DAY TWO of a very van der Waals Christmas
I wake up slowly, savoring that in-between place when dreams still linger, gripping tight to me with clingy limbs, and the world hasn't yet crept in. The comforter is warm and soft, pulled over my head. It cocoons me, keeping my body warmth inside, hugged around me like a onesie.
An arm snakes across my bare waist, brushing the small of my back and the curve of my hip. A hand possessively wraps around my stomach and a body presses against mine with a heavy sigh. "I don't want to wake up," Wolf whispers against my spine, kissing down the ridged column until all trace of sleepiness fades away and a pleasant, fuzzy awareness takes over.
"So let's just sleep in," I say, clasping my hand over his. "That sounds awesome." I bury my cheek into my warm pillow and close my eyes.
"But it's morning."
"I have no proof of that." I keep my eyes screwed shut.
He laughs, the rumble coming from deep in his throat. "Come on, Charlotte. Rise and shine."
"No." I keep my face steadfastly snuggled into the pillow. "Can't."
"Can't?" His fingers rise higher on my body, tweaking sensitive flesh until I gasp and my eyes pop open.
"Wolf," I complain, groaning. "I know you're a Type A personality, but can you please try to just relax and savor how nice this is before one or both of us fucks it up by doing something colossally stupid. Talking, for one."
"You make a good point," he admits, chuckling warmly, "but I haven't slept in since college."
"Start forming some bad habits." I roll over and peek at him from under the covers. "I can teach you. I'm really good at sleeping in."
"You're good at other things, too," he says in a soft voice, bending his face to mine.
Panic streaks through me. Oh no, I should have woken up a little earlier to brush my teeth, I groan inwardly, but Wolf doesn't seem to notice my morning breath, and much to my surprise, I don't find his that appalling either.
"Thanks," I murmur. My cheeks warm.
"I was thinking we could walk around the village today?" he suggests, swinging his legs out of bed. I can see the top of his ass and his tapered waist as he bends down to pull up his boxers.
Even though he's on vacation, I can tell he finds it hard to break the habit of waking up early. "Mmm," I mumble. "Fine."
"Jeez, don't sound so reluctant," Wolf teases, flopping onto the bed.
The moment his back hits the mattress, I sit up, letting the sheet and comforter fall away from my body. Once air hits me, I shiver. The hair on my arms prickles and I loom over Wolf's face, letting my hair dangle around the two of us like a curtain. "I'm not."
"The servants will talk if we stay in bed all day," he counters, and I blush hard, thinking of how embarrassing it will be to face the maids and Humphries after they know I've just ridden Wolf like a cowboy breaking a stallion.
"Good point." I swallow. "Let's get ready."
As Wolf ambles off to his own en-suite bathroom, I tumble out of bed and hit the floor, searching for my underwear and bra. I find my delicates in a discarded heap on Wolf's side of the bed and scoop them up, tossing them on the bed. The sight of my underwear on the rumpled comforter makes my cheeks flame. The bed we'd spent all night making love in. And it was making love, not the other, cruder word. I snatch the delicates and shove them into an empty dresser drawer, reminding myself to do laundry later.
A quick shower later, I join Wolf downstairs for breakfast. Instead of the enormous spread that awaited me last Christmas, breakfast today consists of something far more simple: a glass of orange juice, a slice of buttered toast with a fried egg on top, sunny side up, and a bowl of cut fruit.
"The cook's on vacation," Wolf explains.
"But isn't Graeme cooking Christmas dinner?" Puzzled, I give him a searching look while he pulls my chair out for me. Then, "Oh," I say with a gleeful laugh. "When Graeme says she's cooking...that means she's really cooking. With her own two hands. In the kitchen. With the stove and the oven andâ" I stop myself, frowning. "I don't think I've ever seen her cook. Or even heard Xander mention that she made him anything."
Wolf smirks. "Exactly." The one word encompasses it all. He sits down next to me and picks up his fork, cutting his toast into four pieces. The yolk breaks, slippery orange fluid trickling out of the split and pooling onto the brown bread.
Humphries enters with two small cups of espresso, all broad smiles and twinkling eyes. Even his mustache seems to grin at me.
"Thank you," I say, Wolf echoing me with gratitude of his own.
"Doesn't he have family to visit?" I whisper, keeping my voice low, not sure if it's the habit of butlers to lurk right outside the doors in order to anticipate their master's whims. I really need to get caught up on Downton Abbey...
"No." Wolf shakes his head. "He never married."
Stupidly, I stare at him and ask, "But...they're allowed, right?"
"What?" He spears a piece of toast and pops it into his mouth.
"I mean, on television sometimes they portray it like live-in servants don't get married because the household can't support the, uhâbecause maids would get pregnant and have to take time off and then there'd be kids running around below stairs, getting underfootâuh, the house couldn't afford to feed the extra mouthsâ" I want to kick myself when I see the smile grow on his face.
"Maybe that was true in the last century," Wolf allows, "but we're not as, um, entitled and dictatorial as t.v. might imply." He takes a sip of juice. "I guess we're the closest thing to family that he has. Since we don't really come here anymore, we downsized on most of the staff. There's just Humphries and the groundskeeper's family who stay on the property. The groundskeeper has two daughters who clean for us and his wife is the cook. But they're all on holiday at the moment."
"Right." I stare at my food, wishing the ground would just swallow me up.
We finish our meal in silence and walk to the foyer. "Don't look so down," says Wolf, grinning at me. "I've got the local pub on standby."
Wrenched out of my embarrassment, I stare at Wolf, clueless as a guppy. "For what?"
"In case Graeme's dinner flops."
"Wolf!" His frankness startles a laugh out of me. "That's terrible."
"It's not terrible if it's true," he protests good-naturedly, helping me with my coat in an old-fashioned, gentlemanly fashion that I found utterly adorable, even though I didn't really need his assistance.
I love how we've settled into comfortable routine already. Waking up together, not being mortified at our own nudity and morning breath, eating breakfast together, going for a walk together...It's already picture-perfect and it's not even Christmas yet, so how did I get what I asked for?
We forgo the car in favor of sturdy snow shoes and make the fifteen minute walk from Wolf's home to the village. Most of the ice and snow has melted, and what remains has turned into brownish-gray slush at the side of the road. It's early enough that there aren't a lot of people around, and like children, we join our hands and swing them back and forth. We look at each other and grin in intervals, making me feel about six years old, but there's something so pleasant and cozy about being with him now.
Is it maturity? Mine or his?
"Are you coming back to New York?" he asks, shattering the coziness of the moment.
"I don't know," I say honestly.
"But you're considering it?"
"I do want to settle down." Catching his impish look, I add, "I meant in terms of a home, not marriage. I love my job and the opportunities I have, but I'm starting to feel a little adrift. It's been a great respite from matchmaking"âI make a face to illustrate my point, prompting a laugh out of Wolfâ"but I'm starting to feel burned out from the constant travel."
What I don't say: I'm burned out from traveling alone. From seeing couples at the airport heading off to their destination together. Young or old, they have the comfort and companionship of having another person with them, and that's something I desperately want for myself. Not just someplace to go, but someone to go with. Someone to share the journey.
Someone to take stupid, lovey-dovey Eiffel Tower pictures with and swig champagne with in luxury hotels. Someone to help me read the Paris Metro transit map to figure out which line to take to Montparnasse and Montmartre - although why anyone would want to go to the latter is beyond me. Yes, the Sacré-CÅur Basilica (Basilica of the Sacred Heart) is breathtaking, but the area surrounding it reeks of urine. My travel article strongly reflected my distaste for the arrondissement (district of Paris).
"I know what you meant." He keeps swinging our arms, and even though my shoulder is starting to get tired, I don't stop him because it just feels so good to be blissfully happy and childish for once.
"Where's home to you?" I ask, curious.
He thinks for a moment, forehead scrunching like he's trying to do complicated fractions in his mind. "Here," he says. "The Netherlands. It's where we used to come every Christmas with Mom. Dad usually wouldn't be around because he'd have business deals in the UK or New York, so we were pretty much guaranteed a Dad-free Christmas, which sounds bad, but it was actually the opposite." He took a deep breath. "I know it's Dad's family estate, but it always felt more like our place, you know? Mom loved it here. She came alive, even in the dead of winter when everything else was dead."
"She didn't want to come back this year," I realize out loud, sighing softly. "I'm sorry, Wolf."
He shrugs like it doesn't matter, but his smile is brittle. "Harold Winthrop wanted her to spend their first Christmas together with his family."
Harold was a dentist, I knew from Graeme, and a very successful one. He came from old money but chose not to act like it, driving a ten-year-old Toyota and buying shirts from the sales rack rather than paying full price.
"I guess there's a point in everyone's life when they have to make a new family," he says.
"That's not what she's doing."
"Isn't it?" He arches a brow.
"She's not ditching you or your sister. She's just trying to make him happy." God knows the woman is entitled to a little bit of happiness after Marcus.
"Mom didn't even ask if we wanted to go with them. She just kind of assumed that we wouldn't want to." Wolf shakes his head and gives my hand a tight squeeze. "Come on, let's forget about it."
But I can't. Make a new family. My heart feels a longing pull, feels irrevocably bound to his. Levi has someone, Graeme and Xander have each other, even Rhona found someone new. The only two people left to be paired up are me and Wolf, and it seems like a natural conclusion for the two of us to become family - even more than we already are. There's too much history between us for us to be anything else.
We trudge past the park, where chubby-cheeked toddlers play on the seesaws and slides with their watchful mothers. I grin at the sight, my smile deepening when I catch the knowing look on Wolf's face. We're both recalling the same memory.
"You didn't wave this time," he says, nudging my shoulder.
"I don't need to wave at a baby when I have my own right here," I retort, giving him a slightly harder nudge back.
"Hey!" He laughs. "I resent that."
"As you should. You're almost thirty-three, Wolf." I shoot him a mock scowl.
He chuckles, muttering something under his breathâsomething grouchy, no doubtâand lets go of my hand, wrapping his arm around my waist instead. Snug against him, my stomach flutters with butterflies.
Around us, stores twinkle with fairy lights as shop keepers open for the day. Warm smells are already wafting from the bakery and even from here, I can see how many loaves line the walls of the shop.
"You cold?" he asks.
I shake my head in a silent no. There's so much chemistry between us that I doubt I'll ever be cold again.
part two will be posted tomorrow! Are you guys enjoying this glimpse into Wolflotte's relationship? Anything special you wanna see? teaser: in part two, we will see a bit of jealousy rear its ugly head as Wolf discovers what Charlotte has been doing since he last saw her at Graeme and Xander's wedding... ;) it has something to do with her travel writing!
also, if you've made it this far in the story, I hope you'll go a little further! Have you checked out the sequel to All This Time yet? Here it is! You can find it on my profile under the title Bitter Brews! And it's all about Levi and what he does post-Charlotte! :)