‘Okay, fine,’ he grumbled and snatched his phone from the table, plonking himself down on the sofa. She could get used to having men wearing only pants sitting on her sofa with their feet up on the ottoman. No, scratch that. One man.
God, his thighs were sexy.
Laurel finished ordering the pizza and sat next to him, checking her messages. Nate pulled her legs over his and rested his hand on her bare thigh.
Before she had a chance to text back, her phone vibrated in a call. Uh, no thanks Rebecca. Not now.
‘What are you smirking for?’ she asked, poking a smiling Nate with her toes.
‘I’ve got messages from Jess saying how much she loved you and telling me not to fuck it up.’ He glanced at her before continuing. ‘And I’ve got a badly worded message from Benji, on Owen’s phone, saying that you’re his new favourite, not me.’
He pulled the blanket off the arm of the sofa and covered them both with it.
Ah, what a sweetie Benji was.
‘I’m sorry if inviting them to the farm was the wrong thing to do, I just got kind of caught up in the moment,’ she said, nervously.
What was she thinking? That’s right, shehadn’tbeen thinking, because if she had, she would have thought things like ‘don’t be so ridiculous’ or ‘head first’ or ‘why, in the name of all that is holy, would you invite Nate’s friends to your farm?’.
‘It was exactly the right thing to do. Benji will absolutely love it. Jess is thrilled,’ he said, leaning his head back on the sofa, and her panic subsided a little. ‘Is it okay with you? You know you can cancel, right? You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.’
‘Not at all, I just didn’t want to overstep, you know...’ she trailed off, looking around her front room that fit the two of them in so snugly.
Nate cupped the back of her neck and kissed her firmly.
‘I love the fact that you want my friends to visit us.’
There it was. Us.
‘Us’ was good. This is what she wanted, and the reassurance that this is what he wanted too made a small smile pull at her lips. This was happiness.
‘Is that…’ she started, but suddenly found the weave in the blanket over them very interesting. ‘Is that what you want? An us?’
Because if he didn’t, how would she live without kissing him again? How would she survive having to work with him every day and not being able to slide her arms around his neck? Take him home at the end of the day, back to the flat that held them both so nicely.
‘I thought I’d been—’ He shifted on the sofa and cupped her face, stroking her cheek with the calloused pad of his thumb. ‘In case of any misunderstandings, ever again.’ He leaned his forehead against hers, eyes drooping closed. ‘I want everything, Laurel. I want everything with you.’
‘Okay,’ she whispered, leaning her face into his hand.
‘Okay,’ he whispered back.
Us.
Nate
The next three weeks passed in a haze of organising the funding meeting, pulling more and more gold and bones out of the earth and, of course, Laurel. He couldn’t keep his hands off her, and they quite simply couldn’t work in the same office anymore, not since Sylvie interrupted them, ahem, ‘working’ on the conference table. Nate worked on the kitchen table in Robin’s house and when Laurel left, she took him with her back to her flat.
There was long, warm, tantalising sex on the living room sofa, in bed, in the shower, and fast, passionate sex bent over the kitchen table. Sometimes they didn’t even make it to the flat. Good job the front door that led to the street was sturdy.
Except, of course, for the four days when Laurel got her period. She had said he didn’t have to stay, but how could he not? Not when she was in pain and bloated and tired and needed looking after. He cooked her rice pudding (not as good as her mother’s, apparently), pasta carbonara and brought ice cream and sorbet (‘I just want cold things!’). He made sure the hot water bottle was always hot and the sofa blanket was warm.
It was home. It was perfect.
The one blight on his pretty pink horizon was the funding meeting. He hated that kind of stuff, hated being wheeled in front of donors, on display.
Also, Alex would be there. He would have to be. It was generally accepted that the British Archaeological Society would give a speech commending the finds and the prospective finds, and he knew a lot of organisations gave heavy weighting to what the BAS had to say. If the site got a bad report from Alex, it probably didn’t matter what he said, what he had found, people weren’t going to throw money at him if the BAS weren’t fully on board. So, Alex had to be enthusiastic, not just go through the motions.
Nate sat at Laurel’s dining table, frowning at his emails.
