That Tender Moment (The Huxley Omegas #2)

Chapter One

The house on Ledbury Road was the sort Colin used to dream about when he was twelve and being shuttled between placements.

It wasn’t an ostentatious monstrosity; it looked like somewhere you could imagine a family eating breakfast together without anyone getting glassed.

All white stucco frontage, black railings, and a door painted a sunny egg yolk yellow.

He checked the text about this job again.

General maintenance tasks. That was vague enough to mean anything from a leaking tap to rewiring the entire third floor.

The message had come through Marcella three doors down, a retired Italian woman whose kitchen sink Colin had unstuck last month.

She’d passed his number to her new neighbour.

Builders’ dust still clung to the doorstep.

There were signs of recent work, expensive by the look of it.

Colin took stock: the brass door furniture was new, the number plate freshly mounted, and someone had left the protective film on the letterbox.

He’d sort that later as a freebie on his way out.

The door knocker was black iron, weighted and solid in his hand. It was a simple design, and it sat well against the bright yellow. He brought it down against the wood a couple of times.

The man who answered the door was Asian, with light tawny skin and an expensive haircut that appeared artfully undone rather than messy.

He looked to be in his late twenties, early thirties at most. He was wearing what Colin’s brain registered as rich person’s casual: a soft grey T-shirt and impeccably weathered jeans.

“You must be Colin,” the man said, and his accent was pure American. West Coast, if Colin had to guess, though he’d never been further west than Bristol. “I’m Diwa. Diwa de la Vega. Thanks so much for coming on such short notice.”

He stepped back to let Colin in, gesturing with open-handed enthusiasm, but Colin didn’t move yet.

The assessment he ran Diwa de la Vega through was automatic: alpha, densely muscled with a runner’s build, taller than Colin by a few inches and powerful enough to be a problem if he wanted to be.

But the smile reached his eyes. There were dimples creasing his cheeks, and the boyish energy vibrating off him didn’t read as threat.

He looked like someone who mainlined vitamins and did cold immersion therapy.

Colin had seen a BBC documentary about an American socialite with the same aggressively optimised glow.

Colin stepped inside, reasoning that someone who looked like that was probably vegetarian or vegan, and those sorts tended to be anaemic enough that Colin stood a chance at overpowering him.

“Can I get you a coffee? I’ve just put the Moka on.”

Colin had no idea what a Moka was, so he shook his head. “I’m all right, thanks.”

“Tea? Water?” Diwa was already heading down the hallway, assuming Colin would follow.

The interior of the house was just as tasteful as the exterior: stripped floorboards, modern clean-lined furniture.

“I’ve got this cold-brew thing if you’re not into hot drinks.

Or—wait, do you like green smoothies? I make a really good one. ”

Colin’s mouth twitched. He’d never had a green smoothie in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now.

“What is it you need doing?” Colin asked, stepping further into the hallway and taking proper stock of this alpha’s home.

The renovation looked to have got about three-quarters of the way to finished and then stopped.

The skirting boards were on but unpainted, and a section of wall by the staircase had been opened up and not closed again, exposing a tangle of wiring that someone had at least had the sense to cap off.

A stepladder was leaning against the wall opposite, still wrapped in its plastic film, the price sticker from B&Q catching the light.

“Right, yes, the thing.” Diwa turned and made a small, apologetic gesture at the ceiling. “It’s, um. It’s this.”

Colin followed his gaze. There was a brass pendant fitting hanging from the ceiling, empty, the bare contacts visible where a bulb ought to be.

Diwa pointed at the floor. There, sitting on the stripped boards beneath the fitting, was a yellow Selfridges bag. Inside the bag sat a single light bulb in its box.

Colin’s gaze moved from the fitting to the bag, and from the bag back up to Diwa de la Vega. “And is there anything else you wanted me for?” he asked, in the same tone he’d use to ask whether someone took milk in their tea.

“No, that’s…that’s it.” Diwa rubbed the back of his neck, dimples deepening.

“Sorry, I know it’s a bit silly. I’ve never done this before, and the ceilings here are higher than I thought they’d be.

I didn’t want to fall off a ladder on my second week in the country.

I’ve heard a lot about the state of the NHS… ”

Colin didn’t take his coat off.

“I’m not doing it,” he said.

There was a pause during which Diwa’s face went through several small adjustments in search of the appropriate expression. He landed somewhere between politely puzzled and mildly anxious, head tilting half an inch to the side.

“Sorry…is the ladder not okay? I mean, I could get one Deliveroo’d over, maybe.”

“The ladder’s fine.”

“Oh.” Diwa glanced at the bag. “Are you…are you afraid of heights? Because I am, a bit. I went abseiling once at this team-building thing in Big Sur and I had to be talked down by a guy called Brad. So I get it, honestly, no judgement.”

“It’s not a height thing.”

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

“And I’m judging you. Thirty years old, and you’ve never changed a light bulb.”

“I’m twenty-eight.” Diwa’s mouth had gone sulky at the corners. “Everyone always says I look much younger than twenty-eight. And I’ve been building my company since I was twenty-two, so…”

“You’re going to do it yourself,” Colin said in the unhurried Midlands cadence he used on Mrs Picton’s grandchildren when they were being daft about trying to stuff each other in the fridge. “And I’m going to teach you.”

Diwa laughed and shook his head. “That’s a really nice offer. I get it. Teach a man to fish, yeah? But honestly, I wouldn’t want to put you out. It’s probably much faster if you just…”

Colin’s silence did most of the work. He ignored the request and set his bag down on the floorboards beside the Selfridges bag. “First thing. Where’s your fuse box?”

“My what?”

“Fuse box. Consumer unit. The thing with all the switches in it.”

“Oh.” Diwa looked around his hallway as though it might volunteer the information. “I think there’s something under the stairs.”

There was, as it happened, something under the stairs: a perfectly ordinary consumer unit mounted at chest height inside a cupboard.

The cupboard also contained a Hoover still in its packaging and a pair of slippers with a grinning red and yellow cartoon bee on each toe, holding up one white-gloved hand in greeting.

Colin stood back and let Diwa look at the inside of the consumer unit.

“This one.” Colin tapped the main switch. “You’re going to flip it off before you go anywhere near that fitting. Anything live in the ceiling becomes not-live. Then you can get on with it.”

“Got it.”

“Off you go.”

Diwa flipped the switch, and from the kitchen came the cessation of sound that Colin’s ear had long since learned to listen for. The fridge had stopped humming.

Diwa stared at the switch for a moment. Then he flipped it back on.

“What are you doing?” Colin asked.

“I just wanted to check.”

“Check what?”

“That it worked.”

“It worked. The fridge stopped.”

“Right. Yeah.” Diwa flipped it off again. The fridge stopped again. He looked at the switch, then flipped it back on.

Colin pressed his lips together and trapped the inside of his cheek between his teeth. “Mate,” he said.

“Sorry. Sorry, I just want to be sure.”

“It’s on now.”

“I know.”

“You’re going to have to flip it off again.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m going to. I just want to think about it for a second and make really sure it’s off.”

Colin watched as Diwa de la Vega, twenty-eight years old, business owner, gave his consumer unit the searching, considered look of a man weighing up a chess move. Diwa’s hand hovered. Then he flipped the switch on and off repeatedly. Diwa looked at Colin and began to edge towards the ladder.

Colin shook his head. “It’s on now, mate. Listen to the sounds of the appliances.”

“I knew that. I was testing you. To make sure you’d call it out.”

Colin snorted and watched the man flick the switch once more.

“Right,” Colin said. “The ladder now.”

The ladder was leaning against the hallway wall in a state of pristine factory packaging. It was wrapped, by Colin’s count, in an outer plastic sheath, an inner plastic sheath, and then a quantity of fibrous packing tape that had been applied with total commitment.

“Off you go,” Colin said.

Diwa approached the ladder. He examined it from one angle, then another.

He selected a corner of the outer plastic and attempted to insert his thumbnail into the seam.

His thumbnail, which was buffed and clean and almost certainly the product of a manicure, slid off without making any impression.

He tried again, with more force, and the plastic puckered slightly but didn’t yield.

“Is there a secret to this?” Diwa looked around the hallway. He poked at the plastic agitatedly. He pinched the seam and pulled, then attempted to bite it, and Colin, despite himself, had to look at the ceiling for a moment to recover.

After ninety seconds of this, Diwa stood up and turned to Colin with wounded dignity. “I think the plastic is, um. Defective.”

Colin took his own keys out of his pocket, selected the largest one, and drew it down the seam of the outer plastic in a slow, deliberate line.

The plastic parted easily under the key.

He didn’t open it the rest of the way. He pulled the key back, closed his fist around the keyring, and held it out.

Diwa took the keys. He crouched in front of the ladder, lined the largest key up against the seam, and went at it.

The first pass was tentative and the plastic only dimpled.

He adjusted his grip and tried again, and the seam opened under the key in one long satisfying breach.

He kept going through the inner layer without being prompted, and when the stepladder stood revealed in all its yellow B&Q glory with the price sticker still stuck to one leg, Diwa looked up at Colin with a smile as he returned his keys.

“You’re going to set it up under the fitting now,” Colin said.

Diwa set it up. He extended the legs and looked for a long moment at the locking mechanism before working out which way it went. The ladder unfolded, swayed once, and settled.

“Now you’re going to take the bulb out of the box and out of its little plastic sleeve.”

This Diwa managed without incident. The bulb was one of those Edison-style filament things that cost twelve quid and gave off less light than a match. Colin had opinions about people who spent twelve quid on a light bulb, but he would keep them to himself now on account of this alpha’s dimples.

“Up you go.”

Diwa put one foot on the bottom rung. He paused.

“Could you, um.” Diwa cleared his throat. “Could you maybe hold the ladder. While I’m on it.”

“I’ll hold the ladder.” Colin set his hands on the side rails. Diwa climbed, slowly, the bulb cradled in his palm. He got to the third rung and stopped.

“It feels higher than it looked.”

“You’re three feet off the ground, and you’ve still got some way to go.”

“Yeah, no, I know, it’s just…” Diwa looked down at Colin and then quickly looked back up at the fitting. “Okay. Okay, I’m doing it.”

He reached up. The fitting was, in fact, well within his reach without him needing to go any higher, which was a small mercy.

“A lad I used to know got electrocuted doing this exact job,” Colin said conversationally.

Diwa’s hand stopped moving. “What?”

“He forgot to flip the breaker. Same as you nearly did just now.”

“I didn’t, I flipped it.”

“He thought he had, too.”

Diwa was very still on the ladder now. Colin kept his hands on the rails and his voice in the same flat, unhurried register he used to give people the bus timetable.

“The thing about getting a live current through you is that your muscles lock. You can’t let go of the wire.

People think you can. You can’t. The current contracts the muscles and the strongest muscles in your hand are the ones that close it, so your fist clamps shut around whatever’s killing you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You just stand there until someone notices. ”

“Colin.”

“And that’s if you’re lucky enough to be standing on something dry. If the ladder’s metal, like that one, and your other hand’s touching it, the current’s got a lovely little path through your heart on the way to ground. The smell’s the worst bit, people say. Bit like pork crackling but sweeter.”

“Colin, I’m holding a…”

“And the thing they don’t tell you, the thing that gets people who think they’ve had a near miss, is the cardiac arrhythmia.

You can walk away feeling fine and drop dead three hours later making yourself a cup of tea.

It’s the electrical signal in the heart, see.

Gets scrambled. Doctors can’t always pick it up.

Bloke I knew, he was at his sister’s birthday.

She blew out the candles, and he went over like a sack of spuds. ”

There was a small, wet swallowing noise from the top of the ladder.

“Anyway,” Colin said. “Carry on.”

Diwa’s hands had gone very careful on the bulb. Even as they shook, he fitted it into the socket, turning it half a revolution and then waiting before turning it the rest of the way.

“Done?” he said, in a small voice.

“Down you come.”

Diwa came down. He held onto the ladder for a moment after both feet were on the floorboards.

“Now you go and turn the breaker back on,” Colin said.

Diwa went. From the cupboard came the click of the switch, and from the kitchen the fridge came back to life. Diwa returned, eyes trained on the light fixture.

“Flip the switch and we’ll see how you went,” Colin said.

Diwa walked over to the switch and flipped it.

The bulb came on. The hallway filled with the warm low light of a twelve-quid filament doing its twelve-quid thing, and Diwa de la Vega looked up at it and his entire face brightened.

His mouth came open in pure undefended delight, and he let out a bright burst of laughter. His hand came up. “High five,” Diwa demanded. “High five for teamwork, come on!”

Colin watched the delight happen, and he raised his hand and met Diwa’s palm with his own.

“I changed a light bulb,” Diwa said, to nobody in particular, to the bulb, to the universe.

“You did,” Colin said. “Congratulations on taking your first step towards becoming a fully functional adult.”