t even close to even.
CHAPTER TEN
THE NEXT DAY, after he’d spent a couple of hours going over Damon’s updates on the work done on the Metropolis account in his absence, making note as to where the team might put more eyes, Ben stood outside the sitting room, gaze pinging off the walls of books, overstuffed couches, floor rugs, throw cushions, baskets of dried flowers, knick-knacks on every surface, trying not to settle on any memories in particular lest they drown him.
“I’ve set up a few bags and boxes in the entrance, labelled donate, gift, sell, keep.” Nora pulled up beside him, hands rubbing together, her voice bright, excited. “So, you want to start in here?”
Ben turned to her, slid an arm around her waist, pulled her close. “I’d rather start here,” he growled. And then he kissed her.
Laughing against his mouth, she started to pull back, before her body stilled, softened, and rolled against his and she kissed him like a woman drowning.
And soon Ben was lost in far better memories—the taste of her skin, the way her body moved, lithe and fearless, the sounds she made as she fell apart in his arms.
“No,” she said, slapping him on the chest. “Not now. Later. Consider it a reward for a job well done.”
“Fine. How about you move your stuff first so it doesn’t get mixed up?”
“My stuff is all upstairs. Fits into a single suitcase and a small backpack.”
“Seriously?”
“Mmm-hmm. Can’t be footloose and fancy-free if you’re weighed down with baggage.” She ran a thumb over the tattoo on her arm, as if it was some kind of touchstone. And proffered him one of her gentle smiles—the light, easy, unassuming type. The one that made him feel as though if he reached out for her, she wouldn’t actually be there.
But if he was going to get through this today, and the next, he needed the real thing—the raw, dark, slippery smile he’d only ever seen her offer him.
“Should I be worried?” he asked. “Are you on the lam? Ready for a quick getaway? If you try to vamoose before I get through this, I will find you and bring you back.”
At that she laughed, the sound low yet enormously compelling. “I’m not going anywhere.” A shadow passed over her eyes. Then she shrugged. “I had to pack fast, a lot, as a kid. Circumstances tended to change quickly.”
“A skill you might not have picked up otherwise,” he said, happy to shift focus from himself for a moment. Or for ever.
“Correct! I also taught myself how to cook, knowing it would mean I’d always get fed.”
“Brilliant. What else?”
“I can shape-shift to fit into different situations—loud, wholesome, alpha, nerdy. It really helps put different clients at ease.”
That, Ben thought, a frisson of edginess creeping back in, that was the feeling he’d had the night before when he’d all but seen the masks slip into place. Cheeky and honest and brave. Sweet and sparkly and inoffensive. She was a chameleon.
Everyone was to some degree; Nora, perhaps, more than most. So long as that was all it was. Not that she was faking everything.
“Now,” she said, before the silence grew awkward. “Let’s do this!”
She padded into the sitting room, and stood in the middle, arms outstretched. All lanky legs and mismatched clothes. She looked so right, so part of the room, Ben’s chest tightened.
Or maybe it was the fact that he’d delayed enough. He had to go in there. And clean up Clancy’s mess.
“You could rent the house fully furnished. Or there’s a local domestic violence shelter I’ve done some pro bono work for who would love anything you could give them. How about we focus on the keepsakes first? Start small. Tell me, what do you remember most about this room?”
Ben’s throat began to tighten, his mouth filling with the sharp tang of stale anger. He’d just come back from having drinks at the local pub with a couple of old school mates, when he’d found Clancy in this room. It had been summer, the fire grate empty. The room lit by a single lamp. She’d been holding a piece of paper. Tears pouring down her cheeks.
But when she’d looked up, he’d not seen sorrow in Clancy’s e
yes, he’d seen dread.
“Ben?” Nora weaved her way back to him.
When he didn’t respond, his throat now thick with anger and regret, she reached out, curled her fingers into his.
“If I’m going too fast, or being too chipper, let me know,” she said. “I told you, I’m a shape-shifter extraordinaire. Whoever you need for me to be, I can be.”
Whoever he needed her to be.
The irony was suddenly so bitter he could taste it in the back of his throat.
Ben yanked his hand away. “I’ve got to go.”
“Oh?” She blinked, confused. “Okay. Where?”
“Out.” Away from here. Away from her.
He could feel her need to help, to fix, as if it were a physical thing. But he also felt as if he might stop breathing if he didn’t get some air. If he didn’t get out of that damn house.
He mumbled something about being back soon, and burst out of the room, out of the unlocked front door, and down the street, not even caring which direction he was going.
* * *
Nora sat staring out of the window from her upstairs bedroom. It was late afternoon and she’d heard nothing from Ben for hours.
She’d tried calling him with a bland excuse at the ready, only to track his ringtone—classic, no pop song for him—to the spare room. His suitcase sat neatly against the wall. Nothing unpacked. As if he didn’t want to leave an impression on the place. She knew that move intimately, and it did not bode well.
He’d said he wasn’t ready to talk about Clancy, but it had become clear there was some crack inside where that was concerned; unhealed, buffed over. Even now—if the look on his face was anything to go by—he was out there, in pain.
When she realised she was rubbing the heel of her palm over her ribs, right over her heart, in fact, Nora whipped her hand away.
This wasn’t empathy she was feeling. It was something else entirely.
Despite his pretty words, his bold suggestion they “spend time together” until their job here was done, and despite her belief in that moment that she was fine with that, she’d been hasty.
Harlequin Romance September 2021 Box Set Page 42