23. TWENTY-THREE
Jesus fucking Christ.
So much for good intentions. This was all Aubrey’s fault—being all smarmy and ‘Won’t you please join us for a drink, Poppy? And by the way, I’m planning to have you naked on my wanky Italian sofa in four hours’ time.’ He knew the guy’s moves. Had seen them in action often enough. But Aubrey should have known Poppy was off-limits. Aubrey should have known she was—
His.
Oh… That wasn’t good.
Can’t get jealous about your platonic non-girlfriend employee tenant who can only ever be your non-girlfriend. Because if you did, you ended up in:
“Wetherspoons?”
Roscoe eyed the sign as Poppy held the door open, looking back at him with both annoyance and amusement. “Yes, Wetherspoons. Because you said, and I quote, ‘Show me how to celebrate like an average person.’”
“In all fairness, I haven’t slept for forty-eight hours and may not be as linguistically tactful as usual.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Richie Rich. Stop stalling. It’s time to slum it with the plebs.”
So they entered the bar, the carpet sticky underfoot, the air sticky with the smell of cheap, sweetened spirits.
Poppy found a gap at the bar. “Vodka and lemonade for me. Ooh, look, they’re doing doubles for only fifty pence extra. And you’ll have…whatever their cheapest lager is.”
Roscoe wasn’t much of a beer snob and had, in fact, been in this exact Wetherspoons several times. But it was too much fun to play along with Poppy’s inverse-snobbery to admit to any of that. “I think we might have a repeat of our first meeting if you’re doing doubles and I’m drinking weak lager.”
“Drink quickly then to keep up.” She winked at him before turning to the bartender. “Maybe you’ll ask to feel my hair.”
Roscoe stared at the back of her head.
This was all Aubrey Ford’s fault.
They drank their first drinks while talking, probably wisely, about work. They drank their second and third drinks while talking, probably less wisely, about everything else.
“Ah, there it is,” he said with a smile.
“What?”
“That accent I remember from the first night we met.”
Poppy scowled at him. Or pouted. Honestly, it was a mixture of both.
He chuckled. “Why do you hide it?”
“Because I work in a place where everyone talks like they’re performing Shakespeare in the bloody Park.”
Roscoe spluttered a laugh, coughing on his beer.
“Seriously, you try booking a table for a business lunch at L’Darroze sounding like Eliza Doolittle.”
“I like your voice.”
Oh God. He couldn’t blame that one on Aubrey. That was the beer’s fault.
She pulled a face. “Now if you called them up,” she said, “they’d be bending over to help you. It’s an unfair advantage, your accent.”
“How so?”
“Because it’s such a clear signal. I’m rich. I’m posh. I had a nanny and went to Oxbridge.”
“Anyone can put on a voice.”
“But can you switch yours off?”
“Erm… Like this?”
She burst out laughing. “What was that meant to be?”
“Normal, non-posh voice.”
“Via Wales?”
“Quite possibly.”
“But seriously, if a person walks into a room, a job interview, a client meeting, and talks with an accent like mine, do you think people would treat them the same way as if they spoke like you?”
“I think if they didn’t, then you’d have to question whether you wanted to work with them. Because they’d be idiots to care.”
“Ah, and there it is,” she said, mimicking his words from earlier.
“There what is?”
“The unconscious privilege. The assumption that you’d have a choice about whether to work with someone or not. Haven’t you heard? Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“You didn’t choose to be my EA. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No—”
“Because I didn’t get a choice either about my job. Do you think I’d really be allowed to work anywhere else?”
“I think you could quit tomorrow and never work another day in your life and still have a roof over your head and food on the table.”
Roscoe let out a long breath. He had one elbow on the bar. They were still in the same place as when they’d arrived. The pub was busy around them, other people’s noise, other people’s lives bustling and boisterous. He had barely noticed, the extent of his world formed by the redhead before him. He twisted his pint on its damp beer mat.
“That’s probably true.”
“But…? You look like you’re about to say ‘but’.”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“No. Because it makes me sound whingy and childish.”
“To be fair… So does this.”
He poked her shoulder softly, and she breathed a laugh, half-teasing, half-gentle. “Spit it out.”
He took a breath. “If I did quit… It would lose me my father.”
Silence. He glanced up at Poppy, found her eyes sad and sorry. And he wished he’d never said it, particularly as he was talking to someone who didn’t really have a father at all. He straightened up, drank his beer, explained briskly, “It’s conditional. His affection. It always has been. My brother figured it out quicker than I did. Decided not to play for it. I’ve never been strong enough to walk away.”
“Your father doesn’t deserve you.” Fierce conviction in her voice. That tigress again.
And…shit. He was almost crying in Wetherspoons, which was not at all how he had planned this evening to go. Cheap bloody lager. He forced the feeling away, finished his pint, gestured to the bartender with his empty glass for another.
He forced a laugh. “See what I mean about whingy?” Then he changed the subject and tried to save the evening.
Poppy treated Roscoe to fried chicken on the way home. Although treated might have been a stretch. Subjected was probably more accurate. It was the grimiest, grubbiest establishment she could find—the type that was probably ten percent mouse—and Roscoe hesitated dubiously before stepping foot onto the scuffed linoleum floor.
“Come on, Richie.” She tugged his sleeve. “Time to finish the night in style.” She waved away the wallet he had started to pull out. “No need to flash the Black Amex. My treat.”
He slipped his wallet back into his pocket, smiling wryly. “I have a perfectly normal Coutts card, thank you very much.”
She snorted.
There was a bit of a queue—it was just past eleven, the pubs were closing. Most people were either heading home or trying to line their stomachs before heading into the next stage of the evening.
It was the former for them: home. Together. Together but separate. Together as friends. She shook her head, the alcohol buzz making all her thoughts as clumsy as they were portentous.
She wasn’t really drunk. Not really, really. Just enough to make grubby fried chicken seem like a good idea. Just enough to make the man at her side feel as warm and inviting as a real log fire, the picture-perfect ones on Christmas ads. Somewhere you just really, really wanted to be.
But Roscoe was standing still, face serious, arms folded. He had been a little like that ever since that conversation about his dad, but he’d deflected every attempt she made to return to it. Another time, maybe—another time she would tell him exactly what she thought about George fucking Blackton.
Then she realised that Roscoe wasn’t scanning the menu on the wall behind the till, but that his gaze had shifted to the group of three girls at the front of the queue putting their order in. They were dressed for the office—skirts, blouses, slim dark trousers—and they were extremely drunk, laughing amongst themselves, talking over each other, changing their minds constantly. They were, to be honest, very loud and annoying, and that was probably why they caught Roscoe’s attention—almost everyone in the place was staring at them with varying degrees of irritation as they took forever to order.
But Poppy found herself saying, “I bet women love it, too.”
“What?”
Now that she had his attention, she started to regret it. Because she had his whole attention, and the whole of Roscoe Blackton’s attention was always somewhat overwhelming. He was quite a bit taller than her, tall and sleek and strong—a gleaming skyscraper compared to her dumpy little chicken shop—and he was looking down from on-high, his usually mild blue eyes holding her pinned like prey in a falcon’s sight.
“The accent,” she said. “What we were talking about earlier. I bet it makes pretty much everything in life easier.”
She was trying to be funny. Honestly, she swore she was just trying to get back to that light bantering conversation from earlier in the night. The one where Roscoe had seemed to be having fun, had looked relaxed and amused. And smiled at her. And told her he liked her voice.
But now he frowned. “Like picking up women? That’s what you’re insinuating?”
“Come on,” she tapped him on the chest. Possibly left her fingers there a half-second longer than she intended. “I bet all you need to do is open your mouth. Flash that Black Amex—”
“Coutts.”
“—casually mention you’re the son of an earl and that you’re Lord…what?—what is your title?”
“Younger sons don’t get titles.”
“But your brother’s a viscount!”
He smiled slightly. “Been reading that Wikipedia page?”
“No. Maybe.”
And the Tatler article. And the Forbes interview…
“Hugo can call himself Viscount Leighton as a courtesy. It’s one of our father’s lesser titles. If Hugo had a son, he could use the title Baron Redmayne, which is the next of my father’s titles. But I don’t get one. Not as the second son.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
Roscoe just smiled. “I know.” Then he shrugged, his smile turning a little wicked around the edges as he lowered his voice, leaning in slightly. “No wonder I’m so woefully unsuccessful with women.”
Poppy laughed. It was funny because it was so clearly untrue. It was funny, she reminded herself forcefully. Laugh, Poppy. Laugh.
“I bet you are, though,” her drunk, idiot mouth said.
“What?”
They were at the front of the queue now. Poppy gave their order, paid, tucked her purse back into her bag—all with Roscoe’s eyes on her.
“What do you mean?” he said again as they stepped aside to wait for their food.
“I bet you’re terrible with women.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
“Because of the voice and the flashy plastic and the…” She waved a hand up and down in front of him as he kept looking at her, eyebrow creeping up. “The expensive suits.”
“Right,” he murmured. “The suits.”
“I bet because all you need to do is open your mouth and name-drop a few titles…and…and smirk a bit, that you’ve never really had to…you know…try.”
“Try?”
“Yes. I bet you really are just…woeful.”
“Woeful?”
“At everything.”
A beat. Roscoe looking at her, something devilish creeping into his smile. “I’m terrible in bed am I, Poppy? That’s what you’re suggesting?”
She shrugged one shoulder, affecting a casual disinterestedness, her brain screaming WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, POPPY? Honestly, she had no idea. She was thinking of those viral videos, of people stuck in the mud, slipping over every time they tried to get up, working themselves deeper and deeper into a horrendously embarrassing mess. That was her brain right now.
“No skills at all?” persisted Roscoe, the devil now very evident in his smile.
“Probably, I mean…”
“Just awful, inexperienced, inept fumbling…”
She shrugged again, very focused on making sure her bag was properly zipped up. “Yes, probably. Just…terrible.”
“OK. I see. Thank you for pointing that out to me.”
“No problem.”
“Maybe I should try to improve? Get a few pointers?”
“Sure. You know, buy a magazine. Cosmo or something.”
“I should look online, do you think? Find some videos?”
She nodded. “Yep. Good idea.” The zip on her bag was very definitely done up. But that meant she no longer had an excuse not to look up. She met Roscoe’s eyes. Saw the amusement there. The dark glow of it.
“Or you could help me,” he said.
“What…?”
“Just one friend helping another.” He stepped closer, cupped her cheek.
Her breath caught, heart stopping, then starting again with a painful kick.
He brought his other hand up to her jaw, cradling her face as he lowered his head, his eyes burning on hers—burning with wicked amusement.
“Tell me if I’m doing it wrong,” he murmured, his lips brushing hers.
She made a noise she couldn’t quite describe, a sort of whimper. Then he grazed his mouth along her lower lip and she saw stars as her eyes fluttered shut. She lost sight of everything but the miraculous sensation of Roscoe’s mouth meeting hers, the warm, firm pressure of his lips. Even with her eyes closed she was aware of the size of him, the way his head bent to hers, his hands cupping her face as though every single thing in the world was pinpointed right there in the seam of her lips. His mouth brushed over hers again, firmer now, catching her lower lip in the soft grip of his. His tongue followed, slipped over the hot, tender flesh just inside her lips, seeking, coaxing—as though she needed coaxing. As though she wasn’t already begging with every atom, moaning as his tongue found hers, stroked across it and set every part of her body blazing…
He pulled slowly away, hands still cupping her face, forcing her eyes to meet his. “Woeful, Poppy?”
And she said, “Holy fucking ketchup.”