Yeah, I was completely screwed. Which left me either needing to embrace the feelings and not get in my own way with acting on them, or to stop seeing Laurent and draw an immediate line in the sand. Which would leave me either having to come clean to my brother, or to fake a dramatic break-up.
“Did you see that?” Laurent asked excitedly, leaning even closer. All I had to do was turn my head and our lips would meet. If I was going to kiss him, it wouldn’t be in the middle of a climbing gym, though.
“See what?” When my voice sounded far away, I forced myself to snap out of it.
“How quickly I got up there. Gaspard says I’m a natural.”
On hearing his name, the blond shaggy-haired instructor strolled over to join us, Laurent’s arm dropping from my shoulders, the absence of it now I’d confronted my feelings irking me. “How fast?” I asked Gaspard, my competitiveness already coming to the fore.
“Thirty one point three eight seconds,” he said in heavily accented English. “You think you can beat him?”
“Oh, I know I can beat him.”
“Pushyandcocky,” Laurent muttered beneath his breath.
“It’s not cocky if I can deliver.”
“Ifyou can deliver.”
“Less than thirty seconds,” I said with my eyes already fixed on the path I planned to use to ascend. I might not have climbed this wall before, but I had climbed, so I knew which handholds and footholds were best, and which to avoid. And I’d climbed more difficult walls than this. “How about we make things more interesting and put a little wager on it?”
“A wager?”
“A bet. If I do it in less than thirty seconds, you give me something. And if I take longer than that, I have to give you something.”
“Like what?” Laurent sounded suspicious.
He was right to be suspicious, given my initial instinct to ask for a kiss. With Gaspard patiently waiting for me to be ready for my climb, I decided against it, though. “If I beat you, you cook me dinner.”
Laurent’s eyes narrowed as if searching for the catch. “And if I’m faster?”
“I cook you dinner.”
“Deal.”
I did it in just over twenty-eight seconds, Laurent looking more resigned than surprised by my victory. What he’d failed to realize was that whether or not I’d beaten his time, I still won, my main objective nothing to do with dinner and everything to do with getting myself invited back to his flat.
Back at Laurent’s, we took it in turn to shower, my mind still too full of the quandary I faced to make any jokes about anyone watching the other. Laurent cooked steaks and made a salad, the look in his eyes daring me to make any comment about it being simple fare. I didn’t; he was sitting too close to the knives to risk it.
We’d just finished dinner when my phone rang. “Where are you?” Cillian asked with no preamble when I answered it.
“Hello brother dearest! How lovely to hear from you! You were already in your office when I woke up this morning, and we all know that nothing and no one interferes with your work.”
Cillian sighed long and loud in my ear. “None of which answers the question I just asked.”
“I’m having dinner with my boyfriend.” That word hit differently after my self-realization. “He offered to cook for both of us because he’s that much of a sweetheart.” Laurent gave a little chuckle, presumably at my slight twisting of the narrative with my failure to mention the bet. I put my phone on speaker. “Say hello to Cillian, Laurent.”
“Hello, Cillian,” Laurent obediently parroted. “Apologies for not inviting you or Finn to join us, but we wanted some alone time. You know how it is.”
“So you’re still carrying on with this?” Cillian asked. “I thought you might have grown tired of it by now.”
“Tired of Laurent?” I kept my gaze fixed on the man in question as he stood and started gathering up the plates. “I’m not sure that’s possible. He has that rare quality of being so difficult to please that you dedicate all your time to doing exactly that. It keeps you on your toes and leaves you never quite knowing where you stand with him.”
The more I said, the more I lost track of whose benefit I was saying it for, Cillian’s or Laurent’s. As neither man gave a response, it didn’t really matter. Laurent had disappeared into the kitchen, and Cillian had gone completely silent in my ear. I took it off speaker and brought the phone to my ear. “Why did you call?”
“Mum rang. She’s worried about you and asked me how you were doing. Funny thing… She seemed to think I’d invited you here.”
“And you, of course, put her right and told her I’d helped myself to the keys and no doubt let it slip about Laurent at the same time.”
