His dressing gown muffles me asking a startled, “When?”
“This weekend. I saw his texts to Pat.”
“Nosy, babe,” Patrick rumbles in a reminder of Reece, who sounded similarly husky before signing those reorganisation papers.No repeats, he’d stated. Now I ask his youngest brother to do just that. “What did he ask about me?”
“Who, Reece?” Patrick stands in tree position, not even wobbling a little. “Just stuff like how you were doing. Whether you’re looking forward to working with him. What can he do to make it easy for you. Things like that.”
Sebastian pulls back from our cuddle, adding a little distance. He studies me first, his next eye contact pinning Patrick. “And he wants to know if Pat is any closer to coming home to Cornwall for good instead of only at Christmas.”
There’s no chance of that. London is life, and everyone knows it, but Patrick breaks his yoga flow to join in the only kind of three-way that happens in this home we’ve made together.
His arms envelop us both, and now isn’t the time to compare this hug to one that I can’t let myself reprise in Rex’s study later. For now, I soak up this contact until Patrick rumbles again. “Where is home?”
Sebastian answers. “Wherever we are together.” He means him and Patrick, and yet both sets of arms tighten around me as Sebastian blurts a bullet-fast offer scarily like Rex’s. “It isn’t too late to change your mind, Jack. We won’t advertise your room yet.”
“Babe,” Patrick quietly warns in the closest he ever comes to censuring his boyfriend. “What don’t we ever do to Jack?”
I can’t pull away fast enough to miss Sebastian’s muttered answer.
“Make him feel like he should do what we want.” He instantly does the opposite by issuing an order. “Just don’t go kissing any more frogs while we’re in Cornwall.” He tilts his head at bags packed for their early Christmas celebration. He also offers a helpful solution. “Unless they’re like Pat. Then go ahead and snog them.”
I leave then, in a hurry.
Or at least, I try to.
Crowds of commuters slow my journey even more than usual. Underground trains hum and rattle, making my still-empty stomach queasy when I reach Kensington, where I emerge into a crisp, bright December morning and to the sight of the foundation Land Rover already parked outside the townhouse.
I’m early, but Reece must have left Cornwall at dawn to get here before me. I see that when I let myself in. My new boss fills the study doorway, only today’s brightness means there are no shadows to hide that I haven’t been alone in going sleepless.
He’s grey. So are the smudges under his eyes, confirming that the rescue arm of the foundation has been busy. This morning, Reece looks like he just stepped off a lifeboat. He’s rumpled—crumpled—and if he has caught any sleep since driving up to London, I bet it was snatched on a dog-hair-covered sofa.
Who knew the sight of him looking this wiped out and scruffy would flip a switch inside me from anxious to all business, but, just like that, I drop my worries. And I definitely don’t slide across glossy floor tile in a fuckwit reminder of the last time we were in this hallway together. I glide into work mode instead, and it’s as easy as breathing.
Out comes my lint roller.
I don’t hesitate or even try to stifle that reflex, and it’s the right decision. Yes, he does bat away my roller, but he does it while grinning, which is so much better than my first impression.
Hewasworried.
That uneasiness returns the moment we sit opposite each other at the partners’ desk I usually share with Rex. “Right,” he says. “Let’s think about how to organise a party.”
“I can do better than only thinking.” I show him his schedule. “I got your name subbed for Rex’s on an invitation to London’s biggest banking ball tonight and another party tomorrow. You can research from the ground up.”
“Tonightandtomorrow?”
I don’t know how to describe what I see flicker. I’m used to reading Rex who, for all his financial brilliance, is as complex as a canine—as long as he is in Cornwall with his dogs and family, he’s happy.
Reece is different.
I can’t read him, so I keep talking and aim for brightness. “What better way to make contacts than wining and dining with real moneymakers? It’s a big part of what Rex does for the foundation.”
Reece is back to grey in an instant.
No.
He isn’t only grey now, like those smudges under his eyes. I’m pretty sure my thesaurus would fall open on to the wordhaggard, which is why I repeat what Sebastian asked only an hour ago.
“What’s wrong?”