Opposite, Jonas lifts his arms and peeks out at us from beneath the shadow.
“I like your shirt too,” he drawls at Anders. “It looks lovely and warm and dry.”
Anders gives him an unimpressed look and stands, stripping off his shirt down to his T-shirt. He throws it at his brother’s chest, but with a lot less aggression than earlier.
“There you go, you big baby.” He reaches past me to grab a bottle of water and I freeze at his close proximity. His arms are golden brown and leanly muscled.
“Why, thank you,” Jonas replies with a smirk, lazily getting to his feet as Anders sits back down. He drags his sodden red T-shirt up and over his chest, his hands hitting the ceiling above his head as he pulls it off.
I’m not particularly drawn to overly sculpted bodies, but no one is going to believe it if they catch me staring at his, so I stop doing thatrightaway.
There’s a damp patch on the sofa cushion from where he’s been sitting in his wet jeans. Peggy notices as she comes into the room.
“Why didn’t you put a towel down?” she asks Jonas tersely.
“You’ve never given a crap about the state of the couch before,” Jonas says as he finishes buttoning his shirt.
“Language!” Peggy chides. “We have guests,” she adds pointedly, glancing at me.
“Yes, welcome to our humble abode,” Jonas drawls, sitting down on the towel his mother has now laid out on the sofa. His brother’s shirt pulls tight across his chest. “You like what we’ve done to the place?”
Most people would hate it in here. But as someone who thinks the Southbank Centre is an architectural masterpiece, I’m not at all opposed to a bit of raw concrete.
“It has a certain appeal,” I reply coolly as I run my hand down the smooth surface of the wall. “I’m a big fan of the brutalist movement.”
I’m not being entirely serious—I mean, I do like brutalist architecture, but I wouldn’t go about claiming it in this context—so it gives me a buzz when Anders laughs.
I dart my eyes toward him, trying to catch his smile and succeeding. His teeth are attractively imperfect, clean and white, but not dead straight.
Scott had very little interest in art or architecture. I still remember suggesting we visit Tate Modern the morning after our first night together and he pulled a face and booked us tickets to the London Eye instead.
Anders opens his bottle of water, a smile hovering at the edges of his lips as he drinks. It’s an effort to tug my attention away.
Peggy takes a seat next to Jonas. “Everything okay in here?” she asks guardedly, and I have a funny feeling she was waiting for the air to clear before venturing into the room.
“All good, Ma,” Jonas replies.
She reaches across and pats his knee and there’s something reassuring about the gesture.
I know that she was worried about him earlier, but is she worried about him still? But of course she would be worried. They mustallbe worried. This farm is their livelihood—if a tornado is out there tearing it to shreds, where will that leave them?
“Wren is an architect,” Peggy enlightens her sons, nodding at me, and I sense she’s trying to take their minds off what’s happening aboveground.
“Is that so?” Anders sounds innocent as he flashes me a sly sideways look, raising an eyebrow and going along with his mother’s attempts to lighten the mood.
“Have you two already met?” Jonas asks suspiciously.
“I gave her a ride here,” Anders replies, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankles.
“And you had time to talk?” Jonas presses, not buying the explanation.
He clearly knows his brother well enough to recognize when he’s being hoodwinked.
“We bumped into each other last night when I was walking home,” I reveal, coming clean. “I cut across one of your fields.”
“Scared the shit out of me,” Anders grumbles. “It was like something fromChildren of the Corn.”
Laughter bursts out of me.
