Page 31 of Tears of Gold

I shake my head and chuckle. “No, I’m not complaining at all.”

He stops and stares at me for a long moment. “Why don’t you like being naked? It’s not like you have anything to hide.”

I flush so hard I lift a hand to my face to feel my scorching cheeks. There is everything to hide. I shrug. “Don’t know. It’s never come up.”

“Well, walk around naked and I can guarantee something will come up.”

I’m glad to see him lighter than the way he looked when I met him at the law court gates. I slip the shirt over my shoulder and swiftly button it, leaving a few open at the top so he’s not entirely disappointed. “Did you know this house has six bedrooms? Six, Elijah.” I turn to him and catch a flash of puzzlement creasing between his eyebrows, but he shakes it off.

“Six! How will we choose?” His hand grabs mine and he pulls me towards the bedroom door.

“Eli.” He turns when I call his name. “I’m sorry that we’ve left the Mews.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t be. You did the right thing.”

We went through the rooms the day we came to find Peter’s things, but they look different now knowing they are ours. Our home. The first door after the one we’ve been in is similar, boxy with high ceilings. Definitely not a master bedroom. The rooms increase in size and grandeur as we poke our heads in one after the other. “I wonder if the smaller rooms were nurseries at one time?"

He shrugs. “Nurseries, or playrooms maybe. I guess we’d have to ask Gran to see if she can remember what they were like when she was young.”

“So, you never lived here as a child?”

He shakes his head. “No, my dad preferred the country and then when he left, Mother decided she needed to be near Gran.”

I snort. “Was made to be near your Gran more like.”

He shrugs again. “Possibly.”

We stand outside the room we know was Peter’s; the room he didn’t sleep in often but in which we found the address for his real home. We walk past without opening it. As empty and as bare as it was when we are last here, it would seem even more so now.

We push on the last door together and step inside. “Ah, now we’re talking,” he says.

“Eli! This isn’t a bedroom; it’s a suite at a five-star hotel. Why didn’t Peter have his stuff in here?”

“Why would he? He didn’t live here.” The blues find mine. “And you saw how he and Jeremy lived. It was the polar opposite to this.”

“And you want to sleep in here, with all this,” I wave my hand at the gold mouldings on the ceiling, and the elaborate furniture.

He nods, but his face is solemn. “It’s the one place he shunned.”

I can understand that. “Okay, leave it to me. But the rest of the place we are decorating. You mother offered to send in the decorators, but I said we would do it. Apparently though you are far too busy to do something as banal as painting walls.”

His smile is devilish and slow. “This weekend. Me and you, and a pot of paint.”

“Sounds heavenly.”

“Shall we view the downstairs now? There’s a lot of house to see.”

“Well as there’s this bed here, and you need to sleep before court in the morning, why don't we save the rest of house for tomorrow?”

“So, this is it. This is where we are going to live our life. We’ve given in to the Faircloughs demands.” He sits on the end of the bed, his attention trained on the carpet.

“This is where I choose to live my life with you. Is that okay?”

He looks up slowly, his eyes settled on my face. One hand slips around my hips, tugging on the bones I know he loves to hold. “That is more than okay with me.” He pulls me down and shifts back the ridiculously thick duvet and we both scramble under the covers. I slide his shirt off and throw it onto the floor, and he slips in behind me, wrapping me tight into his arms and pulling me into his chest.

“I’ll spoon you anywhere, you know that.”

I grin in the darkness. I know that.