“I didn’t mean today!”
“When did you mean?”
She closed her mouth and glowered at him because she thought that was her safest bet considering she didn’t have an answer to his question.
His eyes changed, they became hard and glittering and she felt a thrill of fear at the sight.
“I’ve lost eight years. Eight years of you and seven years of my daughter. If it’s within my power not to lose another day, I’ll not lose it,” he told her, the force behind his deep voice almost like a physical thing, “and it’s within my power.”
She had to admit, he had a point, although she wasn’t going to admit that to him.
“It seems everything is within your power,” she grumbled perhaps a little unconvincingly.
Nate didn’t respond.
“So that’s it then, one day you live in London, the next you live in Somerset. Easy as that?” Lily asked.
“You did it for me,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“I didn’t have a penthouse and a multi-gazillion-pound company to run!” she retorted.
He took a step toward her and one of his steps brought him within an inch of her. His hand went to her jaw and she tilted her head back to look at him. His eyes had lost their steel and were glittering with something altogether different.
“Are you worried about me?” he asked softly.
“Well, what are you going to do?” she flared. “You can’t exactly commute two and a half hours one way. You’ll be on the road five hours a day. You’ll be home in time to kiss Tash’s forehead while she sleeps.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
His hand was at her waist again, his fingers biting into her there.
She turned her head and looked at her house. Perhaps she hadn’t thought this through.
He was right. They might as well start this family thing right away, no use delaying it if they didn’t have to, except, Nate was the one who’d be paying the price. She’d had Tash all this time, Fazire and Maxine were always an enormous help, she hadn’t been alone.
He hadn’t been nearly as lucky as her. He’d had Jeff and Danielle (and Victor and Laura but that was beside the point).
And she couldn’t get Victor’s words out of her head. They’d been bedevilling her all day.
Nathaniel had suffered enough.
What, exactly, had he suffered?
“Maybe we should move to London,” Lily mumbled, staring at his chest.
“Natasha is settled here,” Nate replied instantly, “eventually I’ll move some of my staff to Bristol offices. It’ll work, Lily.”
She wasn’t convinced. “We should talk about this.”
Her eyes lifted to his face as his arm slid around her waist. “You’re not giving up anything else for me and certainly Natasha isn’t,” he declared then promised, “It’ll work.”
Lily sighed then she warned, “I’m not sure how Fazire is going to cope with you being here.”
Nate’s lips twitched. “He’ll adjust.”
She sighed again. “I suppose.”
He drew her into his body and looked at her with an intensity that caused all the gymnasts to wake from a wee nap and start to tumble.
“This is going to work,” Nate vowed, that vein of steel going through his words.
Lily lifted her hands, rested them on his chest, leaned into him and relented, “Okay.”
Because there was really nothing else to say.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lily
Lily had to admit, Nate was right per usual, it did work.
In a way, if you didn’t count Fazire and a variety of other things.
Okay, perhaps a great many other things.
Okay, perhaps it seemed only to be working for Nate and Tash. And Tash was the most important so Lily tried not to worry about it too much.
Although she did worry, just not too much instead of worrying about it twenty-four hours a day, she only worried about it during waking hours which she thought consisted of “not too much”.
After Fazire heard the news that Lily and Nate were getting married and Nate was moving in, there had been a genie explosion that had to rock the Genie Richter Scale at about two hundred and eleven.
“Have you forgotten these last eight years, Lily-child?” Fazire stormed after fifteen minutes of bluster and shouting. He was floating so close to the ceiling he had to tilt his head to the side to accommodate his altitude. All of this was done while Nate was taking Tash out for a treat from The Witches Dozen in order to give Lily time to break the news privately.
“Why does everyone keep going on about the last eight years? I wasn’t alone, I had you and Maxie. We didn’t starve or live out of a cardboard box, for goodness sake!” she exclaimed.
“That is easy for you to say. You didn’t watch you slowly fade away, day in, day out, year after year,” Fazire returned, his dark eyes narrowing angrily.
“What’s that supposed to mean? I took care of Tash and you well enough!” Lily’s own temper was coming to the surface.
Fazire didn’t respond, just floated towards his bottle. “Just mark my words, if it happens to you again, Fazire will not be here to pick up the pieces.”
Shocked and angry, Lily breathed, “Fazire, I can’t believe you just said that.”
Lily was stunned and she truly disliked it when he referred to himself in the third person. Not that he could go anywhere until she had her final wish but the fact that he threatened to go somewhere was shocking, to say the least.
He turned his head away from her in a magnificent genie pout and his body began to vaporise but the words hung in the air.
“I’ve some channelling to do. The other genies are just not going to believe this!”
For the next week Fazire held resolutely to his pout even though it was like Nate wasn’t even there. Nate got up at an ungodly hour every morning, woke Lily (only partially) with a kiss, and went to London. He came home at an ungodly hour every evening, kissed the sleeping Tash (who didn’t wake for anything) and turned the sleeping Lily into his arms.
Lily didn’t know how he could do it, he was running himself ragged.
But he did it, day after day (after day).
Although Nate wasn’t there, all that was Nate definitely was.
Workmen arrived the day after he moved in with the edict to finish the house to Nate’s plans and Lily’s decorating specifications. There wasn’t just one of them or even two but a dozen workmen milling around the house which, according to Fazire, was another black mark against Nate’s name in Fazire’s Book as Fazire rarely left the house and didn’t like company very much.