The DILF (Sebastian Vettel)

15. Recovery

Seb flipped a burger over on the grill, one eye on the food and the other on the kids.

Myah, Max and Heidi were chasing each other around the lawn, the dogs joining in. Casey was sat on her mother's lap on one of the sunloungers reading her school book. Oliver was sat on his grandmother's lap showing her the pictures he'd drawn with Maddy earlier that week.

Three weeks had passed since Savannah and the kids had moved in, and finally his parents had arrived for their stay.

He'd been very worried about how Savannah would feel about meeting strangers, especially seeing as though her bruises hadn't quite gone yet. Thankfully, after a lot of nerves, she'd got on with his parents like a house on fire.

He'd already given them a brief summary of what had happened to her and had warned them not to ask about her bruises. His mother had been very empathetic towards Savannah from the start, his father not so much, so Seb had been overjoyed to see her win his father over in a matter of hours.

Now, on the third day of their visit, Seb had decided to get the barbecue out as the weather was supposed to change at the weekend and he knew they may not get another chance that year.  

Savannah was wearing the pair of RayBans that Seb had given her.  She felt self conscious about her fading bruises.  She knew that Seb had told his parents the truth about how she'd got them, and obviously Max knew, as did Antti and Maddy, but the other children thought they were from her falling over in the back garden whilst getting the dogs in.  

The good thing about the RayBans was she could watch Seb without him knowing.   He looked so bloody gorgeous  stood behind the barbecue, his overly long hair held back by a white elastic hairband.  He was wearing the striped apron she remembered from the first barbecue she had attended there.  Underneath it she knew he was wearing a pair of black cotton shorts and a plain white T-shirt.

She felt a lot better physically and mentally than she had done even just a week ago.  She'd been plagued with nightmares for the first two weeks.  In them Christian kept turning up at the gates and dragging the kids into his car.  She hadn't told Seb about the nightmares as she already felt that she was enough of a burden on him. He'd been kind enough to open his home up to her and her children, and he'd been her rock while she'd been recovering from her physical injuries. He'd done enough, she couldn't expect him to deal with more. The dreams had stopped over the last week anyway. She'd not seen or heard a word from Christian, so hopefully he'd crawled back into his hole.

Seb flipped another burger, sensing someone's presence next to him.

"She is a lovely girl Sebastian," said his father, Norbert.

"She is," Seb agreed, blushing slightly.

"I must admit, I had my reservations when you told us you'd moved a strange girl and her kids in, but meeting her, seeing how much the kids adore her....yeah, lovely girl. I think they're not the only ones that adore her," Norbert said, giving his son a nudge with his elbow.

"It's not like that Father," Seb sighed.

"Sure son, sure," Norbert laughed.

"It's not. We're just friends." It was the truth. Nothing had happened between them since the kiss. They hadn't even talked about it and what it meant for them. There just hadn't been a right time for it. She'd been through one hell of an ordeal and Seb knew the priority was helping her heal physically and mentally from what Christian had done to her. They had time to discuss the kiss in the future, or maybe it would be best to forget it altogether.

His desire for her hadn't abated in the slightest, in fact it had intensified. Living in such close proximity to her was doing some crazy things to him.