I risked a glance at him, his expression giving nothing away. “Some sort of reaction would be nice. I’d rather you laugh at me than do nothing.”
“I was thinking.”
“About?”
“How strange life is.”
Reaching under the table, I dug my fingers into my thigh. “Which means what?”
Laurent sat back in his seat, the look on his face one I’d never seen on it before. “What you did for my father?”
“I know it was wrong.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t wrong. Granted, it poleaxed me on the day, and I said some stuff I shouldn’t have said. But you must have seen by now that’s how I am. Particularly when something threatens to topple my emotional barriers. Attack is the first form of defense when I feel backed into a corner. Before I spoke to my father, I couldn’t see any way things could be different. And after… Well, after I felt raw and unable to cope with anything else, which included you, unfortunately.”
I frowned. “So you’re not angry?”
“Not anymore.”
I leaned forward to get my point across better. “Ignoring me for three days says differently. It says you were angry for some time after. If it hadn’t been for Katrina turning up, I doubt I would have heard from you still.”
“You wouldn’t have done,” Laurent said, his calm delivery like a knife to the heart. “But not for the reasons you think.”
“Why then?”
“Because...” He gave a little laugh. “You’re not the only one who has caught feelings. And I seized on your actions with my father as an excuse not to see you anymore. Cowardly, I know, but there you go.”
“You have feelings for me?” Something danced a little jig in my chest.
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
“You don’t sound thrilled about it.”
Laurent reached for his mug, taking a massive gulp of the latte. “It’s messy.”
“Why?”
“Because five minutes ago, you were straight.”
“I’ve just told a man that I’m falling for him, so I would say that counteracts any possible straightness.”
“You don’t live here.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “There is that. But there’re things I can do to stay. Cillian has already offered me a job if I need one for a work visa. Doing what, I don’t know. We haven’t gotten as far as the specifics yet, because I needed to talk to you first.”
“I thought you’d rather stick a red-hot poker in your eye than work for Cillian?”
“Yeah, well… That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I met you.”
“Careful,” Laurent said with a glint in his eye. “You sound like a man in the process of changing. What happened to I’ll be damned if I change?”
Heat flooded into my cheeks. “Are you going to make me say I was wrong?”
Laurent considered for it a moment and then smirked. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
