His entire face lights up at the sight of me. It makes my heart behave very peculiarly.
“Ready?” he says affectionately.
“If by that, do you mean am I wearing clothes I ordinarily wouldn’t be seen dead in, then yes.”
“I think that’s the point,” he says wryly. He holds up the olive parka from earlier and I pout.
“Really?”
“Absolutely, you tease. And get those boots off and put these wellies on instead.”
I look down at my Alexander McQueen suede desert boots. “Okay,” I say mournfully.
He watches me do as he says, and I give him credit for concealing his satisfaction at my obeying him. Probably because he knows it won’t last long.
I finish putting on the horrific green wellies, and he rubs his hands together. “Come on. I need to chop something.”
I shudder. “Wonderful,” I say breathily.
I’m still breathy twenty minutes later but not because of the sight of Lachlan cutting wood.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s very riveting. When we got to the wood store, he installed me on an old garden chair and handed me a blanket he was carrying. He then proceeded to be dreadfully energetic as he found the axe and started to chop wood. Things got even more interesting when he got too hot and took his jumper off, leaving him in a thin T-shirt that soon became rather see-through when he sweated.
I’d love to pay more attention to the strength of his body and the movement of his muscles, but my asthma begins to play up and I start coughing. He looks over and I take a breath, hastily lowering my hand.
“So, you said you grew up in Norway?” I say quickly.
He’s distracted, thankfully, because if he focuses on just how much I’m coughing he’d send me inside and I’d have to give up being with him. “You have a memory like an elephant.”
“It helps in my job. Although an elephant would pray to forget some of the sights I’ve seen at wedding receptions. So, Norway?”
“My father worked for the foreign office and was stationed there.”
“How lovely.”
He pauses, resting his arm on the axe handle. He’s flushed and that damn lock of hair has fallen over his face again. It makes my fingers itch to push it back.
“It was okay,” he says. “We moved around a lot, as you might guess.”
“Oh dear, did that fracture familial relationships and leave an emotional chasm between you as a family?”
“No, to whatever that bunch of words meant.”
“Surely it had an effect on you all.”
He grins at me, his eyes bright. “Not at all. We were a close family. We had to be because we moved so much.”
“You didn’t sound very close when I heard you on the phone to your mum that time.”
His brow furrows for a moment. “No, that was just a bad connection. It’s always irritating, because I like to talk to her.”
I breathe in and cough again as the cold air hits the back of my throat.
“Maybe you should go in,” he says, concern in his eyes.
I wave my hand. “It’s just a cough. Tell me how you ended up at boarding school.”
He hesitates, obviously torn over sending me inside. “It happens a lot with forces children and foreign office people. Lucy and I both ended up at boarding school when we started doing GCSE work.”
“And was that dreadful? Did that stir up resentment against your parents? Did you wait lonely on exeat days when all the other students went out with their parents?” He stares at me and I rack my brain for more inspiration and then remember a book I read at school. “Did they beat you with birch twigs?”
“Jesus Christ, you have a very strange idea of the private school sector.”
“Please don’t spoil my illusions.”
“I’m afraid I have to. I missed my family at first, but we’ve always been good communicators, and my parents would visit whenever they could, and we always went home to wherever they were at holidays.”
“I always wondered whether you’d been scarred by it and that was why you couldn’t commit to our marriage. Intimacy issues.”
He looks faintly revolted. “Not at all. I think I had control issues more than that.” I look at him enquiringly, my heart racing. I think this is the first time we’ve spoken like this. “You threatened my control in every way, and I reacted to that by digging my heels in and inventing increasingly desperate work absences.”
“I threatened your control.” I pause. “You invented work absences?”
“Didn’t you know?” He puts his hands on his hips. “How can you not know that I was out of control around you? I didn’t date until you, and then I was suddenly dancing in the rain to Frank Sinatra. I wasn’t monogamous until you, and then I couldn’t see anyone else. And then I got drunk and married you.”
“I thought that was just the whisky cocktails.”
He shakes his head. “God, no. They definitely helped, but I must have already been thinking about it.” He hesitates. “I felt you trying to pull away before we got married and I think it panicked me.”
“I was,” I say quietly. “I was worried by how powerfully I felt for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hello, you two.”
We turn, and Erica is standing there.
“Hello, Married Lady,” I say, standing up to hug her. “You look great.”
She does look well—rosy cheeked and happy.
She shrugs. “I can barely walk, but I suppose that’s what a honeymoon is for.”
Lachlan laughs and I wrinkle my nose. “At least it keeps you in your room away from the family.”
She laughs. “I saw you two out here and thought I’d come and say hello and thank you for what you’re doing.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I say.
She immediately shakes her head. “It’s a hell of a lot. My mother made it sound completely natural, as though it was expected that because you arranged our wedding it logically follows that you should clean her bathroom.”
“I’m a little worried about that,” I confess. “Will she expect me to go home with her?”
“Only until she’s fully exposed to your version of housework,” Lachlan observes.
I snort. “I’m a very clean person.”
“It’s easy to be clean when your carpets don’t get dirty because of the clothes littering the floor.”
“I love how you’re always laughing together,” Erica says, giving me a sweet smile.
I feel so guilty. We’re completely lying to her. If she knew the truth it would crush her soft, romantic heart.
She pats my arm. “I’ve been watching you two.”
I cough and then cough again. “Not creepy at all,” I get out, heaving for breath.
“You’re just very in tune. I’ve rarely seen a couple so together.” She pauses. “Are you okay, Joe?”
I gasp for breath, the cold making me cough again and again. I splutter, panicking when inhaling suddenly seems impossible.
“Joe?” Lachlan says urgently.
“I’m okay,” I manage. My eyes widen as the horribly familiar feel of an asthma attack closes in. I pat my pocket, but I’ve left the inhaler in the pocket of my other jeans. I look frantically at Lachlan.