I concentrated on making tea. Maybe Tim and Archer would finally work things out. Or maybe those swords would end up being put to use…
“Ollie!”
Mia’s voice jerked me from my thoughts and I realised I was still pouring boiling water into an overflowing mug.Shit.
“They’ll sort it out,” she said, but I had the feeling she was trying to convince herself as much as me.
ARCHER
I was disappointed to find it wasn’t Ollie bringing me lunch, warming my workshop with his bright smile. I stamped on that swiftly—the fact Tim was doing this felt as if he were making a statement. Perhaps hostilities were over.
“Thanks, “I said. “How’s the garden coming along? It looks good.” My words came out awkwardly, proving that compliments didn’t come naturally to me.
Tim’s face lightened. “Cheers,” he said gruffly, and nodded at the steel I’d cut out. “What’re you working on?”
As I told him about the twenty-something millionaire with more money than taste, things between us felt almost as they used to.
“I better get back before the others eat all the lunch,” he said after a while, before hesitating. “Is it okay if I have seven friends to stay? I was thinking three nights wouldn’t be too long, but long enough to make it worth them travelling.”
“That’s fine,” I said firmly, while wondering where the hell seven extra people were going to sleep. The house was big but not huge, and part of the upstairs space was taken up with that minstrels’ gallery, which could have been more usefully made into bedrooms.
“I thought a couple could crash in my room, and the rest could share the other two spare rooms. If that’s okay.”
What had I done to make him so uncertain of me? “Sounds like a plan. Will they be bringing air beds or something similar to sleep on?”
He grinned, and for an instant, I saw the old Tim. “They can sleep on the floor. They’re young.”
In the past, he’d have finished that off with some statement about me being an old man and my back not coping, but he was still wary. So I did it for him.
“Unlike me, you mean. It would be helpful if they could bring sleeping bags, but we’ll manage if they can’t.”
“Cool. I thought maybe next week, coming on Thursday because Hig has to go back on Sunday evening for work.”
“I’ll let Shona know to expect Mia.”
“Thanks, Archer.”
That was when I realised one of the things that had gone so wrong between us was the power disparity I’d enforced out of habit, not realising that things had changed. I fiddled with a couple of tools on my table for a moment, wondering if I had to say this. But I knew that I did.
“Tim,” I said, as he was heading out of the door.
He turned back, suspicion on his face.
“You don’t need to thank me. You don’t need to ask permission to have your friends here once Mia’s eighteen. All you need do is to check in with the rest of us that it’s convenient. You’re an adult now, and this is your home as much as it’s mine, and”—Ollie had done something to me. He’d got me talking aboutfeelings—“I’m sorry if I made you think otherwise.”
He nodded jerkily, his face flaring bright red, but said nothing before he left. That was okay. Tim always had been easily overwhelmed, and I remembered how it was to be his age with hormones firing and every single thing feeling like itmattered.I wondered when I’d stopped feeling that things mattered. Somehow, I’d withdrawn, and I hadn’t even realised it until Ollie, with his love of even the smallest of things in life, came along.
I had no idea how a talkative, accident-prone copper dragon had wormed his way into my life and, it seemed, into my heart. All I knew was that I didn’t want to go back to how my life had been before Ollie.
Chapter Twenty-six
OLLIE
Days slipped by until they blurred together in a haze of happiness. I couldn’t decide which I loved more—being with Archer, the great sex we had, or spending the night with him. As we lay together in the dark, he told me a little about his father. He’d been the most charming dragon ever to exist, and he had fulfilled none of his head of family duties.
After he fell silent, I snuggled closer against him. “You know, it’s never occurred to me to wonder what a family could do to depose their head if they wanted to. I guess in the old days they’d have flamed them, which would have been so much easier.”
He tensed beside me, and I remembered this wasn’t merely an abstract theory. I was talking about his father being deposed. Also, I realised with a rush of mortification,him.
