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A hot shower was exactly what Tala needed for a moment to think, standing under the powerful stream as she massaged shampoo into her scalp and closed her eyes. When she tried to assess the past couple of days, though, her mind began to boggle and she struggled to think straight. Everything she had done was unlike anything she had ever done before.
Never had she been to a bar alone. Never had she slept with a guy she hardly knew. Never had she felt so good the morning after. A bonus of how little she ever managed to drink was that she never got hungover: she struggled to drink more than just enough to be tipsy, and she always woke up with a clear head.
It only began to pound now. It wasn't a headache, just the thrum of too much new information crashing around for space. As she rinsed out her shampoo, she tried to separate the strands of her thoughts, plaiting them into a neat braid the way she had once tied Lily's hair for nursery. Swallowing hard, she realised that Maddie was right. She didn't really miss Aditya. She only missed his daughter.
There were a few facts she knew for certain, and she set them on repeat as she worked conditioner into her hair. The snow was too deep to drive through and it wouldn't be until at least that afternoon that anyone bothered to come as far as the remote cabin to help them out. That meant that she and Raphael would be stuck for at least several hours when he was supposed to be enjoying the lead-up to Christmas with his son.
Another fact: he was a father. A twenty-two-year-old with a five-year-old son. Her whole life, Tala had fallen for older men – Aditya was ten years older than her, closing in on forty – and she had thought that they were her type, but she had never had any success. Raphael was younger than she had ever thought she would date, six years her junior, but it didn't bother her. And as much as she tried not to be shallow, she loved that he was tall.
Strong, too. She had found that out last night. Her breath hitched at the memory. The soap slipped out of her hand as she lathered up her body and the thud brought her back to reality. Raphael was waiting for a shower. Their official first date was due to start in fifteen minutes, though she had nothing she would ordinarily use to prepare for a date. Her make-up was all at home, her nice clothes too.
He had already seen her naked. He had slept with her; he had seen her bleary-eyed in an ill-fitting dressing gown. He knew what he was getting himself into: he knew better than to expect more than wet hair and a Christmas jumper. That was what he was going to get. Washing out the conditioner, she opened her eyes at last and shut off the shower, stepping into the clutches of her towel.
As cold as it was outside, the heating kept out the worst of the chill and if she couldn't see the heavy snow for herself, she would have struggled to believe that the temperature had dropped below zero. There was no icy blast that hit her when she stepped out of the bathroom, though she did bump into Raphael. When her towel slipped, he grabbed the material to stop it from falling.
"You done in there?" he asked. He didn't give her time to blush.
"It's all yours," she said, and she slipped into the bedroom to change. In the time it took her to tug on a pair of underwear and find her bra after last night, shimmying into jeans and a jumper and tying her wet hair off her back, Raphael was done. He wasn't wasting any time.
