Page 60 of Crazy Spooky Love
My shoulders sag and I drop down on the bed because I feel like my knees might go from underme.
“Clear the room,” Leo says softly. “You’re all safe to leave now.”
Donovan Scarborough charges in and helps his buyers to their feet, shooting Leo a filthy look.
“You’re fired,” he jabs his finger almost in Leo’s chest. Then he swings and points toward me. “You. Sort this out. You’ve got one more week.”
“What was that all about?”Leo asks when we’re alone in the bedroom a few minutes later. He’s sitting next to me on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. He held my dreams in those hands for a while, and he didn’t take good enough care of them. “Who’s Charles?” he asks. “The old boy won’t tell me a thing, just stares at me as if he’s taken the Fifth Amendment every time I ask him anything.”
“I’m not sure yet,” I say, aware I’m being evasive, but at the end of the day we are not on the same team anymore. For a couple of moments back there it felt as if we were, but the reality is that he’d trample me into the dust when it comes to business, and that’s what thisis.
“Maybe…we could pool resources on this one?” he says. “For old time’s sake?”
Oh, he so very nearly had me. Nostalgia had kicked in hard, a weird mix of seeing him wearing a shirt I gave him, adrenaline coursing like quicksilver through my blood, and the way he’d automatically covered me when he thought I was in danger. There is undeniable history between us, and we might always care enough to instinctively defend each other from the odd flying book, butfor old time’s sake? Really? What else would he like to do for old time’s sake, I wonder? Get a drink? A quick tumble on the bedroom rug after we’ve straightened up? He’s trying to charm success out of my fingertips any way he can, and I’m afraid this lady’s not for fleecing.
“I think you just got fired from the job,” I point out, but he shakes his head.
“Scarborough loves being on TV too much to fire me. He’ll come around, he’s due on the show himself next week. He won’t blow it off.”
I sigh heavily. It takes one vain man to understand another. The scales are falling quickly from my eyes again as far as Leo is concerned. I don’t know quite what came overme.
A thought strikes me. “No twins today?”
He looks evasive. “They’re busy on the weekend.”
I’d almost forgotten it’s Saturday. “Community service?” I’m joking, of course, but Marina will enjoy it when I tell her. She’s still sore that we didn’t tell Leo about the weird incident in the cellar.
He shoots me a sideways glance like he’s checking if I know something I shouldn’t. “Something like that.”
I don’t know what to make of that. “Are they local?”
He shakes his head, and I hear him swallow in the quiet room. “They moved here from up north to work for me.”
“Wow,” I say, surprised. It seems like a huge commitment. “How did that come about?”
“Socials.”
I can’t help but feel he’s being deliberately vague. “You met them on social media and they moved here to work for you?”
“They’re Darklings One and Two.”
I gulp-swallow my laugh because his expression has turned unusually vulnerable, a rare glimpse behind the scenes.
“They chose those names, not me. They founded the group, and then they moved here to work with me.”
I process this. “You mean they started your fan club then turned up on your doorstep?”
Leo scrubs his hands over his face and grins. “I can’t help it if women find me irresistible, Mels.”
No one else has ever called me that. He coined it, and I kind of liked it when I was his girl. I’m not his girl anymore though, and I’m not sure I like how it makes me feel to hear him say it now. It infers intimacy, and it establishes that the closeness that used to exist between us is still there, to some degree at least. I don’t have many exes, and Leo is definitely the only man I ever reached the stage of thinking forever-thoughts about.
It’s quite cosmopolitan to remain friends afterward, isn’t it? All thecelebs do it, boff each other, ditch each other, and then get snapped months later sharing a sandwich in Regent’s Park or a mocha chocca coconut oat-milk frappuccino in a café in Camden. Granted, Shropshire is a long way from Camden and our coffee is more likely to be instant, but the intention is the same. I’m not hotheaded enough to tear photos in half or burn his clothes, and given the fact that Leo’s wearing a T-shirt I gave him, he isn’t either. I’m through wasting my energy hating him for choosing the bright lights of London over me; it hurt me hugely at the time but was probably sweetened by the fact that he was back within the year because one fifteen-minute spot a week wasn’t enough to cover his exorbitant rent.
What we’re left as now is uneasy friends who’ve seen each other naked, and every now and then he says or does something that makes me think he regrets us breaking up. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say I’m ninety percent over Leo Dark, and the ten percent that feels nostalgically romantic toward him will never be big enough to let him anywhere near my heart again.
“I should probably go and find Lestat,” I say, standing up. “This was…” I search for the most appropriate way to describe the morning. “Eventful.”
On the landing I change my mind about finding Lestat and head up the slim staircase to the attic, expecting to find Isaac, but his favorite chair is vacant. The whole room is empty, and even though I widen my search around the house, there’s no trace of him anywhere.
