Chapter One
Thehouse on Ledbury Road was the sort Colin used to dream about when he was twelve and being shuttled between placements. It wasn’t an ostentatious monstrosity; it looked like somewhere you could imagine a family eating breakfast together without anyone getting glassed. All white stucco frontage, black railings, and a door painted a sunny egg yolk yellow.
He checked the text about this job again.General maintenance tasks.That was vague enough to mean anything from a leaking tap to rewiring the entire third floor. The message had come through Marcella three doors down, a retired Italian woman whose kitchen sink Colin had unstuck last month. She’d passed his number to her new neighbour.
Builders’ dust still clung to the doorstep. There were signs of recent work, expensive by the look of it. Colin took stock: the brass door furniture was new, the number plate freshly mounted, and someone had left the protective film on the letterbox. He’d sort that later as a freebie on his way out.
The door knocker was black iron, weighted and solid in his hand. It was a simple design, and it sat well against the bright yellow. He brought it down against the wood a couple of times.
The man who answered the door was Asian, with light tawny skin and an expensive haircut that appeared artfully undone rather than messy. He looked to be in his late twenties, early thirties at most. He was wearing what Colin’s brain registered asrich person’s casual: a soft grey T-shirt and impeccably weathered jeans.
“You must be Colin,” the man said, and his accent was pure American. West Coast, if Colin had to guess, though he’d never been further west than Bristol. “I’m Diwa. Diwa de la Vega. Thanks so much for coming on such short notice.”
He stepped back to let Colin in, gesturing with open-handed enthusiasm, but Colin didn’t move yet. The assessment he ran Diwa de la Vega through was automatic: alpha, densely muscled with a runner’s build, taller than Colin by a few inches and powerful enough to be a problem if he wanted to be. But the smile reached his eyes. There were dimples creasing his cheeks, and the boyish energy vibrating off him didn’t read as threat. He looked like someone who mainlined vitamins and did cold immersion therapy. Colin had seen a BBC documentary about an American socialite with the same aggressively optimised glow.
Colin stepped inside, reasoning that someone who looked like that was probably vegetarian or vegan, and those sorts tended to be anaemic enough that Colin stood a chance at overpowering him.
“Can I get you a coffee? I’ve just put the Moka on.”
Colin had no idea what a Moka was, so he shook his head. “I’m all right, thanks.”
“Tea? Water?” Diwa was already heading down the hallway, assuming Colin would follow. The interior of the house was just as tasteful as the exterior: stripped floorboards, modern clean-lined furniture. “I’ve got this cold-brew thing if you’re not into hot drinks. Or—wait, do you like green smoothies? I make a really good one.”
Colin’s mouth twitched. He’d never had a green smoothie in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now.
“What is it you need doing?” Colin asked, stepping further into the hallway and taking proper stock of this alpha’s home.
The renovation looked to have got about three-quarters of the way to finished and then stopped. The skirting boards were on but unpainted, and a section of wall by the staircase had been opened up and not closed again, exposing a tangle of wiring that someone had at least had the sense to cap off. A stepladder was leaning against the wall opposite, still wrapped in its plastic film, the price sticker from B&Q catching the light.
“Right, yes, the thing.” Diwa turned and made a small, apologetic gesture at the ceiling. “It’s, um. It’s this.”
Colin followed his gaze. There was a brass pendant fitting hanging from the ceiling, empty, the bare contacts visible where a bulb ought to be.
Diwa pointed at the floor. There, sitting on the stripped boards beneath the fitting, was a yellow Selfridges bag. Inside the bag sat a single light bulb in its box.
Colin’s gaze moved from the fitting to the bag, and from the bag back up to Diwa de la Vega. “And is there anything else you wanted me for?” he asked, in the same tone he’d use to ask whether someone took milk in their tea.
“No, that’s…that’s it.” Diwa rubbed the back of his neck, dimples deepening. “Sorry, I know it’s a bit silly. I’ve never done this before, and the ceilings here are higher than I thought they’d be. I didn’t want to fall off a ladder on my second week in the country. I’ve heard a lot about the state of the NHS…”
Colin didn’t take his coat off.
“I’m not doing it,” he said.
There was a pause during which Diwa’s face went through several small adjustments in search of the appropriate expression. He landed somewhere between politely puzzled and mildly anxious, head tilting half an inch to the side.
“Sorry…is the ladder not okay? I mean, I could get one Deliveroo’d over, maybe.”
“The ladder’s fine.”
“Oh.” Diwa glanced at the bag. “Are you…are you afraid of heights? Because I am, a bit. I went abseiling once at this team-building thing in Big Sur and I had to be talked down by a guy called Brad. So I get it, honestly, no judgement.”
“It’s not a height thing.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”
“And I’m judgingyou. Thirty years old, and you’ve never changed a light bulb.”
“I’m twenty-eight.” Diwa’s mouth had gone sulky at the corners. “Everyone always says I look much younger than twenty-eight. And I’ve been building my company since I was twenty-two, so…”
