Chasing the Browns

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

‘Hey, beautiful,’ he whispered, cupping my cheek.

I smiled shyly, casting a glance askance. ‘Hey, handsome.’

I could hear the smile in his voice when he said my name, ‘Lea.’ And that was all it took – the way my name rolled off his tongue, the gentle way in which he’d said it, and the intense look in his gorgeous blue eyes – to make me fall for him all over again.

I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his chest. I could feel his heart beating beneath my cheek. It felt right.

‘I love you, Nicholas,’ I whispered.

‘I love you more,’ he said, his voice muffled because his lips were in my hair. ‘Always,’ he added.

That was when I woke up. I’d had the same recurring dream all night, and now it was four o’clock and I’d decided that I couldn’t go to sleep, knowing that I’d fall right into the same dream.

I hated it. I hated it because it felt perfect, just like I hated Rita because she was perfect, too, and he’d chosen her instead of me.

By now I couldn’t deny that I had feelings for him. And I couldn’t deny that they were strong, because they definitely were.

I was having dreams about him. Dreams about us and dreams that, when I woke up, I wanted to fall right back into, again. And I kept thinking about him without meaning to: the way he smiled more from one side of his mouth than the other, and the way he’d look with his blonde hair flopping over his face, just about covering his bright blue eyes, matched with that glorious smile.

I kept thinking about the way he’d skated in to stop me from crashing into the barrier yesterday, and the way he’d gripped my arms and stared into my eyes. The sad tone in his voice when he said sorry, like he meant it.

And then there was Rita, the problem of all problems.

What about Jack – or have you forgotten that you still have a boyfriend?

Oops.

My good mood had deflated once thoughts about Rita came to mind, so I got out of bed – even though it was four o’clock in the morning – and made myself some hot chocolate before settling down in front of the telly.

There wasn’t much on at that time of morning. It was either really bad films, tele-shopping, or the news.

It took twenty minutes of rambling on about taxes, the coalition, the floods in the north, the suspect of a stabbing from five years ago, drug smuggling and secondary school GCSE statistics for the news reporters to get on to news about Angel. And, when they did, they said that the police suspected that she had definitely been kidnapped, and that there were witnesses who’d claimed that she’d been murdered.

I could hear my heart beating in my ears when I turned the telly off. The worst part was, I knew the person. The person was “right in front of me”…I just couldn’t see it.

But if it wasn’t Vince, and it wasn’t Damien, then who was it?

*

That Sunday crawled slower than snails. Mum was out doing God knew what; Dad was meeting his lawyer who’d come over from Brussels; Jack was doing some more admin for George all day, and so was Nick, apparently, leaving me with nothing to do except lounge around, waiting for a call from Poppy that never came.