CHAPTER 4
SHERIDAN
Myles Wilson is quite possibly the sexiest motherfucker I have ever had the pleasure of looking at. And it’s really hard to look at him without combusting. He’s not just sexy because he’s good-looking—which he most definitely, absolutely, completely is—but because he can handle a twat like Stavros without breaking a sweat. How Nash can work with that smarmy git, I do not know. Why I signed myself up for a week with him, I do not know.
All I do know right now, is that sitting shotgun to a driving Myles in his modest black VW Polo with Nash, Stavros and JP squashed in the back, is setting my anxiety levels at an all-time high. It’s all shoulders, elbows and knees in the back seat, with one of them grumbling every so often about how uncomfortable they are. Stavros has said at least five times that a man of his size shouldn’t have to sit in the back of a Volkswagen—even though I’m really not sure what that has to do with anything—and we haven’t even got on the A45 yet.
Hector jumped into my lap the second Myles started the engine, farted, and started his shaky legs ritual. He’s panting so heavily that the windows are steaming up, and it smells like rotten eggs inside this little car.
I’m going to kill Beau and Nash for not letting me drive my damn self.
“I’m so sorry,” I say for the second time, and open the window a crack to let some fresh air in. The heat definitely isn’t helping. “I’ll pay to get your car fumigated or something. I didn’t know Hector was blacklisted from Beau’s precious Range Rover.”
Myles just laughs. “It’s fine, Sheridan.”
“Damn thing should be blacklisted from all cars, not just Beau’s Range Rover,” Stavros mutters.
I hear a sturdy thump, followed by an “Ow.” I don’t need to turn around to know who punched who.
I couldn’t leave Hector at a shelter or with a reliable neighbour—he’d just never recover. He’s nervous enough at home as it is without him being lumped with a practical stranger for a week. The only alternative to this was for me to just not come at all, which my siblings said wasn’t actually an option. That’s why I’m so irritated with Beau. The ‘oldest’ of us, who usually handles me much better than this, and Hector. He loves Hector, to the point they’re inseparable when he comes to the cottage some evenings. He’s just too damn fussy about his bloody car.
A doctor told me to get a dog to help with my anxieties. I decided to adopt rather than buy from an official breeder since purebreds are expensive and there are too many dogs in the world without good homes. Little did I know, I picked up the one puppy who had more anxiety than I did. I’ve never wet the bed multiple times. I think. I’d have to double check that with my mum, but I’d like to say that if anyone out of the four of us was a bedwetter, it was probably Nash.
“He’ll be fine once we’ve been going for a little while,” I say, more to remind myself than the rest of the passengers in the car. “I’ve given him tablets and spray to calm him down.”
“I honestly don’t mind. Lots of dogs get nervous in the car.”
“If the David Beckham wannabe and GI Jobs in the back there” —someone, I think JP, starts cackling at my analogy— “had just let me drive myself, I could’ve saved everyone the trouble.”
“Was never gonna happen, Shez.” Nash sighs from the middle back seat. “You’d have followed us to the motorway and carried on back to Ansty instead of going to Lerwick Forest.”
Damn it, he’s not wrong. But I can’t let him get the last word in. “We’re not even going on that motorway.”
“Deflection!”
Hector barks at the volume, stumbling in my lap to look over my shoulder into the back seat at the source of the shouting. How one dog can be so nervous yet so nosey all at the same time I have no idea. Nash gives his head a scratch for good measure.
Myles glances over his shoulder, “She’s not wrong, though.”
Ha. I don’t get smug often, but I do like being right.
“A woman with a sense of direction…” Stavros muses, “who’d have thought it?”
I clench my teeth, clamping down on my own rebuttal.
“You know, Steven, I’m not opposed to pulling over and leaving you on the hard shoulder,” Myles says through an equally strained jaw.
“I’d like to see you try, mate.”
I’d like to see him try, too, actually. In fact, if this was a train with one of those emergency brake lever things, I’d be yanking on it so hard just to get a front row seat of Stavros’s ejection.
“For the love of God, man,” John Paul, who I have a serious suspicion is nursing a bad hangover, speaks for the first time all morning, “just shut the fuck up.”
Turns out there’s only one shitty man in this car, and it’s the idiot who picked his own name.
“Here’s a great idea,” Nash leans forward, “how about some music?”
“Most sensible thing anyone’s said all morning.” JP mutters.
“I’m picking!” Stavros butts in, and Hector barks again. “I ain’t listening to any of your lot’s shit.”
“And a woman definitely can’t pick,” I mutter.
Myles snorts, and it makes me blush. Again. I hadn’t expected him to hear me over the bickering in the back, but apparently, he had. He adds to it when he quietly says, “Especially not one with a sense of direction who’s already sitting in the front.”
My chest heaves with a silent laugh, and I can’t help looking over at him. He’s grinning and it’s absolutely beautiful. The apples of his cheeks bloom with it, and I want to poke one. His short choppy hair, which is somehow both light and dark blond all at the same time, ruffles in the breeze from the open window. His skin is pale, but he seems to tan well, the sun giving him a golden glow which stretches into his gorgeous hazel eyes. Shameless, my gaze trails down to his arms, held confidently at twelve and six rather than ten and two, the veins in both of them painfully visible. I’d never considered myself a forearms kind of girl, but I am right now. I also don’t very often find myself hot for men I’ve only just met, but apparently Myles is the exception. I can see a peek of a tattoo on his left bicep, but I’m way too shy to even contemplate asking what it is.
While I’ve been gawking at my brothers’ friend, the three in the back have been fighting over who’s music is going on and what in particular we’re going to be subjected to. I’d rather sit in silence at this point, but I know that’s never going to happen, and opening a book would just be downright rude, as tempting as it is.
I feel my phone vibrate where it’s wedged between my thighs, and I try and coax Hector’s back legs up to reach it.
Brin
How’s it going? Xxxx
Grateful for a distraction, I reply instantly.
Me
About as well as you might expect with that idiot in the back xxxx
Brin
Which idiot? Xxxx
Me
Steven Alfred Sinclair-King LXXXVII xxxx
Brin
Lol what number is that? Also yes,
complete twat. Do not envy you xxxx
Me
87. Fortunately the others also seem to be just as equally pissed off by his twattishness. Xxxx
Brin
I’m sorry. I’ve snapped at Beau for lumping you with the boys. Xxxx
Me
It’s fine. Nothing like throwing me in the deep end I guess xxxx
Brin
Have you managed to get your vagina under control yet? Xxxx
Me
Come again?????????????
Brin
Myles…
Me
What about Myles? Xxxx
Brin
Here, I wrote a poem: ?
Oh Myles
I really like your smiles
And those fancy watch dials
I bet you’ve got nice kitchen tiles
Which I one day hope to defile
With you
Trying not to laugh is proving to be really difficult, because yikes. Where did she come up with that? More importantly, how did she come up with it so completely off the cuff? My sister is nuts. She’s about to become an English teacher to a bunch of teenagers and yet she’s sending me limericks about…defiling kitchen tiles? At least I know I’m not the only Bennett sibling with a vivid imagination.
Me
… Wow. And people call you prude.
Brin
THEY DO NOT.
Me
Not anymore they don’t. Xxxx
Brin
Are you just going to pretend that my poem wasn’t instant genius?And that you obviously have the hots for Beau’s insanely good-looking friend who just so happens to be your type to an absolute T? Xxxx
Me
I do not. Xxxx
Brin
Sure, Jan. xxxx
I sneak a peek at the insanely good-looking man beside me and find myself biting my lip. I’m perfectly fine to admit I have the hots for Myles to myself, but I’m not telling my sister. She’d only tell one of the girls in the other car, who would then tell the rest of them, and then one would mention it to Beau, or Nash, and finally it would come back to me, and probably Myles, leaving me to spend the rest of the holiday looking like some kind of fraught tomato.
Yeah, no thanks.
I realise that the boys have resorted to shouting at each other, only because Hector is suddenly barking like a maniac. I snuggle him to my chest and lower the window a little more, even though we’re easily going sixty and the wind will probably irritate Stavros, but I don’t care. I need to calm my dog down.
“Enough!” Myles suddenly yells, the carefree man I was admiring minutes ago long gone. “I’m putting the fucking radio on.”
Which turns out to be, sadly, the worst decision he could make.