chapter 36
1097 Words
Titus
I watch Heidi disappear around the corner and hear her go into the kitchen, and bring my gaze back to Saxon. He’s watching me, a lopsided smile on his lips.
“You okay?” he asks.
I sigh. “Yeah. I’ve been an idiot.”
“I could have told you this would happen. It was obvious from the way you spoke about her.”
I huff a sigh.
He chuckles, then purses his lips. “Is she likely to move back here?”
“I don’t know. She loves England, and she’s all settled here. I can’t ask her to do that.”
“But if she offers?”
I hesitate. I don’t think she will. I know she repeated my line about being a little in love, but we’ve only been together a few days. It’s no time at all to ask someone to change their life for you.
I slide down the pillows a bit. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure.”
“Like… what’s this about you moonlighting?”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I hear you’ve been earning some spare cash as a stripper.”
His jaw drops, and then his eyes narrow. “f*****g Huxley. Can’t keep his mouth shut.”
I laugh. Huxley emailed me this morning to give me the rundown. Saxon has been up in Auckland keeping an eye on things in my absence, and they went out last night. “What happened?”
Saxon looks up at the ceiling for a moment before returning his exasperated gaze to me. “Hux wanted to try out a new bar he’d heard about. I went out with him, Elizabeth, Mack, and Sidnie. I… ah… might have had one too many.”
“I’m shocked.”
He gives me a wry look. “There was a group of girls there, well, women, but young, early twenties.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. It was a leaving do. Apparently they’d organized a stripper, but he hadn’t turned up. One of them asked me to stand in.”
“Tell me you didn’t,” I say, already knowing the answer from Huxley’s story.
“I declined politely. But the others were all cheering, and then Hux and Mack joined in, and, well, I sort of unbuttoned my shirt a bit just for a laugh…” He scratches the back of his neck.
I chuckle. Huxley told me that Saxon went a bit further than that, but I decide not to push it. “Hux said you disappeared with a redhead.”
“Um, yeah. She came back to my hotel room.” He plays with a pen for a moment before lifting his gaze back to me. “I liked her.”
I lift my eyebrows. “Really?”
“Yeah. But I won’t be seeing her again. She was moving away.”
“Did you get her name?”
“Yes,” he says sarcastically. “Catie. With a C.”
“Pretty.”
“She was.”
“I meant her name.”
“That too.” His gaze drifts away as he obviously remembers a moment from the night before. Then it comes back to me, and he sighs. “When I woke up this morning, she’d gone.”
“Ah, f**k. No number?”
“Nope. Huxley didn’t know her or the group she was with. I’ve got no way of tracking her down.”
“Maybe the bartender?”
“She obviously didn’t want me to find her. It’s a fine line between being interested and stalking, you know? It was fun, but I’ve got to let her go.” He looks wistful. Then he sighs. “You want to go through the report?”
“Yeah, okay.”
He talks for a while, summarizing the results and discussing his take on them.
Heidi comes into the room as Saxon is finishing up, and I say goodbye to him and tell him I look forward to catching up with him at Huxley’s wedding.
As Heidi climbs on the bed, I close the laptop and lean it against the bedside table, then take the mug she passes to me. “Thank you.”
She smiles and curls up next to me, pulling the duvet over her legs. It’s cooler in here now, although her cheeks still hold a touch of the flush that bloomed in them while we made love.
“All good?” she asks.
“Yeah. I was teasing him because Huxley emailed me and told me Saxon got drunk last night and did a striptease in a bar.”
She laughs. “And my brother didn’t leap to his rescue and stop him?”
“Nah, he stood there and watched. So did Mack, by all accounts. It sounds like it ended well.” I tell her about the redhead.
“Aw,” she says afterward, “that’s a shame. She did a Cinderella?”
“Sounds like it, except she didn’t leave the glass slipper behind.”
We study each other for a moment. I hold my arm up. She moves closer to me, and I lower my arm around her.
“So Saxon isn’t with anyone?” she asks.
“No. His girlfriend moved out a while ago. She said he didn’t spend enough time with her. It’s tough when you work long hours and you give your all to your job, and then your partner resents you for it.”
She looks up at me. “Are you speaking from experience?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you talking about Claire?”
I hesitate. I am, but it doesn’t feel right to criticize her.
“It’s all right,” she says softly, “you don’t have to say anything.” She kisses my cheek. “You really are very sweet sometimes.”
I put my empty mug on the bedside table, and she finishes off hers and does the same.
“Come on,” she says. “You look tired. We’ve got an early start tomorrow. Let’s get ready for bed.”
We clean our teeth and turn off all the lights. It’s warm, but Heidi turns the fan on, and we snuggle under the duvet. I cuddle up to Heidi’s back, pulling her against me.
“Goodnight,” she murmurs.
“’Night, sweetheart.” I kiss her hair.
I could have told you this would happen. It was obvious from the way you spoke about her.
I sigh, and close my eyes.
- Writer
