THOR

Maura and I’d been talking for months, and today was the day she arrived in the UK.

She was travelling with Dragon’s Cally, who’d had a tough time of it and was still hurting. Maura hadn’t wanted her to travel alone and had insisted on accompanying her. I was a nervous wreck.

It was different talking on the phone or via text. I could censor myself on texts and on the phone. I tried to get Maura to speak as much as possible, but now she was going to be with me every day, and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to keep up the act I’d had going on. Keeping my language clean had been a battle all on its own. I used the F word a lot, and it was sprinkled throughout my sentences on the regular.

“This is a mistake,” I mutter, wiping my bandana across my sweating forehead with a shaky hand.

Dragon must have heard me mutter that because the next words out his mouth had me torn between laughing and throwing up.

“What the hell is going on with you, Thor? You’re like a virgin bride on her wedding night,” Dragon growled out. Then the man had to go and make it worse by thinking I was having a heart attack.

“I’m not having a heart attack, Dragon. I’m fucking nervous, okay.”

“What! Why? Maura is a nice lady,” the confusion in Dragon’s question was understandable. Maura was lovely. Nobody knew about us talking, so this would be news to him.

“I know alright, it’s just…well,” I hesitated, sucking in a deep breath before letting it out on a sigh. Finally blurting out, “We’ve been chatting, Maura and I, while she’s been in the US. Just texts at first, but then it was phone calls. And I think she’s the one. But it’s complicated because of the kids. I knew the day she came to the café that she was the one I’d been waiting for. But I also knew I had to be patient after all that she’d been through. I got her number off Bev and Gunny and got in contact. This is the first time I’m seeing her, and I’m worried she’s going to run a mile when she sees me here instead of Bev. I didn’t tell her it was me picking her up today.”

When Dragon was silent, eyes wide at the verbal diarrhoea I’d just thrown at him, I knew I’d made a mistake, but I could fix it. Maura could catch a ride back to the Manor with Dragon and Cally.

‘Yep, that’s what I’ll do, she could come home with them, and she’d be none the wiser,’ I thought.

“Jesus, say something, Dragon. I knew this was a bad idea,” I mutter, taking my keys out of my pocket. “You can pick them both up. Maura isn’t expecting me, so it won’t look strange; I’ll just wait until she comes to the manor.”

Dragon stopped me from leaving and laid it out for me in a way that I couldn’t help but agree with.

“Okay, old man, you need to calm the fuck down and take a breath. First, did you think that maybe Maura is just as nervous as you are and how she’ll feel if she finds out you offered to pick her up and then you ditched her? If you want this to work, you are going to have to grow some balls, man. She’s been let down her entire adult life by men, don’t be one of them,” Dragon reminded me.

He wasn’t wrong. Maura had been used and let down by men her whole life, and I’d be damned if I was going to be one of them. Although his comment about growing some balls was a bit much.

I calmed myself the fuck down and it wasn’t long after that that I lost Dragon as soon as he saw Cally. Then there she was, as tiny as I remembered, with a wide happy smile on her face. Her blonde hair a little longer than it had been, but she was still as beautiful as I remembered. Striding forward, I wrapped my arms around her in a hug, gratified and happy when she hugged me back, rubbing a cheek against my chest, smiling up at me, blue eyes sparkling happily, “You came to pick me up.”

“Damn right I did,” I agreed, smiling back at her. Happy to have her in my arms.

Who’d have thought that I’d find the woman for me at fifty-five.

“I’m glad,” she murmured, standing on tiptoes to kiss my cheek.

Letting her go, I grabbed her suitcase, “Is this all you have?”

“Yes, I need to stop by the flat to get some clothes, if that’s okay, before we go to Crow Manor.”

“That’s fine, babe,” I assured her. Letting out a whistle to get Dragon’s attention, I told him what was going to happen, and once Maura had reassured Cally, we left them to it.

Pulling Maura’s suitcase along with one hand and holding onto her other hand, we walked towards the parking garage.

It had been years since I’d held a woman’s hand, but I found that I liked it, and Maura didn’t seem to mind having my paw wrapped around hers.