Page 9 of Best Mistake Ever
Despite my annoyance with her, I feel my skin prickle at the thought of it. It’s been a while since I had sex and the lack of it is clearly getting to me.
My gaze drops to that perfect cupid’s bow on her top lip. It’s so pretty, I want to run my finger over the undulations of it. But I know where that could eventually lead and that’s the last thing I should be getting into.
Huh. That’s strange. There’s a small, faint scar on her top lip, just to the right of the bow, that I’ve never noticed before. Not that I’ve spent a lot of time looking at her mouth. Or at least, I’ve tried not to. And I really shouldn’t be doing it now. She might read more into it than just idle curiosity.
Glancing back up, my gaze locks with hers and a strange connection seems to pass between us, like the air’s alive with the potential for something wholly improper to happen here. She’s staring back at me as if she’s thinking the same thing I am.
My heartbeat picks up its pace and I feel it thudding in my chest.
Ah hell. This isn’t good. I really need to kill this. Right now.
‘Okay, fine. Keep it on today, but I want it gone by tomorrow. Is everything set for this morning?’ I ask, to distract myself from my wayward thoughts.
She seems to snap to attention at my question and raises a folder she’s had tucked under her arm. ‘I think so, yes. I’m just going to go over everything to make sure.’
‘Good,’ I say, then turn and get out of there, away from her unnerving presence and the inappropriate impulses she’s teasing from me.
This event’s in her hands now so I should leave her to it.
I head back to the reception desk to check whether Harry’s arrived yet, my blood still pulsing hard through my veins.
Just as I’m walking into reception, I see the heavy oak front door swing open and Harry comes striding in.
‘Hey, man,’ he says, giving me a salute. ‘How’s it going? Are we all set?’
‘Yeah, good. We’re ready,’ I say, going over to clap him on the back, hoping to God that Delilah isn’t going to make me look like an idiot today.
‘Cool, I’ll head to the room and get my laptop set up with your projector then. The team should be arriving in fifteen.’
‘No problem. Delilah should be here in a minute, ready to greet them.’
‘Ah, the lovely Delilah,’ Harry says, his voice heavy with meaning. He met her briefly last week and seemed pretty taken with her. He even went so far as to suggest she might be a good distraction for me, since I’ve totally failed to get back in the dating game, like he’s been urging me to do.
Harry never really took to Tessa, so he wasn’t entirely surprised, or concerned, when she took off.
I wait till Harry heads off to the room we’re using to host his investor’s meeting in today, then walk out of the main hotel doors for a breath of air.
Turning back to survey the building, I feel the usual rush of affection for the impressive, honey-coloured, stone-fronted grandeur of the house.
Gladbrooke House is a Grade I listed Georgian country manor, surrounded by a hundred acres of fields and woodland just south of Bath, and the place I most feel at home. There’s something about it that makes me feel happy to be here. It has such a warm, comforting air. Despite the neglect it’s seen, it still feels as though it’s hosted a lot of happy memories throughout its existence.
My father bought the place in the noughties in order to ‘diversify his portfolio’.
The previous owner had been pummelled by inheritance tax and had totally let the place go, before reluctantly selling up, so it was in a real state for a number of years.
My dad brought in a team of people to bring it back to life from the broken-down wreck it had been, but he didn’t spend the money on it that it really needed. So it just sat there, unloved for most months of the year while he was off performing on his international tours.
Since my brother and I were at boarding school from the age of seven, we only got to visit here sporadically during the holidays when we were young. My mum and dad never married and they split up when I was eight, so after that, I came here less than half the time, spending the rest of it in London with Mum and her new partner, or in one of my dad’s other homes around the world. I’ve always loved the place though and during the breaks from university, I used to invite friends to come and stay and we’d have wild parties here.
Good times.
Last year, after my stint in rehab, my dad offered it to me as a bolthole till I was back on my feet. He’d been intending to put the place on the market but hadn’t quite got round to it. He has very little attention these days for anything other than playing with his band or living a sun-drenched, booze-soaked life on the Italian coast with his fitness-obsessed new wife.
Rock stars. What a charmed life they live.
I’d thought for a while that that’s what I wanted from my life too, but when it came down to it, it turned out I wasn’t cut out for it. The expectation that I’d be as successful as my old man weighed heavy on me.
From the outside, it must have looked like I’d got everything I wanted in life – but in reality, it didn’t feel like that.
