He runs his fingers through his hair, looking slightly awkward. “Yes, against all my objections. I didn’t want anything from him. Silas is my best friend and he needed me. The estate was terrible when he inherited. I remember us coming here after the will had been read and his brother had gone back to London. It was shocking. The whole place looked like it had been abandoned in time. His father hadn’t done any restoration for years and the tenants’ cottages were falling apart. And he’d left him no money to do anything.” His expression darkens. “Old bastard.” He shrugs. “I had a really good job lined up in Norfolk but I couldn’t leave him with all that, so I stayed.”
“For free, I bet.”
He looks slightly embarrassed. “Just room and food for a few years until he got more on his feet.” He shudders slightly. “Which wasn’t a good deal when you remember how bad Mrs. Granger was at cooking.”
“I never understood everyone’s objections to her food. I know her cakes are legendary, but her day-to-day cooking seemed okay to me.”
“That’s because you have some sort of iron lining your stomach from your childhood spent eating Derry’s food.” He smiles at the thought of our old cook. “Anyway, I stayed.”
“But surely you’ve got your family and the house in Norfolk to consider?”
Niall is the third son of a Norfolk landowner and although his elder brother manages the family business Niall still has a sharein it, and when his father died he left him a big Georgian house in Norfolk.
He shakes his head and smirks. “I sold the house back to my brother, which enabled me to decorate this place in the décor you so obviously approve of.”
I sniff, thinking of the grey and white. “I’m not sure about that,” I mutter. I look up at him. “Did you not want to go home to your family?”
He shakes his head and looks slightly abashed. “No. Don’t get me wrong. I love them and I always will, but somehow this place feels more like home. I don’t know why, but I’m happy here. I don’t want to move.” I open my mouth to agree with him, but he jumps up and takes the cups over to the sink. “Anyway,” he says briskly. “Silas insisted on deeding the house to me. Said as far as he was concerned, I could stay forever. And let’s face it, estate managing here is a fucking job for life.”
I smile. The two of them were roommates all through boarding school and uni and Niall is closer to Silas than anyone else. My mood darkens. Apart from my brother. He’s certainly close to him. The thought makes me wince, but I chase my frown away when I see him watching me with a peculiar expression on his face.
I stand up quickly. “Let’s get Cora settled and bathed. I’m knackered.”
He nods and follows me obediently like a very large dog.
I don’t know whether it’s being so close to him and alone together or whether it’s because I’m unsettled but that night I can’t sleep for ages, and when I do finally close my eyes I dreamabout the moment when I was seventeen and he accidentally broke my heart.
The car pulls up outside my house and my mum turns to look at me. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay, darling? I hate leaving you when you’re feeling poorly.”
“I-I-I’m fine,” I say and pause to take a breath through my nose and out of my mouth the way Sheila the speech therapist has been teaching me. When I feel calm and like the words aren’t strangling me, I smile at her. “I’ll be fine. I don’t want you to can-cancel the trip. It’s just a cold.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” She smiles and strokes a piece of hair back from my forehead. I want to point out that I’m not five anymore, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings and I also don’t think I’d get all those words out before the weekend is over. “Anyway,” she says happily. “Gideon and Niall are visiting for the weekend for a school reunion, so I’ll tell them to watch you.”
“Mum,” I immediately whine, feeling red heat on my cheeks. “P-P-Please don’t do that.”
“We’ll miss the ferry, Monica,” my father says quickly. “Let him go. He’ll be fine.”
I shoot him a grateful grin which he acknowledges with a wink, and I get out quickly before she can change her mind. Waving to them, I watch them go before turning to the house, nerves spinning in my stomach and making me feel sweaty.
Niall is in there and I’ve got all weekend with him. I know Gideon will whinge about it but I’m sure Niall won’t. He’s always so nice to me. He’s very calm, and when my brother gets cross with my halting speech, he shuts him up. Last month he’d told him to fuck off if he couldn’t be patient. I’d glowed while Gideon had glowered.
I walk up the path to the front door of the Georgian house, seeing Niall’s battered old Volkswagen Polo parked near the garage. I feel warmth in my cheeks and my groin. That part isvery new. I’ve always loved Niall. He’s been my brother’s best friend since my brother left for boarding school when he was seven. Niall usually came back to stay for a few days with us in the school holidays and as a little boy, I followed them around like a puppy. I flush at the thought of how silly I must have looked, but he never treated me like that. Instead, he’d been kind and interested and with him, my stutter has always eased a bit.
However, this last year I haven’t noticed his kindness but how gorgeous he is. Tall and white-blond, his hair is cropped close to his head, showing off the denim-blue colour of his almond-shaped eyes with their long, curling lashes. He’s also long-legged and walks like a panther I’d seen once on a wildlife programme. His looks do funny things to me and I’d been mortified when my first wet dream had been about him, waking me up in a tumble of wet sheets and heavy heartbeats.
Lately, I’ve become sneakier in my desire to spend time with him on the rare occasions I’ve seen him, affecting disinterest when he speaks to me. But I’d seized the chance for a full weekend with him alone apart from my brother by pretending to have a bad headache. I smile. Mission accomplished. Hugging the knowledge that I’ll see him in a few minutes, I let myself into the house.
It’s quiet and feels empty and I frown. I wonder whether they’ve gone to the pub. I hope so because when he’s had a few drinks he’s very affectionate, slinging his arm around my shoulders and ruffling my hair.
I’m looking around, wondering what I should be doing when they get back that displays me to my best advantage, when I hear a thump from upstairs and a hoarse laugh that I recognise as belonging to Niall.
I start up the stairs but something tells me to be quiet, so instead of shouting my presence I ease up the steps, avoidingthe creaky one in the middle. There’s a short groan and another of Niall’s laughs and I realise they’re in Gideon’s bedroom. I frown, removing my hands from my pockets and wiping the sweaty palms against my jeans.
I start down the landing towards the open bedroom door. The noises are louder now. Sighs and groans and a rhythmic creak of bedsprings. I scuff my Vans along the carpet as if to stop myself from reaching the open doorway, all haste gone now and replaced with dread. However, I arrive at the door and when I peep in I draw in a shocked breath, the scene etched in my brain like it’s been burnt there.
Gideon is lying on the bed completely naked. He doesn’t spot me because his head is thrown back, and he’s the source of the gasps and groans because between his legs is Niall. He’s propping his weight on his arms as if he’s doing press-ups and he’s thrusting into my brother so hard that the slap of the flesh echoes around the room. His backside clenches as he moves. He’s staring down at Gideon, his eyes slitted and lazy and a film of sweat over him. His gaze is intent and hot and his movements rough and forceful in a way that makes my balls draw up and my belly hurt.
I can’t move, held captive by the sheer hotness of the scene. It’d obviously be hotter if it weren’t my brother underneath him, but even so, I’m seventeen and Niall is naked, so I watch with a hard cock and a broken heart as they shudder and groan together.
