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Out on the street Nadia spread her arms, bags dangling from each hand, and closed her eyes and filled her lungs. With feet that seemed to float across the ground she twirled out into the middle of the deserted back street. “It feels like a brand-new day. Doesn’t it?”
“A brand-new world,” he agreed.
She looked over his car at him with a dark smile, a smile that spoke of cool sheets and hot limbs and getting all that as soon as possible, and said, “I do have a couple of hours before senior pole-dancing starts.”
He laughed so loud it echoed off the buildings around them. “You little con-artist. You do have a job.”
A shrug. Then, “For now. Until I find my real thing. Which I will do.”
Ryder took her scarf and looped it around her neck, tugging her closer. “Of that I have no doubt. And...until then?” he asked, in a voice loud enough only she could hear it.
A finger running down the spine of his car, she sauntered around the thing, every step an exquisite sensuous thing he’d never become immune to. Neither did he want to. “I don’t know—we could walk? Window-shop? Coffee?”
“I thought you hated coffee.”
“Please, when did I say that?”
“First time I asked you out. Stunts your growth were your exact words. Miss Nadia, were you playing hard to get?”
“Ha! I’ve never played hard to get in my life. You just...overwhelmed me.”
Ryder found it hard to imagine that this creature of his was overwhelmed by much in life, but he’d take it. “And now?”
“You still overwhelm me.” At his side now, Nadia lifted onto her toes and pressed a soft, sweet kiss on his lips. Then, holding his cheeks between her palms, said, “Lucky for you I appreciate the thrill of being up high looking down, on stage looking out, eyes closed or blinded by stage lights, nothing but a ribbon and practice between me and certain death. But you, gorgeous man, are the greatest thrill of my life.”
When she kissed him it was anything but sweet. It was deep, real, so far beyond a mere thrill.
“I’m thinking takeaway,” said Ryder. “And they rent rooms above the pub around the corner, right?”
“Man after my own heart.”
He held out an elbow, she slid her hand through the bend and rested her head on his big shoulder as together they walked down the thin Richmond street, sunlight filtering gently through the patchy clouds, the soft swish of their shoes on the crooked pavement in perfect time.
EPILOGUE
Nadia dodged the piles of plasterboard and plastic sails hanging from the scaffolding as she headed out of the soft double doors and down the stairs of the old Richmond building she now called home.
From the second-floor landing she caught Amelia’s eye through the open doorway of the makeshift studio she was using while Ryder’s company decked out the new slick arts studio near his old place in Brighton.
Wrangling a group of teenagers, no doubt forced to attend class to get ready for the senior formal, Amelia beckoned Nadia inside mouthing, Help me! But Nadia waved the appeal away. Been there, done that.
She wrapped her thick scarf around her neck and tugged her beanie tight about her ears, then pushed open the brand-new, shiny red doors at the front of the building and jogged down the tidy steps. Once she hit the far edge of the footpath, she walked backwards and as always marvelled at how warm her building looked even in the winter light with the scrubbed façade, windows all now free of bars and gleaming with the light of endeavour, the neat row of apple trees and box hedges planted along the entire front.
Hands in pockets and shoulders lifted high to her ears with pride, she glanced up at the arched windows of the third floor; the one with the window seat at which she sat and sketched ideas of a weekend. The other up against which their huge king-size bed had been shoved that first night the place was officially theirs and had never been moved. The next one that gave the most light for Ryder’s vintage drafting table that he used in the morning while she slept in, the one that had been his mother’s before him.
To think in a few short months it would all be done. The bottom floor for Ryder’s new boutique firm—RF Renovations. The middle floor for her very own private studio—or her “swaying and swinging room” as Ryder called it. The top floor with its windows and beams, big industrial fans, crazy chandeliers and Ryder’s imaginings for the layout of their first home, just gorgeous and perfect.
To think how much had changed since she’d made the choice to come home. After Vegas, she’d also made the choice to give her mother a break, because, no matter how tough the woman was, she mattered and always would. They were stuck with each other. Nadia had sat her mother down and told her exactly that and then had neatly put the onus on her mum to deal with it. Or not. Amazingly, she had. Slowly though. Kent women were stubborn after all.
