Chapter Fifteen

NATE

I was at breakfast early, looking forward to seeing Alex. I still couldn't believe he'd come after me last night and that he hadn't judged me for taking five years to tell my cheating ex where to go. He was like no one I'd known before. I didn't want to think about returning to my lonely life in London. It would be empty without Alex's perpetually amused gaze and easy, undemanding warmth.

Mrs Fortescue was at the table when I arrived, and we at last had the chance to talk properly. I didn't have much to tell her about the last five years as my life had consisted solely of work and hookups, but she'd recently set up a charity for at-risk youth and wanted to tell me all about it. The next fundraising dinner was only a month away. "You must come," she said. "I'll tell Charlie to add you as his plus one."

This definitely wasn't the time to mention I'd told her beloved son to fuck off. "Thank you, but I'll be back at work by then. I doubt I'll be able to get away."

"We'll see," she said, rising and laying her napkin beside her plate.

I stared after her as she left the room. What had she meant by "We'll see"? Did she know about James's almost offer of a job?

Because I was watching the door, I saw Alex's arrival. He was talking to one of the younger Teagues, but he glanced in my direction. His resulting smile had my heart doing something strange. He was smooth-shaven this morning, unusually, and I longed to touch him.

He sat opposite me, his plate piled high. "D'you want to find the shop where Jane Austen's aunt was busted for shoplifting?"

"Where what?" The outrageous claim jerked my attention away from how much I'd like to kiss him. "You're screwing with me, aren't you?"

"Swear to God. Says it on the internet, so it must be true."

So, after breakfast, we set out on a millinery-shop hunt—though we did have to look up what one was beforehand. We didn't find the shop, but we had fun searching, not least because of the scandalised look from the woman in the Tourist Information Bureau when we asked.

*

As the days passed, I grew to know Alex Teague. We spent hours in our favourite coffee shop, with the owner, Sheila, bringing us countless refills as we read about Regency society. The rest of the time, we talked. I'd never found anyone this easy to talk to other than Rufus.

I learned about his family. He was close to his parents and his aunt, Margaret. He lived alone in a small cottage owned by the Teague family, paying rent as and when his work allowed. He didn't have a full-time job and took whatever local work was available in the winter, while each summer, he was employed as a tour guide at a King Arthur-themed attraction near Tintagel.

"Do you tell the people you show around about your family tree?"

"They'd either think I was joking, or they'd want me to pull out the welded-in replica of Excalibur," he said. "I have fun messing with them in other ways. Depending on who's in each group, I either go for the romance angle or the blood and guts and gore of the Battle of Camlann. And when there are kids, they get the good stuff—the way eels were used for currency or the medicinal benefits of swallowing a live buttered spider."

I eyed him with suspicion. "I hope you're making that up."

"So do I," Sheila said, wiping down the table next to us. "Can you keep your spicy Jane Austen conversation down a bit in future, lovelies? Not everyone is as easily amused as I am, and I'd hate to lose my Chamber of Commerce star rating because people thought I was disrespectful to our most famous resident. Now, another teacake for you both?"

Alex's eyes brimmed with laughter, and I wanted to kiss him. It was a longing that I was feeling increasingly often. Somehow, the fact I wasn't making headway on Bim's investigation had ceased to matter.

We went flying whenever we could get away with missing supper. Or rather, I would fly and then join Alex in the water. I didn't know why he was intent on swimming rather than flying, but I was growing to love it, too. Dragons are huge, and something about being weightless in that form was addictive. Or perhaps it was swimming with Alex that was addictive.

I had deleted the tracking app from my phone a couple of days after the incident with the Ferrari. In the vanishingly unlikely event it had been hacked, I hoped the deletion would look like an innocent quest for more space. It was marginally less suspicious than forgetting my phone each time we went to the river. And I wasn't going to stop going to the river with Alex, not for anything.

It wasn't only swimming we did there. His touches, his kisses, the look in his eyes as he teased me…

My meandering thoughts came to an abrupt halt as panicky realisation dawned. I'd fallen for him. It wasn't just that I liked him and we had great sex. I'd gone and bloody well fallen for him.

I couldn't do this again. Being in love had almost destroyed me before. But when I thought about stopping it, no longer having those moments with Alex of desperate need and bliss, of ease and laughter, I couldn't. I was too far gone.

The only thing I could do was hide my feelings. I'd managed the friends-with-excellent-benefits arrangement so far without any problems. As long as I didn't show how much more I wanted from him, it would be okay. He wouldn't see me for who I was.

And that meant we could continue to have this. I could continue to have him, each moment with him a memory to lock away against a cold and empty future.