Connor eased out of him and reached for the tea towel he’d slung over the back of the nearest chair. He dampened a corner of it at the kitchen tap and came back to the table to clean Vidal up. He wiped the mess from his inner thighs first, then between his legs where the lube and come had started to leak out of him.
Vidal lay where Connor had left him, arms loose at his sides, eyes half-shut, and permitted the handling without a comment.
“Right, sweetheart. Up we come.”
Connor tossed the towel at the sink, got one arm under Vidal’s knees and the other round his shoulders, and lifted him off the table. Vidal let his head tip into the hollow of Connor’s shoulder and his arm came up lazily round the back of Connor’s neck. “This is undignified.”
“You asked for the babying, love.”
He carried Vidal out of the dining room, and dumped him onto the sofa with rather more bounce than strictly necessary. Vidal let out an indignant yelp as the cushions caught him and the crucifix at his throat flipped up and smacked him on the chin.
“Connor Evans, you are abrute.”
“Been called worse.”
He pulled the cashmere throw off the back of the sofa, shook it out once, and settled it over Vidal from collarbones to ankles. Then he sat down on the edge of the cushion by Vidal’s hip, and laid one hand on the throw over Vidal’s stomach.
“What brought this on, Vidal?”
Vidal’s gaze had drifted up to the cornicing. For a moment Connor thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then his mouththinned. “It has become evident that people’s patience with me has an expiry date. Major Beauchamp made it very clear this morning that he will only be staying in my service for the next month and a half.”
“He’s put in his notice, then?” That surprised Connor; he’d have put money on Beauchamp being in it for the long haul, the way he’d caught him looking at Vidal with a peevishness that was edged all the way through with indulgence.
“Apparently he’s on a three-month secondment. Which Imayhave known about when James first made the arrangement. And which I might have been perfectly all right with…before.”
Connor let the rest of that sentence stay where Vidal had left it.
Before the cupcakes with the pink candles. Before Vidal had started measuring his days by whether Beauchamp was in the building.
“He stopped me on the pavement, Connor. On Mount Street. Mercè was falling asleep sweetly in his arms, and the sun was out. He waited until precisely that moment to inform me, in the flattest voice you have ever heard, that he was looking for private security for me. He was talking of just passing me on to someone else! As though I were a warehouse of perishable goods and he were the man from the alarm company.”
“Vidal —”
“He has been sitting in his bedroom in the evenings, compiling a list of interchangeable men who might replace him, and he did not think to mention it until we were half way through our arrangement. It was the most mercenary bit of speech I have ever been subjected to, and I have had dinner with French arms dealers.”
“Hang on, love.”
Vidal’s eyes cut sideways to him, dark and injured.
“That’s not fair to him.” Connor kept his voice easy. “He’s a military man. They go where they’re told to go. They don’t get to pick and choose their postings, and they don’t get to decide to stay past the paperwork. He’d have been given this secondment with an end date stamped on it before he ever set foot in this building. And you said it yourself a minute ago. He was trying to set things up so you’d be set up well when he goes. That’s a man doing his job properly and trying to hand you off to someone who’ll look after you the way he has.”
“He could have chosen a better moment.”
“He could have. He probably thought a sunny Sunday was the best chance for him to get you while you were in a good mood.”
“He thoughtwrong.”
Connor’s thumb stroked once across the cashmere over Vidal’s ribs. “He wasn’t breaking up with you. He was giving you notice so you’ve got runway.”
“I refuse to accept that there is a difference. I am very good, Connor, at refusing to see things I do not wish to see, and I intend to exercise that talent to its fullest extent today.”
Connor bit down on the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Vidal was coming back into himself by degrees, the vocabulary climbing back up the register, and that was a better sign than any amount of quiet acquiescence would have been.
“Right. Well. While you’ve got your eyes wide shut, I’ve got a proposition for you. Come to Sunday dinner at my mum’s with me. Next weekend.”
Vidal’s head turned on the cushion.
“My mum does a roast every Sunday at her house in Bow. My brother’ll be there, his missus, the nieces. It’s not fancy. Mum’ll put you next to her and ask you questions you don’t want to answer, and my brother’ll take the piss out of my waistcoats. There’ll be too much food and a trifle that’s mostly sherry, andyou’ll come home full and tired and not thinking about private security arrangements.”
