Page 68 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
Well, Nina would have been happy to dump them, but Noah had far better manners and said with convincing enthusiasm that it would be lovely to all eat together but Nina saw the way he swallowed to hide his disappointment and as he took her borrowed puffa anorak, he whispered ‘sorry’ in her ear.
As it was, dinner passed in a mellow blur for Nina. What with the heat from the obligatory roaring fire and the brandy in her glass and the hearty steak pie in front of her, she was feeling no pain. Rachel and Ford, despite their scrubbed, wholesome appearance, like they should be advertising wholegrain cereal or paraben-free cleaning products, were good company. Before touring Europe, they’d sold all their worldly possessions, bought a camper van and had road-tripped across the States so they were full of stories about the time they went to the Grand Canyon or the Utah salt flats and how Rachel had got locked in a bathroom at Graceland.
Noah was full of questions about road-tripping that they were only too happy to answer and Nina was content to sip her brandy and murmur the odd comment as she and Noah played footsie under the table. They were exchanging so many heated looks that they hardly needed to be seated so close to the inglenook fireplace.
The only thing that slightly killed the mood was that every person in the pub found a reason to pass their table so they could gawp at Nina. Normally, Nina wouldn’t have minded the attention (on the contrary, she usually loved it) but tonight she’d dressed solely for Noah to gawp at.
In fact, she’d have been quite happy to skip pudding and head back to their B&B and their box bed, but Rachel and Ford had walked over 25,000 steps that day so they did want pudding. They were both really nice, super nice, but Nina wanted to punch them.
‘You all right?’ Noah asked when they’d given their pudding orders and Rachel and Ford left the table to take photos of the rustic, rural charms of the pub and post them on Instagram. ‘Shall I come and sit next to you?’
‘Yes, please,’ Nina said and when Noah was seated in the chair that Ford had just vacated, he slipped his arm around her shoulders. She almost wanted to shrug it off because she was too hot after spending most of the day being too cold, but then he pulled her even closer to kiss her cheek. Nina leaned into Noah’s touch and his lips were moving down, just glancing the corner of her mouth, when something occurred to her. ‘I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve kissed today!’
‘Yes we have!’ Noah frowned. ‘No, we haven’t. We should probably rectify the non-kissing situation quite soon.’
‘Very soon,’ Nina agreed. She pulled away. ‘But not here, especially not when those two girls have walked past our table twice already and think that I don’t know that they’re trying to take a sneaky picture of me.’ She raised her voice and the two girls backed away, phone still pointed in Nina’s direction. ‘But yeah, more kissing needs to happen as soon as humanly possible.’
‘Sooner than that,’ Noah said, his gaze fixed on Nina’s mouth. ‘Really wish we hadn’t ordered pudding now.’
‘Talk of the devil …’
Their pudding was in sight as were Rachel and Ford, who were loudly enthusing about the history of the pub now that one of the bar staff had told them it was haunted by several different ghosts.
For perhaps the first time in ten years, Nina hadn’t ordered dessert but Noah stayed seated next to her and fed her delicious morsels of his sticky-toffee pudding, though she had no appetite for them.
It all got a bit hazy after that. There was definitely another brandy. And nuzzling. Quite a lot of nuzzling. Especially in the car on the way back.
Nina supposed they must have made small talk with Rachel and Ford and their hosts. Possibly refused a nightcap because the next thing she was aware of was climbing the stairs to their room, the wooden banister rail smooth under her fingers, Noah walking behind her and pausing to nuzzle the back of her neck again when she stopped on the landing to get her bearings.
Then finally they were in their room. The fire had been stoked while they were out and it was toasty warm and Nina was coming to boiling point just from all that nuzzling.
The door shut behind Noah with a heavy thud that matched the beat of Nina’s heart.
‘So,’ she said hoarsely. ‘About that kiss …’
‘Yes, that kiss,’ Noah said prowling towards her and Nina didn’t think she’d ever wanted to be kissed quite so badly as she did at that moment …
Then the wait was over because Noah had closed the small gap between them, closed his arms around her and Nina was dragging his head down, her fingers clutched in his hair and they were kissing.
At last!
There was no point in being polite about it. No time for hesitant, closed-mouth pecks but greedy, grabby, hungry, hot-mouthed kisses, both of them clutching at each other. Nina found herself swooning, actually swooning, in Noah’s arms and God, he tasted divine. Like brandy and caramel and coffee.
Eventually Nina had to push him away so she could drag some air into her lungs. They stood, only centimetres apart, fighting for breath, unable to tear their eyes away from each other.
‘We don’t have to do anything,’ Noah managed to say. ‘I don’texpectyou to do anything because you feel you have to.’
‘I know that,’ Nina was quick to assure him. ‘Idon’tfeel like I have to.’
‘Oh.’ Noah’s shoulders fell, as did the corners of his mouth as he tried not to look too crestfallen but failed.
‘I don’thaveto,’ Nina said in case Noah hadn’t heard her the first time, ‘but my God, I reallywantto.’
‘You do?’ Noah asked hopefully.
‘Yes! Of course, yes! Why are we even talking about it when we could be doing it instead?’ Nina had barely got to the end of her sentence before Noah’s mouth was on hers again and then it was an ungainly scramble over to the cabinet and Nina banged her elbow and Noah knocked his head as they tried to slide back the wooden panel that hid the bed from view.
Noah threw himself down on the pile of cushions and pillows. ‘Come here,’ he said in a very commanding, very unNoah-like way, which played havoc with Nina’s nerve endings.
