“Then what?”
“Then I’ve got a full-time job waiting for me at home.”
“Doing what?”
“The same care work I’m doing here. Nothing too complicated, but I don’t need to be the brightest bulb in the box to make sure my clients are comfy.”
He’s admitting something I’ve been reminded of very recently, and I can’t hold back a shiver. It isn’t cold in this bathroom. If anything, that coincidental echo warms me. He still pauses to check in.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“These hives don’t agree.”
“They’re usual for me. Some antihistamine will sort it.”
“And I’m just saying that it’s scary how fast one little scratch can turn nasty. Especially if you can’t see it and you work in less than sterile places.” He’s still behind me when he clasps my shoulders, close enough that I feel his breath all over again. “You look good.” He lets go of me in a hurry. “I-I mean, your skin isn’t broken anywhere that I can see. No sign of cellulitis. If you’re sure you only need antihistamine, Alice takes it for her hay fever.” His voice abruptly thickens. “I mean, sheusedto take it.”
He must work hard to wrestle down his sadness—almost instantly, he’s bright and breezy again, which I might believe if I didn’t get a sideways glimpse of his damp gaze in the mirror.
He sniffs again. “If you want, I can check if there’s any left in her medicine cabinet?”
What I really want is for my cock to calm the fuck down.
I almost tell him that I can buy my own meds. That I could have done it already, but the switch in his voice from clogged to clear means I say, “Yeah, okay” instead, reminded of when my own usefulness had served its purpose and how shitty that left me feeling. Being needed still matters to him, so I tell him, “Go ahead, Alasdair. When we get to your place, you take a look for that antihistamine for me.”
I also hear that he’s made up his own mind.
About me.
I turn to see thankfully dry eyes and hear a request as soft as Highland heather.
“I will, if you start calling me Dair. That’s who I am to my friends.”
I told myself earlier that Alasdair isn’t a friend. Not yet, and maybe never. Now he’s outright asking me to be one to him.
“Please,” he all but whispers, and I shouldn’t. Not after the last time.
Dair smiles up at me, and it’s wild how much I want to.
4
We only needto walk for a few streets before Dair lets me into the twin of Flynn’s townhouse. This one is subdivided.
“We’re on the ground floor.” He wrestles with an old lock. “If I can get in, that is. Ah, here we are.” The door creaks open, and even before it closes behind us, I can tell this place won’t be hoarded. Believe me, if it was, I’d be able to smell it, even with the lights out.
Neglect doesn’t catch at the back of my throat this evening. I’ve uncovered enough rats’ nests when clearing houses to note its absence. If anything, all I smell is furniture polish. And the scent of home cooking. It reminds me that my lunchtime meal deal was a long time ago. “Something smells good.”
“Oh, that’ll be the stovies I made for after my late shift. Working nights always messes up my body clock. I’ll be eating them for my breakfast.”
I’d ask him what stovies are, only Dair flicks on a light switch, and I’m surprised into silence. I mean, I’m an antiques amateur, not an actual expert, but there’s nothing worthless here. I’m not saying I spot any furniture that Chippendale himself might have crafted or any ceramics from the Ming dynasty, but there’splenty of it. China tea sets cover every surface. Even more are on display in glass-fronted cabinets. I crouch beside one to count pieces and reach an easy hundred. Then I get up to study a Welsh dresser. It’s old. Dinged by family life. Scuffed and a little shabby, but with some TLC could be worth a couple of hundred. I think the same in the next room Dair shows me into. “Who told you none of this was worth selling?”
“Does it matter?” Dair sits heavily at a dining table. “Because they were right, weren’t they? Nothing matches. Not even a single one of the chairs around this table. And not much of the china. Who buys mismatched collections? It’s all…”
The wordeclecticcomes to me. There’s no way I picked that up on the Isle of Dogs. I must have absorbed it while sitting on the sidelines of a meet-up.
Dair sighs like some of Kev’s clients do when their Billy bookcases from IKEA fall to pieces mid-removal. “None of it is even worth putting on Facebook Marketplace, is it?”
