Chapter 14
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
With a well-deserved flourish, Simon whipped the oven cloth onto his shoulder.
“Rougaille Saucisse,” he announced, accent tone-perfect, even through the usual fuzzy thickness of his voice.
“And he speaks French as well.”
“Creole, actually.” Simon’s eyes danced bright in my direction. “But I do speak both. And a little Swedish.”
“Of course you do.”
“From my mother.” He flashed a wink at me, already ladling up. “Told you. I am exceptionally interesting.”
The lime-waxed dining table looked like it had been set for a magazine shoot.
Along the length of the table stretched a spotless pale grey runner.
Instagram-perfect flowers sat in an oversized glass vase right in the middle, flounced by a pair of white-wicked, unlit candles.
Very soft-tone. Farmhouse chic, or French Chateau, or everything’s-off-white-because-I’m-loaded.
The chairs were padded fabric and cream, and no way had anyone ever gone near them with a plate of anything tomato-based.
Simon remorselessly uncorked a bottle of red that probably did not come from the middle shelf at Tesco’s. As he glugged wine into a pair of thin stemmed glasses, I pictured myself spontaneously chucking it all over the furniture.
“You know, I think I’m going to sit on the floor?”
His eyes darted from me, to the table and back again, laughter lines creasing in at the corners of his eyes.
“Don’t worry. If you get the chair dirty, they’ll buy a new one.”
“They would not!”
Simon twinkled at me, shrugging slyly. “Only people I’ve ever met to have a strictly ornamental kitchen table as well as a formal dining room.”
Maybe he didn’t think so much of this place after all.
“Don’t you ever get tired of making problems go away for the rich and famous?”
Handing me a wine glass, Simon set the plates down in front of the bar stools tucked under the overhang of the island.
“Never a dull day. Why? You think I should be doing something more worthy than protecting the careers of marginalized actors and celebrities?”
“Oh come on, you can’t call the Richard Whittakers of the world marginalised.”
Simon shrugged. “All the rest of my clients are queer too.”
“I didn’t realise that.” Perched side by side, we’d pivoted in towards each other to keep talking. Being stuck in Richard’s castle didn’t matter so much when Simon was looking at me like I was the only one he’d want to be stranded anywhere with.
“Their sexuality is none of your business, unless they want it to be. And I am pretty good at my job, so...” Simon set his foot on the lower bar of my stool. “I don’t really want to talk about Richard all night, do you? Dig in before it gets cold.”
Halfway through the first mouthful, all the flavours came alive.
“Oh my god this is good.”
Why was I even surprised he was a master chef in disguise? He probably did brain surgery as a hobby on the weekends.
Simon dragged a hunk of bread through the sauce. “Were you worried I might poison you?”
“No. But it’s tomatoes and sausage, isn’t it? How d’you get it to taste so good?”
“Ben, you watched everything I did.”
“Yeah, but you cheffed it.” Only he would think it was simple. “There’s no way it’d turn out like that if I tried.”
Simon leaned forward, elbow on the worktop, easy and relaxed and perfect, and I sort of leaned in too.
“I think you’d do okay. If you tried. It’s all about working with what you’ve got.”
Oh, he had to be licking the sauce off his thumb on purpose. No way he didn’t know exactly what he was doing to me. I swallowed hard and forked up another bite.
“Reckon I like Mauritian food.”
Simon tilted his head, attention flashing between my lips and my eyes.
“It’s Creole actually. Mauritius has all sorts – Indian style curries, and Chinese food, French influence. Lots of seafood.”
“Sounds alright, that does. Bit of everything. Better than scrag end.”
“Mm.” Simon nodded. “All the variety you could want in life thanks to thousands of people being dispossessed of their homelands in service of the sugar trade for hundreds of years.”
A chunk of sausage stuck in my throat, hard enough to hurt when I swallowed.
“Oh.” Maybe we were not in fact having a deeply layered flirtation. “Right.”
Simon laughed.
“Tastes good though, doesn’t it?”
Why couldn’t I ever work him out?
After we’d eaten, Simon steered me into a cosy room upstairs. No telly. Three deep, slightly shabby sofas grouped around a fireplace, and bookcases lining the walls.
“Don’t they watch TV?”
“Not in here.”
How very foolish of me to ask. Obviously they had an entirely separate room for sofas and books. “So what’s this, the library?”
“Library’s down the corridor.”
My laugh perished in my throat. Simon wasn’t joking.
“What do they do in here then?”
“Hardly anything at all.” Settling onto the nearest sofa, Simon set his wine glass on a handy table situated exactly where you might want to put your drink down, and picked up a pack of playing cards.
“They’re planning on redecorating and throwing out the sofas. Not up to scratch, according to Temp.”
Maybe they’d put them up on gumtree, and someone like me would pick them up and strap them to the roof of their car. Or maybe you didn’t do that kind of thing when you lived in a place like this.
“God knows why she cares when they only come in here at Christmas.” The cards flowed through Simon’s fingers like they were connected on a string. “Which is a shame, don’t you think? I rather like it. It’s lived-in.”
“Who by? The resident ghost?”
That earned me a head-tilt. “I mean it’s unpretentious.” Slim fingers tapped the deck back to order against his thigh. “Worn in. Human.”
Funny things for someone as permanently polished as Simon to appreciate.
“Wait – you think the third living room in their country mansion is unpretentious?”
The fronts of the cards flashed as he arched them back, and they folded into each other like leaves of paper in a book.
Simon snorted a laugh.
“Fair point.”
I picked a seat while he shuffled. Up the other end of the same sofa as him, close enough to read lips and play cards, far enough away we didn’t have to touch.
“Don’t you like it, as a room?” Simon asked. “I think it’s got a bit of soul to it. You can’t substitute for that if it’s not there to begin with. A bit like feelings.”
I squinted at him, trying to figure out whether he was really set on talking interior design.
“Feelings change though, don’t they? Sometimes.” Oh what was I wittering on about? He didn’t do dating or love. He didn’t have any feelings about me, other than as his interpreter. He’d spelled that out so clearly.
The cards stilled in Simon’s hands. Over the top of them, he watched me with the energy he’d had at the bus stop, and on the rooftop right before he kissed me. I still didn’t have a clue what he wanted.
“We should play Bullshit.” He handed me the deck like he expected me to know what to do.
“Remind me how that goes again?”
“Get rid of everything you’ve got before I do, any way you like, as long as you tell me what you’re putting down. Make it convincing, or pick it all back up again. You deal.”
I cut the deck a couple of times, managing not to fumble it. If I tried doing Simon’s fancy shuffle, I’d be playing 52 card pick up instead.
“What are we playing for – the fun of the game?” Simon leaned in. “Or would you like to make it more interesting?”
The edge of the pack buzzed under the strum of my thumbnail. If anyone knew Simon well enough to catch his poker face, it was me, but I didn’t have money to burn if he upped the stakes. The way he handled the cards suggested he was perfectly capable of thrashing me.
“How?”
“Oh I don’t know.” Deviousness flashed in his eyes. “Beat me, and I’ll tell you something true.”
My pulse swam with adrenaline. Fire, this was. I should have packed asbestos gloves to come and play. What did he want to know that he couldn’t come out and ask?
“And if you win?”
Simon’s eyes flashed intense like the rainstorm we’d been caught in. “Same terms apply, naturally.”
Oh hell. Both of us had to know I’d gladly let him soak me to the skin.
“Deal.”
Simon started with a pair of aces. Which made sense, because I didn’t have any.
Not that I’d expected him to play it safe.
I got rid of three queens, and bunched a non-matching pair together, ready for the next turn.
Then bottled out, and put down a pair of tens instead.
Maybe there were tactics I didn’t understand.
After the third pair of aces he set down with barefaced audacity, I cottoned on.
“Hang on a minute – you did that already.”
“Did I? Are you quite sure?”
“Yeah. Bullshit! Total bullshit.”
Sheer wickedness lit his face, and he flipped his last two cards up, to show exactly the cards he’d declared. “I think you’ll find it’s not. Outrageous accusation. How very dare you.”
“What? But you—”
“Stitched you up rather nicely? Yes. Pick them up Ben. Your cards.”
Why had I thought I stood a chance? He basically did this for a living with things more complicated than a game.
Brow furrowed with concentration he skimmed through his hand, selecting another pair to set down. “Two aces.”
My teeth grated together, and I gestured in his eyeline. “Again?”
“I like aces.” His smile twitched, bubbling with amusement. “Feel free to challenge any time.”
The smug git got rid of another four before he switched to another number. And stopped trying to be subtle.
“Three eights.”
“You got five cards there.”
“Are you calling me a cheat, or making conversation?” Laughter jumped and sparked in his eyes, contagious like a virus. I caught his wrist to stop him setting the cards on the pile, and his teeth buried into the fullness of his lower lip.
“Manhandling me now?”
“That is definitely five. Turn them over. Bullshit.”
“Such a stickler.” The cards tumbled down, and he scooped the pile up. Somehow, his stack stayed taller than mine.
When I set down four cards instead of three, he didn’t call me out. When I set down six, he pressed his lips in on themselves, and took a sip of wine. He stacked the rest of his hand together in a neat pile and slapped them on top of mine.
“One king.”
My pulse roared in my ears. He was throwing the game. Why was he throwing the game?
“Think you’ve got confused about how to win Simon.”
I had three sevens left. Next turn, I’d win anyway. But there was no way I couldn’t, now.
“I know exactly what I’m doing. Call me out, Ben.”
Ventriloquist in action, he was. As if I didn’t know it. His eyes locked onto my mouth in patient expectation.
“Bullshit.”
Without breaking eye contact, he leaned across to add all the cards in the deck to his stack. “Would you look at that? You appear to have won.”
What did he want to tell me so badly he needed an excuse?
“Funny that.”
“Something true...” Simon leaned in, elbow braced on his knee, and I forgot how breathing happened. “Sev… I can guess what she told you. But she’s wrong. About how things are with me and Richard.”
“Ok.”
Simon focused on my mouth, waiting for more words from me. But they weren’t going to come. I’d hit my head. I had to have done. I was in a coma having fever dreams.
He sighed.
“Look, Richard is not who I want. At all. Never has been, but I’m prone to idiotic decisions when people rile me up.”
Oh my god.
“Does he rile you up?” Masochism. My speciality.
Simon’s nostrils flared with the strength of his exhale. “He’s an egregious tit most of the time. You’re very willfully missing my point here.”
Oh my god. Oh my god.
“Do I rile you up?”
“Better.” His grin curved. “Not like that.”
What did he even mean?
Simon drew his cards towards him. Squaring off the pile, he shuffled, fanning them in together with steady control.
I forced myself to focus on the cards, not the boggy mire of Simon’s head-fuckery. But he wasn’t dealing. He kept passing them between his hands, from one to the other, and back again.
“Today’s sort of like a holiday, isn’t it? You’re not really my interpreter when it’s only the two of us. I don’t need you to be.”
Oh fuck. There was quicksand everywhere and I was drowning.
“Absolutely. I’m just some bloke having the best night ever, thrashing you at cards.”
Simon snorted a laugh, lolling back against the sofa. “You are having the best night ever. You know you are.”
The urge to grin at him gnawed into my cheek muscles. A rogue sofa spring jabbed at me from beneath the cushions. I shifted to get more comfy.
“Yeah.” Fuck self-preservation. “I am.”
Simon took my hand, and his voice dropped low and soft, barely louder than breathing.
“We could pretend we’re here for other reasons. Today. If you wanted to.”
The still silence of the empty house crackled all around us. My heart thud-thudded, pulse slow and heavy. I didn’t care if he’d put a ring in my nose and was leading me by it. He knew exactly where I wanted to go.
“Pretend what, exactly?”
In the lamplight, Simon’s eyes were molten and deep.
His arm stretched along the back of the sofa.
He’d only have to lift his hand to touch me.
And he did. One finger traced the line of my cheekbone, down my jaw, rising goosebumps along the side of my throat where I wanted him to bloody well bite me.
“That everything I told Temp was true. That nothing’s more complicated than us being together.”
“You’d... want that?” I croaked.
“For tonight? Yes.”
“Me too.” My voice lost its sound. I was barely forming words, but Simon’s soft smile told me he knew exactly what I’d said anyway.
“When this is over, you’re my interpreter again.”
I nodded, once. Like an obedient robot.
Simon swallowed visibly, barely holding himself back. Maybe he was in the middle of a really bad dry spell. He had to be, looking at me like that.
“Tell me something true, Ben. Tonight can I be me, and you be you, and sex just be sex?”
“Yeah,” I whispered. Zero hesitation. Hundred percent commitment to my flashing neon lie. “Course it can.”