Page 30 of Letting Go of Yesterday
‘I think you should let me pay for dinner; it’s only fair as you paid for the bowling and that way we could have a can of Coke each.’ Rowan laughed again, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth she wished she hadn’t said them. She liked the idea of sharing a can of drink with Nathan. It spoke of the kind of casual intimacy she’d never had with James, the sort of thing a normal couple might do.
‘My mother would never forgive me if she found out I let you pay for your own chips, but I’m sure I can persuade Brae to give us two straws, if he’s working today.’
‘I don’t mind sharing, if you don’t.’ Rowan felt suddenly shy and Nathan nodded.
‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather share a can of Coke with.’ He smiled again and she felt another huge jolt of attraction towards him, one that went right down to her toes. The date couldn’t have been any more simple or any more perfect, and Rowan’s only regret was that it would eventually have to end.
* * *
Rowan wasn’t sure if her parents knew that she and Nathan were dating, but she suspected they did. It was hard to believe they wouldn’t be able to pick up on the energy that seemed to fizz between them whenever she was close to Nathan. They’d been on three dates in the last two weeks and spent time together with the children in between, and she was certain her whole family would have been delighted at the prospect of her and Nathan getting together, but it was far too soon to even consider making it public. It didn’t really matter whether her parents had already worked it out, because none of them would discuss it in front of the children. When her mother had asked how she felt about James potentially introducing them to a new partner, she’d said he’d have to be certain it was serious and long-term first. The children needed stability, and Theo in particular was vulnerable about things changing, so they all needed to act with caution. Her parents understood that. The children saw Nathan as a friend and she wanted to keep it that way, although it was getting harder and harder for her to think of him in those terms.
‘Thank you for dinner, it was amazing.’ Rowan turned towards him as they pulled up outside her cottage. They’d driven to Port Tremellien and had drinks at a new bar overlooking the beach, watching the sunset turn into nightfall, before eventually heading to dinner at a Thai restaurant which had a fabulous reputation, but that Rowan had never tried. There was always a chance of someone seeing them together, but all three of their dates had happened outside of Port Agnes, apart from when they went to Penrose Plaice for a portion of chips, and no one watching them together could have claimed to know for certain that they were a couple. They’d kissed again at the end of the first two dates, but despite the opportunity there had been to go further, and despite how much Rowan had wanted to, she’d put the brakes on both times. James was the only man she’d ever slept with. Part of her was still scared that their lack of intimacy and the fact that he’d fallen in love with another man was due to some kind of failing in her. Added to that, she was also nearly forty and had been through two pregnancies, which made the prospect of someone seeing her naked terrifying. But it wasn’t just someone, it was Nathan. In a way that made it better, but in another way the stakes were far higher than they would have been if this had just been a rebound fling. As much as she might try to tell herself that dating Nathan was just a way of moving on from a bad marriage, she knew it wasn’t true. He meant far more to her than that, he always had done, but up until now it had all been on her terms. Just as she’d suspected, Nathan hadn’t given even the slightest hint of wanting to push her into something she wasn’t ready for, but the truth was she was more than ready. She was just terrified of getting it wrong.
She couldn’t even use going home to the children as an excuse for not being as brave as her body was begging her to be. Bella was staying at Tiffany’s, and Theo and Leo were at a cub camp in the village hall. The newest cubs were doing their first ‘camp out’ in the warm and dry, rather than under canvas, partly because of the time of year and partly because, as the cub leader had told the parents, there was a high rate of wanting to go home at their age. Irene was one of the volunteers and she’d assured Rowan that she’d take the boys home with her if the need arose. There was unlikely to be a lot of sleeping going on for the boys and, as Rowan looked at Nathan she realised that getting a good night’s sleep was the last thing on her mind, too.
‘I’m really glad you liked it.’ His voice was warm, but somehow it still elicited a shiver of anticipation. ‘And I love going out with you.’
‘Me too.’ Rowan twisted her hands in her lap. There’d been so many times during the evening when she’d wanted to reach out and touch him, but instead she’d knotted her fingers together and she was doing the same thing now. They had to take this slow, not just because of her insecurities, but because of the risks to their friendship if they got it wrong. The trouble was, the more time she spent with Nathan, the more her feelings deepened into something more than friendship. Her attraction to him was even stronger than it had been all those years before, and even though she knew she should thank him again, lean over and give him a kiss, before disappearing inside, something else entirely came out of her mouth.
‘Do you want to come in?’
‘Do you want me to? I don’t want you to feel like there’s any pressure to invite me in.’
‘You know I want you to, and I’ve wanted you to at the end of every single date, it’s just that I’m scared I might have forgotten how to do this.’ Her voice was low and she couldn’t meet his gaze. She had to get this out now, or she might never be able to tell him, and she needed him to know before they went any further. ‘My marriage to James was so lonely for years. There were always a thousand things he needed or wanted to do rather than spend time with me. In the end we were more like friends, maybe not even that.’
‘Then he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought.’ Nathan took her hand. ‘If I come in, I want you to know there’s still no pressure. I would give anything to spend time with you, except if I thought it wasn’t what you wanted.’ She looked at him then and she could see in his eyes that he was every bit as attracted to her as she was to him, and that there was no putting the brakes on this time, because she didn’t want to.
‘Let’s go inside.’ Getting out of the car, she moved with an urgency she suspected wasn’t entirely decent. Within seconds they were inside the house and as she pushed the door shut behind them and turned to face him again, he closed the gap between them, pausing for a moment.
Rowan reached up and put her hands on the back of his head, pulling his mouth towards hers and kissing him, making all the lies she’d told herself in over two decades with James painfully obvious.Maybe everyone’s love life died off when they’d been together a while. Passion didn’t matter in a relationship. She didn’t need to feel desired to be happy.When Nathan kissed her, she knew what she’d been missing and suddenly her fingers were fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, her body arching towards his.
‘Are you sure?’ He whispered the words into her hair, but she didn’t have to ask him if he felt the same. His feelings for her were obvious as their bodies pressed together.
‘Oh, I’m sure.’ Rowan helped him pull his shirt over his head, before slithering out of her dress. She was too much in the moment to feel self-conscious any more, or even remember that no one but James had ever seen her like this, or touched her the way Nathan was touching her. Except the truth was it wasn’t remotely the same. When Nathan touched her it was as if electricity was pulsing through her body and when she kissed him again, she wouldn’t have been surprised if fireworks really had been going off somewhere above her head. But she wouldn’t have noticed even if they had been, because all she could see was Nathan and all she wanted was him, in a way she couldn’t imagine ever wanting anyone else.
17
Nathan kept catching himself smiling for no apparent reason at all, except for the fact that he felt happier than he had in a very long time. He could have tried to convince himself that the look on his face was down to the fact that the bare bones of the kitchen construction had now been completed, or because he and Will had just signed on the dotted line to work with Rowan’s father on another very lucrative contract for the conversion of five farm buildings on the outskirts of Port Tremellien into executive homes, which would start in the spring. But those things would have been a lie. The reason he was smiling was Rowan.
Nathan would never have believed they’d get this second chance after so many years, or that it would turn out that his feelings for her would never really have gone away, just been buried in an attempt not to compare every other woman he met to the girl he’d been in love with but had never had the chance to tell. It scared him a bit, because he knew there was a possibility of history repeating itself and getting over her might be impossible this time around. It had been hard enough the first time and even after she’d left Port Agnes with Katrina and Dean he’d held on to the hope that they might be able to pick up where they left off, but she’d ghosted him long before it was even a thing. Their kiss hadn’t been his first, but it had meant more to him than any of the others and he hadn’t been lying when he’d told her that he’d thought about it for a long time afterwards.
By the time she’d come back to Port Agnes to stay with her dad he’d moved on, telling himself that the only reason he still thought about her from time to time was because of how abruptly it had ended. If it hadn’t been for Leo and Theo’s friendship they might never have got to know each other again in any meaningful way, but watching Rowan with her children was like getting to know her on a deeper level. She loved them fiercely and she would do whatever it took to make sure they had fun, even if it meant making a fool of herself by falling off a surfboard over and over again until Theo was laughing so much that he stopped being afraid to try it.
At first, he was more than happy just to have her friendship. There was no denying that Theo’s presence brought joy to his nephew’s life, but spending time with Rowan had brought it to his too. After Nicole had left him, he hadn’t been interested in anything serious. Women either seemed to want him to live up to some kind of bad boy fantasy that just wasn’t him, or they suddenly viewed him as fundamentally untrustworthy when they discovered his past. He supposed it made sense in a way, but their assumption that he’d cheat on them because he’d been convicted of a crime was wrong. He’d never been unfaithful and, even in more casual relationships, he’d never dated two women at the same time.
Maybe his certainty that Rowan would never date him was what had allowed them to get to know each other properly. He’d just enjoyed hanging out with her and, even when they’d kissed again, he hadn’t been sure it would go anywhere. He’d half expected her to pull out of agreeing to go on a date, but then it had happened and things seemed to take on a momentum all of their own. Spending the night together could have been a huge disappointment, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth and he was as certain as he could be that she’d felt the same way. If it had been just a way of getting her husband out of her system, she wouldn’t have asked him to stay the night, or been the one to reach out for him again the next morning. She made Nathan feel wanted in a way he would have found it hard to describe. Afterwards Rowan had made them breakfast, like they were a proper couple, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from saying what was on his mind.
‘This has been incredible and I know there are all sorts of rules we’re supposed to live by in the dating world, but I’m horribly out of touch with them. So I’m just going to have to come out and ask if you’ve thought about what happens next?’
‘A fourth date?’ She’d grinned then, standing in her kitchen wearing an oversized T-shirt, her tousled hair looking so different from when she put it up for work, and he’d had to force himself not to reach out for her again, because they needed to have this conversation. Suddenly she looked shy. ‘Does this make me easy, spending the night with you so soon?’
‘If you’re easy then so am I, but we’ve waited more than twenty years and if you count all the times we’ve been out together since you got back, it’s at least fifteen.’
‘That sounds far more respectable.’ She laughed, but he hadn’t been able to join in.
‘Does being respectable matter to you?’
‘It has to in my job.’ Shrugging, she reached for his hand. ‘But I want to do this again, because it really has been amazing.’
