Page 32 of Owned By her Enemy

She laughs. “You’ve got a taste for blowing things up now, have you?”

“Yep.” Ivan stands and looks with pride at his sandcastle. “This one isn’t good. We’ll make another one better.”

My throat clogs, because he’s echoing what Lotte said when Tottenham Tower came down.

It’s ironic that the reason we ended up together was my uncle trying to blow up Tottenham Tower, since Lotte did almost exactly that last year. Turns out it was structurally unstable. Her father had built an extra penthouse floor which wasn’t accounted for in the original design, and the whole thing was about to collapse under the weight of his own greed and folly.

If that’s not a metaphor, I don’t know what is.

“Will you help, Mummy?”

Lotte is on her feet in a second, at Ivan’s side. “You know I’m always up for some tower demolition.”

I pull Svetlana into my lap for safety and watch with amusement as Lotte and Ivan trample the castle with gleeful comments about how it is falling down excellently, and they can’t wait to build another.

“We’re going to have to buy them Jenga to satisfy their building and destructive impulses,” I mutter to Svetlana.

“Well, that worked up an appetite,” Lotte says, dusting off her hands as though a good day’s work has been achieved. “How about dinner at our favourite restaurant?”

Ivan perks up, then furrows his brow. “Can we come back here though? I want to build another castle.”

“Definitely,” I say. “You’ll be here tomorrow, because we’ll return tonight.”

I catch Lotte’s hand in mine and kiss her knuckles. That spark is in her brown eyes again. The one that says,I love you and I’m going to surprise you.

I wink.

It’s indulgent, but we always come home to the beach house after our anniversary dinner. For no better reason than because this is where I should have taken her that first night. Sentimental, like I said. The kids get tucked into bed, usually having been asleep already—somehow. Lotte put in a large flat lawn at the side of the house as a helicopter pad, so now we don’t even have to drive the last part of the journey.

Maybe I’ll take her down to the beach. My little songbird always deserves a treat.

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