“Turn around,” he said, winking.
Christ, he wanted to get right down to business?
“Listen, I haven’t?—”
“Please, Petey,” he said, softly. The way he shortened my name felt intimate. His hand rested on my hip and gently turned me over. The heat of his body, the strength of his touch—I was powerless to resist. I tucked myself up against him, my back against his stomach. Only my robe separated us. I became aware of our breathing, the gentle rise and fall. His thumb traced up and down my chest. Again, I realised how slow I’d been to understand. William hadn’t wanted to shag me, he wanted to hold me—and his embrace felt more real than any I’d had from any of the hundreds of men who had gone before him.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For not running.”
“Why would I run?”
“I can think of four point three million reasons, at least.”
The cuckoo clock downstairs cuckooed for ten o’clock. I needed to sleep.
“I’m a producer, William,” I said. “We don’t run from problems. We solve them.”
He snuggled closer into me, his legs and feet entwining with mine. His face nuzzled in behind my ear, his hot breath making my cock as rigid as I could ever remember it being—but he never reached for it. I knew he wouldn’t, and I was fine with that. This wasn’t sex. This was something else. I didn’t understand it, I didn’t recognise it, but I realised now it was something I had been looking for, for a long, long time.
“Do you want to sleep up here tonight?” he asked.
I nodded, and I felt William’s whole body relax into mine. Then, as light as breath itself, William’s lips grazed my skin, and he tenderly kissed my neck.
Chapter 22
William
How do you know if you’re falling in love, and how do you know if what you’re actually doing is going insane? I couldn’t concentrate all the following day. I’d managed to leave a message for my accountant, but between my money worries and thinking about Petey, my brain was mush. Petey was working late, but by early evening I was already sitting in my father’s armchair, counting the hours for him to come home. I drummed my fingers against the unopened copy ofOathkeeper—the final book in the originalKnights-Erranttrilogy—in my lap. Petey Boy was all I could think about. I kept going up to the belvedere to stare out the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. I kept burying my face in the bed sheets, hoping to catch the scent of him. I’d tried to start reading at least a hundred times, but my thoughts drifted—to the way his body fit so perfectly into mine, to the way his nose crinkled up when he laughed. To the way he didn’t even bat an eyelid when he found out what a mess I was in. Sohowdid you tell if this was actual, full-blown, shout-it-from-the-belvedere love, or the kind of medically diagnosable, legally inadvisable obsession that gets people put on a register?
The door downstairs burst open.
“Dub-Dub, I’m in love!”
“Jesus, Jonty, could you have knocked? I nearly shat my boxer shorts.”
I put my hand to the seat of them to check. I was cautiously sniffing my palm when Jonty came bounding up the stairs, his black curls in a tangle.
“You can’t be in here,” I bleated.
“You have to meet her, Dub-Dub. She’s so beautiful, busloads of supermodels aregiving up the catwalk and wolfing down Big Macs to make up for lost time. You shouldseeher! Her little ears, Dub-Dub! They’re… gah… you’ve never seen ears like them. They’re perfect. It’s literally like someone designed those ears specifically for her.”
“Jonty, you need to leave.” I was thinking of Indira’s fines and how much I needed the cash. But I was also thinking of my oath to Petey Boy. Aiding and abetting a lovesick Jonty in going AWOL was not good boy behaviour. I tried to usher him back down the stairs, but he was bouncing around like a toddler on red cordial.
“Her laugh, Dub-Dub! It tumbles out of her like church bells. The sound, I swear, it’s… a religious experience. I find myself making goofy little jokes to hear that intoxicating peal. It goes straight to the old beef bayonet, Dub-Dub. In an instant, the plucky little chap’s protruding from the gun port, ready to fire hot lead right into her sides.”
The cuckoo clock sang for six o’clock. Thank goodness. Cocktail hour. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get rid of him, so I poured us a drink while he blathered away about this woman’s incredible brain and business acumen. I sat in my father’s armchair.
“Jonty, who the devil are you talking about?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Well, no. You haven’t said her name even once.”
“Lola, of course. Who else’s ears could I possibly be talking about?”
