Chapter 12 #2
Hans strode from the room, leaving Ruben, Demetria and Cherry behind. Poor Demi. Her smile was melting away like plastic left on the hob.
But still, she tried. “So you’ll need to get the basics down—background, interests, and so on. A backstory that we can all agree on, you know, when and where you met. And—”
“Demi,” Ruben interrupted. He was talking without thinking again, but he was too tired to care. He needed a shave and a platter of bacon before he could have this sort of conversation. “You should go and do... whatever it is you’re doing today.”
She blinked. “But—”
“It’s fine. You have plans. Cherry and I can muddle along.” He looked at the sheets of paper trapped in her capable hands. “You made lists, I assume?”
“Oh, yes,” she admitted, looking down as if she’d forgotten they were there. “But—”
“We’ll follow the list,” he said, “and report back later. Promise.”
She released a long-suffering sigh. It was a familiar sound. “You’re sure? ”
“Yes, Mother.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. If you insist.” She slid the papers over the table at him before giving Cherry a nod. “You have a phone in your room. You can call me at the house if you need anything—anything at all. Just press ‘02’.”
“Thank you,” Cherry said, and she really did look grateful. Because she was in a strange house, in a foreign country, with a man she barely knew and didn’t trust, and he should have thought this through, shouldn’t he? Why didn’t he think anything through?
The thought shimmered, twisted, transformed in his mind, reborn with his brother’s voice and his sister’s quiet spite. Do you have half a brain in that head, Ruben? Does the peasant part even function, little brother?
“See you later!”
He blinked back to reality just in time to see Demi leave. Which meant that he and Cherry were alone. Utterly alone. Well; except for Agathe’s singing, floating down the hall from the kitchen. He held on to that hoarse, wavering voice like a talisman. Pull yourself together .
“So,” he said, scanning the papers. And now he sounded like Demi.
“We have the, ah... the list. Basics, background, things like that.” He looked up.
Cherry was sitting directly opposite him, her arms folded under her breasts, looking at him from beneath her long, long lashes.
If it weren’t for the hard line of her mouth, she might look seductive.
Ruben gave his head a firm shake. If he couldn’t stop thinking about her like this, they’d never get anywhere .
“So,” he began. “How long have we been together?”
She shrugged. “Up to you.”
“You’re sure? You don’t have a preference? Something you’d like to tell your parents?”
“Oh, yes,” she murmured. “It matters so much that I tell my parents the most tasteful lie possible. I really give a shit.”
He bit back a smile. “Point taken.”
“Look,” she sighed. “I’m not trying to be awkward. It’s just… You know what you need out of this, right? I don’t. So when it comes to backstory and all that shit, it’s up to you. As for the rest, the personal information—if you give me the list, or whatever Demi made, I’ll write it down for you.”
“But if we don’t talk,” he said, “we won’t become comfortable together. That’s important too.”
She arched a brow. “You think I can’t turn it on? You think I can’t flirt with you?”
I know you can. I wish you would. I wish you could mean it.
“No,” he admitted. “I know you’ll be fine with all that. But I—”
“ You are a bigger flirt than I am,” she said. “And we both know it.”
Ruben considered feigning outrage. Then he saw the dangerous gleam in her eye and decided not to bother. “Okay, fair enough. But if we were engaged, I wouldn’t just pull all my usual shit on you, would I? I’d be different.”
“How romantic,” she drawled .
At that moment, Agathe swept back into the room with a plate in both hands. “Here we go,” she trilled, setting them down with a flourish. “Now, I will be right back—“
Ruben stood, intending to help with the rest of the plates—Agathe had a rather poor grasp on appropriate portion sizes. Then he realised that Cherry was also standing, and his eyes narrowed. “You sit,” he insisted. “You’re a guest.”
“Exactly,” she countered. “Guests help. It’s polite.”
“No, hosts do everything.”
“That’s ridiculous. You—”
“See, this is the kind of thing Demi means. We can’t just write down the shit on her list and get to know each other,” Ruben insisted. “We have to spend time together.”
Agathe appeared again. In the time it had taken them to have their ridiculous argument, she’d fetched a small mountain of muesli. And a platter of fruit salad. Jesus, she was really going for it.
“Fine,” Cherry said, sitting down slowly.
She murmured her thanks to Agathe and grabbed a piece of toasted rye bread, looking at it as if it was some kind of alien substance.
Finally, she shook her head and met Ruben’s eyes.
“We’ll do this, then. We’ll eat together. We’ve both got to eat, after all.”
Ruben’s heart leapt. He was relieved, he told himself. He wanted this to go smoothly. That was all. “I’m usually out for lunch. And breakfast. Dinner?”
She arched a brow. “What do you do at lunch?”
“I’m at work. ”
“ Work ?” She spluttered, reaching for a glass of orange juice. “You have a job ?”
He shrugged. “I have an occupation. Every man needs one.”
“Right… Okay. So, um… What should I do?”
Ruben tried not to be disappointed by the fact that she hadn’t asked about his job. “That’s up to you. You can go anywhere you want as long as you run it by Hans first, so he can deal with the security. And Demi will give you access to my bank account—”
“Why would I need access to your bank account? Aren’t you paying me?”
“Of course. But if you decide you want to spend the next few weeks, I don’t know, re-decorating my library—”
“You have a library?” she demanded, her voice sharp. “Where?”
“Ah, it’s nothing major. It’s just a room with a ton of books.”
“Whose books?”
He shrugged. “No-one’s. Agathe’s. I mean, she chose them, her and Demi.”
“Okay,” Cherry nodded. “Cool.” She downed her orange juice and stood. “I’m gonna go.”
“Um…”
“Bye!”
Ruben sat and watched as she hurried from the room.
This was not going well.