Page 34 of Love Walked In

As I raced down the steps to the main entrance, the inside of my brain was a splash painting of feelings—happiness, annoyance, and uncertainty slashing and dotting across each other.

Why had Vinay come, when I’d told him I wasn’t interested in giving up the shop?

Why couldn’t I take Mari back to bed and stay there for the rest of the day?

I took a deep breath. It wouldn’t do to rush up to Vinay frantic.

I let myself remember Mari’s soft touch on my arm, the way she looked to me for reassurance.

For all her ferocious independence, there was a tenderness at the heart of her that she’d chosen to show me, and I liked that.

I liked it far too much for how short-lived this affair would be.

But now I understood what I’d been seeing between Graham and Mari.

The way they talked to each other, the way he kept an eye on her and she prodded him—I could see their closeness, feel the warmth and familiarity between them, but it didn’t have the electricity that surged in the air whenever my eyes met hers.

It had felt right .

“Do you have the newest Game of Thrones ?” a voice in a nasal, obviously fake Scouse accent asked when I got to the bottom of the stairs. “I’ve been waiting for it to come out for aaages.”

But now I had to pay for that moment of blissful escape and remember that the real world existed. I turned, and Vinay smirked at me.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered.

“You haven’t been answering your messages for the last few days,” he whispered in his normal accent. “I have big news for you. Literally big.”

If I kept pulling my hair like this, I’d end up bald with worry. “That’s lovely, but honestly, couldn’t you have sent me a text and told me to meet you at the caff?”

“Hi, can we help you find anything?” Mari suddenly said from beside me, and my stomach jumped again. Of course she wasn’t going to stay where I put her, I’d been ridiculous to think she would.

My eyes zeroed in on the reddish-purple mark where her shoulder and neck met, and a shiver went through me as I remembered how she’d cried out when I’d sucked on her skin. I’d be hearing that sound in my dreams for weeks.

Now Vinay grinned widely at her. “No, just here for a natter, I’m afraid. I’m Vinay, an old friend of Leo’s from uni.” He snapped his fingers. “Wait. The accent. You must be Mari.”

She shrugged lightly and smiled. I recognized it from her catalogue of expressions—it looked welcoming, but I knew it was just as much a shield for her. “That’s me.”

“Leo’s told me all about you,” he said, then dodged my attempt at subtly kicking his shin.

“Only bad things, I’m sure.” She glanced back and forth between us, then raised her eyebrows. “If this isn’t business, I guess I’ll leave you guys to it.”

I let her walk away, just barely resisting the urge to tug her back to me, to kiss her cheek, or better, her mouth.

Even to hold her hand in mine. The more closeness she offered, the more I craved.

After she’d shown me how to make buttery-sweet cinnamon toast and I’d eaten every bite, she’d led me back to the bed and asked me to teach her how I liked to be touched.

My face flamed at the thought of that lesson. I’d remember it until the day I died, if I didn’t expire of sheer ecstasy the next time she used her mouth on me.

“If eyes were hands, she’d be naked right now,” Vinay said with a quiet smile.

“Shut up,” I muttered half-heartedly, rubbing my face to scrub away the utterly unprofessional memory. “Give me five minutes and we’ll talk upstairs.”

I got Graham to take my place on the floor with a rubbish excuse about an early lunch break, and led Vinay upstairs to my office.

He glanced around once I’d closed the door behind us and we’d sat down. “I like what you’ve done with the place. It’s like your granddad could walk in any minute.”

I hadn’t had the time or energy to care about interior design for months, but now through Vinay’s eyes, I saw the state of the office for the travesty it was.

I’d pinned up some of the loose photographs Judith had brought but I knew I hadn’t truly made it mine.

The ancient desk chair was designed for a man significantly taller and broader than me, and the carpet was a burnt-orange shag that hadn’t aged well since its 1970s heyday.

But didn’t that say so much about my relationship with the place before Mari arrived? That I hadn’t done anything to make it nice for myself, just accepted it as it was and plowed through?

I could change things now, though. I could rip up the horrible old carpet, find a chair that didn’t make my back hurt, hang up prints. I could make this a place I wanted to be, even after Mari left.

My stomach sank. I didn’t know if I wanted to be here, if she were thousands of miles away.

I shook my head, letting go of futile hopes. “I don’t have much time. What’s your big news?”

Vinay sat forward. “My boss is really riding me to make a deal with you. They’re very keen to buy the building, and they want to offer you this for it.” He took a piece of paper out of his coat pocket and pushed it across the desk.

I took it, saying as I opened it, “Your boss really won’t take no for an answer?

She’s very…” My train of thought went over a cliff.

I’d never been skint, thanks to the money I’d inherited from Mum’s parents when they’d died, but even my eyes widened at the number written in smooth blue ink.

It was a number that bought houses and second houses, paid for my father’s retirement, my retirement at age thirty-one.

The Rosses would never have to work again, if they didn’t want to.

“Big, innit?” Vinay said.

“Ridiculous.” I rubbed my fingers across the roughness of the paper. “It’s Monopoly money,” I said with a strange laugh. “I can’t grasp it.”

He nodded. “Me neither. It’s life-changing.”

I studied him. “Life-changing for you and Sonali, too. It’s one percent commission for you, isn’t it?”

“Right. But bidding up wasn’t my idea, I promise.”

I played with the scrap of paper. “You need this, though.”

Vinay stared at his hands. “We’ve never pretended with each other, mate. Sonali really wants to stay home with the twins once they’re born. Money like this would let her quit her job. And a two-bed flat was fine when we thought we’d have one child, but it’s not enough for two.”

We sat there silently. Vinay expectant and I… I wasn’t sure what I was. I was so many things at once that I couldn’t name them. Voices in my head talked over each other, my father’s triumph, Judith’s shock, Alexander’s ire.

And Mari? Mari would be so disappointed with me, that I wouldn’t let her see her plans through.

Overwhelmed, that’s what I was.

Faced with my silence, Vinay sighed. “It’s not about the money, is it, mate?”

I rubbed my left cheek as I tried to put the words together. “No.” I let my fear come to the surface. “I just don’t want to disappoint anyone, more than I already do.”

He fiddled with one of the black buttons on his coat. “You had thirty years of Alexander telling you how to live your life, so I won’t do that. I know what it’s like, for families to have expectations that hurt more than help.”

I nodded in recognition. Vinay was two years older than me, and he’d originally gone to Imperial to study medicine but failed his first-year exams. His father, whose only dream had been having a topflight neurosurgeon for his only son, hadn’t spoken to him until he’d studied new A-levels and gotten into LSE to study business.

Even now he begrudged him any kind of approval.

“I hope that someday you feel certain enough to do what you want,” Vinay said firmly, then smiled. “But now I want the goss. Tell me what’s happening with Mari. You never struck me as the type for something casual.”

“It’s not casual,” I growled.

He put his hands up with a laugh. “All right, all right, not casual. So you’re mad for each other and this is forever, well done. You deserve it.”

And now to explain the mess I’d gotten myself into. “She’s going back to America in April,” I mumbled to my desktop. “So it’s not forever.”

Thank God Vinay didn’t die laughing at me, though I was sure I deserved it for being so foolish. Instead, he rested his head in his hand and said with a sad chuckle, “Oh, mate . You don’t make it easy for yourself, do you?”

I laughed bitterly. “I don’t think I’m capable of it.”

Vinay studied me, his dark brown eyes pensive. “I never saw you look at Bex the way you look at Mari.”

“Because Bex and I weren’t that way,” I finally confessed. “Even when we tried to be.”

When we’d tried to transform best friendship into desire, it had been like trying to light a fire with soaked matches and green wood. Of course there hadn’t been a spark.

Vinay nodded. “Then it’s a good thing you moved on.

You deserve to have the life you want, not the life someone else thought you should have.

” He reached out and tapped the magic number on the desk.

“And you know what? This is the kind of money that means you’re not tied down.

You could do anything, go anywhere, for as long as you liked.

Even California.” He waved his hands in a “ta-da” gesture.

For a moment I let myself step into the picture he painted.

Of waking up every morning in Mari’s bed, making her coffee the way she liked it.

Of exploring a new place, finally using the driving license that Judith had insisted I get.

I’d never been outside of Europe, had only seen pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pacific Ocean, the rolling vineyards where Mari had grown up.

When I’d googled Loch Gordon one night, the photographs made me imagine going outside every day to draw, bathing in bright sunshine, breathing in the scent of dusty soil and rough-edged plants. I imagined taking time to woo Mari properly, without distractions.

But what if I made the bet, let go of my life here and followed her halfway around the world, and she got tired of me? I’d be thousands of miles from home, from Judith and my parents and my sisters, from the parks and streets and trees as familiar as my face in the mirror.

And I wasn’t Mari’s forever. She’d made that abundantly clear.

Don’t fall for me .

A small part of me feared that it was too late.

“If I looked at a woman like that, I’d follow her wherever she wanted to go,” Vinay said. He stood up and reached across the desk. “Just think about it, mate.” He paused. “But not for too long, please.”

I looked across at him, my friend who’d kept trying even when I’d disappeared into grief. The least I could give him was some consideration. “All right. I’ll think about it,” I said as I shook his hand.