Worlds Apart (27 page)

He picked up a pair of secateurs and headed to the garden. He needed to think.

Taylor had been nine years old when his plane had flown over the wall and landed several feet from Niall. Of course, Niall hadn’t seen a wall, all he’d seen was something flying through the branches of a tree that was neither bird nor insect. Then something larger had fallen to crash at his feet. Taylor.

It was the most extraordinary and exciting thing that had ever happened to Niall, and he could replay that afternoon in his head as clearly as if it had occurred a moment or two ago.

“Where did you come from?” Niall had asked.

“Over the wall.”

“What wall?”

The dark-haired boy turned and gasped. “Where’s my house?”

And Niall realized this was a mortal, the very first he’d seen. He’d been so thrilled, his knees had trembled. “What’s your name?”

“Taylor.”

“I’m Niall.” He pointed to the plane. “Is that yours?”

Taylor went to pick it up.

“How does it work?” Niall asked.

Taylor showed him how to turn the propeller to tighten the elastic band, and then gave it him.

“Throw it forward and up, but not too hard,” Taylor said.

The plane soared across the field of wild flowers and landed thirty feet away. Taylor ran after it, but Niall didn’t move. He wanted to see where the boy had come from, and if he moved, he might not be able to find the place again. He stared up into the tree.

Taylor came back. “Don’t you want to play?”

Niall nodded. “Can I see your house?”

Concern filled Taylor’s face. “I don’t know where it is.”

“I haven’t moved since you landed at my feet. We can work it out. There must be a tear.”

“In the sky? That’s not possible.”

Niall smiled. “Anything’s possible. Find things for me to throw and I’ll see if I can get them back into your garden.”

Taylor offered him the plane.

Niall shook his head. “Something that won’t break.”

Taylor picked up a handful of stones. The pair of them took turns throwing them into the tree. It was Taylor’s that went up and didn’t come down and he yelped with delight.

“Come on,” Taylor said. “I’ll stand on your shoulders and then I’ll pull you up.”

The pair of them sat side by side on a thick bough, looking out on Niall’s side, feet dangling, and Niall had pointed out his home.

“It’s a castle,” Taylor said and laughed.

“I’m a prince.”

Taylor had rolled his eyes and Niall’s heart had swollen with joy. They swung their legs to sit the other way and Niall had his first glimpse of the mortal world through a shimmering rip in the sky. He caught a glimpse of a walled garden and a stone house beyond. Taylor clambered through the hole onto the wall and Niall followed, his heart pounding. When Taylor climbed down into his garden via a tree house, Niall took out his knife, leaned back through the rip and scratched the letters NT into the bough, entwining them together. He came back fully onto the mortal side and did the same on the stone where he sat. Then Niall climbed down too.

When he saw a girl playing under an apple tree, Niall made sure she couldn’t see him. It was forbidden to show yourself to a mortal, and Niall instinctively felt he was safer if he only trusted Taylor. Plus he hadn’t really broken the law because Taylor had come onto his side. When Taylor tried to introduce Niall to the girl, he realized he should have told him he’d made himself invisible.

Taylor scowled when the girl said he was lying, that no one was with him. She stomped back to the house. Niall thought Taylor would be angry, but he just turned, smiled, and said, “Let’s look for a tiger.”

Niall gulped. The only tiger he’d seen had been in the palace of his aunt and it had been in a cage. But when he realized Taylor was pretending, he crept through the undergrowth after him and hid among the fruit trees. They launched themselves at a snarling beast, both of them rolling on the ground trying to pin the animal down. At the sight of the delight on Taylor’s face, Niall vowed they’d be friends forever.

When Taylor was called in for his meal, he went back to the wall with Niall to make sure he could get through. Niall climbed up and found the stone where he’d carved their initials. Taylor sat next to him and ran his finger over the letters.

“Aren’t you curious about my side?” he asked Taylor.

“Course. Are you curious about mine?”

Niall smiled. “I knew about your world, I just never expected to see it or find a friend in it.”

Taylor grinned.

“We should make a pact,” Niall said. “A promise sealed in blood.”

He took out his knife and offered it to Taylor. “You cut my palm and I’ll cut yours.”

Niall gritted his teeth as Taylor drew the blade carefully across the fleshy pad below his thumb. His lack of hesitation pleased Niall. Niall made the exact same cut on Taylor and they clasped hands.

“I promise to come here every day that you want me to,” Niall said. “My side is dangerous. Yours isn’t. You have to promise not to come onto my side unless I’m with you.”

“I promise,” Taylor said.

Niall sighed. If Taylor was caught on the other side, all Taylor’s blood would be spilt.

“I promise not to tell anyone about you,” Niall said.

“I promise the same, but my sister saw you. Don’t know why she said she didn’t.”

“She didn’t see me. I’ll never let her see me.”

Taylor smiled. “I’ll say I have an imaginary friend but I’ll never tell them your name.”

When their hands fell apart, there was no blood and no mark on either of them. Taylor’s eyes looked about to fall out of his head. Niall wasn’t sure if Taylor thought he really
was
imaginary.

“I have to go,” Niall said. “Please don’t come over or try to follow me. We’d both be punished.”

“I swear I won’t,” Taylor said.

In the end, it hadn’t been Taylor who’d crossed on his own but his sister, Stephanie.

“Niall!”

Roo’s voice broke into his thoughts and he looked up to see her at the far end of the walled garden sitting in the tree house, her legs dangling, no shoes. Niall left the basket filled with lettuce, radishes and tomatoes and walked over. One glance at her long legs and his cock reacted. Niall stuck his hand into the pocket of his chinos.

“I’m stuck,” she wailed.

“How?” Niall climbed the ladder and stopped with his face level with her stomach.

“I think my shorts are caught on a nail or something. I don’t want to rip them.”

Niall slid his fingers under her butt, feeling for where she was attached. His heart ricocheted round his chest.

“Nice as that is, I’d feel guilty if I didn’t tell you I’m snagged on the other side.”

He laughed, felt for the loose nail, and lifted Roo backward. She came free with the sound of tearing.

“Oh damn. Is there a big hole?” She looked over her shoulder.

Niall slid his finger into the rip in the material, Roo groaned and he yanked it out.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“I wanted to walk on the wall.”

Every cell in Niall’s body seemed to freeze. “What for?”

“For fun, to check out the view, see what’s on the other side.”

She climbed back into the tree house, swung through a window and pulled herself onto the stone. Niall stared up at her. Roo stood with her back to him, looking out over the forest side, down into the Wharfedale valley. At least, he hoped that was what she saw.

“Anything interesting?” he asked.

“Herd of zebras at a waterhole. Euuw, two of them are trying to play leapfrog.”

He forced a laugh. Roo walked along the top of the wall with her arms outstretched. Niall kept pace below. He knew she wouldn’t be able to see anything, not unless she looked through at a very specific point. A little part of him hoped she found the tear between the worlds. A larger part of him knew that was the worst thing she could do.

“Oh shiiiiit.”

Niall stared in horror as Roo lost her footing and began to tumble.

Chapter Seventeen

As Roo fell off the wall, she had a split second to see the ground rushing up to meet her before Niall got in the way. She landed on top of him and they sprawled in the dirt.

“Oh God, sorry,” she blurted. “Are you okay? Have I bruised your bruises?”

“I’m fine.”

Roo stared down into his face and felt his cock growing hard between them.

“Taylor kissed me,” she blurted.

“He told me.” Niall’s hands slid over her butt, his thumbs stroking along the line where her shorts finished, a finger sliding in the hole made by the nail. Tingles raced down her legs and her toes curled.

“And I told him you kissed me too,” Roo whispered.

“He told me that as well.”

Roo swallowed hard. “And that—”

“You’d seen us in the orangery.”

“Are you both angry with me?” She rolled off Niall and pushed herself up, torn between telling him how she felt and running. “I’m sorry. I can leave. I—”

Niall sat up and caught hold of her hand. “We don’t want you to leave.”

Roo’s heart hiccupped. “We?”

Niall nodded. “We.”

Roo read everything into that and then talked sense back into her thick skull. Kindness not lust. A place to stay, not a bed to share. Two guys having fun flirting.

“I’m cooking for three,” Niall said. “Pasta with wild mushrooms, asparagus, ginger and cream.”

He stood and didn’t let go of her fingers. Friends didn’t hold hands like this. As fast as she’d talked herself into believing nothing was going to happen, she shot straight to thinking it was.

“Sounds delicious. Any pudding?” she croaked.

“Carrot cake.”

“Extra frosting?”

Niall smiled. “You’ll have to fight Taylor for it.”

They walked back to the house hand in hand, and Roo’s heart bounced around in her chest like a ping pong ball while her head tried to grab thoughts and hang on to them long enough to dissect them. When she’d become unbalanced on that wall, it was because she’d noticed something on the stone, only now she couldn’t remember what. Something carved? She could have fallen either way.

Maybe it was fate she’d tumbled into Niall’s arms.
Oh yeah.
But wow, he’d been so fast.
How—
He squeezed her fingers as if he could read her mind. And
thinking
about the wall was just a distraction from the real issue here. It was all very well thinking about having a relationship with two men, but now that it seemed possible…probable…definite… Roo gulped.

Yet holding Niall’s hand made her feel safe, as if she were on a fairground ride and he was the security bar. Safe yet excited. Niall led her into the kitchen and sat her at the table before he let her go. Had he thought she’d run?
Should
she have run? Niall poured her a glass of white wine. Despite the half bottle of champagne she’d already consumed, Roo felt surprisingly sober.

“Can I help?” she asked. “Slice the mushrooms, crush the ginger, or shall I just sit and admire your fantastic butt—I mean technique.”

He laughed.

“Are you feeling okay now?” she asked. “All recovered?”

“Yep.”

“What happened exactly?”

He glanced at her. “Taylor didn’t tell you?”

She shook her head.

“I kissed a woman and her boyfriend took exception.”

Roo pushed back the sting of disappointment that he’d kissed a woman other than her.
Stupid.

Niall turned to face her. “I wanted to know…I needed to see if it was different from when I kissed you that first time.”

Roo brightened. “Oh, the electrocution thing. You were experimenting. Yeah, that was…weird.”

“I didn’t have a problem kissing her.”

Her shoulders slumped and she stared at her glass. “Right.”

“There was no spark at all. Not like there is with you and with Taylor.”

She looked up to see Niall smiling at her. How could she not put two and two together? Niall wanted her. He’d told her Taylor did too. Anyway, she wasn’t blind or stupid. She’d seen the way Taylor looked at her, and there had been that kiss until he’d got uppity.

“Want to tell him the food’s about ready?” Niall asked. “He’s in the office.”

As Roo pulled opened the kitchen door, Taylor pushed from the other side.

“Good timing,” she said. “Dinner’s ready.”

Taylor grinned. “My timing’s always perfect.”

Roo felt her face heat.
Shit.
She was hearing sexual connotations in everything. When she turned, the table had been set, two places one side, one on the other. How had Niall managed that so quickly? Her wine stood next to the single spot so she sat there.

The pasta was fantastic. Roo couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a proper home-cooked meal. When she put her fork down on her empty plate, she looked across to see the guys were barely halfway through their food.