26. MATT
26
MATT
A ries is a drug. She must have coated her skin in cocaine, because I cannot get enough. Watching her cavort in the pool all day in that bikini was torture. That, and Seb bullying me into getting the most out of the situation.
I stand in front of the breakfast buffet, plate in hand. I can feel the heat of the day on the back of my neck. It’s only 8 am, and it’s already boiling.
“Good night?” Seb asks, coming up behind me with a platter of food piled so high it’s obscene.
I grab a croissant. “Erm, yeah.”
“You weren’t in your room. I checked,” he says before giving me the most salacious, suggestive wink.
“What were you doing in my room?”
Seb laughs. “Checking. Duh.” He saunters to the outside table, pulls down his sunglasses and takes a seat.
I follow him out. “That’s an invasion of privacy. I did not give you permission to go wandering around in my quarters.” A boyish grin still decorates Seb’s face, irritating the fuck out of me. “I get that this amuses you, but my kids are on this boat. They could come up here at any moment. I don’t want them finding out.”
“Finding out what?” Kate says, coming over with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand. She’s wearing a blue dress that falls just below her knee, her dark hair tied up in a knot on top of her head.
“Matt’s screwing the nanny,” Seb answers.
Kate freezes, glances at Seb and then back at me, no doubt trying to decipher whether or not this is a prank. “Are you?” she asks in a stage whisper.
I roll my eyes and shake my head, dismissing the entire conversation rather than denying it as I bite into the croissant.
“She’s gorgeous,” Kate says. “And lovely too. We had a good chat at the pool yesterday. It’s obvious she really cares about Lucie. You could do a lot worse.”
“I’ll say,” Seb agrees.
“Stupid though,” Nico muses, stepping out into the glaring sun to join us.
“She’s not stupid,” I say, far too fast.
Seb and Kate share an amused glance, and Nico’s lips curve too, although he’s not sharing his amusement with anyone else. He pours a glass of fresh orange juice and sips it thoughtfully. “I didn’t mean her. I meant the whole”—he raises his glass of OJ and moves it round in the air like he’s stirring a cauldron with it—“thing. You’re blurring all the boundaries. If she’s a good nanny and it doesn’t work out, you’ll have to let her go. If it does work out…” He shrugs, like he doesn’t know what happens next.
“Let the old bugger have some fun,” Seb says. “If he wants to get his nuts off with the staff, why not let him fuck the nanny? At least she’s hot.”
A primal urge to smash my fist into Seb’s face rises up.
“Daddy!”
I spin to the voice so fast I nearly choke on my croissant. Lucie is sprinting towards me, Aries just behind her. They’re far too close, and I know by the look on Aries’ face that she heard exactly what Seb just said. Her expression tears at my heart; she looks humiliated. Uncertain green eyes dart between the four of us like she’s trying to gauge who’s going to launch the next attack.
I scoop Lucie into my arms. No one else moves. We’re all standing, trapped in this horrendously awkward moment until Kate moves towards Aries.
“Did you sleep well?” Kate asks, then immediately shakes her head and curses under her breath as though she wishes she hadn’t mentioned last night at all, while Aries looks stunned. Seb’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline. “Sorry,” Kate says. “Come and get some food. Sit with us. Come on Lucie, come choose some food,” she adds, holding out her hand to my daughter. “There are fresh pastries.”
I put Lucie down, and she skips off to grab Kate’s hand. With one quick, unhappy glance at me, Aries moves off with Kate back inside to the buffet spread.
I turn to Seb. “You’re a fucking twat, you know that?”
Nico slowly sits down next to Seb, making no comment.
“I’m sorry,” Seb replies. “But come on. You’re a walking stereotype. The sad old divorcé fucking his hot nanny.”
“Fuck you. Yesterday you were badgering me not to waste the opportunity.”
“And I stand by that. Your nanny looks like she stepped off the stage of the Moulin fucking Rouge. But that doesn’t change what this is. It’s a midlife crisis if ever I saw—”
“You don’t know what this is,” I fire back. “And you just made her feel like shit. She’s a human being, Seb.”
He stills, scanning my face. When he’s found whatever he’s searching for, he breaks into an enormous smile and thumps his palm against the white tablecloth, making the orange juice slop around in the glass jug. “You really like her. It’s not just sex, is it?”
Something in my chest locks down. “We are not fucking talking about this.”
“No, we aren’t,” Nico says, like his is the final word on the matter. He turns to me. “But you need to think about it. Because this has repercussions for a lot of people, not least your kids. And you”—Nico turns on Seb—“need to go and apologise to that woman in there.”
“Aries. Her fucking name is Aries,” I say, swallowing my orange juice in one gulp.
Seb rises from the table, nodding his head at both of us, his expression far more solemn than I’m used to seeing, and goes back inside to find Aries.
I can’t sit down, not right now. Not riled up this way. I want to fucking hit something, I’m so mad. This is my business, my life , not some topic of discussion or source of amusement for everyone else. Fuck’s sake.
I pace along the deck, staring out into the calm blue of the Mediterranean Sea, spending a few minutes clinging to the rail, letting frustration pound through me. I should never have told my brothers about Aries. Why the fuck did I mention it at all?
I don’t know what this is with her, what I’m doing, what this could be, and now they’re all waiting for me to make some kind of declaration. To admit that this is more than a fling. Is it? I don’t fucking know. I don’t do this… I don’t have affairs; I don’t mess around. Fuck . I can’t feel my way through it anymore, because of damn Seb and his niggling. How can he be both so fucking childish and so uncannily perceptive at the same time?
I need some space to work this shit out, but how can I get that on a boat with all my family?
When I head back towards the dining deck, feeling no better for my self-imposed time-out, Aries is sitting next to Lucie, with Kate on her other side. Nico and Seb are reading the broadsheets, discussing some business story. There’s no sign of Charlie.
“Where’s Charlie?” I ask, directing the question to Aries. There’s a hint of anger in my voice, and I don’t know why I’m throwing it at her. I can’t talk to her the way I want to, because of the pressure of all these fucking eyes on us, knowing things they shouldn’t know that I’m trying to hide from my kids. Judging me. Judging Aries. Like my life is some spectacle they can look at from the safety of their own happy lives. It’s a fucking mess and the frustration of it fills my chest like I’m being pumped full of hydrogen on the cusp of exploding.
Seb and Nico are watching me over the top of their newspapers. Seb throws a wary glance at Nico then dips his eyes back to the paper. They think I’m going to lose it.
“He’s in his room,” Aries replies. “He’s getting changed.”
“I told you to prioritise him. Make sure he was at breakfast on time. We’re leaving soon.” The anger is louder now, bigger. Fuck . I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it’s been there since I sat down to breakfast, and walking along the deck just now did nothing to alleviate it. I don’t have it under control.
I can’t see Seb behind his suspiciously erect newspaper, but I feel his attention so strongly his gaze might as well be burning two peepholes through the small print.
Nico lowers his paper, unashamedly staring like he’s trying to warn me off. Talk me down with only his eyes. Damn condescending prick.
Fuck . This pressure is unbearable…
Aries stands up. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“Not now.” They’re all watching me . “Go and get Charlie.”
Aries sets her chin. “It’s important.”
“No.” Aries pulls back, but I can’t stop. All the anger rushes up in a torrent of fire through my torso. “Go. And. Get. Charlie. Like I damn well asked you to. How fucking hard is it to follow a simple instruction?”
Kate inhales sharply, straightens her sunglass and stares at the table. Seb shrinks down behind his newspaper. Nico folds his up and lays it flat on the table. I feel his glare most harshly of all. His unspoken I told you so booms so loud in my head that he might as well have screamed it.
Nico nods subtly, from me to Aries, in a silent bid for an apology.
I don’t fucking need Nico to tell me what to do. I know I should apologise. I want to, but the words are stuck, lodged in my throat. I can’t do it, not here, not in front of everyone, their gazes on me like I’m some specimen in a zoo. What’s he going to do next ? What’s the creature going to do to fix this fuck up ?
And Aries… she did ignore my instruction. Again. Maybe Nico’s right. This is stupid. This blurring of lines… of roles . I’ve fucked up and I’m losing control of this situation.
Lucie sobs, and it’s only now I realise she was at the table at all. I’d forgotten. She’s cowering in her seat, and Kate puts an arm around her and pulls her into a hug.
The bitterness in Aries’ gaze is a tonic that strips my skin. If we were alone, I know she’d dress me down for the way I’ve just spoken to her, but she says nothing. She excuses herself from the table, throwing her napkin down in a heap over her half-eaten food.
I watch her storm back downstairs to fetch Charlie, her red hair swinging down her back.
Nico stands, fixing that infuriating older brother glare on me. “And you wonder why you have such a high staff turnover.”
I point at Seb. “When he stops f—” I catch myself on the cusp of swearing, biting back the expletive. “Winding me up, I’ll be just fine. I need a coffee.”
Seb raises both hands like he’s under fire. “Don’t put your shit on me. This is all you.”
Nico shakes his head, walks around the table, and offers his hand to Lucie. “Come on, grab your croissant. We’re going to go stand at the bow and yell about being King of the World.”
Lucie nods, a little hesitant, but Nico curls his fingers in encouragement, and she slips her tiny hand in his. “Okay. But I don’t want to be a king,” she says. “I want to be a Princess.”
Nico smiles. “You can be whatever you want. Let’s go.”
Relief spills through me as Nico and Kate walk my little girl along the deck, letting her pretend to be a princess, and giving her a little bit of magic all kids deserve, which I seem incapable of delivering.
They each take one of her hands and begin to count, “One… Two... three…” and on ‘wheee’ they swing her between them and she squeals, and then giggles, calling, “again, again.”
Everyone, it seems, is better at this parenting thing than I am.