Harry smiled at me. “Don’t worry. You see those two chaps over there?” I looked over to where Harry was gesturing. There were two men in dark clothes sat together. One had his attention firmly on Naomi and her Hollyoaks date. The other was scanning the room.
“Woah!” I said, impressed. “Bodyguards. That is very cool.”
“I suspect when Toby pulls his head out of his arse she’ll have another slightly less trained bodyguard in the mix too.”
I raised an eyebrow. “He likes her. Still?”
“He never stopped.”
Once I felt more reassured about the Naomi situation I didn’t even think twice about going back to Harry’s house, but I’d underestimated the strength of the bad memories of Harry’s accusations that it would evoke from the last time I was there. When I first walked into his kitchen I glanced around and stopped midstride. All those feelings of humiliation surfaced again and for a moment I couldn’t breathe.
“Verity?” Harry had asked, his voice laced with concern as he turned to me. When he saw my face, he covered the distance between us in two large strides and his arms closed around me. “Jesus, I’m so sorry, baby. I was such a piece of shit.” As his arms tightened around me and I was cocooned in all things Harry, my heart rate slowed and I managed to take a breath.
“It’s fine,” I said against his chest. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, because Verity Markham is alwaysfine. Because she always holds it together.” He pulled away from me slightly so he could look down at my face. “I want you to know that you don’t have to be fine all the time with me. That you don’t have to relentlessly be the strong, capable one. Not with me. I really am sorry,” he whispered, framing my face with his large hands. “If I’d known…” he broke off and cleared his throat. “There’s no excuse. I was a total and complete prick.” He glanced around his kitchen. “Maybe I should sell the house.”
I knew from his tone that he was deadly serious.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I like your house. I’ll get over it.”
Barbara chose that moment to heft her big butt up onto the sofa, her bushy orange tail swishing back and forth in irritation.
“Anyway, I think your cat is pretty settled here.”
“She’d get over it.”
“Harry, you move staff in when you go away so that she doesn’t have to sleep alone. I think she’s fairly set in her ways.”
When he kept looking around the room and biting his lip, I took his face in my hands and pulled it to mine. “Look, seeing as sofas are kind of our thing, let’s christen this one.” And with that I kissed him. Christening the sofa was easier said than done with a belligerent cat in the room. I sustained a fair few scratch marks on my arm in the process. But it was worth it when we were later snuggled up with a still grumpy cat on said sofa watchingGame of Thrones. Barbara had spread her huge bulk across both our laps. If I paused stroking her massive head, she speared her claws into my thigh. At one point she lumbered up to climb onto Harry’s chest until her paws were either side of his neck and meowed right in his face. This prompted Harry to leave our cosy huddle and trudge to the fridge to extract some smoked salmon for her. When I huffed in annoyance the cat gave me her best fuck-you look, and shoved her arse in my face before leaping down to eat her spoils.
Every day I could feel myself falling deeper and deeper for this I-might-be-a-baddass-CEO-but-I-let-my-cat-bully-me-on-the-reg man.
And I was terrified.
Chapter16
The past doesn’t always stay in the past
Verity
All the rest of that week I stayed up in London. Sometimes we spent evenings reading, just like we used to in the school library. Harry had hooked me into epic fantasy books so thoroughly at school that it had stuck, and now we both still read the same authors. Our mutual obsession for an author called LP Mayweather and the extraordinary world he/she (nobody knew which – the author was fiercely private) had created was no surprise.
When we weren’t cocooned up together in Harry’s house we’d gone out with Toby, Naomi and some of Harry’s other friends. It seemed that most of his close friends were from university. I was happy for him that he had gone from the relentless exclusion and bullying at school, to somewhere where he was instantly accepted. He’d found his people. It helped that hollow feeling of impotent rage I experienced every time I thought about those fuckers who’d picked on him. And Naomi was right. Toby really was hovering around her as if she was going to be attacked at any moment, despite the bodyguards tailing her at all times.
Eventually Naomi had had to take him aside in the pub, muttering to me that he was being “an over-the-top dickhead”. I watched them surreptitiously from the booth we were all chatting in. Naomi marched him over to a corner and then started talking animatedly and gesturing towards her bodyguards. Toby said something to which she rolled her eyes and was about to walk away but he pulled her back so she was standing against the wall, put his arm up at the side of her head and leaned down to whisper in her ear, his other hand going to her waist. Whatever he said to her made her eyes go wide, a blush spread from her neck to her cheeks and her mouth drop open slightly. His head dropped down further, and I couldn’t see properly but I’m pretty sure his lips made contact with her neck. Naomi’s eyes fell to half-mast and she swayed towards him for a moment.
I thought they were going to kiss but Toby straightened up, his hand swept her cheek as he smiled down at her dazed expression, then he took her hand and led her back to the table, a blush still staining her cheeks. When they sat back down in the booth, Toby let Naomi sit first then slid in next to her, his arm slung up along the booth at her back. I raised an eyebrow at her but she dropped her eyes from mine to study the drink in front of her in an uncharacteristic display of shyness.
So when I met Lanie for the first time the next evening when she and Toby came over to Harry’s for tacos, I wasn’t too surprised that Naomi showed up as well. It was almost uncomfortable at first as Lanie was so very shy and standoffish, sinking into the folds of her black hoodie and ignoring everyone most of the time. The normally relaxed Toby was on edge all evening. The only time I saw Lanie relax was when she was cuddled up to Barbara on the sofa.
“You okay, darling?” I asked softly after Naomi and I brought a cup of hot chocolate over to her. Toby and Harry were still in the kitchen.
“Fine,” she muttered. This was her go-to response it seemed.
“You must be pretty special if Barbara likes you this much. She’s picky.”
Lanie snorted and rolled her eyes. “She’s just a cat.” Her tone was dismissive but the way she buried her face into Barbara’s fur did not correspond with her indifferent tone. The hot chocolate remained untouched.
