The trouble with Henry Church was that in spite of his towering intellect, he was still three-quarters clueless when it came to knowing and understanding what people wanted from him. Like conversation—conversation would have been good, thought Tilly with a sigh as she sat at the airport and waited to board the biggest plane she’d ever seen.
She’d checked her luggage hours earlier, wincing as they’d asked if she had a heavy coat she could take out and carry with her, which she didn’t. But she did her best to add the extra weight from her luggage onto her person, and wore the glares of the people behind her in the line with only slightly wilting shoulders. By the time the counter staff had slapped a heavy sticker on her luggage and waved it and her through, she was dressed for Antarctica and carrying an extra pair of shoes in a handbag that wasn’t built to carry much more than a handkerchief, a pair of sunglasses and a purse.
But she was through, passport and boarding pass in hand, sunglasses on head, string bag full of water and chewing gum, hand lotion, food magazine, neck pillow and several electrical adaptors for converting Australian power cords to UK ones. Couldn’t have too many of those.
The plane needed to board soon, otherwise she’d be tempted to go back to the glittering, hideously expensive electronics counter for the noise-cancelling headphones she definitely didn’t need to spend her hard-earned money on. And then she boarded, and settled, and they were off and not even the newness of air travel and films she’d never seen before could keep the monotony at bay for long.
Thirteen hours and a stopover in a Middle Eastern country’s airport terminal, which was even more glittery and expensive than the terminal in Melbourne. Twenty-four dollars for a small tray of Persian dates—although those were worth every cent. Twelve dollars for warm coffee and stale pastry.
Eleven hours on a different plane, and then Heathrow.
Dear Lord, Heathrow.
Where the lost luggage counter had been almost as hard to find as her lost luggage, which still hadn’t been found, and now she was on a train heading for Trafalgar Square, spare shoes sticking out of her handbag, ridiculous neck pillow and food bags in the string bag on her arm—and the only positive she could think of was that at least she didn’t have her extra-heavy suitcase in tow, because there was hardly enough room for all the people jammed onto the train, let alone luggage.
Thirty-six hours, no sleep, no luggage, and one slightly bewildered doorman later, Tilly let herself into Henry’s apartment—sorry, flat—door.
And promptly forgot to unarm his very expensive, very loud security system.
By the time she’d raced back and hastily tapped the passcode into the console, half the people in the building probably thought it was on fire. She could just imagine doorman Len’s face. He wasn’t going to need to have gone through school with her in order to start calling her names.
Just a mistake, Tilly. No damage done.
She could hear her mother’s words in her ear and almost taste her father’s steadfast support for the daughter who rarely got anything right the first time around.
But she was here now, deep breaths, and pictures hadn’t done Henry’s living room or his spotless kitchen justice. She set her string bag and handbag on the kitchen counter, immediately rendering the space not so spotless anymore, and plugged her flat phone with its brand-new power adaptor into a socket. Henry had made her promise to go into a phone shop and get a local SIM card for it as soon as she possibly could, but surely one day without wouldn’t hurt? He’d also been the one to tell her to always carry the charger in the same carry bag with the phone, so at least she’d done that right.
She didn’t phone home, the time zone calendar she’d printed out to pin on a wall somewhere suggested her parents would be asleep. Instead, as promised, she texted that she had arrived. She added enough exclamation marks to make up for the missing luggage, then turned the central heating on, and then took a long, luxurious shower in the most overdesigned black-on-black bathroom she’d ever seen. Three different kinds of mood lighting in the bathroom—what was that about? And showerheads for two in the one super-wide cubicle? And handrails in the strangest of places? Either Henry had a kinky streak or his landlord did. Maybe they both did.
But the water pressure was second to none and the liquid soap smelled divinely masculine, and there was shampoo to match and if she wasn’t about to fall into bed and get some sleep she’d have tried that out too.
As for putting her smelly travel clothes back on, surely Henry would have a T-shirt she could borrow? Not that she felt altogether comfortable striding into his bedroom wearing nothing but a damp towel and rifling through his drawers, but needs must.
He’d never know.
Henry had a lot of dark suits and perfectly pressed white business shirts. His socks ran in neat rows and so did his underwear. Black, grey, ooh navy. ‘Henry, you rebel,’ she murmured at the lone pair of stripy pink and red socks right at the back of his sock row. ‘Bet you didn’t buy those.’
But they would do to keep her feet warm, and the grey cotton boxers looked as if they could do pyjama duty, assuming they stayed up.
The man rolled his T-shirts and kept them in tidy rows as well. For these, he’d allowed himself to branch out with his colour scheme to include various shades of dark green, pale blue, and pristine white. She took a blue one, dropped towel and tried her makeshift nightwear on for size.
The T-shirt drooped off one shoulder and almost covered the boxers, and why anyone needed a wall full of mirrors in here was open to speculation, but the sight of herself dressed in Henry’s intimates and standing in front of his absolutely enormous bed brought a flush to her cheeks that had not been put there by the heat of the shower.
His bed sheets and doona were grey—of course they were—a finely striped linen that felt butter-soft to the touch, but she had her own room in here somewhere and had taken enough liberties already.
The spare bed was big enough for two and came with crisp green sheets and a doona so soft and feathery Tilly thought she might weep with something very close to relief. She should set her alarm, she thought, as she slipped beneath the covers and closed her eyes and tried to banish the feeling of movement from her body. She should sleep for a few hours and then get up and seize the day, but her phone was in the kitchen and the princess bed was superbly comfortable, even better than the one at home, and she smelled like a dream. Henry’s T-shirt was ridiculously soft, and even though he wasn’t present she still felt oddly comforted by the notion that she was in a place of safety.
Henry with his tidy drawers and one lone pair of stripy socks.