Christmas With Nathan (11 page)

Giving a brisk knock on their door, I only had a second of waiting before Rebecca opened it with William cradled in her arms. ‘Morning! Here’s your mummy,’ she cooed, giving Will a gentle rocking before reluctantly handing him across to me as I entered the lounge with her.

‘Good morning, my beautiful boy,’ I whispered, lowering my head to place a kiss on his soft head as his eyes opened at the sound of my voice. My little man. The simple feeling of having him in my arms again made my entire body relax. Nicholas walked into the lounge to join us, giving me a nod of greeting. ‘Morning, Stella. I’m just making coffee, would you like one?’

I’d slept so well last night, but I loved the kick start that coffee gave, even though I was limiting myself to just one a day while breastfeeding. ‘Oh, yes please.’ Giving another nod, Nicholas headed into the adjoining kitchen and I smiled at just how quietly aloof both he and his brother could still be. In fact, their mannerisms were so similar that they could almost be twins.

‘Was he any trouble?’

‘Nope, after I gave him his last bottle at eleven he slept like a log until he got hungry at five this morning, which I thought was pretty good going,’ Rebecca told me as she took a seat on the sofa.

Gazing down at William I couldn’t help but smile. He was sleeping peacefully, his little lips pursing as he dreamt, and he looked so content that I felt my heart flutter with love as it did every time I looked at him. I had loved spending last night alone with Nathan,
really
loved it, but I missed having my boy close.

‘Did
you
have a good night?’ Rebecca asked, her eyes flashing mischievously as a myriad of images from last night immediately crossed my mind; fur-lined cuffs, spread legs, teasing vibrators, hips grinding, sweat-slicked skin … My eyes widened and I felt my cheeks blush furiously as I tried to avoid her gaze
and
her question.

‘I take it from that blush that you did.’ she added as I gave an embarrassed shrug and nod. Last night had been incredible, with Nathan truly on top form, but it seemed a tad too early to be dishing out the gossip on sexy things.

Thinking of Nathan, where was he? I’d assumed I would find him here with Will, but seeing as he wasn’t in the lounge or kitchen, it seemed I was wrong. ‘Is Nathan here?’ I asked, wondering where on earth else he could be.

‘Uh … no,’ Rebecca replied, shifting on the sofa as an odd look crossed her face that I couldn’t quite place. It almost looked like excitement, but I think there had been some concern mixed in there too. How odd. ‘He popped in earlier to see Will, but he’s uh … he’s gone out for a bit.’

Gone out? Now those words really got my attention. We were on holiday together, why on earth would he be going out on his own? My skin prickled slightly as unease ran through my system at the peculiar look Rebecca was still giving me.

‘Where?’ I asked, concern filling my tone.

Just as Rebecca opened her mouth to answer, Nicholas walked back into the lounge, giving Rebecca a warning look as he handed me a coffee.

‘Not sure. He just said to tell you he’d be back later,’ Nicholas replied, his tone carefully neutral as it often was with anyone other than Rebecca. She was the only one who could really bring out his softer side, a bit like the effect I had on Nathan. Except I couldn’t bring out his softer side if he wasn’t here, could I? Where the hell was he?

Sitting down on the opposite sofa, I tried to calm my nervous heart and work out what was going on. Was Nathan upset about last night? Did he regret doing the scenes with me? He’d certainly seemed to enjoy them just as much as me at the time. Perhaps now he’d slept on it he had decided that we shouldn’t do that type of thing now that William was here. But surely he would just talk to me about it instead of running away? God, my mind was running at a mile a minute and almost making me dizzy.

Will was starting to get a bit fidgety in my arms, perhaps sensing my unease, so I shifted him, rocking his little body as I tried and failed to get him to settle again.

‘He’s probably hungry,’ Rebecca commented. ‘He only had half of his bottle this morning before he fell asleep. It was so cute, he was trying to drink but tiredness just got the better of him. Feed him here, we don’t mind,’ she offered, leaning forwards to top up her coffee from the pot Nicholas had placed on the table.

Even in my slightly unsettled state an amused smile crossed my face as Nicholas literally leapt from the sofa at Rebecca’s words. ‘I … uh … I’ll leave you to it and go upstairs for a bit.’ Clearly while she didn’t mind me breastfeeding William in their lounge, Nicholas had certain reservations. Mind you, Nathan would go mental if I got my boob out in front of his brother, so it was just as well that he was now making a hasty retreat from the room.

Unbuttoning my blouse, I popped the fastenings on my maternity bra and shifted William up a little, where he instantly locked on and began to feed greedily. Looked like Rebecca had been right.

Looking across at Rebecca, I watched as she twirled a strand of hair repeatedly around a finger, her eyes still fixed on me as if she had something on her mind. Hmm. That hair-twirling was her nervous twitch, why was she doing it now? Looking at her carefully, I could see her chewing on her lower lip, as if she was torn between the urge to tell me something, but desperately trying to hold it in.

‘What is it?’ I asked, still feeling a bit twitchy about Nathan’s absence. ‘Is it Nathan? Is he OK? Do you know where he went?’

Rebecca shifted on her seat, her eyes flicking between mine and her lap repeatedly. ‘He’s fine, I think. And no, I don’t know where he is. Not exactly.’ After giving me that completely cryptic answer, she sipped her coffee and put the mug down and twisted it on the coaster several times. ‘But I overheard Nathan and Nicholas talking this morning before he went out,’ she began, pausing again to twirl a piece of her hair with a sigh. ‘Nicholas told me I shouldn’t say anything about it to you …’

My stomach was churning now. What on earth was going on? I didn’t want her to break her word to Nicholas, but if something was wrong then I wanted to know about it, and I wanted to know
now
. ‘What were they talking about?’

Luckily, friendship seemed to win out, and with a quick glance at the door to check it was shut, Rebecca leant closer to me and lowered her voice. ‘Nathan was a bit aggravated about something and getting himself really worked up. The stuff I heard didn’t really make much sense …’ She paused, leaving me hanging to the point where I ended up waving my hand impatiently to indicate that she tell me more. ‘Well, he was going on about how he was sick of men ogling you, and that they needed to know you were his. He was ranting about some guy flirting with you yesterday.’ A blush rose on Rebecca’s cheek. ‘I won’t repeat the exact words he used, because they were, uhhh, quite …
heated
, and he certainly wasn’t happy.’

I took it that by ‘heated’ she meant that Nathan had been swearing like a trooper, which sounded about right for my man, because he certainly had a filthy vocabulary stored away for when he chose to use it. ‘I covered Will’s ears,’ she added with a wry smile that had me joining in and glancing down at my boy again.

Nathan had obviously been talking about the son of the cottage owner who had given me the keys. He had been a bit flirtatious, I suppose, but after Nathan had so blatantly laid claim to me, I hadn’t even given it a second thought. It seemed from Becky’s words that it was still playing on Nathan’s mind though, which was interesting. He’d always been quite possessive of me, but his jealously had seemed to level out a bit since Will had been born. Or at least I thought it had.

‘The guy who let us into the cottage was a bit flirty, but I didn’t think it was that big of a deal,’ I murmured.

Rebecca nodded, looking suddenly curious. ‘He also said some other stuff that I didn’t really understand, like, uhhh … well, he said a collar wasn’t a public enough statement, and that guys still thought you were single when you aren’t.’

My eyebrows rose in surprise. Wow. I’d never thought that Nathan would feel so vulnerable about our relationship status. He must know that even on the rare occasions that someone flirted with me that I would never, ever cheat on him. Seeing Rebecca’s continued curiosity I also wondered how to deal with her mention of my collar. Becky and I were close, best friends, really, and she knew about the type of relationship Nathan and I shared, but she didn’t know the significance of my necklace. I instinctively knew she wouldn’t like the idea of the collar, so instead of trying to explain how very important it was to Nathan and I, I avoided discussing it and tried to shrug it off.

‘Well, that doesn’t make any sense,’ I murmured, knowing my cheeks were already flushing guiltily at my lie.

Rebecca sat forward on her seat and licked her lips, and for a horrible second as her eyes sought mine I thought she was going to push me on the topic of the collar, but then she surprised me by completely changing the subject. ‘Have you and Nathan ever discussed getting married?’

I nearly laughed out loud. Yes we had, but Nathan was
not
a fan of marriage, and that was a huge understatement. Holy wedlock was not something Nathan and I would ever be experiencing, and that was fine by me. I had his collar to show our commitment and that was more than enough.

‘No,’ I said with a shake of my head as I gently helped Will across to my other breast. ‘Well, we have discussed it, but after growing up with their parents’ dodgy marriage as an example it’s not something Nathan wants.’

‘You sure about that?’ she murmured, cocking her head inquisitively.

‘Yep,’ I replied definitively, gently stroking the soft hair on William’s head and smiling.

‘Hmmm.’ Rebecca’s odd reply had me lifting my head up as I looked at her again and saw her eyes flashing with barely supressed excitement. ‘It’s just that, well … I heard him asking Nicholas what ring size I wore … and then Nathan said he thought that my hands must be about the same size as yours …’

If I hadn’t been nursing Will at that particular moment, I may very well have jumped up from my seat in shock. As it was, I remained seated, my hands marginally tightening around William as I tried to take in her words. Nathan was enquiring about ring sizes?
Why?
I knew he hated the idea of marriage,
hated it.
It was one of the reasons I wore his collar around my neck.

Besides, I wasn’t sure
I
wanted to marry him. It went against everything that Nathan believed in, so the only reason he could possibly be considering proposing would be because he thought
I
wanted it, and I didn’t want him to feel forced into anything. That would just put pressure on our relationship, and as far as I was concerned, things between us were pretty perfect as they were.

‘It might not be anything …’ Rebecca said hesitantly, ‘but it just sounded a bit weird,’ she finished, giving me an awkward shrug.

I chewed on my lower lip, knowing that Nathan would hate me doing it, but I was not able to control myself when my nerves were this raised. Gosh, this certainly wasn’t how I had expected the first day of my holiday to start.

‘I’m sure you must have misheard, Becs,’ I mumbled as Will finished his feed and started to get agitated. I shuffled him around while sorting out my clothes to make myself decent again.

Lifting him onto my shoulder, I stood up and began rubbing his back to help ease his wind as I saw Rebecca give a sceptical look, which she quickly cleared from her face and replaced with a reassuring smile. ‘Yeah, you’re right, I probably did. Serves me right for eavesdropping, I suppose,’ she joked limply before we both noticeably tensed at the sound of car tyres on the gravel track beside the cottages.

Turning to look out of the window, I saw our car pulling up and Nathan’s blond head appearing out of the driver’s door with an inscrutable look on his face. Hmm. He didn’t look angry, more contemplative, but one thing was for sure – his taut lips and creased brow certainly didn’t seem to indicate that a romantic proposal was coming my way.

‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough,’ Rebecca murmured supportively as she came to stand beside me at the window.

Obviously hearing his brother’s return, Nicholas came down the stairs, calling through to check that I was covered up again before opening the front door for Nathan and coming in to join us in the lounge.

A second later, Nathan walked into the room and it was immediately obvious to me that he was wound up about something because his shoulders were tense and his eyes were flashing around restlessly.

I watched in amusement as he turned to Rebecca and fixed her with a firm stare that actually had her eyes widening as she stepped backwards nervously – she liked Nathan, but he still made her a little nervous when he blasted his intensity at its maximum levels. ‘I just wanted to speak to Stella for a few minutes, would you mind watching Will again please?’

Nodding at him, Rebecca sidestepped his big, tense frame, letting out a visible breath of relief as she passed him and came to my side, holding out her arms for William. ‘I don’t need an excuse to spend a bit more time with my number one nephew,’ she said softly, her eyes sending me a supportive look that I suspected was supposed to put my mind at ease. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work; Nathan was plainly really worked up about something, which in turn was stressing me out, and as a result my stomach began to tumble violently as I handed Will over, grabbed my coat, and followed him as he turned to stride outside.

He walked us toward the boundary of the farm where there was a small cluster of trees and a wood shed. Leaning on the wooden fence, he stared out over the beautiful scenery, but I suspected his positioning was just a way of avoiding my gaze for a few minutes. Hmm.

When we had first met, Nathan had actively avoided eye contact with me. It had been a habit left over from his overbearing father, but after we’d grown close, Nathan had begun to seek out my gaze for reassurance. He hadn’t actively avoided eye contact for ages, so his sudden reluctance to look at me was distinctly unnerving. Blowing out a breath, I tried to settle my tumbling emotions. I knew the scenery was beautiful, but my mind was in overdrive and far too concerned by his behaviour to pause and enjoy it at the moment.