Page 45 of Oz (Finding Home #1)

Oz seemed to find it easy once she arrived.

I think that might come from being brought up by his mum.

He’s firm but fair and very loving. Fatherhood brings out the softer edge only a few of us ever knew was under there.

I struggled a little bit initially. I was so terrified of dropping her or fucking her up.

Oz coached me, and I grew into my role the way she grew into hers.

I like to roughhouse and play and I’m not always the strictest parent.

Sometimes she’s just too funny and I have to laugh, even if Oz disapproves.

I think a portion of this might be down to me trying so hard not to be my father that I go the other way.

I close the book softly and put it down on the bedside table.

My sleeping girl doesn’t stir. She runs through the grounds all day the way Henry and I did and then she’s out like a light.

I stroke her curls back gently and lay a soft kiss on her forehead.

I smile. She looks like an angel in sleep, which Niall always says is so ironic, considering she could raise the dead with the volume of her voice during the day.

It always leads to him then enquiring whether she could be Oz’s biological child after all, to which he usually responds with a lazy raise of his middle finger.

Niall likes to consider himself the matchmaker to end all matchmakers, but I can’t begrudge him the title because he changed my life the day he sent Oz to me. I look up and grin as I see Oz leaning against the door and smiling at me.

“Couldn’t wait to hear the ending again?” I say.

He shakes his head. “The same book all the time. Surely that’s bad for her development, and for the love of God, why is she still so astonished that there’s a bear?”

I gather him into my arms, loving the way his smaller body fits against mine, his head notching into my neck and his warm smell of ginger weaving around me. “It’s tradition,” I whisper. “It’s good for her, darling.”

I feel the smile he gives at the endearment against the skin of my throat, but I also don’t miss the slight shiver.

He loves that endearment above all others, and one night I’d stretched him out and for every kiss I’d laid on his body I’d whispered “darling” against his skin.

I give a swift grin. I’d only got to his upper thigh before he lost patience.

My Oz isn’t one for delayed gratification.

He pulls away. “Dinner.”

I nod and let him take my hand. We wander down the gallery, which is now lit by lamps in case Cora wakes up.

I look up at the portraits as we go by, catching their sour expressions which always used to frighten me as a child.

I wonder what they’d think of me and Oz.

I smile. They’re probably still bobbing and rolling over in their graves like miserable Lilos in a pool.

At the end of the row of portraits I look up at my father.

He glowers down at me, looking eerily similar to that one summer when Henry and I had decided to slide down the main stairs on tea trays.

We’d nearly taken out some members of the Women’s Institute and had damaged a very old door when we’d smashed right through it.

I can still remember the horrified faces of the women as they scattered like pins and the look of apoplectic doom on my father’s face as we’d sailed past him.

I smirk. That would register as nothing compared to his son and heir marrying another man and living in this house with him and being so fucking happy.

“Why are you grinning like a moron?” Oz asks, and I shake my head.

“No reason.” But my smile widens as behind my back I raise my middle finger at the old bastard’s portrait.

When we get down to the kitchen we ease into our routine which is like a dance between the two of us.

No matter what time of night I get home, Oz will be there.

He’ll heat the dinner up and I will lay the table.

I’ll uncork the wine and last of all I will open the back door so the sound of the surf fills the room in a muted grumble.

Sometimes he won’t eat with me. Sometimes he’ll just make a cup of tea.

But he always perches next to me, watching me with that face that’s as full of life and interest as the day I looked up and saw him sitting on the fence and staring at me.

We’ll chat about our day and he’ll regale me with tales of Cora and the house.

We’ll laugh and just be together. It’s a simple pleasure that beckons me home every night like a lighthouse beacon.

I stand at the door and breathe in the salty air and turn back to watch him as he moves with the ease of familiarity around the old kitchen, nimbly avoiding the loose flagstone and knowing just the right amount of pressure to open the cutlery drawer.

Too much and it will explode out of its tracks like a race horse and throw knives and forks around the room with abandon.

The low light picks out the sheen in his dark hair which is longer now and makes his pale skin seem to glow. The tattoos on his arm are like dark shadows over his skin, and he looks as gorgeous as he ever did. I feel warmth hit my chest because I love him so. Nobody has ever got me like Oz.

When I was little I had yearned for someone to protect me from my childhood, someone to stand for me when no one that I trusted would, when I was tired from sticking up for Henry and then later for Ivo.

I’d never have guessed that my knight in armour would come to me later in life when I’d almost forgotten that I needed one.

He would be small and fierce and his weapon was the sharpest tongue this side of Ireland.

But he was all mine and I, in turn, belonged to him.

That feeling of ownership and steady love gives me everything. When I’m with him I feel whole and safe. And free to be me because he loves simply and deeply. He doesn’t ask for expensive gifts, which is a relief because the house will still be in hock for years. All he asks is for me the way I am.

He sets the dinner down and for a few minutes we eat hungrily.

“When is your mum coming down?” I ask when my hunger has been assuaged a little.

“In a couple of weeks.” He grins at me. “Get ready because she’s staying for a few weeks.”

I pour us each a glass of wine. “I love your mum. I wish she’d take the house I offered and live here.” When Oz moved in permanently I’d offered her one of the cottages on the estate, but she’d said no.

Oz grins. “She’s happy living with my auntie now. The two of them are trouble. Actually, speaking of trouble, don’t forget that Henry and Ivo are down at the weekend.”

“Is it my imagination or do we see a lot more of them since Cora came home with us?”

He smiles. “I told you the other day. Ivo feels some sort of kinship with her since it was he that found her for us, and Henry’s just besotted.”

“I’m glad,” I say softly. “It always bothered me that Henry didn’t love the house the way I did. That he had bad memories of this place, because that was down to my father, not the house.”

He nods. “It’s a welcoming house. I felt it as soon as I came.”

“It knew,” I say impulsively, grabbing his fingers and kissing them. “It knew it should keep you.”

He laughs but his eyes are soft. “You and this house.”

I shrug. “I just think that now it’s the way it should be, and Henry is responding to that. This place is built for children running here and there and noise and laughter and arguments. It’s built for–”

“A family?” he says softly and astutely as ever. “You want more children, don’t you?”

“I do.” I watch his expression closely. “I want Cora to have a couple of brothers or sisters. Someone to roughhouse and argue with. Someone to think of apart from herself.”

“Someone to protect,” he says softly, and I smile as he gets up and falls into my lap with the same ease of movement that he navigates our home. Sure and deft like a sleek little cat. Sun warm and peaceful nowadays, but ready to rear up and wreak some hell if needed.

I run my fingers through his hair and hold him close while we sip our wine and talk. “I love you, Pika,” I whisper into his ear, and he gives me the wide, curling smile that first captivated me.

“Mo mhuirnín dílis. I love you too.”

He kisses me softly, but the tongue promises other things, and before it gets too heated he levers off me and stands up. “I’m going for a shower. I’ll see you up there.”

I kiss the palm of his hand and watch him go, followed by the ever-present shadow of Chewwy.

I clear the pots away and switch the lights off, but at the last minute I deviate and stand against the open door.

The moon lies full on my land and the breeze rustles the trees, sending fantastic shapes over the ground.

An owl swoops overhead and the sea roars.

I have always loved this place passionately.

My ancestors fought to stay on it, some for glory, some for pride, and I will carry the fight on in my own little way.

It will probably be lost in the history of the place, but my fight is to keep it safe for Oz and our children, so we can live the rest of our lives together in a ramshackle old house where sand drifts in and lays a fine layer over everything.

Where the booming of the surf is loud and the sweet scent of the lavender drifts through every window.

Where we can be at peace. There truly is no place like home.