I rose from the table, unable to keep the grin off my face. “You say the nicest things.”
Laurent tipped his head back to stare up at me. “Who said it was a compliment?”
I grabbed his hand and yanked him to standing, the suddenness of the movement granting me a lovely moment where Laurent had to use my chest for support before righting himself. “It was a compliment. You took one look at me and knew your life had changed forever.”
“I took one look at you, and…”
“And?” I prompted.
“I thought nice arse.”
“What about the front?”
“I thought that was nice, too. Then I realized who you were.”
I laughed as we headed for the exit. “Rude.”
“To Cillian. Not to you. Although… I have to be nice to him now after what he did.”
“Because he gave your father money? It’s not like he hasn’t got enough of it.”
“And he didn’t get that way by giving it away. Whichever way you look at it, it was a nice gesture, and I’m grateful.”
“How’s your father doing?”
“It’s still early days. They anticipate him needing to be there for at least a month.” Laurent raked his hand through his hair, signs of stress showing. “If it doesn’t work…”
“It will. And if it doesn’t, we send him back again. Or we send him somewhere else.”
“We?”
I winked. “Cillian.”
An instructor gave us a brief orientation, allocated flight suits, helmets, and goggles to our group of twelve, and then escorted us to the wind tunnel. We’d each take it in turns for a flight that only lasted about a minute, but that he assured us felt like much longer when your muscles weren’t used to it. There’d be three flights in total. The woman currently in the vertical wind tunnel, a perky blonde in her mid twenties, certainly seemed to be enjoying it, high-pitched squeals escaping from her lips every few seconds.
“If you squeal like that when you do it,” Laurent said into my ear. “I’m going to pretend I don’t know you.”
“If I squeal like that, I’m going to call a halt and ask everyone to carry out an emergency search for my testicles, because it’ll mean they’ve blown off.”
We were last to go in the wind tunnel. Not for any gentlemanly reasons, but because we’d been the last of our group to check in. It gave us a bit of time to spend together, Laurent and I automatically carving out our own space away from the other nine people who awaited their turn. There were six who already seemed to know each other, a couple, and the boyfriend of the girl still squealing her way through her go.
I lasted until the girl was swapping with her boyfriend before voicing the question that had been on my lips all afternoon. “What did you say to Katrina yesterday?”
Laurent chuckled. “Has she called you since?”
“No.”
“Messaged?”
“Also, no.”
“Good.”
I turned to face him, more interested in getting to the bottom of this than in trying to pick up tips from those who went before. “We said we were going to be honest.”
Laurent rolled his eyes. “If I were being pedantic, I could point out that we agreed that today, and the event you mention happened before that, so it’s not covered by the agreement.”
“You could… But it would be a dick move.”
