“How hard is it to check the goddamn oil?” he muttered as he started the climb up to the folly.
The steps were roughly cut slabs of granite wedged into the side of the hill at uneven intervals. Flynn remembered nearly breaking his neck on them as a kid when he lost his footing on a damp patch of moss and bounced down to the bottom. They’d been cleaned up since then, the moss bleached clean and the sloping slabs propped up with pebbles and concrete until they were more or less level.
It wasn’t much of a climb, but it was enough to jostle the ache in Flynn’s thigh to life. The cold probably didn’t help either. He stopped halfway up and stretched his leg. It didn’t help, so he grimaced and dug his knuckles into the tender knot of muscle. That hurt enough to make him curse under his breath, but after a second, the muscle gave under the pressure. Flynn pushed himself back up straight and resumed the climb.
If he took a spill on the steps, he thought dourly, he’d probably break a fucking hip.
His ego flinched. He wasn’tthatold, and it wasn’t that he was out of breath or wheezing. When hikers got lost out on the island, he hiked up cliffs and came back down carrying sodden, frostbitten idiots in shorts over his shoulder.
He just wasn’t twenty anymore, when a pint and a bad night’s sleep were enough to bounce back from a dislocated shoulder.
But it did make him think again about Teddy’s offer. His thigh ached. What would it be like in ten years’ time? Twenty? Going up and down the stairs at the lighthouse? The thought made him wonder whether Jessie might be right. Maybe cutting off his nose to spite his face wasn’t the best thing to do with a fifty-grand check on the table.
He stamped firmly on that notion. Whatever he was going to do, he wouldn’t make up his mind that night.
The last two steps brought him to the arched, empty doorway into the folly. It was an old ruined chapel, and had been an old ruined chapel since some St. John with a whim and too much money in his pocket ordered it built. The bare stone ribs of the roof curved overhead in the suggestion of a vaulted ceiling, and the far wall consisted solely of an empty Gothic arched window that romantically framed the moon.
It was also all decked out like a fairy orgy was about to take place. Drapes of silver silk hung from the walls, silver bowls glittered on the narrow altar in front of the moon window, and narrow wrought-iron benches had been lined up in the nave.
For a moment the idea that it could be some rom-com inspired setup flickered through Flynn’s mind—complete with Nate in a suit and down on one knee and their loved ones gathered around as he popped the question. The thought of it made Flynn cringe. Well, maybe 75 percent of him cringed. The other 25 percent was apparently an idiot.
It was a stupid idea, anyhow. For one thing, Flynn didn’t have any loved ones on the island, and for another, he caught sight of Nate. He was slouched against the folly’s one complete wall. In the moonlight his graying hair blended with the old stone and he looked more like a jilted bridegroom than a hopeful one.
His shirtsleeves were rolled back to expose his wiry forearms, there was grease on his hands and his jaw, and he had an uncorked bottle of wine between his knees and a cigarette between his lips. When he saw Flynn, he sighed and took a swig of the wine.
“Come on, then,” he said. He tilted his head back against the wall, and he looked at Flynn through the drifting smoke. “Let me have it.”
Flynn thought about it.
“Maybe once you’re warmed up.” He walked over and held his hand out. Nate eyed it for a moment and then sighed and took it. Flynn hauled him to his feet and caught him when he staggered. “How much of that wine did you drink?”
Nate snorted and lifted the bottle so Flynn could see it was still half-full. “Not enough,” he said dryly. “My ass is numb, not drunk.”
Flynn plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and took a drag. It had been over a year since he’d stolen even a postpub lungful of someone else’s cigarette, over a decade since he’d had his own pack in his pocket, but it felt like he’d never quit.
“I thought it was a bad habit,” Nate said.
“It is.” Flynn took another drag and then lifted the cigarette from his lips to look at the smoldering tip. He twisted his mouth in a humorless smile, and the smoke escaped the corners. “It’s been one of those days.”
“Tell me about it,” Nate said as he pushed himself off Flynn’s shoulder. He rolled his head from one side to the other, and his vertebra sounded like cracked knuckles as he took the cigarette back. It was halfway to his lips when a yawn interrupted the habit. He wiped watering eyes on his hand and smeared grease over his eyebrows. “Sorry. Not your problem. I shouldn’t have woken you up. I just didn’t know who else to call.”
That curled something smug and petty on the back of Flynn’s tongue. “Not even Max?”
Instead of taking that last hit on the cigarette, Nate stubbed it out against the wall. It left a ashy black smudge that he scrubbed away with the heel of his hand.
“I asked him to sleep over at mine, keep an eye on Mum.” Nate flicked the butt away into the dark. “I don’t want to wake them up—not after Mum fell today.”
The smug turned to ashes in Flynn’s mouth. He shouldn’t have asked, and he wanted a cigarette even more.
“But you didn’t mind waking me up?”
That got him a tired shadow of Nate’s usual “charming as a fox” grin. “I’d already drunk the coffee and broken the wine open by that point,” he said. “Like I said, sorry. I am really glad to see you.”
The idiot 25 percent of Flynn wanted to make something more of that. The rest of him just wondered how the hell his clotheshorse posh boy looked even hotter scruffy, grouchy, and covered with oil.
Because he was a fool, probably. He should remember the wedding invitation he hadn’t gotten before he got all soppy.
“Come on.” He slapped Nate’s shoulder and gave him a shove toward the steps. “I’ll take you home.”
