Chapter 28
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
THURSDAY
In the back of the cab on the way to Possimus, Simon tugged his seatbelt looser. One knee up on the middle seat, he pivoted to face me.
“Don’t look so terrified,” he signed. “It’s only a date. And a little chat with a passing acquaintance.”
My stomach knotted. I’d been failing to channel anything approaching calm all morning.
There shouldn’t be an issue – I’d been in a fancy restaurant before, even if none of those times had been on an actual date.
But last time, publicly pretending to be together had involved full frontal nudity, a lighting rig and a professional camera.
Now it was going to be a date neither of us would voluntarily sign up for, and I’d rather be anywhere else in the world.
“How’s it going to go again?” I signed back.
“We’ll kick off with some Couple Goals, get it trending how adorbs we are when we feed each other linguine.
” The invisible strand of pasta he signed stretched in the air for a moment.
I tugged at my collar. The wash out of a summer had turned blistering, vindictively waiting for the day Simon wanted me in a full suit.
I could barely hold focus on his signing.
“Snap a kiss or two while we’re Living our Best Lives to shore it up, and we’ll be golden. ”
“What if I don’t want the linguine?”
Simon snorted a laugh.
Richard’s video had attracted all kinds of thirsty comments, but no one wanted to see me and Simon so much as kiss. Following the release of our little clip, #paperbagjob had trended hard. Who knows what they’d come up with if we went full Lady and the Tramp about it.
Simon squeezed my hand, speaking quietly. “And all this time, I thought I was the one with a problem with romance.”
Alright for him, wasn’t it? Living My Best Life did not involve pretending not to be in love with the guy I was pretending to date, so his ex could still get married without any unwanted kerfuffle, while absolutely nobody believed us.
“You don’t think they’re going to wonder why we’ve gone from not putting up any pictures together to documenting entire dates?”
“If we pitch it right, we can make it obvious we’d rather keep our relationship private, but we were never going to stand by and let Richard’s upcoming marriage get torn apart by malicious rumours.”
My gut squirmed like a live eel. It was a good line, but I wasn’t doing this to protect Richard.
Luke was wrong. It had all been about Simon keeping his job.
Me keeping mine, so I got to keep seeing him four times a week instead of never again.
Which is why I couldn’t pull out now, even if all the mind-blowing sex stopped the minute this got sorted.
Oh god, it would as well. No more holiday romance when we were back to the day job. That had to be the end point. Simon had already told me he needed me too much at work, didn’t do dating. Unless...
“What if Luke doesn’t buy it?”
Concern didn’t feature in Simon’s repertoire. “Not one part of what I said is a lie.”
Only he would treat confidence as the solution to everything.
“Simon...”
“Ben, trust me. Everyone who matters is on board with this. Luke doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Which is exactly why we’ve invited him here to fill him in.”
Simon was wrong: Luke knew we were lying our collective arses off. He’d definitely clocked it.
The car swooshed us across the river, wending its way north through the city, right past the all-night cafe we’d had breakfast at not even a week ago. In daylight it was full of posh mums with buggies, the window full of cupcakes. No sign of anything stag-ish or beer-filled.
Possimus was a bloody fish bowl.
Not literally. No one had massacred a lot of guppies in a tank. But the windows were walls of glass vaguely disguised with free-flowing greenery vined around whatever sky-hooks were holding everything up. The plants draped in an artfully poised way, as fake as our date.
My bouncer costume barely met the dress code.
“Are we really going in there?”
There were tablecloths, and quietly chinking cutlery, and the wine glasses on the table were so thin stemmed I’d probably snap one picking it up. The waiters were significantly better-dressed than I was.
Simon touched my shoulder, tilting his face into line with mine. “Look at me. Everything’s going to be fine. Where’s your tie?”
The thick coil of it filled my palm, already unravelling ready to be put on like it had heard him. Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.
“Jacket’s hot enough already.” Why would I want to put anything else on?
Simon’s lips quirked. Apparently, me imminently succumbing to heat stroke gave him the giggles.
“Trade secret – if you have to go into a room full of hostile idiots, make sure you’re dressed at least as well as they are. Preferably better.”
Words to die by. Only, a tie wasn’t going to fix much about me, even if everything Simon had on was flawless armour. It did not possess the same supernatural properties of disguise as Clark Kent’s glasses.
“That’s what all your togs are about then?”
Simon raised an eyebrow and I slid across the back seat to follow him out of the car. Non-answer noted.
“Come here.”
Right there on the pavement Simon squared in front of me, flipping my collar up, nestling the long run of silk against my neck. Spit stuck in my throat. Coughing didn’t clear it. I needed space. Distance. Not a live enactment of the kick-off point of one of my recurring x-rated dreams.
“I can do it.”
Simon arched an eyebrow. “Not particularly boyfriendly to let you.”
Achievement points for not hyperventilating. By now I should have got three thousand.
“You did yours all by yourself.”
Laughter ticked his mouth lopsided. “I didn’t think you knew how to tie a Windsor.”
Focus, Ben. What people saw going on between us here today mattered a whole lot more than whatever this actually was. Unless, he wanted to do this?
“Fine.” Trust him to care deeply about the knot of my tie. He probably had nightmares about me buying almost matching off-the-rack suit trousers in the sales. If we were going to be all over the internet, at least my tie would be straight for once.
His knuckles grazed my chest as he measured the ends, weighing the slim side of my tie against the fat arrow point. Eyebrows crunched together, he judged how short the short side should be with mathematical precision. And I waited for him to look up at me again.
“Are we going into a room full of hostile idiots?” Did everyone have so many eyelashes? “Thought we were going for lunch.”
Whatever knot he tied, it did not involve the rabbit going around the tree three times and back into its hole. It closed my airway off before he even slid it into place.
“That’s the spirit. Do try to keep breathing. Remember, you don’t need to pretend to be invisible.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Of course you don’t.”
The silk tie hushed as he wriggled the knot up towards my throat, and he stayed holding it for a solid half decade, his eyes telling me all kinds of things I didn’t understand. When it was just the two of us, everything made sense. Out in the world with an audience, nothing did.
“Ready?” With a final flick at an invisible imperfection on the front of my jacket, Simon deemed me good-to-go.
We approached the entrance, side by side.
Simon’s hand settled right above my arse as he held the door for me.
Like I needed gallantry. Fuck, before that moment I hadn’t known I did.
My spine tingled. Enthusiasm switched on.
Six inches lower, and he could cop a feel and I would pop a semi in the middle of the poshest restaurant I’d ever stepped into. And like it.
Waiters darted between tables, avoiding eye contact while we lingered near the podium guarding the book of Who Shall Be Admitted. Simon in full Nonchalance mode; me, not so much. Another one buzzed past us. We were extras for The Invisible Man.
Simon met my eye. And his hand dropped. I froze, all my attention on the drag of his fingers over the outline of my arse.
On where they were going next. My heartbeat stumbled over itself like he’d knotted its shoelaces.
The cocky-bastard squeezed. Hard. Right at the point my glute and the top of my thigh met, full-fingering into the seam stitching my trouser legs together, and I—
“Hm nmh.”
—squirmed.
All the blood in my body relocated with haste.
Slim-cut suit trousers did not have the elasticity required for anything other than torture, and he wasn’t letting go.
I didn’t want him to. Hell yes. I’d so much rather spend the afternoon on my knees in a bathroom stall reminding Simon exactly how much casual sex we could be having instead of faking The Best Date Ever.
Sweaty-palmed, I signed in close against my chest, watching his mouth because I wanted to bite him. “We could just—”
Someone cleared their throat. It wasn’t Simon.
Shit.
A waiter stepped out of the inter-dimensional portal to nowhere he’d been loitering in, like the bloody door man in my joke about the lift.
Wincing back a pace, I willed myself an inch taller, up on the balls of my toes, clenching everything, hoping he hadn’t noticed Simon minorly foreplaying me under the back flap of my jacket.
Obviously, Simon retained calm. “Reservation under Azie. Thank you ever so much.”
“Follow me, gentlemen.” The waiter plucked up a pair of pleather-bound menus and a wine list, totally five-starring it.
Didn’t even look at me funny trying to readjust while I hurried after their long-legged glide.
Geniality dialled to thirteen, he first-named Simon like they played in a competitive squash league, or were very distantly related via a wealthy aunt, and effused us over to a round table slap-bang in the middle of the window wall. On cinematic, widescreen display.
“As requested. Very visible from the street.” He didn’t bother removing the third place setting, which had to be for when Luke turned up.
As if I needed any more reminders this was all for show.