Nikolas laughed a bitter sort of sound. “Actually, it was. I just thought what would Nikolas do?” He looked to Ben.
“Run away. Let someone else sort it all out?”
“Exactly. I called his embassy—as he’d have done. I invoked diplomatic immunity—as he’d have done. I blamed it all on my brother, Aleksey—as he’d have done. I left everyone else to sort the mess. Yes, as he’d have done. I actually drank a glass of champagne to Aleksey on the plane home to Denmark.”
“As he’d have done.”
“So, that’s the story of Nikolas. Which now brings me to the next thing I want to tell you. Ask you.”
“Fucking hell, more?”
“I think, maybe, I’m now Aleksey again. What do you think? I don’t need to live Nikolas’s life. I don’t want his life, and I don’t want his name.”
“Okay…That’s going to take some getting used to. I’m not sure. I think of you as Nikolas.”
“I know you do, which is why I asked you first. Think about it, maybe?”
Ben did. He thought about it a lot over the next few hours. He went out to chop some wood, which was a cure for almost any amount of angst. It involved a regular, unthinking physical effort and enabled him to indulge his love of precision, each log chopped just so, stacked just so. As he worked, he thought about Nikolas…or Aleksey. Could he just make the change? To him, Nikolas was everything, and Aleksey was the dark shadow haunting them. After an hour of working so hard he’d stripped down to just jeans and boots despite the falling snow, he looked up to find Nikolas watching him. He jammed the axe into the chopping block and came over, wiping his face on his T-shirt. “You okay?”
Nikolas shrugged. “I’ve been drinking vodka and wishing I smoked still, so maybe not so good.”
Ben switched to Danish, which always made Nikolas laugh at his accent, if nothing else. “You want to go for a run?”
Nikolas shuddered. “In the snow? No. Not particularly.” He stripped off his jacket and put it around Ben, zipping it up. “I was wondering…”
Ben raised his eyebrows. “The answer to that is always yes, as you know.”
“Well, for once, I wasn’t going to ask that. I wanted to know if you wanted to…go out. To eat, tonight.”
Ben frowned. “Okay…not so hard to ask?”
Nikolas seemed annoyed. “I’m trying to ask you out. On adate. Our first, if I remember rightly.”
Ben’s whole face lifted in surprise. “Fuck me.”
Nikolas shook his head despairingly. “You’re very hard work sometimes, Benjamin.”
CHAPTER TEN
Ben reckoned he shouldn’t be anxious on a first date with someone he knew literally as well from the inside as he knew from the outside. But, somehow, knowing Nikolas as well as he did only made it seemed odder now to be deliberately going out with him, as opposed to all the going out they’d done without thinking too much about it. It made his head ache. And then there was the dilemma of what to wear; which was such a girly thing to think about that he tried to pretend he wasn’t thinking about it, but with Radulf watching him pulling things out of bags and throwing them on the bed, it was hard to keep up any pretence of being macho; which was peculiar, considering Radulf was usually present for the times when Ben was more obviously taking a feminine role in life and not at all worried about howthatactivity affected his masculine credentials. But Radulf had always proved very discreet in his observations about Ben’s sex life, so he trusted the dog not to comment to anyone on his sartorial dilemmas either.
A suit was way too formal, jeans too casual. But what lay in between? He remembered some of the clothes Nikolas had bought for him in London, just before their fateful meeting with Gregory, and he rummaged in his bags for them. Everything was still in its packaging. He pulled some out and found black wool trousers and a grey, button-down shirt, neither of which appeared too creased. He tried them on. He’d lost weight since London, living on a diet of mainly fish, and everything fit with a delightful looseness that left room for lots of eating. He eyed his jackets and decided on his new leather one. He held it up for Radulf to see, just to remind him why he’d had to buy a new one.
After all these decisions, he now had to think about his hair and a shave—or not. Nikolas, he knew, had become slightly obsessed with his long hair. He claimed to hate it, but in bed, and at other times, he frequently ran his fingers through it, played with it, twisted it around absentmindedly. The stubble he also purported to dislike but didn’t seem adverse to when they were kissing—when kissing, Nikolas clearly couldn’t get enough of it. Ben smirked at his reflection; he was good to go.
Nikolas appeared to think so as well. Ben suspected it hadn’t taken Nikolas hours to decide what he was wearing. He’d opted to dress all in black; black suit and black shirt with no tie, and his long overcoat. Nikolas moved in circles very different to Ben’s and always seemed effortlessly elegant. Tonight, though, with his still sun-bleached blond hair and deep tan, he appeared very different to the Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen Ben had first met. He gave Ben a quick glance, quirked his lip but didn’t comment. Ben checked the guard was in front of the fire, filled Radulf’s water bowl and put the television on for him. Nikolas was standing impatiently, tossing the keys from one hand to the other, glancing at his watch. “Don’t get too fond of that dog, Ben. He goes back soon.”
Ben and Radulf both gave him identical looks, and he was still chuckling at this as he climbed into the driver’s seat. Ben followed him out and frowned. “Hey, I’m driving.”
“It’s snowing, I’m driving.”
“Yeah, exactly, it’s snowing. I want to drive.”
“Get in, Benjamin and stop arguing.”
“It’s my car!”
“Paid for withmymoney.”
