Page 17

16

K evin sprawled in the kitchen chair, scraping the last of the macaroni cheese off his plate and making a satisfied mmm sound as he did, eyes on me.

He’d been generous with the moaning the whole meal, the big flirt.

Phil, knowing that I had rules about begging at the dinner table, had bustled over to Kevin the moment we started eating. He sat at attention, alert and ready to take care of any rogue noodles. Unfortunately for Phil, Kevin had it covered. Phil still watched every single forkful, from plate to mouth and back again. Just in case.

After our…interlude…Kevin had jogged out to his Land Cruiser and brought in a gym bag with a clean change of clothes while I hurried upstairs to change. Since the tight jeans had done their job admirably well—a little too well, perhaps—I decided it was okay to take it down a notch.

I threw on a henley and a pair of washed-soft jeans that hung low on my hips and didn’t cup or showcase a damn thing. Much more my speed.

Kevin ducked into the downstairs bathroom to change, and I was serving up the food when I felt rather than heard him approaching. I glanced up as he came into the kitchen.

His shoulders looked broader in his plain burgundy t-shirt, and he was wearing sweatpants.

That was my Kevin, I’d thought.

I appreciated him in his fancy clothes, but I preferred him the way I knew him—in his cargos and work boots, or else in his athletic wear. Clothes that said he was ready to fix something, or be physical. Clothes that complimented the man he was.

The smart date clothes had made me feel bizarrely off-kilter.

“You’re an amazing cook, Charlie,” he said now as he set his fork down, and gave Phil a consoling pat.

Phil was in a huff over not getting any treats, but he waited until Kevin had stopped fussing him before he decided to express his feelings by shuffling off to lie on his bed. He put his back to the room and commenced snoring.

“Thanks,” I said. “Wait until you try the brownie.”

“Did you made that from scratch, too?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have a latte with it?”

I laughed as I stood and gathered the plates. Kevin leaned over and gently eased me away, carrying them to the dishwasher. “The person who cooks doesn’t clean,” he said.

“The person who buys his boyfriend a door and spends hours installing it doesn’t clean, either.” I attempted to nudge him aside and take over.

He ducked down and kissed me before bumping me away with a hip and tucking the plates into the dishwasher. “Boyfriend,” he said. “Never thought I’d have one of those. Goes to show, doesn’t it? You never know what life is going to spring on you.”

“I never thought I’d have one, either,” I said without thinking. I took some milk from the fridge and went over to my Gaggia.

“Why’s that, then? Aren’t you gay?”

“Oh no, I am definitely gay.”

“How come you didn’t think you’d have a boyfriend, then? Are you not into relationships? That’s a thing, isn’t it? Did you not want one?”

I fired up the machine. Yes, I’d wanted one. I’d dreamed of it. I’d just…given up. I didn’t want to be a downer and tell Kevin that, though. Instead, I shrugged, and said, “Sort of didn’t think I’d meet my guy.”

“Too busy working.” Kevin came up behind me and pushed me against the counter.

I laughed. “If you start that again—” I warned.

He got his teeth on my neck and growled. “I won’t.”

“You are .” He was rocking lightly into my arse.

“Sorry.” He let me go and leaned back against the counter instead, crossing his arms under his chest and tucking his hands under his armpits.

“Yes, I’ve been too busy working.”

Kevin disapproved. “You haven’t had time to do anything, have you?”

I held up a finger while I concentrated on getting the swan on his latte right. The head was too large, but it wasn’t half bad. “Here you go.” I slid the cup carefully across the counter to him.

“Ooh. A duck!”

“It’s a swan.” I went to snatch it back but he batted my hand away.

“It’s a perfect swan,” he said. “Thank you.”

I made another one while he sipped happily at his latte, and this time I did a leaf.

“That swan’s much better,” he said.

“It’s a leaf!” I twisted to glare at him, and found him watching me fondly.

“I know. Where’s my brownie, then?”

“My god, you’re a bottomless pit.” I passed him the plate of brownies, unsurprised when he took the whole thing rather than one off the top.

“Yep. Got to keep this machine fuelled up and ready to perform.” He stuffed a brownie in his mouth and dropped his head back with a decadent moan. “Amazing.”

“Shouldn’t you be fuelling up with things like steak and kale and buckets of water, rather than pasta and lattes and brownies?”

He shrugged. “Fuel is fuel, Charlie. If I want it, I assume my body needs it. I tried eating for gains a couple of years ago but I can’t tell you how miserable it made me. There I was, walking around with a really short list of things I’m allowed to eat and a really long list of things I’m never supposed to touch. It was stupid and I thought, fuck it. I want pizza and freedom, not a six-pack.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your priorities straight.”

“Yup.” His hand hovered over a second brownie and he sent me a questioning look.

“Eat them all if you like,” I said. “Except for this one.” I snagged one for myself.

“Think I’ll save a couple for after,” he said, and grinned when I blushed.

After meaning after the sex we were trembling on the brink of having.

I cleared my throat, switched off the Gaggia, and took the milk jug over to the sink. I filled it with hot water and washing-up liquid and left it to soak.

“How is it that you’ve been living here a couple of years and you still haven’t got round to fixing the place up yet?” he asked. “Is it a money thing or a time thing?”

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Everything seemed to change all at once. I bought the house one month, and the next month, my parents up and decided to retire early and go and live in Spain. That meant selling the family home, obviously, and…and the shop.”

I went to stand beside him as he mowed his way through the plate of brownies. He shifted closer until our shoulders were touching.

“I’m sort of in debt up to here—” I held my hand as far over my head as I could reach, then went up on tiptoe, “—because I got a mortgage for the dream fixer-upper, which is currently the dream in stasis, and right after that, I had to get a loan to buy out the parents. They needed the cash for retirement.”

“Shit timing, though.” He made a thoughtful noise. “What about your sister?”

My jaw tightened. “It was always the plan to go in together on the coffee shop. The parents’ retirement brought it forwards a bit, which was unexpected but doable. And then at the last minute, Amalie decided she didn’t want to be tied down so young, and fucked off to Belize.”

“Leaving you in the hole?” Kevin said indignantly.

I brushed it off. “It’s not her dream.”

“Wow,” Kevin said. “That’s bollocks.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “So that’s why I’ve still got the previous owner’s junk fighting for space with mine in the garage, and my house is falling down around my ears. Don’t even get me started on the loft.”

Kevin’s eyes brightened. “What about the loft?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never been up there.”

“Whaaaaat?”

“I’ve never been up there.”

Kevin stuffed the rest of his brownie into his mouth and brushed the crumbs off his t-shirt. “Let’s go and have a look,” he said, taking my hand and tugging.

“Nope,” I said, refusing to move.

His fingers flexed around mine. “Aw. Come on.”

“No. I’ve managed not to look for two years straight, I can manage one more night.”

He stared at me. “How can you not have looked? In all that time?”

“Easy. I am a one-man business with a mortgage I’ll be paying off from beyond the grave. Also, I don’t care.”

Mostly though, it creeped me out—not that I was about to share that with the pragmatic Kevin.

I’d heard things scurrying about the very first night I slept here. I woke up in the morning, flipped the catch on the ceiling hatch shut, and hadn’t given it another thought.

Kevin boggled at me. “But?—”

“It’s just a loft!”

“You don’t know what could be up there, though.”

“I doubt there’s anything all that interesting.”

He gave me a crafty look. “There could be treasure.”

“Kevin. Really?”

“Yes, really!” He picked up my other hand and tugged again.

I dug in my heels. “Like what? Loot? A big wooden chest full of ill-gotten coins and jewels?”

“You never know what you might find.”

“True. But the previous owner was a frail little old lady in her nineties. Pirate treasure seems unlikely.”

“You realise you’re judging her based on how old she was when she sold you the place. Her nineties? That’s fucking amazing. But to get to her nineties, that means she was once twenty-four, like me, or thirty-one, like you. You don’t know what she was into in her thirties. People keep stuff from their whole lives, not just the last year or two. I’d know. I’ve been in loads of houses. Garages and lofts, too.”

“Fair point. But I still don’t think there will be any treasure up there.”

“Will you let me look?”

“I don’t know. Once I break that seal, it becomes something I have to deal with, and I’m not exactly keen to take anything new on. My to-do list is full, thanks. I’ve got unopened moving boxes of my own in the garage which I really need to unpack first.”

I opened my eyes wide at the noise of absolute outrage that came out of Kevin.

“You haven’t unpacked yet?”

“…no? Whatever’s in those boxes, I haven’t needed it. Maybe I’ll leave it all for the next owner to sort through. Or my heirs.”

Currently, that meant my sister and a second cousin once removed on my mother’s side.

“I can help you there, too,” he said, almost beseechingly. “I helped Griff empty his mum’s garage two hours ago. I can do yours, too. I’m so good at this stuff, Charlie. Like, I don’t brag about shit. You gotta trust me. When I say I’m good at something, it’s because I am .”

I squeezed his fingers. “I do trust you. That is not in question. You’ve already fixed my cabinets and my door. I refuse to take advantage of you, Kevin.”

I had a feeling a lot of people got Kevin to do things for them.

Craig Henderson being the worst culprit of all.

He slowly drew my arms up and around his neck, watching my face. “You trust me?”

I nodded.

“Then how about you take me to bed?” he said, releasing my hands, and running the backs of his fingers down the outsides of my arms and around my waist. He rolled his hips into mine.

My stomach twisted with nerves.

“This is where you lead the way upstairs,” he encouraged.

“Right! Yes. I will do that.”

Kevin’s eyes warmed when I did not do that.

“Unless you don’t want to,” he said. “We can watch a movie or something instead. Cuddle on the sofa. Big fan of cuddling, me.”

I was probably a big fan of cuddling, too. I didn’t know. I hadn’t cuddled anyone other than Phil, and that was guaranteed a very different experience from cuddling Kevin.

“Hmm.” I hesitated long enough for Kevin to start looking worried, then I grinned at him. “I don’t want to watch a movie. Let’s go.”

Heart in my throat, I turned and did my best nonchalant walk across the kitchen.

I’d never been so aware of my body in my life.

Kevin caught up with me in two strides and plastered himself against my back, a strong arm wrapping around my middle as he synced our steps up. He’d done this before and it was a little silly, but I was grateful for it.

Things were always easier when he was touching me.

“Can’t believe I finally get to see your room,” he murmured happily into my neck, then growled. “Your bed.”

My steps faltered. We’d made it to the stairs at that point, and Kevin steadied us with a hand on the bannister.

Fuck.

Kevin was going to see my room.

“Uh,” I said.

The arm around my waist tightened. “Don’t tell me you have unopened packing boxes in your bedroom, too,” he said with a low laugh.

I stiffened.

Kevin stiffened. “Charlie?”

“Listen,” I said, plucking at his arm. We were halfway up the stairs. My room was clean. I’d tidied it earlier. That wasn’t the problem here.

It was just…

Kevin had these standards that I hadn’t been aware of until recently, and I was starting to think that clean and tidy wasn’t enough, and I should have found time to redecorate it as well.

“There are no unopened boxes,” I said. There were no unopened boxes visible . There were a few under the bed. He didn’t need to know that. “The thing is,” I continued, “it’s about the same level of finished as my kitchen. Don’t go expecting a boudoir or anything.”

“Oh my god. A boudoir . I want to make you a boudoir.”

“I don’t?—”

“A sexy one.”

“I don’t…? What does a sexy boudoir look like anyway?”

He was moving me up the stairs again, and we were going at speed. “Mirrors,” he breathed in my ear.

“Hell, no.”

“Bit of gold. Maybe some velvet.”

“Sounds like a brothel, not a boudoir. I think I’m more of a Scandinavian kind of guy. French farmhouse? Coastal? I’m not really sexy enough for a boudoir, and?—”

Kevin turned me in his arms at the top of the stairs and kissed me breathless. “You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever met in my life,” he said. “I’ve already come about how sexy you are three times today, and I’m gonna do it again any minute. Enough of that nonsense.” He grabbed my arse. “More of this.”

“Yes,” I said. “If you can keep your mind on the job and stop getting distracted by my house.”

“It’s a cute house with a lot of potential and I want to make it a home for you so much Charlie. Don’t freak out about it, but I’ve drawn up a project plan. It’s in a binder and everything.”

“What?”

“But when it comes down to you or the house? Pfft. It’s you. You, you, you.” He shifted against me restlessly. “I like a professional challenge and all, but come on. Do you know how long I’ve wanted you?”

“Uh, no?”

“Fucking ages.” He turned me again, smacked my arse, and shoved me ahead of him.

“Wrong room. This is the bathroom,” I said when he wrangled me through the first door we came to.

He wrangled me back out, thankfully not getting distracted by the abundance of beige and the sagging floor, and shuffled me along the landing to the next room. “This you?” he said.

“Yes.”

He made a hungry sound and propelled me through the door.