His mind went back to the moment he’d first seen her. She had looked just like her profile picture on the app, and yet nothing like it. Her hair was a kind of mid to light brown, but the camera lens hadn’t picked up all the lustrous threads of gold and copper, and nor had it caught the softness of her eyes or the sweetness of her tentative smile. But mostly, because of course it was only a photo, it had failed to capture that mesmerising husky voice.
Frankly, she could have been reading the phone book backwards to him and he wouldn’t have noticed. And it had been the same earlier, as she’d talked about their daughter.
He hadn’t wanted to break the spell. In fact, he hadn’t been able to break it. Truthfully, he had been fighting himself all evening not to lean across the table and kiss her. But there was no point now in imagining how it would feel to have those soft lips part against his and, picking up his wine glass, he drained the contents.
Standing up, he switched off the lights and made his way upstairs. As he reached the top step he hesitated.
His rooms were to the right, but from where he was standing he could see a thin line of light beneath Lottie’s door. Instantly he felt his breath clog his throat. She was awake, and they definitely had unfinished business. Before he had a chance to finish that thought, he was turning to the left and walking towards her room.
He reached her door in three strides and raised his hand—but as he did so he caught sight of the illuminated numerals of his watch and something...a sharp memory of nights spent listening to the sound of raised voices and doors slamming...stayed his hand. Instead of knocking, his knuckles brushed soundlessly against the wood.
It was after midnight. The house was in darkness.
More importantly, this wasn’t him. He watched, he waited, but he didn’t participate. He certainly didn’t ever walk into a storm of his own volition, and there was nothing to be gained by doing so now.
Restarting their tense conversation in the more intimate setting of her bedroom had ‘bad idea’ written all over it in mile-high letters. It would be far better to wait until the morning to confront her—not least because their strongest motive for any reconciliation would be awake and eating breakfast in her highchair.
Turning, he walked to his room. It was late, and he was tired, and his body was aching as though it was going through some kind of withdrawal.
He needed a quick shower and a long sleep—not some protracted debate with someone who was just going to argue that black was white.
Besides, she was probably already in bed.
He breathed in sharply, his groin hardening in the time it took his brain to jump from thinking the word ‘bed’ to picturing a near naked Lottie between the sheets.
Was this his fault?
He couldn’t see how. The evening had been going so well. They’d eaten and talked, and watching the way her eyes shone with eagerness when she talked about Sóley had made his breathing lose rhythm. Only when he’d asked her how she was like her daughter the joy had faded from her voice and her fingers had started to shake as if someone was pressing a bruise on her heart.
He hadn’t thought about what he was going say or do—in fact he hadn’t been thinking at all. He had felt her pain, and he’d wanted to make whatever it was that was hurting her stop, and so he’d reached out and touched her face, half expecting her to pull away.
Only she hadn’t. And then, watching her eyes soften, he had been lost, falling b
ack to that night when the softness in her eyes had stripped him not just of his clothes but of all sense and inhibition.
His body tensed—not at the memory of Lottie’s hands pulling at the buckle of his trousers, but at the dull, insistent hum of his phone.
Glancing over to where it lay on the bed, he cursed softly. It would be Marta, his nineteen-year-old half-sister. She was the youngest member of his family and for the last two months had been holding off all rivals in a crowded field to take the title of most demanding sibling in his life.
His jaw tightened. He loved his sister, but since the acrimonious breakdown of her parents’ marriage her life had been spiralling out of control. She had been stopped by the police and given a warning for reckless driving, and then she and her now ex-boyfriend Marcus had been involved in an argument with some photographers, after his twenty-first birthday party. And all of it had been gleefully reported in the media.
What she needed was guidance and reassurance.
What she had was a father—Nathan, who had already moved on to a new actress-model wife, and was wrapped up in the imminent birth of their first child.
She also needed her mother—who also happened to be his mother. Except Elin was far too busy being placated by her entourage of hairdressers and personal trainers to deal with her difficult daughter.
Only why did that make Marta his problem?
But he knew why. He couldn’t turn his back on his family, and nor could he live like them, so the only way he could make it work was by taking a step back—just as he’d done outside Lottie’s door.
He thought back to when Marta was a little girl. She had always been bringing him some necklace or bracelet that was so snarled up it was impossible to see where it began and where it ended, but he’d always sat down and patiently untangled it for her. It was just what he did—what he was still doing. Only now it was her life that he was untangling.
‘Marta—’
He heard her quick breath, like a gasp, and then she was speaking incoherently, fat, choking sobs interspersing every other word.
‘Ragnar—Ragnar, I hate her! She won’t listen to me. It’s not my fault. I can’t stand living with her. You have to speak to her.’