Chapter 17

Seventeen

I n the morning, I woke up before Eis, and in sleep, his eyepatch had shifted. I felt weirdly guilty as I studied the contours of his beautiful face. His bad eye… It was just closed. There was some scarring, faint streaks where the acid must have eaten into his skin, but in the pale sunlight, he looked perfect.

His other eye opened.

Shit.

Busted.

"Uh, good morning?"

"It's okay; you can look if you want to."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not so much now. My eyelid is sewn shut. I wear the patch because it invites fewer questions than having an eye that doesn't open."

"Unless Alfie gets involved, anyway. He has no filter."

"He's a good kid, just full-on."

A real handful, Steven said, and he had no idea how to deal with that. Giving Alfie a games console and expecting him to sit quietly in the corner didn't work the way it had with Harry, so Steven mostly left Alfie to me.

"He loves the worm farm."

"Remind me to drop some leaves in the top later. I promised I would."

"Okay. Do we have plans today?"

"Yeah, we're going for a drive."

"A drive where? To your stately home down the road? To your private theme park? To your beach house?"

"Correction: you're going for a drive, and you can go wherever you want."

"But I don't have a car."

"I got you insured on the BMW."

"Are you kidding? That thing's the size of a tank."

"And it has an excellent safety rating."

"I can't drive that. What if I hit something?"

Eis tucked my hair behind my ear and shrugged. "Dents polish out. You have your test this week, and if you're worried, practice will help. Your sister's taking you?"

"We're going out for lunch afterwards."

"I wish I could be there to celebrate, but I have to go to London." He pointed to his eye. "Checkup."

"You have those regularly?"

"Every month at the moment. When I first woke up in the hospital, I thought that I'd heal up and that would be it, but now I know you never truly recover from an injury like this, and I was one of the lucky ones. I can still see. The plastic surgeons did a good job with my scars." He smiled. "And now I have you."

"You do." A giggle burst out of me. "My parents are gonna shit a brick when I take you to meet them."

"Oh?"

"A hot pirate? Come on. My mum keeps trying to set me up with clones of Steven."

"My parents will probably give you the third degree. ‘Who are you and what plans do you have for our son's money?' That sort of thing." Eis gave me a sheepish look. "I've brought home one too many gold-diggers. Nothing serious, and I knew exactly what they were from the start, but Mum still hated it. She'll love you. So will Edie, who would have driven over here this weekend if I hadn't told her to give us some space."

I was nervous about meeting his family, but mostly, I was terrified that something would go wrong before I ever got the chance. What if Eis changed his mind about me? But I put my nerves aside as we took a shower together, which turned into me on my knees with his cock in my mouth. I'd hoped that if I distracted him enough, he might forget about the driving, but no such luck.

We started off trundling around the roads on the estate, which was even bigger than I'd previously thought, and after lunch, we ventured out into the big wide world. He made me drive all the way to Exmoor, where we took Primrose for a long walk and had lunch in a little café. On Sunday, we went to Dartmoor. The boys would have loved it, especially Alfie, but I enjoyed having Eis to myself. Well, almost to myself. Every time he moved in for a kiss, Primrose woofed and ran circles around us.

It was a good day.

A great day.

Then the boys came home, late once again. Luisa was driving, and Steven climbed out to fetch the overnight bags from the boot. At least if Luisa was there, he wouldn't try to come in, which was a relief because Eis was upstairs, measuring the room that would become Harry's so we could order furniture. We'd left the BMW up the road so I didn't have to deal with an awkward conversation this evening.

Only Alfie had other ideas.

"What the…? Steven, what happened to Alfie's face?"

"Don't ask me. He did it while I was out."

"You went out and left Alfie home alone?"

"Luisa was with him."

"Don't worry; it's pen," Harry said.

Alfie turned to face me, and he'd done a thorough job. The black patch covered his entire eye, and he'd even drawn a thin strap going across his forehead.

"I just wanted to look like Eis. Eis is cool."

"Who's Eis?" Steven asked.

"Our plumber," Harry told him, and I could have hugged my darling son. "He's fixing the shower."

"Luisa needs to watch Alfie better. He could have poked his eye out."

"And you need to stop him from bringing woodlice over. It's upsetting for her."

"It is? Gee, that's a shame."

"Janie, we need to act like grown-ups about this."

I stuck my tongue out and walked into the house with the boys following. Steven was such a twat. Was it possible to buy woodlice in bulk? Online or something? I'd have to look into that.

Eis laughed like crazy when he saw Alfie's face. I didn't laugh quite so hard when I realised he'd used Sharpie, and it wouldn't come off, even with make-up remover and an exfoliating pad. The internet suggested using hand sanitiser, but I couldn't get too close to his eye with that.

And while I tackled the Sharpie problem in the bathroom, I could hear Eis and Harry in the bedroom, talking about furniture. Harry wanted a desk and a bookshelf, and then Eis got his laptop out and they started scrolling through the IKEA website.

It made my heart ache, but in a good way. It was so swollen that I thought it might burst. Should I tell the boys that Eis and I were dating? I wanted to, but what if that changed everything? I worried about Harry. The Halloween planning was going well, Eis assured me, and I didn't want to jinx it. His assistant had even arranged for a minibus to come from Bristol with Harry's old friends.

I'd tell the boys in a couple of weeks. Let this relationship settle first.

"We're having pizza," Harry announced. "Me and Eis ordered it. I got you the one with the pepperoni 'cos I know you like that."

"Did you get me the pineapple one?" Alfie asked from his seat on the edge of the bath.

"Extra ham, extra pineapple," Harry said and rolled his eyes.

Guess that meant Eis would be joining us for dinner, and it felt…right. As if we were taking the first tentative steps towards being a family.

"Mum, what's a bailiff?" Harry asked before he bit into his first slice.

"Why do you ask?"

"A guy came to pick up Dad's car, and I heard him say he was a bailiff, but Dad said he was just helping out because the new car's getting delivered next week and they won't both fit on the driveway. But why wouldn't Dad get a new car before he sold the old one? Now he doesn't have a car at all. Anyhow, that's why we were late again. Because we had to wait for Luisa to come back with her car and drive us home."

Home. It made me so freaking happy to hear Harry call it that. For so long, it had been Marigold Lodge, and he'd hated the place. What else made me happy? That Steven was finally facing some consequences for his poor decisions. He'd ruined my credit; now his was suffering too. A visit from the repo man was just what he deserved.

"Maybe Luisa was with her other boyfriend," Alfie piped up. "I don't like him."

Uh, what? "Her other boyfriend?"

"He came over when Dad took Harry to the football, but Luisa told me not to tell Dad, so I didn't."

Eis was trying to keep a straight face, but he wasn't doing a great job of it.

"Why don't you like him, buddy?"

"He smells like that stuff Dad sprays on his armpits, but like, a lot, and he told me I couldn't watch TV and I had to go in my room."

"Chickens coming home to roost," Eis muttered.

More like buzzards circling.

"Can I have a chicken?" Alfie asked. "It could live in the garden at Eis's place."

They both looked at me.

"It'd be good for the boys to learn where food comes from," Eis said.

"I'm not plucking a freaking chicken."

"I was thinking of the eggs."

Right. They both kept staring, and then Harry joined in. Great. I grudgingly shrugged.

"If you look after the worm farm properly, perhaps in a few months we could get a chicken."

Harry shook his head. "I learned about farm animals at school, and chickens don't like living on their own. We have to get at least two."

"We can call them Nemo and Dory," Alfie said.

"No, dumbass, those are fish."

"Harry, don't call your brother a dumbass."

"So we should get fish as well?" Alfie asked. "They can live in the swimming pool."

Eis was trying not to laugh, his eye sparkling. "Let's start with the chickens, buddy. Maybe later, we can put in a pond."

Lisa was right; Eisen Renner made the best dad.