Flirting With Magick (31 page)

"How about you rest up tonight, get some food into you, and
tomorrow night go and talk to him?" Dianne suggested. "Kate can get Nathan to arrange to meet him out, and we'll fix it so that you end up
somehow running into each other; then you can have some time alone."

Kate went quiet.

"
What's wrong, Kate?" I asked, still perplexed at the turn of events.

She shook her head and smiled, "It's nothing; I'm just a bit enviou
s. You got a song... two songs! How romantic is that?"

***

On Friday evening, I sat on a bench outside the Irish pub as planned
,
self-doubt taking up more and more space in my head with every minute
that I waited. What if they had it wrong?

Ten minutes after the designated time, I stood up, feeling deject
ed, and rummaged through my bag to find my phone, almost hitting the
arm of a man texting on his mobile as he stepped out of a doorway.
"Sorry," I murmured.

"Abby?"

My heart leapt as a familiar voice rang in the air and again when I laid eyes on Scott's smiling face.
Oh shit! Calm down. So far so good. Now to just get through this.

"Hi." I was elated that he had finally turned up, yet sick to the
stomach with nervousness.

"
What are you doing here?" He stuffed his phone in the back pocket
of his jeans.

"
I was, um, hoping to meet someone..." I fumbled the well-rehearsed
excuse and happily noticed that he looked disappointed, "but not
now. You?"

"Oh, some friends said they'd be here. I was just coming out for a few... are you leaving?"

"Ah, yes... um no," I stammered, "would you... like to go for a drink?"

"Hang on." He pulled his phone out again and dialled. "Hi, it's
me," he said into it after a moment, "Can I catch up with you later?
Don't hang around for me. I'll give you a call." He shoved it back into
his pocket and presented me with a shy grin. I tried to look cool. I knew
whoever he was supposed to meet wasn't really here anyway. "You
look nice." He observed me briefly and led me into a trendy bar across
the road, to my disappointment choosing a table in the middle of the room rather than one more intimately situated near the wall. Nice? That wasn't what I was hoping for. I had carefully chosen my outfit, ensuring my lacy bra peeked out of my low cut shell pink dress, the
right amount to be a little bit sexy, and that the long skirt clung slightly
to my curves, just enough to get the idea of what was underneath. I'd
gone to too much effort to be
dismissed as 'nice.
' Surely it had to get better.

He placed a glass of wine in front of me, which was my favour
ite, but I didn’t remember asking for. "How's your week been?"

"Fine... busy," I wasn’t about to go into detail about my stomach flu, "You?"

"Yeah, same."

I went to take another swig of my drink and realised that I had already polished it off.

"Do you want another?" Scott offered, draining his own glass.

"Can we go for a walk instead?" I felt like I was going to pass out from nervousness. My mouth was dry, my hands were shaking, and I couldn’t sit still while so much still unsaid hung in the air around us. He had never made me feel this agitated before.

"You seem a little edgy," he noticed, leading me outside.

Edgy wasn’t the word for it. "I think I had too much coffee today,"
I lied, having actually steered clear of it that afternoon to avoid being a
bundle of hyperactivity. Fat lot of good that did. The balmy summer air
was exhilarating against my bare skin, as was the way his arm brushed
casually along mine. I snuck a look at his profile—so familiar but still so depressingly out of reach. What if this was all a misunderstanding and I made a complete idiot of myself? He said we were friends, but what if that was really all? Somehow my heart raced even faster, the realisation of how much I had remained in love with him, despite everything else, surged up my body so abruptly I had to bite my lip to stop the gasp.
Please don't let them be wrong about this.

We stopped at a shop window, which was dressed in a display for
the upcoming holidays, and it took everything I had to not fall ag
ainst the glass to stop my legs shaking.

"Check this out." He nudged my hand with his as we watched a wooden man deliver a Valentine’s heart to his beloved. I prayed this
was a sign. After a few moments, he turned to me. "Abby, are you
okay? You're not yourself." He squeezed my fingers softly. "Did you get stood up?"

"
I, uh," I kept my eye on a little delivery man as he slid repeatedly
around a conveyor belt, bearing flowers. "I came to see you."

I was relieved that he still held his light grip. "I don't understand
." I gazed up at his reflection in the window. A wry smile twitched the edges of his mouth, but his brows were furrowed in confusion. "Did we arrange something? I wouldn't have forgotten, surely."

"No. We didn't arrange anything," I answered carefully.

"Was this a set up? I don't get it," he frowned again. "You could have just called me."

I let out a loud sigh, "I wanted it to be casual. I didn't want to have
this big, planned thing and give you the 'I need to talk to you' line." I
dropped his hand in frustration. "You're wrecking this for me already
."

My exasperation was met with a laugh. "There, that's better." He turned me so we were standing face to face with my back against the window. "That's the Abby I know and love."

My knees buckled at the 'L' word. So much so that his hands tightened
his grip on my shoulders. He knew. He'd worked it out, and now he was tormenting me. "So what did you need to talk about?"

The butterflies hit me again, and I swallowed hard. When I opene
d my mouth to answer, nothing came out.

His hands loosened their grip on my shoulders and crept sensuo
usly
along the back of my neck. "Can I have a guess?" he whispered, "Does
it start like this?" He held my face in both hands as he leaned down
towards me then stopped, his mouth only millimetres from mine. I
closed my eyes and rested my head back against the glass. Moments passed, my breathing getting faster and faster with anticipation.

Then he softly kissed the tip of my nose.

Was that it?

"Something like that," I slid abruptly past him, embarrassed at
having been caught out in all my vulnerability. What the hell did he
think he was doing? I turned away from him, my face burning, and
focused my attention back on the display.

"We're not finished yet," he said, rushing over to the curb to flag down a taxi before it sped past.

"What are you doing? Are you leaving?" I cried in panic, as he
opened the door. This wasn't part of the plan!

"Get in!"

He didn’t let me talk during the entire trip to my flat, every attempt
I made halted by his held up finger and a small smile.

We entered my home under his enforced silence. His hands once
again found my shoulders, and I shivered at his touch, despite the wa
rm summer evening. I closed the door and opened my mouth to speak.
He put his finger upon my lips, which he soon replaced tenderly wit
h his mouth, before pushing me hard against the door and pressing his body to mine, his fingers tangled in my hair.

"I don't know whether to slap you or keep kissing you," I said
breathlessly when he peeled himself from me.

"Sorry, I saw the taxi coming and just wanted to get over here,"
he whispered, walking me backwards to my room. "We don't need to
talk right now. Except I want to tell you how sorry I am. All I've do
ne is make you suffer because I was a world class idiot, putting my career first and telling you something I didn’t mean." He sat me down on
my bed, and we both realised I was shaking. "Is something wrong?" He
rubbed my upper arms where goosebumps had formed.

"I think I'm just a bit nervous."

"I guess I am, too, even though we really shouldn't be. We know each other."

"It's different now."

"Yeah, but it's better." He kissed my eyelids, once each, then placed
his hands on either side of my face, lightly stroking my hair back. "C
an
we start over? I mean really start over. Just forget everything that
happened until tonight."

"We don't have to forget
everything
," I countered. "Some of it was
pretty good." I smirked up at him. "We'll just forget the bits where
you were the world class idiot."

"I think that was all of it."

I held my breath, loving the way he was gazing at me, although if it were anyone else, I would have looked away, embarrassed.

"
I’m in love with you, Abby," he whispered before laying me dow
n and kissing my neck, running his soft lips along my collarbone.

"Scott," I whispered back, relishing his name on my lips, hardly
believing I could finally say what I’d wanted to for so long, "I love
you, too."

***

I awoke late in the morning with Scott's arm still resting lightly on
my waist. I moved a lock of dark hair from his face and lovingly stroked
my fingers over his smooth cheek as he slept. His eyes fluttered ope
n,

"Hey, beautiful," he smiled gloriously, pulling me closer to him,
his voice still husky with morning. "This is reminiscent of our first
night together."

"
You'll laugh, but we have to go to Kate's today, too." I had promise
d
we would visit her so she could see for herself how successful the ni
ght
had been. Or be a shoulder to cry on had it all gone pear shaped. Tha
nk goodness that didn't happen.

He slid his hand down over my hip and rolled onto me. "Well, if
I remember correctly, we had some unfinished business then, too," he
said in between kissing my forehead, cheeks, eyelids, and finally, lips.
"
Have I told you this morning that I love you?" He raised his left brow
,
the tiny ball on the top of his piercing glinted in the sunlight that
streamed through the gap in the curtains. It was strange how much brighter everything appeared.

"Hmm, not since about three this morning." I looked over at the
clock. "It's been at least eight hours; you need to lift your game." I
giggled as he pulled the sheet back up over our heads. I'd lost count of the amount of times we said it before we fell asleep.

"I love you so much."

"I love you more." I meant every word. We were both smiling widel
y,
and I could just imagine how deliriously stupid we must have looked.

Minutes later, he lay back down, both of us weary with excitement.

"Why'd you stop seeing me?" he asked all of a sudden. We had
been making love all night and had not really had a chance to talk.

I paused before I spoke, collecting my thoughts. "Sean said he saw
you with someone at PeaSeas, and I realised I had serious feelings
for you so I had to call it off."

"Woah, what?" He abruptly sat up. "With someone? That can't be right."

"It was the weekend before I came over and said we couldn't sleep
together anymore."

"But I wasn't with anyone else when I was with you." He frowned,
his eyes narrowing while trying to remember. God, he looked sexy when he did that.

"I don't think he would have lied about it." I admitted, Sean could
certainly bullshit, but I was pretty sure he wouldn't make up something
like that, especially since he didn't know then that Scott and I were
anything more than friends.

"The only thing I can think of was when I was mucking around
with Kate; I had my arm around her and was pretending to kiss her;
we were teasing Nathan. It was all of five seconds. Maybe he saw that
and got the wrong idea. Believe me, when I say it was just you, it was
just you." I was annoyed for a moment, but it wasn’t anyone's fault, and obviously nothing Kate would remember as being important.

"And after me?" I teased my fingers through his sparse chest hairs
, immediately regretting the question. Why would I want to know?

"Abby..." he groaned, "it doesn't matter anymore. I'm with
you
now. I don't care about who
you've
been with or what
you've
done, so can we just let it all go?" I could see in his eyes that he had. Tanya...
Carolyn... But he was right, he could have been with half the city, and
it didn't matter. What was even more important was that my past didn’t matter to him, either. "I went to tell you how I felt, you know."
He lay down on his elbow, facing me, tucking my hair behind my ear.
The amber flecks in his eyes twinkled against the green.

"Did you? When?"

"The weekend just after we called it off. Your car was there, and I knocked but you were out."

"I was home all weekend." I remembered that weekend well. I was
feeling rather despondent about not seeing Scott anymore and to make
things worse Josh had called again and wanted to see me. He said he
was going to come over. I didn't want to see him so when he knocked...