Page 13 of Scandal Queen

He stepped up and slid his hand around my back, squeezing me into his side, uncaring of Daisy watching, and kissed the top of my head. “All or nothing.”

“All or nothing,” I repeated.

* * *

“Okay that’s three Disney movies. I can’t take anymore singing.”

Daisy groaned but it only contained half her usual fighting enthusiasm. Her eyelids had been fluttering for the last quarter of an hour.

She lay in the middle of the chintzy sofa with her head on my lap and her feet on Oliver’s. Every so often I glanced at Ollie and met his eye.

Mind reading would be so useful right now. I hated not knowing what he thought.

We’d gone from zero to one hundred in the space of one evening. Daisy though looked happy. More than happy. I couldn’t stop looking at the way he rubbed her feet when they both laughed at something on the telly. I didn’t laugh, my attention solely remained on them. My two people.

Nana had been right. I’d been born into a situation I couldn’t control. I’d survived it by the skin of my own teeth, but it left me wired differently to most. For me there’d never be dating for fun. I’d never go and stand in a speed dating queue with Molly. For me it would only ever be these two people.

Maybe in a way it made me right for him. I’d never sell him out, he knew that. I had too much to lose, too much to protect. Maybe it was that about me that had attracted him in the first place.

Oliver lifted Daisy’s legs off his lap and stood, stretching slightly, giving me a gratuitous view of all the things I’d missed the last few days. I held in a nervous giggle when he caught me staring and raised an eyebrow. “How about,” he said turning his attention fully onto Daisy. “We get back to sleep now? Maybe if the doctor who comes to check you in the morning says you are well enough, we will walk to the beach.”

I opened my mouth to protest. He shouldn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. I didn’t think Oliver Beaufort would be strolling down the road holding our hands any time soon. We might not be a secret in his life anymore, but in mine I’d been run out of town for being the daughter of a drug addict who’d dared to date the future king.

“Can we?” Daisy’s expression lightened with wistfulness. As she turned to me, I had to stop myself from shooting her down with the Harbinger of Doom act I usually maintained.

“Maybe. Let’s see what the doctor says. Anyway, come on, you’re tired. I’ll tuck you in. Sooner you sleep, sooner it will be tomorrow.”

“Will I be going back to school soon?” she asked. I tried very hard to read her expression to see what she might think about that. After all, her last memories of being in school must have been terrifying, but just her normal optimism and enthusiasm stared right back at me.

“Well it’s half term next week anyway, but maybe after that. It really depends what the doctors say.”

She nodded and didn’t seem upset. Oliver however had a frown on his face. He looked at me like he didn’t understand the language I spoke.

Unnerved, I reached for Daisy to break the moment. She kicked her legs. “Ollie.”

“Daisy!” I chided.

“It’s okay. It will be my pleasure. Now I assume your toothbrush is upstairs.” Daisy groaned and I chuckled.

“Everything is in the bathroom between the bedrooms.” She was already in her pyjamas, so I let him take her up the stairs and do the daily brush. She didn’t make half as much fuss for him as she would for me. I sat and sipped the glass of red wine that had come out of his picnic basket until I heard his feet back on the stairs. With every tread my nerves crackled with flashes of painful electricity.

I needed him in almost indescribable ways.

But things had changed.

Whatever happened now had the prospect to be a promise carved out of stone between us. Not because of who he was, but rather because of me.

He’d come. He’d apologised. My daughter still loved him. But now, in the dark, we would be two adults with words to erase and promises to pledge. Promises that would change everything for both of us.

My fingers shook around my glass. My heart told me this was unequivocally right. My world-weary brain, my battle scars of survival, told me to be careful.

So when he walked in with a frown still on his face I sat up a little straighter.

“What’s wrong? Does she want me?”

He flicked a glance over me, distracted, upset possibly? “No, she’s fine.”

Well that didn’t settle my nerves.