Petey Boy seemed to roll the idea around in his head for barely a second.
“And if the sight of gorgeous golden-haired Leigh Halfpenny wasn’t enough to get your ovaries quivering over your cornflakes this morning, it’s time to meet another adorable golden furball you wouldn’t mind taking up residence in your basement, the hazel dormouse.” He clapped his hands and flopped back into the chair. “Too easy.”
I bellowed with laughter. “You can’t say that on TV!”
“No, but it was worth it to make you laugh.” Petey Boy winked and flopped a leg onto the coffee table, his foot mere inches from my bare knee. Extraordinary manners, really. Mystomach burst with nervous energy, and my leg started to bounce up and down involuntarily. I wanted to ask him more, but he beat me to the next question.
“You know the hazel dormouse is Jonty’s pet project?”
“Where do you think I plucked the idea from? Buckford is where Jonty learned about the hazel dormouse in the first place.” I pointed towards the porthole window and Buckford Hill beyond. “The wood is absolutely teeming with the little blighters.”
“You’re kidding.”
“My parents were committed naturalists. And naturists, as it happens. I can never remember which one is which. But during his nineteen years as baron, my father rewilded a third of the estate, created two new forests, and restored the ancient oak woodland. All bare-arsed, of course. Murder in the bramble season, but you get used to it. We were a very naked household. Upon reflection, that’s probably why the staff all left.”
Petey snorted a laugh. Emboldened by the sight of him enjoying himself, I kept riffing on the theme.
“Long and the short of it, Buckford is practically a nature reserve. A few years ago—before my father and my brother, David, died—Jonty was staying for the weekend when the Hazel Dormouse Protection Trust released twenty dormice into our oak woodland. Now you can’t move up there for the furry little bastards. They’re taking over. I went for a ride the other day, I kid you not, half a dozen of them—pistols in their paws, bandanas covering their darling little faces—blocked the path and shouted, ‘Stand and deliver!’”
Petey Boy was in fits, and my heart was absolutely bursting out of my chest.
His foot brushed my knee, jolting me out of my momentary reverie. Our eyes met. Then, before I realised he’d even moved, Petey Boy was straddling me in my armchair, hissoft lips pressing passionately into mine. He smelt like tea and toothpaste and geranium body wash. There he was, this beautiful lithe man, wrapped in a bathrobe, his body hot with expectation, and there was me, underneath him, frozen in horror—my body an explosion of pins and needles.
He pulled away. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
He scrambled off me, tightening his robe around his waist. “Did you not… oh my God. I’msosorry.”
I jumped up because sitting down suddenly seemed incredibly awkward. “No, I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting?—”
“I thought you said you wanted to get to know each other?”
“I do. We were. I mean, I thought we were. The conversation was going well, wasn’t it?”
Petey Boy shook his head, his eyes wide in disbelief or panic or something like it. “When you said you wanted to get to know each other, I thought you meant… you know… you wanted to get toknoweach other.”
How had we got here? Why was I so bad at reading signals—atgivingsignals?
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding?—”
“No kidding.” Petey Boy’s hand was in his short-cropped hair. “I thought you’d been giving me green lights all the way.”
“To be fair, I did make you tea.”
“I’m, like,reallygood at consent.”
“We’ve hardly met,” I said.
Petey Boy was pacing now. “You answered the door with your cock out.”
“It was the angle. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I told you, we’re a really naked household.”
“You told me to go for a shower.”
“You seemed like you needed one.”
Petey Boy stopped still, staring at me incredulously. “I douched!”
