“You shouldn’t have done that, you know,” David told Hen as he drove her back to Bishops Langley.
“I’m sure there’s any number of things you feel I shouldn’t have done in my life, but how about telling me which specific thing you’re talking about right now?”
“Made me leave Rory on his own with you like that. It’s not fair—it’s not like he needed vetting as a potential boyfriend, is it?” David stared sadly out of the windscreen. Leaves were falling from the trees and being tossed by the wind, dancing wildly for all-too-brief moments before they came to rest on the road and were unceremoniously crushed beneath the wheels of passing traffic.
Much like his hopes and dreams.
“And he’s not having an easy time of it at the moment. Ever since his birthday yesterday, he’s been all down in the dumps.”
“Oh dear. Midlife crisis? Birthdays can be so tricky.”
Oh God, that was it. David relaxed as relief flooded through him—Rory’s sudden mopiness wasn’t his fault after all.
“Just you wait,” Hen continued. “He’ll be buying a fast car and looking for a much younger partner.”
“Hah. I wish.”
“Oh dear. I thought that was it. I must say I’m rather surprised. He is nice, isn’t he? Not at all the sort you usually go for.”
“You say that like it’s a bug, not a feature.”
“Nice isn’t the stuff of which grandes passions are made.”
“The chance would be a fine thing in any case.”
They were silent for a short while as David negotiated the Saturday traffic. It wasn’t until they were almost at their destination that he blurted out, “Tell me honestly, Hen—do you think I have a chance with him?”
She hesitated. “I’m sorry, darling.”
Oh. And that was it, wasn’t it?
Because if there had been a glimmer of attraction to him in Rory’s eyes, Hen, with her psychology and her . . . her Hen-ness would have seen it, wouldn’t she?
David drove into the station feeling as though his splintered heart were being crushed beneath Mrs. Merdle’s very tyres. With his luck, he’d end up getting a puncture.
He went to bed early again that night.
After all, what was there to stay up for?
On Monday morning, David dragged himself over to Mark’s with a weary air, and was so unchatty even Mark, who was usually the one to tell him to stop talking and get on with his work, complained.
There was a noticeably brittle briskness to Mark’s manner when David got back from his lunch break, which he’d spent in the park watching tots in wellies as they played in the river. It had all been impossibly old-fashioned and idyllic, and had lulled him into a false sense that the lark was on the snail and all was right with the world. Now, it seemed, he was about to pay for it.
“Ah, David. I’ve just been on the phone with a potential new client. Could mean quite a lot of business for us. We’re meeting him this afternoon.” He paused, then said with an air of great significance. “Mr. Renard.”
“Who?” David wondered if this was some local celebrity he had yet to encounter.
“Mr. Renard.” Mark’s expression certainly seemed to think David should have heard of the man. Then he sighed. “Apparently you met him at Charles’s summer party?”
“I doubt I’d remember him, then. I was one or two sheets, or more like entire duvets, to the wind, and in any case, the whole affair was rather overshadowed by . . .” David’s stomach lurched in a curious fashion. “Um. His first name wouldn’t happen to be Xavier, would it?”
“Yes. It would. Is, I mean.” Mark’s face was red, and he met David’s eye via the scenic route. “I hope that isn’t going to present a problem.”
“Not at all,” David said firmly, not completely certain he was telling the truth. He had mixed feelings about Xav. On the one hand, his failure to mention the significant detail of his wife being David’s boss’s wife’s sister—perhaps the necessarily convoluted phrasing had put him off?—had cost David his job. On the other hand, David hadn’t much liked his job at Whyborne & Co. after Mark had left the firm in any case, and Charles would quite likely have seized the opportunity to sack him no matter who he’d been found in flagrante with.
And, well. Xav was . . . Xav. David couldn’t help a little frisson at the thought of seeing him. Would he, seen in the sober light of day, live up to the hazy memory David cherished of their one drunken encounter?
He hoped so. He badly needed something to take his mind off his hopeless love for Rory.
Mark was speaking again—clearly David had been mulling it over too long. “Frankly, this has come as a bit of a godsend. I haven’t quite known how to tell you, but if we don’t get Mr. Renard’s business, I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go. There simply isn’t the work for two of us.”
David, who’d been enjoying a few warm, fuzzy, and rather naughty feelings, felt as though plunged into an icy bath by a puritan nanny who’d caught him doing something unspeakable. “What?” he said intelligently, then rallied. “Why did you give me a job, then?”
“I’m sorry.” Mark gave an awkward laugh. “You see, it’s all your own fault for failing to live down to my expectations. I honestly thought you’d be fed up of village life by now, and would have gone back to London.”
“Oh.” David swallowed, then forced a smile. “Well, that’s me, isn’t it? Flitting around the darling buds like a mayfly. Or do I mean gadding about like a gadfly?”
“I was thinking of a butterfly.” Mark coughed. “Ah, not in any censorious sense, obviously.”
“Obviously,” David agreed mechanically.
“Butterflies perform a very useful function,” Mark went on. “Ah, pollinating, and so on.”
“Like pretty little sex toys for flowers.”
“That wasn’t quite what I . . .”
David stopped listening. It was silly to feel so hurt. He knew that. Why should Mark have taken him any more seriously than anyone else in his life?
It was just that David had thought he had.
The meeting was held at a hotel just outside Bishops Langley proper. Once a stately home enjoyed only by the idle rich, it had now been surrendered to the needs of the corporate, mingled with the odd gaggle of yummy mummies sharing a guilty cream tea before picking up the tots from school. Mark and he were shown into a spacious lounge with ceilings so high David half expected to see eagles nesting in the chandeliers, with views over gardens that were a riot of autumnal colour. The furniture was all in keeping; no forced modernisation here.
David wondered what Rory would make of the place. Would he be overawed and made uncomfortable by the opulence, or simply delighted with the loveliness of the house and gardens? David couldn’t decide.
And then he saw Xav and could think of nothing else.
Xav looked utterly delectable in a traditionally cut suit that showcased his broad shoulders and narrow hips, his perfectly coiffed hair just begging to be mussed in the throes of passion. There was something so . . . thrusting about an attractive older man in business wear. David had always been a sucker for the type.
In more ways than one.
“Ah, Mr. Renard,” Mark greeted him.
“Nugent. Delighted you could make it. And that you brought young David here.”
David swallowed. “Xav, how lovely to see you again.”
“Likewise,” Xav purred. “How are you, David? You’re looking well. Very well. No lasting effects from a certain overindulgence when we last met?”
“No.” David cleared his throat, his voice having betrayed him on being reminded so directly of that infamous event.
“I was so sorry to hear of the aftermath,” Xav went on.
Not so sorry as to offer a good word for David in his brother-in-law’s ear. “Very kind of you, I’m sure.”
Mark coughed. “I’ll, ah, go and see about ordering us some tea.”
“Thank you,” Xav said, and turned straight back to David as Mark strode off. “I’ve been dying to make it up to you.”
“Oh, you don’t need to—”
“Nonsense. And I’m not just being altruistic. You see, Charles told me something interesting about you. He said that, for all your faults—and he went into great detail about those; it was rather amusing—you were the most efficient administrator he’d ever had working for him. And I know he’s always thought highly of your current employer. I’m sure I shall be amply rewarded for placing myself in your hands.” Xav’s smile was somehow strongly reminiscent of Mr. Willis’s after he’d jumped on the kitchen counter and divested David’s tuna sandwich of its filling one lunchtime.
No doubt another kind of divesting was on Xav’s mind. Possibly also filling.
“Your business, you mean,” David said a trifle uncertainly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Placing your business in my hands.” He fixed Xav with a steely gaze. “Or were you thinking of something else entirely?”
“Right,” Mark’s voice came breezily—perhaps a little too breezily—from over David’s shoulder. “I’ve ordered us all the full cream tea. Shall we sit down?”
The talk, as they ate, was almost exclusively about Xav’s business interests. David made notes, occasionally sipping at his Earl Grey. Xav seemed to be rather in the nature of a peripatetic insect himself, flitting from one money-making endeavour to the next—and apparently never short of capital. Presumably that was Marthe’s department.
“But the books are in a shocking state,” he said earnestly, leaning forward, his knee nudging David’s. “I’m afraid they need a thorough overhaul.”
“I’m sure we can do that for you,” Mark said bracingly.
“Thank you. I feel we’ve covered some good ground here today. But, David, you’ve barely touched a thing. You must at least have one of these scones. They’re delicious. Have plenty of cream,” Xav added, as David reluctantly reached for the smallest scone on the plate.
He’d been hoping Xav had been about to take his leave, but in fact he turned the conversation to nonbusiness matters so David not only had to eat that scone, he had another, larger one pressed on him as well. And then Xav moved on to the cakes . . .
David couldn’t decide how he felt about it all as they drove back to Shamwell in Mark’s stolidly reliable BMV. Stuffed to the point of imminent explosion, clearly, but also . . . troubled. Which was silly. Xav’s attention had been flattering and not at all creepy. Obviously. David didn’t even know why he’d thought of the word creepy in the first place.
Xav wasn’t Rory, of course. But he scored over the object of David’s hopeless affection in two significant aspects: one, he was definitely not straight, and two, he was equally definitely interested in David.
Just . . . he wasn’t Rory.
The stairs seemed extra steep when David got home from work, so instead of going upstairs to change, he headed straight for the living room and flumped on the sofa, covering his eyes with one arm with a dramatic flourish.
Rory, who was sitting at the other end of it, gave him a curious look. “Bad day at the office?”
David groaned. “Don’t ask. And for the love of all that’s holy, don’t offer me any food.”
“Business lunch?”
“Business afternoon tea. About an hour after I’d eaten lunch. I’m amazed I haven’t burst out of my trousers.”
“Yeah? Where’d you go?”
“Langley Place.”
“Oh, Jenni went there once with the girls. She said it’s dead posh. Good scones?”
“Never mention scones to me again. Or clotted cream. Or strawberry jam. Don’t even hint about cucumber sandwiches or tartelettes aux fruits.”
“You’re safe with that last one, mate. I don’t reckon I can say it.”
David lifted his arm to shoot Rory a one-eyed glare. “Stop laughing at me.”
Rory spread his hands out wide. “Me? Would I? Hey, don’t s’pose you brought home a doggie bag?”
“If only I could have. Then I wouldn’t have had to eat so much.”
“Guess I’m on me own for tea, then.” He grinned. “Want me to eat in the kitchen so you don’t have to look at it?”
“Oh God, I’ll still be able to smell it. I’ll be in my room. Possibly forever more.” David hauled himself to his feet and waddled up the stairs to collapse on his bed.
A couple of hours later he felt vaguely human, and once changed into yoga pants and T-shirt, he even dared to venture downstairs.
Rory, who’d been flicking through TV channels, gave him a welcoming smile. “Okay to mention the f-word now?”
David blinked as hope flared, briefly and ridiculously. “Are you propositioning me?”
“What? No. F for food, right? I was gonna ask who the client was who rated the posh scones, that was all.”
Hope crashed and burned, then salted the earth where it had fallen for good measure. “Ohhh . . . Well. Funny story, actually.” Not, however, one that he felt inclined to tell for some reason. David sat down on the sofa next to Rory. “Mark said something today that was a little . . . Oh, I don’t know. Worrying, maybe? Or just depressing? I’m not sure.”
“Yeah, mate? What was that?”
“He said when he took me on, he never expected me to stick it out. He thought I’d have run back to London by now.”
“Oh. He told you.”
Rory’s flat tone made David look at him sharply. “You knew?”
“Yeah . . . Remember when we went out for drinks on my birthday? He told me about it then. But he said I wasn’t to tell you. S’pose he reckoned if you were gonna leave anyway, what was the point in getting your back up about it? Guess he changed his mind, though.”
“It’s the new client,” David said mechanically. “They’re going to provide enough work to keep me on.”
“Yeah? That’s good, right?”
“Is it?”
“Well, yeah. Cos now you can stay in the village. You know, with me.” Rory’s face went red. “I mean, as long as you want to. Till you want to move on. The kids’ll be glad. That you’re staying a bit longer, I mean.”
David could have sworn he heard a discordant sound, like unto the dropping of a piano from a great height. So Rory thought he was fickle, flighty, and faithless too? It stung. More than Mark saying it had. He’d thought . . . He’d thought Rory believed in him. Hadn’t he meant anything he’d said, and all those plans they’d made? For him to take the kids to school, for them to get a bigger place together. Almost like they were a proper couple . . .
Except they weren’t, were they? And they never would be. It was past time David started getting used to that. All he was to Rory was the person who’d be taking his kids to school for a while. And helping him pay the rent. And then leaving, because God forbid David be allowed to find something he wanted permanently in his life.
Rory coughed. “So, uh, who’s the rich client, and what’s the funny story?”
“It’s Xav.” David felt no enthusiasm to explain, but what did it matter, now? “Did I tell you about Xav? No? Well, ah, he was the reason I was sacked from Whyborne & Co.”
“Why, what did he do?”
“It’s more what we were doing together. At the firm’s annual party. We were discovered in flagrante.”
Rory seemed to be practising for a new career as a living statue. “Right.” He coughed. “Right,” he said again, very much in the manner of one wishing he could forget what he’d heard.
“You did ask.” Was Rory was now regretting having said he wanted David to stay?
It hurt, and coming on top of the earlier blow . . . Once again, he’d thought better of Rory—and had a rude awakening. But then, weren’t so many straight men like this? Fine with gay men in theory; far less so in the face of any evidence they were putting said theory into practice.
“I’m afraid I just couldn’t help myself,” David went on, in a knife-twisting mood. “Xav’s rather an old-fashioned charmer. Devilishly handsome and ridiculously fit, of course. My clothes practically flew off of their own accord. So many sparks were flying it’s a wonder we didn’t burn down the house. And he has an extensive portfolio of business interests. So I’ll be seeing quite a lot of him in future, I expect.”
Rory stood up. “Right. Better get me tea on.”
He walked out of the room.