Page 126 of The Home Grown
Ellie pulls away slightly, sniffing loudly before dabbing her face with a tissue.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine honestly—your mam’s appointment didn’t get fulfilled and?—”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Mam says. “Come and sit down, love.”
She steers Ellie to an empty chair at the table before turning and making her way to the kettle.
I kneel in front of Ellie, trying to catch her eye.
“Did something happen with Kathryn?”
“No.” She swallows, rummaging in her bag for a packet of tissues, pulling a fresh one from the wrapper. “I hate letting people down and your mam’sappointment?—”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly, Mike.”
She dabs her eyes, then pulls on her best fake smile.
I rack my brain for something—anything because if Kathryn has done anything … but Dad is apparently more switched on than he leads anyone to believe. He’s been watching the scene unfold from the doorway to the garden, and he steps towards me, tapping me on the shoulder, forcing me to look up at him.
“Want to tell us what’s going on?”
ELLIE
Imaginethe feeling that consumes me the moment I open the door to find Mike in a tuxedo.
A tuxedo.
I thought a suit was something, but him in a tuxedo is something else.
His jacket is moulded to his frame like a glove, showing me every single thing I remember from our moment on his sofa. And a heat fires inside me as I wonder how I ever thought of Mike as anything other than everything he is.
Hilarious. Endearing. Masculine and gorgeous and—his smile. Oh, his smile is something else. And he smiles—no beams—at me from the threshold.
“Hey, sweetheart. Looking good. How are you feeling?” he says, straightening up to his full height.
His hair, freshly cut, has me desperate to run my hands through it—and he’s trimmed his beard. I liked it before, but the clean angles make him look … refined, which on top of the suit and his manly scent of whatever it is, has me lost for words.
Damn him.
I’m still in a robe, hair pinned up and a full face of makeup, still thinking I had plenty of time to finish getting ready.
“I—you’re early,” I say.
“Yeah, sorry—I can wait for you out here if you’d prefer,” he says.
“No, no, come in,” I say, moving aside.
He walks into the living room and sits down on the sofa like he’s been here hundreds of times before.
“How’s your mam?” I ask, hovering by the doorway.
I know exactly how his mam is, though. She rang me this morning to apologise for her son’s erratic behaviour.
But I ask Mike on the basis that she was upset with him, and I know the reason he didn’t come over last night was because he was begging for forgiveness.
“She’s okay,” he says. “Sorry you had to be there for that. I mean, I guess it was my fault. I only told her half a story and—” He blows out a breath, resting his head on the back of the sofa. “It took me ages to pry it from her, but she said I disappointed her. She didn’t get to see me—her only living son—get married, so yeah, that’s the guilt I’m living with for the rest of my life.”
