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I felt so heady with buttery yellow happiness, I didn’t care who saw me. “Only if you promise too. Can you imagine the look on Nico’s face? Or your poor, lovesick policeman?”
A series of dull thuds interrupted us. Florian cocked his head. “Was that the door?”
Another dull thud, even louder. “Yes, I think so. Probably the housekeeper—he said he would be dropping off some clean bedding. Good timing, because if I keep this all over my face, we’re going to need it tomorrow.”
And lube and sex would be messy.
“I’ll go,” Florian offered. At least he’d managed to pull his jeans on, I was still parading around in my underwear, my own trousers lost amongst the paint pots in the sitting room. Once he got rid of the housekeeper, I had every intention of getting those jeans off him again. The beach walk could wait.
Five minutes passed. Mind you, the housekeeper did like to talk, and I’d encouraged him, to practise my French. Florian probably needed rescuing. I thought I heard a man’s voice as well as my lover’s, but this damned house was so big they could have been hosting a troop of boy scouts in the hallway and I wouldn’t have been able to hear. As I was contemplating going to join the party, the front door slammed. Good, I’d get my man back. Shouldering on my towelling robe, I trotted downstairs.
“Flor, I’ve decided our evening stroll can wait. I’ve had a much better…”
The remainder of the sentence dried on my tongue as a dazzling fireball of colour scorched through my mind. Orange flames mushroomed out from it, growing, growing, growing, filling my senses with a wicked smell, blasting me with heat, revelling in every single vile shade of that vile, putrid colour. I cringed with fear, swaying against the banister as, like a living thing, the fireball changed shape, flattening, elongating, crinkling into a smile, a victory smile. Knowing the battle was already won.
Screwing my eyes tight, I tried to escape its path. As if I ever could. Towering above me, in all its scorching orange glory, it hurled yellow to one side as if she weighed nothing at all, it stomped over sweet silver, almost as a casual afterthought. My beloved green cowered in my arms, a trembling shrunken ball, defeated before it had even faced the intruder.
Yes, the beach walk would be postponed. As would sex. Indefinitely, if our unexpected visitor had any say in it. He wasn’t one for wasting time in frivolities, such as skimming stones and aimless meanders with one’s hand warming in another. Or painting flowers and hearts on faces. Not when there were important deals to be done and filthy lucre to be made.
And falling stupidly in love was the height of frivolity, in his book.
CHAPTER 20
FLORIAN
I took an instant dislike to the man. It would have happened anyway, even if he didn’t serve as a big, arrogant reminder Charles belonged to another life elsewhere that didn’t include me. Marcus represented everything I loathed about a particular breed of rich, foreign tourist, from his salmon-pink knee-length shorts and the exuberant chest hair poking from his crisp linen shirt to the oversized gold Rolex spanning his oversized wrist. A childish urge gripped me to knock the ubiquitous Ray-Bans from atop his thinning sandy hair and crunch them underfoot. Just for the hell of it.
People like him were the reason the corner shop stocked more hundred-euro bottles of champagne than tins of lager, the reason a young local family like the one Jerome was building couldn’t afford their own place. And despite bonjour and merci and une bière, s’il vous plait universally recognised as the most basic of French vocabulary, he was also the sort of man who greeted restaurant staff with a booming hello, so the entire restaurant knew someone special had arrived, and then demanded the most expensive wine on the list, just because he could.
I had the impression the loathing was mutual. And annoyingly, he was taller than me, fully dressed, and not daubed in face paint. On the upside, most of what he said flew over my head, because his French was on a par with my English. So at least I didn’t have to make small talk with the connard. Like the shrewd businessman I’d been assured he was, he processed the scene in front of him within seconds—two half-dressed blokes covered in warpaint—and jumped to all the correct conclusions. Amused, he snorted like a pig, so sadly, I couldn’t add rampant homophobia to his list of failings.
“What did he say?” I demanded to Charles after we’d been introduced. Marcus had pumped my hand as though he was determined to wring every last drop of juice from my flesh. I couldn’t make out how Charles felt about him pitching up without notice. His face had turned ashen as he’d greeted his old friend, but then he’d fixed his mouth into a smile for all the back slaps and the hetero, masculine bullshit that followed. I wondered which colours loomed in his mind, whether silver and green were holding on. I had a feeling not; anxiety painted his taut features as clearly as my delicate flowers.
Marcus was supposed to be arriving next week, Charles explained, but a very important new client was demanding a deal to be closed this week and so he’d left the wife and kids and nanny in the villa in the Dordogne and hotfooted it over here. To discuss this oh-so-special client with the fragile man I’d hoped to hold onto a little longer.
“Marcus says that I must be on the mend if I’ve got the energy to be ‘frolicking about with the locals’.”
“But not mended,” I pointed out. “Not yet. There’s a difference.”
Charles didn’t answer because Marcus was saying something else; whatever it was must have been droll because my lover let out a little laugh, although I didn’t think it quite reached his eyes, and then they had another round of stupid man hugs and Marcus said something else funny, and all of a sudden I felt very alone, underdressed and out of place and like I didn’t want to be there anymore.
“I’ll… er… get this washed off and put some clothes on,” I muttered, resisting the urge to just charge out of the front door. But only because I’d seen the anxiety. Marcus was his oldest friend, but leaving my vulnerable lover alone with this overbearing man? It felt like an enormous mistake.
I wiped the last traces of the beautiful flowers from my skin. Oh fucking merde. As if that wasn’t symbolic of everything I already knew. Charles joined me in the bathroom.
“Don’t go, Florian.” His chin rested on my shoulder; worried grey eyes locked onto mine in the mirror. We’d snapped a very different version of this photo an hour ago, colourful, joyous, and carefree. Before and after shots. I’d have whiplash from the speed with which the tables had turned. I threw him a regretful smile.
“It’s okay. Honestly. I need to check on Papi anyhow. You and Marcus must have lots you need to discuss.”
“Can I phone you later? I’d come over but obviously Marcus is staying the night.”
“Of course. You never have to ask.”
Stepping to the side, I cupped his pale face between my palms, my head brimming with so much I needed to say but having no right to say any of it. Because when push came to shove, what was I? Who was I? A summer fling. A cinq à sept distraction for a burnt-out businessman. We’d known each other six weeks—the man waiting for him to return downstairs had known him forever. And no, I didn’t think he was back to full health, but where were my qualifications in psychiatric medicine? Or in anything, come to that? Who was I to determine that Charles was unfit to return to work? I peddled salt, not pills.
I slid a finger up the contour of his cheek and over the flowers I’d painted there, lingering on the silver and green stars dotted between them, already a little smudged, a little blurred at the edges.
“Close your eyes, Charles. Tell me what colours you see. Right now. Now Marcus is here.”
