Chapter 12 #3
I smile and shake my head as he looks around happily.
He’s a force to be reckoned with at home, and the men who work for him adore him.
He’s always ready with a joke and a smile but he’s equally prepared to muck in with anyone to help.
However, seeing him here, relaxed and happy, he looks younger somehow, as if he wears a mantle of responsibility that he doesn’t allow anyone to see is heavy.
I nestle closer to him. I want to help him with that, make him smile and look after him, and somehow at this moment that doesn’t seem like an insurmountable desire the way it used to when I was a teenager mooning over him.
He moves away to help with the luggage and I rush to help him, only to come up short when I find Gideon already at his side.
They haul the bags together, chatting and laughing with Jacinta and the others, and for a second I feel a resurgence of that sense of inferiority.
These are all wealthy and successful people with years of friendship.
The friendship may have boiled down to how many positions they could shag in, but they all have an air of success compared to me, a failed picture restorer hiding away on an estate in Cornwall where the world can’t find him.
Then I mentally kick myself in the arse. I’m more than that and Niall sees it, so I make myself smile at Niall and follow everyone into the warmth of the house, inhaling the scent of pine and cinnamon that greets me.
We’re greeted by a small woman with grey hair curled neatly into the nape of her neck. She giggles as Niall sweeps her into his arms. I gape as he launches into a fast-paced conversation in German.
“Didn’t you know he was multilingual?” my brother asks, bringing the final bag in and dumping it at my feet in the wood-panelled foyer with a staircase that twists out of sight.
“He speaks French, German, and Swedish.” I open my mouth to say that I knew he spoke Swedish because his mother is Swedish for Christ’s sake, but he tuts disapprovingly before I can say anything.
“Maybe stop having sex long enough to get to know him, Milo. There’s more to him than a big cock. ”
“Well, you’d know about that,” I say waspishly, stung because he’s right and cross because he knows so much more about Niall than I do.
He smiles slowly. “I do know that, Milo. Is it going to be a problem?”
“No,” I say hurriedly. We don’t need to do this in the foyer of someone’s home. “No, of course not.”
For some reason, he looks almost disappointed in me, but the expression falls from his face too quickly for me to tell.
Niall turns to us and the old woman coos and goes to hug my brother, smiling happily with the ease of familiarity. My stomach tightens, and Niall comes over to me with a frown playing on his face. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say quickly.
“Okay, let me introduce Sofia to you.” He calls her over and says something in scattershot German.
She smiles adoringly at him, giving me the same smile and making some of my tension drop.
She turns to Niall and says something with a lilt of laughter in her voice, but I don’t take offense because her eyes are so warm.
She turns away and Niall grins. “Sofia says how pretty you are. All hair and eyes.”
“That makes me sound like Dougal from The Magic Roundabout ,” I whisper, and he laughs and hugs me close.
“Let me feel your nose just to be sure it’s wet.”
I swat his hand away, grinning in spite of myself. “Were you speaking German?”
“Yes. Do you speak any languages?”
I laugh. “I had enough of a job speaking English. Foreign languages were judged as something that might have been a step too far.”
He looks at me searchingly. “I’ll teach you.”
I shake my head. “Swear words, I suppose.”
He laughs. “Of course. Grab your bag and we’ll take them up to the rooms. Sofia has done supper and it’ll be ready in half an hour.”
I grab my bag and follow him up the staircase.
I catch a glimpse of a huge wood-panelled room with floor-to-ceiling windows offering a glimpse of the mountains, a fire burning in a large stone fireplace and deep comfy-looking sofas and chairs surrounding it.
Then Niall climbs the stairs and I hasten to follow him.
The others split off at the first floor to their rooms, but I follow him up another set of stairs and gasp when I round the final one.
I’m in a room that seems to stretch across the top of the house.
Ahead of me is a floor-to-ceiling window next to French doors that let out onto a patio on which a hot tub sits with steam rising from it.
The mountains are in full view, dusted in snow and framed through the first lazily tumbling flakes of snow flittering down from the lowering sky.
A long and deep plum-coloured sofa is situated in front of the window and off to one side is a grey chaise lounge that’s big enough for two.
It’s positioned in a nook formed by a smaller window and the wooden wall, and it’s packed with enough pillows and throws to earmark it as a perfect place to read.
On the other wall, which is made of stone, is a massive bed big enough to sleep four.
My lips tighten because it probably has in the past. It’s made up with grey and white striped bedlinen and fluffy pillows and a plum-coloured eiderdown.
I wander across the room and open another door as Niall follows me like I’m the Pied Piper of the Master Suite.
I’m looking at a small sauna and the scent of hot wood billows out.
Another door leads to a dressing room and then finally a wood-panelled bathroom with a shower that runs along one wall and a huge clawfoot bath which is positioned in front of another window.
I turn to find Niall looking at me almost anxiously. “Do you like it?” he asks.
I smile at him. “It’s so beautiful.” His shoulders relax, and I nudge him. “Did you actually think I wouldn’t like it?”
He laughs. “I don’t know why I doubted it. It’s made of wood and at the top of the house. Of course you like it. You’re like bloody Heidi.”
I laugh and then look around curiously. “Do you rent this out?”
He nods. “I probably couldn’t afford to keep it otherwise. But I mainly rent to friends and family and leave plenty of time to come out here myself.”
“But you’re always working.”
He smiles. “I said that I left time for me, not that I managed it.” I laugh, and he looks at the room assessingly. “I’m thinking of trying to spend more time out here, actually. Make a change and try to have a life outside of work.”
For a second I feel jubilation at the thought of being part of that, of coming here with him in all seasons. But then I grow cold again as I remember that this is nothing but an instructional set of hook-ups and at the end, he’s anticipating being able to go back to his footloose lifestyle.
I immediately change the subject. “Where am I sleeping?”
He gapes at me. “In here, of course.”
“With you?”
He frowns. “Of course. Who else would you be sleeping with? Is that okay?”
“Of course. But what about the others?”
“Milo, I may have been fond of company in my bed, but even I’m discriminating enough not to fuck six people at once.”
I stare at him. “So what? You’ll fuck me and then what? When we stop will you move back to my brother?”
He leans against the wall, staring at me as though I’m fascinating. “No, Milo,” he says quietly. “That door is closed and locked now.”
“Why?” The question sounds breathless because that’s how I feel. Like he’s just blown my words away.
He gives me a strange smile. “If I say just because, will you accept it?”
I cock my head to one side. “Of course,” I say simply.
He nods. “That’s why.”