Page 145 of From Best Friend to Bride
“Understand, Delilah?”
“Yes,” she muttered, lowering her chin to her chest and averting her gaze. “I understand.”
“Good.”
“She finishes at ten,” Si said brightly.
“Traitor,” Deli hissed.
I glanced between them. “Make sure you’re back by eleven. I’ll wait up for you.”
“I—” She paused with her mouth open before freezing. “Yeah, yeah, fine. I understand.”
I nodded my head. “You can let her go now, Si.”
Deli sniffed, shaking his hands off her upper arms. “I’m going to divorce you and move to a nunnery. I bet I won’t be manhandled there.”
I leant across the bar with a smile. “You’d have to leave the contents of the bucket behind if you did that.”
As if my words slapped her in the face, she jerked, staring at me for a moment. Her thoughts all flashed through her eyes as she raised her clenched fist, then opened her fingers out to point at me.
“You shut up,” she replied. “I thought you were leaving.”
“I am.” I smirked and straightened up. “See you later, my pretty wife.”
As I pushed back and turned, I caught a glimpse of her sticking her middle finger up at me. Instead of turning around and telling her off, I laughed to myself and headed out of The Blue Tit. The cool evening air wrapped around me and made meshiver, and I hurried to my car before I gave up and went back inside.
Great.
Now I had a few hours to kill.
As it turned out, it wasn’t too difficult to fill that time. By the time I’d stopped Granny’s dog from eating everything within her reach and handled the bloody house cow and put her to bed, more time had passed than I’d thought.
Deli would be finishing work in twenty minutes, and I had to figure out how to approach the topic of her kissing me.
More specifically, how I hadn’t frozen because I didn’t want her.
I wanted her. I wanted her more than she could ever fathom, but what I’d told her before still stood.
A physical relationship wasn’t something that could happen just because. It was still a line I was reluctant to cross, especially without properly discussing it first.
And, honestly, if I’d given in and kissed her back the other day, I probably would have lost it. I don’t think I would have been able to restrain myself, and the thought of it terrified me.
For that to happen, I would truly have to be pushed over the edge.
And given that kiss and the way she’d disappeared, I wasn’t sure Delilah would stop me.
I made a cup of tea and took it to the living room. I was virtually alone in the place—Granny was in bed, Mum was having dinner with friends, and none of the household staff who lived at the estate would come anywhere near the private living space at this time.
I sighed and lay down on the sofa. Would she actually come home tonight? I was certain Lucy would back me up, but therewas always her old house. Aunt Bonnie would never turn her away.
Was I waiting up for something futile?
The thought that I was waiting for her to never come back made my stomach roll. What had happened to our relationship? Had this marriage really fucked our friendship up? We were on borrowed time, after all. We’d agreed to annul the marriage after Nana’s death, and that was four months ago now.
What if this hiccup made Deli realise that she wanted to go back to how things were?
Could I cope with that?
