“Daniel doesn’t like me getting close to anyone, scared I might tell them the truth. Not that it’s much of a secret. How did you know?”
“Mrs. Hampton, Colette as I’m allowed to call her.”
“Ah, she should have been a detective, or a barrister. She’s certainly my champion and guardian.”
“When will you be able to come home?” I asked.
“A couple of days, I think. They warmed up my cold heart, I expect to be a completely different person,” he joked.
“I don’t want you to be a different person. I want you to be the Miller that kissed me. I wrote a letter, my last letter to Lincoln. You should read it sometime.”
“I’ll have my courier deliver it first thing in the morning.”
“Your courier?”
“Colette, my champion. Trust me, there isn’t anything that woman doesn’t know. She saw me picking up a letter from the box one day. She asked me who it was from. I didn’t tell her, of course. The following day, or it might have been a couple of days later, I drove to the shop and there she was with a purple envelope in her hand. I called her a nosy cow, but it worked well.”
“No way. I’m surprised she didn’t say anything to me, she’s such a gossip.”
“She’s a great keeper of secrets also.”
“She’s a good friend to you, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she always has been. She was my mother’s friend, and I guess she took over looking after me until I didn't want to be looked after any more. Trust me, I pay for that looking after. I think I’ve practically rebuilt her house at my own cost!”
I smiled at him.
“Can I ask you something? Something that might make you want to run for the hills?”
“I’m not sure I’ll be running anywhere, and if I’m going to be scared of what you want to ask, should you?”
He hadn’t quite got the words I’d used right but then, I couldn’t remember them exactly either.
“Kiss me?” I asked.
“With pleasure.”
Miller reached out with his hand and slid his palm across my cheek. He pulled me towards him. His kiss was gentle, tender, yet held the same passion as before. I felt a tear run down my skin. I felt his rough lips on mine and I tasted the blood as they cracked slightly. When he pulled away, he smiled.
“That was everything, and more,” he whispered.
“How bad is it for me to tell you, I’d love to climb in that bed with you right now?”
“Very bad, so bad that I want you to. Not sure what Nurse Happy might have to say about it though. But, do it. Lay with me, Dani.”
Miller shuffled over and I slid on the bed beside him. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and held me close. I placed my hand on his chest and my head on his shoulder. He kissed the top of my head.
“I was so scared,” I whispered.
“I can imagine. I’m sorry for scaring you. I tried to call but holding the damn thing with one hand and dialling wasn’t in my skill set. I dropped the phone into the sea.”
“Who is Nurse Happy?” I asked.
He didn’t need to answer. A nurse bustled into the room and ordered me off the bed. She gave me a lecture about germs or something. Miller laughed and I stood and smiled, nodded my head when appropriate, and then apologised. She bustled out again.
“I better go. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you,” I said.
I leant down and kissed Miller again.
“Happy New Year,” I whispered.
“It’s going to be,” he replied.
It was a further week before Miller was released, and I waited at his house while Daniel brought him home. I’d visited Miller every day and avoided Daniel as much as I could.
“There’s my girl,” I heard, as Miller climbed from the car, I smiled the broadest smile I think I had in years.
I walked forwards and was engulfed in his embrace.
“Thanks, Daniel. We’ve got it from here. I’ll call you later,” Miller said.
I walked with Miller into his house while Daniel drove away.
“Is he pissed off at me?” I asked.
“Who cares? I have a list of instructions from the hospital. I’m to take it easy for a few more days. I intend to break every one of those instructions. Do me a favour. Grab a couple of blankets and drive us to the cottage?”
I cocked my head. “Should you? I think you ought to rest for a while.”
“Please? There’s something I need to do.”
“Okay, but we won’t be out long, will we?”
“Just grab a couple of blankets, maybe a pillow or two. You’ll find them in the bottom of the wardrobe.”
I left him standing in the hallway and collected what he needed.
“Now we go to the cottage.”
“You can’t walk that far,” I said.
“Dani, I was rather cold, I got warmed up. I only have a broken arm, and I’m not disabled. It’s important to me.”
I wasn’t sure but I made him put a coat on anyway. We drove the short distance to Harlson Falls and walked the path to the derelict cottage. He unlocked the door and we entered. Miller shook out the blankets and laid them on the floor, and he placed one on the windowsill. He took my hand and led me to it.
“Sit,” he said.
He positioned himself between my thighs and used his good hand to brush hair from my eyes. He tucked it behind my ear and took a deep breath. I held mine.
“I fell in love with you in this house. I sort of lied and told you it was a kid crush, because that’s what I thought it was at the time. But I never stopped thinking about you. Some say a youngster can’t possibly know anything about love, and what I felt then, bears no resemblance to what I feel now. I want to kiss you so bad in here, because for me, this is where it all started. It all sounds a little stalkerish, but I can promise you that it isn’t. I loved Annabelle, but you were also always in my mind. Maybe it was because whenever I thought of you, the fun you had, the smile you always shared, you reminded me of a better life, of hope.
“You still remind me of that. You’re like a rain shower in the middle of a hot summer, the first flowers of spring. Even in your darkest times, you managed to find a smile. You struggled with dignity and courage, and I fell more in love with you then.”
I didn’t get a chance to reply.
His kiss started slow, his tongue swiped over my lips until I parted them. I raised my arms and placed them around his neck. I drew him close by wrapping my legs around his waist. I wanted to feel his body against mine. Our hearts beat in tune with each other.
As his kiss deepened, so my hold on him tightened. When he broke away it was as if part of me was missing. He stepped back and let his hand run down my arm to catch my hand. He pulled me into a standing position and then led me to the blankets he’d laid on the floor.
I knelt as he did. He stared at me for a long while, running his fingers over my face and through my hair.
“I love you, Dani,” he said before kissing me again.
That time it was with such passion he took the air from my lungs. That one kiss took all the pain and hurt I’d felt for months away, he absolved me of any guilt I might have felt. He healed me with his lips and his tongue, with his strength and his courage.
Lincoln Miller Copeland became mine then, and I became his. We were a perfect fit, as if we’d been designed to be together. I could have cursed the years we’d been apart, but I didn’t. We wouldn’t have been there, in that moment, if we hadn’t travelled the paths we did; had life not shaped us to be the people that we were.
As he laid me down, and his hand slid down my side, gently caressing the skin under my jumper, I stared into his eyes.
“I love you, too, Miller.”
“I’m not going to make love to you here, as much as I want to. Trust me, I’m desperate to. What I want to do is discover you. I want to know every inch of your body before I make it mine.”
He did just that. With his hands, and his mouth, he explored my body. He tasted and caressed every inch of skin, removing my clothes as he did. He licked, nipped, and kissed, and I struggled to keep hold of myself.
“Miller, please,” I whispered, as I ran my lips over his neck.
I slid my hand up his jumper and ran it over his bare chest, feeling his heart beating a rapid rhythm. I felt his chuckle against my skin.