Falling For You [Tom Hiddleston]

42

Claire's POV

As soon as Tom left the room, I pulled my phone out to check my messages. Earlier, when I was upstairs, I'd sent Luke a text to inform him that Tom had invited his family over for tea; I had a feeling this was going to interfere with our plan to tell Tom about the letters tonight after dinner.

You can still come over.

I made blueberry scones.

Tempting, but no.

Based on past experience,
they'll probably be there
for the rest of the day.

Great. 😒

I'll talk to you tomorrow
since you're coming with
to set.

All right.

See you tomorrow.

Shoving my phone back into my pocket, I exhaled slowly as I fought against my unexpectedly emotional response to this development; nothing was going as planned. I crossed over to the kitchen window and shifted the curtain aside to stare out at the pouring rain.

I'd always loved watching it rain, but it rained differently here than it did back in Minnesota. Most of the time here, rain just fell from gray skies without much fanfare...but back in the Midwest, whenever it rained this hard, it was always accompanied by one hell of a storm - incredibly powerful winds, flashes of lightning so bright it would make it look like day, and thunder so loud you could feel it reverberate in your chest.

I rested my forehead against the cool glass and closed my eyes; I didn't want to feel grateful for this eleventh-hour extension of my time with Tom...but I was. I tried to tell myself it was just because I'd grown fond of the man over these past couple months, but I couldn't even make myself believe own damn lie.

I stared at my reflection and forced my polite social mask back into place, wondering what the holdup was. Not to say I wasn't relieved to have enough time to pull myself together - but it really wasn't that far of a walk from the front door to the kitchen. If I strained my ears, I could just make out muffled voices coming from the front hall, so I had to assume that they'd wanted to have a private conversation before their mom showed up.

I wasn't curious enough to investigate, so instead I went to check on the scones; they were starting to smell good. I'd just decided that they needed a little longer yet when I heard their voices getting louder.

I instinctively took several steps towards the open area near the table so I wouldn't be trapped in the narrowest part of the kitchen by strangers. I mentally shook my head at myself when I realized that I'd unconsciously thought of his family as a threat; it was hard to go against some of my more deeply ingrained habits knowing those instincts were what kept me alive in the field.

Although I still wasn't fully in control of my emotions, I should be able to handle something as simple as meeting Tom's family.

As I watched the trio approaching, I focused on Tom's sisters, watching their micro-expressions. It was immediately obvious that his older sister knew exactly who I was - but the younger one didn't; this would be an interesting afternoon, to say the least.

"Your scones smell wonderful, darling," Tom murmured as he slid his arms around me, holding me tight to his side and pressing a kiss to my temple. "I can't wait to taste them!"