“No.”
“Who were you drinking with? A date?”
“No.”
“Your father?”
The sharp stab of pain in my head was a small price to pay to laugh at that suggestion. “Oh, yeah, my father. I’ve decided that if I can’t beat him, I’ll join him. We’re going to binge drink for a few years, and then we’re going to see if we can find ourselves a good two for one deal on rehab. There must be somewhere that does a father/son package.”
“It might have been your father,” Henri said defensively.
I lifted my head to look Henri directly in the eye. “No, it couldn’t have been, and you know that. I’m trying to stop my father from drinking, not facilitate him drinking more.”
“You’re being a bitch.”
“Probably,” I admitted.
Henri stood. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“I was drinking with Cormac King, if you must know.”
He frowned. “Isn’t that the same last name as…?”
“Cillian. Cormac is his little brother.”
Henri collapsed back in the chair again. “How little?”
“I don’t know. Early twenties.” I told him the entire story apart from the bit about finding him in the shower, and my drunken impulse—that in the cold light of day seemed nothing short of lunacy—to seduce him. I was beyond grateful that I hadn’t tried.I could live without a straight man letting me down gently. Or even not so gently. He might have a gay brother, but there was no telling how Cormac might have reacted to me trying to grope him. I could be nursing a black eye or a split lip now.
“You shouldn’t get involved in other people’s family feuds,” Henri advised.
“I’m not. I shared a few drinks with him and agreed to keep it to myself that he’s staying there. He’s going to look after Quasimodo, which saves me a job, and he’ll be long gone before Finn and Cillian get back. There’s no story there.”
“What’s he like?”
Hot. Funny. Intriguing.“Young. Irish. Impulsive.” I closed my eyes for a moment, enjoying the insides of my eyelids. “He wanted company for the evening and I gave him that. It was fun to let loose. It doesn’t make me anything like my father.”
“I never said it did.”
Yeah, he hadn’t. It was just my paranoia talking. In danger of falling asleep mid-conversation, I forced my eyes open. “What’s up?”
Henri shrugged. “Nothing.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I have to move out.”
Having slid down on the sofa, I struggled to a more upright position. Henri currently shared a house with two French girls and a Dutchman, and had been living there happily for over a year.
“The landlord is selling the house,” he elaborated.
“Can’t you find somewhere together?”
“I suggested that.”
“And?”
“They’ve become an item.”
