200 Harley Street: The Enigmatic Surgeon

‘You could go home and change.’ But suddenly she didn’t want him to go anywhere.

‘I won’t get that twenty minutes back again.’

She was going to have to get used to feeling this happy. At the moment it was too heady, and she could hardly breathe. ‘I could come with you.’

He nodded. ‘That’s a great start.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

‘WHEN DO YOU need to pick Isaac up?’ He was carefully putting the finishing touches to his part of the mural.

‘Not for another couple of hours. He’s gone to play at a friend’s house. I have to pick him up at eight.’

‘I’ll take you, if that’s okay. I’ve missed the little guy.’

‘Of course it’s okay.’ A thought occurred to Charlotte. ‘I always wondered...’

‘Yeah?’

?

??Why do you have a child’s seat in your car?’

He chuckled. ‘I got it for when my sister and her little girl came to stay with my parents. She only used it once. I was going to take it out of the car that weekend, but then it came in handy for Isaac.’ He paused, his hand hovering over the last delicate part of a lion’s eye. ‘What? You thought that I had a child tucked away somewhere?’

‘No, not really. I just didn’t know. Was it okay for me to ask?’

He chuckled. ‘Yep. And, in the interests of complete transparency, there’s something I need to know too.’

‘Fire away.’

‘Why does Isaac call that blue rabbit of his Stinky?’

‘Ah. The blue rabbit. I seem to remember he was the one that started everything...’

‘That’s why I feel such an attachment to him.’

‘Well, he was originally called Rabbit.’ She grinned at him. ‘For obvious reasons. Then Isaac threw him into the pond at the park, and when I’d fished him out again I told Isaac he’d need a good wash because he was really stinky.’

‘Ah. Makes me feel so much better to know that there’s a logic behind it.’

She laughed. ‘Anything else you need to know?’

‘Not at the moment. You’ve got paint on your nose.’ He closed the distance between them and swiped at her nose with his finger.

‘Better?’

‘Not really. I just seem to have smudged it.’ He grinned, looping his arms around her waist. In the last few hours all the barriers between them seemed to have disappeared. At some point, while they were painting the bright, colourful mural, all the promises they’d made, the honesty and the trust, had turned from just words into reality.

‘Do you think he’ll like it?’

‘Well, I like it.’ Edward grinned. ‘I think he’ll love it. The monkey’s great.’

‘And your lion. He looks a bit like you.’ She pulled at one of the dark spikes of hair that had fallen across Edward’s forehead, which mirrored the slightly rakish look of his lion’s mane.

He laughed, sweeping his hair back off his forehead with one hand. ‘He’s more like you.’ Edward kissed her eyelids. ‘Golden eyes...’ he loosed her hair from its bonds at the back of her head, smoothing it over her shoulders ‘...golden hair...’

‘A nasty roar...?’