Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Talk about sweet.
I smoothed his hair and called, “Dair.”
He pulled his face out of my neck and looked at me.
I could see the heat in his eyes from our kiss.
I could also see the worry for his mother buried under it.
“You’re a good son,” I said softly. “And she’s a strong woman. It’s going to take time. But she’s going to be okay.”
“Fuck, you’re killing me, hen.”
I pressed my lips together.
“I ken she’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’m just glad you’ll be around for a few days to look after her.”
I stroked his freshly shaven jaw. “Of course I will.”
“The next week and more is going to be torture.”
He thought the same as me.
I couldn’t help myself.
I kissed him again.
We necked for a long time, and I enjoyed all that time, before he put me back in my seat (and I didn’t enjoy that).
Even so, there were donuts to get because there were mouths to feed.
Dair waited until we were both belted back up.
And I fixed my hair while he drove us to town.
Early that afternoon, I’d already said goodbye to Davi, and she, Kenna and Dad were hanging some ways away, giving me space to say goodbye to Dair.
I didn’t want to say goodbye to Dair.
I was in his arms, and I could feel him examining my face while I fiddled with a button on his shirt.
“Look at me, lass.”
I lifted my eyes to him.
He grinned audaciously.
“You so very much like me.”
I frowned and slapped his chest.
He laughed and took my mouth in a bold, deep kiss, albeit a pitifully short one.
We were oh so totally leveling up when I got to Scotland.
“Text me your flight details when ye get them,” he ordered when he’d finished kissing me.
I was a little dizzy from said kiss, so I didn’t have it in me to give him shit for again bossing me.
“Okay.”
“I’ll meet ye at the airport.”
I nodded.
He gave me a squeeze. “It’s not too long, Blake.”
“I know.”
He touched his nose to mine. Then he touched his lips to mine. After that, he held my jaw and stroked my throat with his thumb.
That felt crazy nice.
God, he was undoing me!
Finally, he let me go.
Totally undoing me.
We held hands back to the rental car.
Davi got in. After another hug with his mum, a shake of the hands with Dad that turned into a man hug complete with pounding of backs, and a tight squeeze and quick kiss for me, he got in.
Dad, Kenna and I stood in the drive and waved as they drove off.
Davi shoved out of her window and waved back.
I had little doubt Dair saw me in the rearview, waving.
Since that probably made me look the forlorn, infatuated woman, I stopped.
Davi popped back into the car.
And then they were gone.
Chapter 11
Breaking
Dair
* * *
Dair stood outside international arrivals at the Edinburg airport, waiting for Blake to come through the doors.
It had been a busy week and a half, and busy normally made time fly, but waiting for her to come to him, it seemed to drag on.
During that time, they texted frequently, and talked every evening (or, his evening).
In the beginning, when she was still in Arizona, he got detailed reports on his mum. When they’d go out for a meal. When they’d cook together. How his mum spent a lot of time alone on the back deck with her tea or a glass of wine, and Blake left her to it to give her space.
She also shared how the sadness wasn’t shifting
“But it won’t, Dair,” she warned. “Not for a while. She’s lived with this a lot longer than we probably know, but following through with ending a forty-year marriage is going to be hard.”
It settled him Blake was there with his mum, because he knew how deeply she cared for her.
It settled him more she had a sense of what his mother was going through, even if he hated both of them went through it.
However, when she got back to New York, she was a good deal less quick in returning texts, even though she always picked up when he phoned.
This was because she was having lunch with the “G-Force” to fill them in on Alex and Rix’s wedding and her mother’s shenanigans.
Or she was over at Nora and Jamie’s to work with Nora on some event.
Or she was shopping with Cadence, Mika’s daughter, for some special occasion.
Or she was busy cooking, because she’d been asked by one of the G-Force to make some dessert of hers that he wanted to use to impress a date.
Or she was at her father’s, making sure some repair she’d ordered happened as she expected.
It unnerved him how full her life was in New York. She’d given the impression it was aimless, when it was anything but.
He could live anywhere, but considering the matches he called were mostly European, the commute would be impossible. He’d have to keep his flat in Edinburgh and be there most of the time regardless.