Page 30 of By His Side
“No.”
Darien grinned wide enough to show his dimples. “In which case, it would be a waste of breath.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and stared at the screen.
“Expecting a call?”
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
“Our best course of action.”
The “our” had me tamping down on a sudden surge of emotion. It made it sound like we were in it together, rather than me being a millstone around his neck. “I told you. I’m going to stay in a hotel.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Too many people around. Now the press has got wind of you being out of prison, they’ll try to track you down. Speaking of which, how did you get away without them following you?”
“I went over the fences in the backyard.” I smiled at the memory. “Mrs. Featherstone’s vegetable garden might have borne the brunt of my chosen route.”
“Sounds like she deserved it.”
I shrugged. “If it wasn’t her, it would have been someone else. I couldn’t stay inside the house forever.” We both watched the pair of swans glide past. There were a few people still around, mostly dog walkers, but it was quieter than it would have been during the day, which was why I’d gone to ground here. That, and it being peaceful. “So if not a hotel, then what? And don’t say the halfway house.”
“I wasn’t going to. Benedict House is the first place they’ll look once they work out that you’re no longer staying with your mum.” Darien pressed a few buttons on his phone before bringing it to his ear. “I have an idea that might work.” I didn’t have time to enquire what it was before he started talking. “Hey, H, sorry for calling so late…. No, I don’t want to know what I interrupted… I’m too young for that sort of information… Yes, I know I’m your older brother, not your younger one. I’m still too young. I’ll always be too young for lurid details about yours and Levi’s sex life.”
I didn’t know what his brother had said, but whatever it was, it made Darien laugh. “Yeah, yeah! Listen… I was wondering if you could do me a favor… The flat above the restaurant… the one where Levi lived before you hypnotized him into moving in with you.” From Darien’s smirk, I assumed his brother had said something uncomplimentary. “Is it still empty? You’d be a lifesaver if you could loan it to a friend of mine for a while.” The word “friend” had enough of a hitch to it that I could tell he’d thought twice about its use. Just as I was thinking that a flat sounded good, especially one tucked away above a restaurant, Darien pulled a face. “Right. I’d forgotten about that. Never mind. It was just a thought.”
I didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation, returning my focus to the lake until Darien ended the call. “I guess that was a no, then?”
“I didn’t think you’d be up for sharing with a nineteen-year-old university student currently becoming expert in the art of washingdishes during her studies. I forgot she was living there,” Darien said apologetically.
A drop of rain hit Darien’s hand, both of us automatically looking to the skies in anticipation of it turning into a downpour. Great! Even the weather was conspiring against me. Darien stood. “Come on. If it’s going to rain, I’d rather be in the car than here.”
We completed the last part of the journey to where Darien had parked his car in a run—the rain coming down hard enough we were in danger of getting soaked. We were just in time, the heavens really opening as we scrambled inside, the sound deafening as it ricocheted off the roof of the Toyota. “Drop me off at a hotel,” I said. “It’ll do for tonight. I can try to rent somewhere tomorrow.”
Darien turned his head my way, his eyebrows raised. “And how do you imagine that going when you meet respective landlords? You’re living in cloud cuckoo land if you think it’ll be that easy. There’s a reason I usually sort out accommodation for my clients.”
I bit back on the urge to tell him to sort it out, then. It would have been grossly unfair when that’s exactly what he was trying to do. I’d put him in a difficult situation when he would have been well within his rights to ignore my call until the next day. Seeming to reach a decision, Darien started the engine. When he didn’t share his plans with me, I relaxed back in my seat rather than interrogating him.
Our journey took us past London Zoo, the place where you could often see the giraffes from the road devoid of any long-necked animals. I guess when your genetic preference was a savannah, you weren’t about to venture outside in a rainstorm. We passed through Kilburn and Willesden and I still had no idea where we were going, Darien lost in his own world, and the silence companionable enough within the confines of his car that I didn’t want to be the one to break it.
In Wembley, Darien stopped outside a house. He turned the engine off but made no move to get out of the car. I turned my head to study the house. If it was a halfway house, it had done an excellent job of pretending it wasn’t. “Where is this?”
“This,” Darien said with something that sounded suspiciously like fatalism, “is my house.”
“Oh!” There wasn’t a lot else I could say to that. I would have guessed a hundred different destinations before I would ever have dreamed of Darien bringing me back to his place of residence.
“It’s late,” Darien said, “and I’m tired. I’d rather work out a long-term solution tomorrow, if that’s alright with you?”
I resumed my study of the house. The building had taken on a different light now that I was more enlightened. “Isn’t that breaking some sort of rule?”
Darien’s laugh was loud and filled with mockery. “Now, you worry about that. Where was that concern when I was balls deep in you?”
My cock twitched at his phrasing, the organ not getting the memo that Darien had said it to shock rather than arouse. I twisted to face him so I could make eye contact, wanting him to see I was sincere. “I don’t want you to get into trouble. I’ve never wanted that. I meant it when I said that no one would hear so much as a whisper from me about what happened. So if me staying here means you’ll end up in the shit, I’d rather sleep on a park bench.”
“In this weather?”
