Page 139 of Hold On

Ren laughed. “Yes.”

Between them, they licked the bowl clean, then worked together to put the kitchen back to rights. They both liked things to be neat and tidy, though Dominic was better at making that happen than him. Ren didn’t have his patience.

“Have you said yes to Col yet?” Ren asked.

“Not yet.”

“But you will.”

Dominic nodded. “I just worry that someone will make a thing about Col’s best man being a convicted murderer. I wanted him to think again. He said he didn’t need to but…”

“You think their wedding’s going to be all about you!” Ren pretended to look aghast.

“Okay, okay. I’ll call him later.”

“He knows you’ll say yes.”

“Probably.”

“We need a shower again.” They were both nicely floured.

“Let’s wait until the cakes are out.”

“Do you think they’re going to explode all over us?”

“No, it’s just that you’ll get distracted and we don’t want them to burn.”

“Good point.”

Ren wrapped his arms around Dominic, kissed the junction of his neck and shoulder and licked a smear of cake mixture from his cheek. “Are you happy?”

“You know I am.”

“The business is what you wanted?”

“You don’t need to keep asking me that.”

“I know it isn’t what you’d have chosen.”

“Hey! I didn’t know what I could do and it turns out I’m good at running a security business. You’re good at finding the right people to work for us and we have some big clients. I don’t need tolovewhat I do, if I’m doing a good job, and earning a fair wage, then that makes me happy. I’m even happier that you’re not in danger, that our jobs, at least, are less than nine to five and we have plenty of time for ourselves.”

“But wouldn’t you rather have been one of the guys who deciphered that Kushan script?”

“Oh because that really could have been me? It was enough to read about it.”

Though Ren remembered how riveted Dominic had been by the decoding of some rock face inscriptions near the Almosi Gorge in northwest Tajikistan. He’d seen the longing on Dominic’s face. He was wondering about asking Dominic if he wanted to do a PhD. He didn’t have to work for the business full time.

“Look what we’ve achieved, Ren! In less than a year the business has boomed.”

RD Security had been more successful than Ren could have hoped. It had all kicked off when the firm that the marquess had used at Asquith had sold their business, but the contract with Asquith had not been tied into the sale and the marquess had given Ren and Dominic a chance. Once they’d proved they could do the job, other work had followed. At first through the marquess’s and Ren’s contacts, then through their growing reputation for reliability, efficiency and integrity.

“If we carry on at the rate we’re going, we’ll definitely have to take on more people,” Dominic said.

“I think we should buy a place where we can spend the weekend,” Ren said. “To be honest, we could probably run the business at a distance. We travel a fair amount anyway. Keep Ian doing the basic admin in the office downstairs, still have it as the business base, but we don’t need to live on top of it. Maybe Ian would like to rent it?”

“Where do you want to live?”

“Where doyouwant to live?”

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