The Burlington Manor Affair

“It’s been so weird, thinking about what you said, about your dad’s expectations of us.”

The letter was in his mind, but he couldn’t address that yet, not while she was still getting used to the previous information he’d shared with her. “You weren’t aware of his perfect family dream?”

“I suppose I was, and in a weird way I could relate to it, because I’d always wanted a brother.” She looked at him and smiled. “Then you arrived, all stroppy and surly. Stomping around the house with your long hair and your stubble.”

It shamed him that her memory for detail was so good. “I can’t be blamed for my surly self. When I came home after our parents got hitched it was a total culture shock. I wasn’t used to Burlington Manor being a happy place. I was a bit freaked out by what I found there.”

She looked at him as if confused at first, then she broke into laughter. “Oh, Rex, really?”

“Of course. My parents argued the whole time. Bitterly. It was a shock to me to come home and find...well, happiness. Dad was content with Sylvia.”

She studied him. “I never knew it was such a change for you. I mean, I’d guessed it would be awkward, turning up to find us so thoroughly ensconced there.”

“It’s true. And I also felt a duty to my mother. I had to give my dad a bit of grief for upsetting her. It’s in the contract for number-one son.”

She chuckled. “So, to do right by your mother you came home stoned and then proceeded to get plastered on your dad’s best whisky?”

“Like I say, duty.” He lifted one shoulder.

The atmosphere between them felt so easy and warm. And the honesty, it was too good. He wanted to bottle the mood of the moment, to capture and keep it for them to enjoy always.

“Why did your parents split up?” she asked tentatively. “I always wondered.”

Rex shrugged. That wasn’t something he wanted to be totally honest about, not with her and not right now. So he lied. “My mother wouldn’t talk about it, said it was in the past. Everything changed after that, when you came into our lives. That’s why Dad was so keen to be the family unit, I guess. He’d made such a hash of it the first time around.” He’d be able to show her that in the letter, soon.

He smiled and tried to break the tension, hoping to steer her away from the more troublesome question. The last thing he wanted to tell her was that his parents had split because Charles Carruthers had a mistress on the side while he was married to Rex’s mother. Carmen didn’t know, and he preferred to keep it that way. It would tarnish Carmen’s image of Charles, and Rex didn’t want to do that. Rex’s mother had blurted it out when he was a teenager, and he’d been reminded of it when he read that letter in the library. When he did share the letter with her, he wanted them to be comfortable with each other. They were getting there, and meeting like this, on neutral ground, was helping. “So you noticed that, me being a git?”

“I couldn’t fail to notice, obsessed with you the way I was.”

Rex wanted to respond with something easy, something witty, but her comments affected him so intensely he couldn’t do anything else but reach out for her hand across the table.

Touching her that way felt precious.

She wasn’t fighting. She also wasn’t submitting. Instead, she was meeting him on equal ground. As much as he adored her when she offered herself like a gift—sacrificing all control to him—he also treasured these moments where they were stripped bare to each other. The honesty they shared was what counted most of all. They needed this time together, to edge it forward. I want this. I need to be with this woman.

“I was confused by you,” she continued. “I’d wanted a brother, you see. But what I got was you...a stroppy, brooding bloke who somehow turned me into a puddle of lust every time he turned up and prowled around the house.”

A puddle of lust? That triggered his libido dangerously. “Like I said last night, it’s a good job I didn’t know that at the time. You wouldn’t have been safe.”

She gave him a faux warning glance. “You did know.”

Why did that make him feel like he hadn’t done enough back then? He hadn’t been mature enough to talk to her about their weird situation and the undeniable attraction between them. “I knew how it felt to be around you, and I knew that it wasn’t just me.”

The look in her eyes when he said that made him want to hold her, badly. They needed to excise the demons that had been put in place around their sexuality and their desire for each other.

“The whole brother/sister thing.” He shook his head. “I hated my dad for trying to enforce that on us. Both of us were the only child. Even if there hadn’t been physical attraction between us, neither of us was equipped to take on a new sibling at that late stage of being a teenager.”

“That’s true.” She blinked, and it was an accepting look she wore. “Just your average dysfunctional family, hmm?”

“Absolutely.” He swigged from his iced Asahi. “I couldn’t deny it felt good, though, what you and Sylvia brought to the house. And I didn’t deny it for long. It was a new age. I began to enjoy it. Like I’m enjoying us there, together, now.”

She didn’t respond and to his surprise she seemed to pull away.

“Why can’t we be like this all the time?” He asked the question because as soon as she pulled back he felt crazy for her, desperate to hold on to her.

“Rex, please don’t spoil it.”

Was it a plea, or a warning? She’d shut off from him. It felt as real and stark as if she’d physically pulled a screen into place between them.