Colin had sprung this on me. Before I could film the demise of the moustache, apparently I had to adjudicate in the competition. Now I stood in the corridor outside the room he shared with Amir, facing off against two gangly cyclists with matching lip fluff, no idea how delicate I had to be with their egos. Nellie and Amir were avidly observing.
‘Are you suggesting I’m a partial judge?’ I accused, delaying the decision for another few moments.
He chuckled, but didn’t look at me, simply stood next to Derek with his hands clasped in front of him. ‘Yep,’ he confirmed.
‘Surely the two of you can sort this out without requiring a kindergarten teacher to settle the dispute. I just want them gone. Humanity can thank me later.’
Colin brushed his fingertips thoughtfully over the pale-reddish whiskers and regarded Derek critically.
‘It’s an important lesson to learn, you know,’ Colin declared, ‘how to lose with grace.’
‘Have you actually learned that?’ Nelson asked doubtfully.
‘Shut up, Nellie. I’m prepared to demonstrate.’ He cleared his throat ponderously, hitched up his pants and then turned to give Derek a thump on the back hard enough to make him stumble. ‘Nice ’tache, mate. Well done!’ He offered his hand in one of those bro handshakes, since normal handshakes apparently weren’t macho enough. ‘You can grow a real moustache – a fine one.’
God, he was good. I had whiplash; one minute he was brewing a cock-and-balls coffee and the next he was building genuine rapport with a junior member of the team, although I was pretty sure he didn’t mean for anyone to know he was serious.
He grinned, his usual cheeky number. Stretching his arms out wide, he gave a bow. ‘You have learned from the master,’ he murmured. ‘You going to keep yours if mine has to go?’ he asked Derek.
I suspected Colin had never looked so uncertain at Derek’s age. ‘What do you think? Does it look any good?’ Derek’s gaze darted to me, but Colin grabbed his arm and turned him away, inspecting him critically.
‘I think you can rock it.’
I rolled my eyes, making sure Derek caught the action.
‘Don’t listen to her,’ Colin continued with a dismissive flick of his fingers. ‘I have no choice, but you keep that ’tache if you want to.’
‘I’m a bit worried if the only woman in the room is advising against it,’ Derek said with a dry smile. Good man, he was learning not to trust Colin on everything.
‘Nah, she secretly loves mine,’ Colin insisted, biting his lip and shooting me a wink that zinged rather annoyingly right through the centre of my body. ‘She’ll be sad to see it go. In fact, I bet she’ll stop me before I get the razor near my face. This moustache makes meirresistible– right, Lees?’
‘Yes,’ I said sweetly. ‘It’s impossible to resist teasing you, when it looks like you smeared peaches and cream on your lip.’
Nelson and Amir hooted with laughter, but Colin stepped closer to me, his gaze never leaving my face, and I couldn’t help feeling as though whateverthiswas, it wasn’t over yet.
‘Peaches and cream, hmm?’ he repeated slowly, tugging one lip into his mouth for the briefest moment. ‘Sounds delicious.’
My skin went up in flames, culminating at my hairline, as he stood, hesitating expectantly.
‘You coming, Kubicka?’ He gestured to the door of his room.
‘Hmm?’
‘Don’t you want to record this, for your viewers or continuity or whatever?’
Not really, now that my stomach was twisted in knots and my brain was hanging on an image of his serious eyes that I was certain no one else could see. Or I was fixating on his lips with too much curiosity.
He’d scraped off too many layers of my outer shell to do this right now, but it seemed I didn’t have a choice.
Chapter 13
Colin
Tugging my shirt over my head one-handedly as soon as I walked into my room wasn’t exactly on purpose, but I rolled with it once I’d done it. She was in my room. This had not happened before, except in the couple of fantasies I tried not to indulge in too often.
I teased her about finding me irresistible, but I was well aware her presence here right now meant precisely nothing. The tingling feeling in my chest was wrong. My instincts had always been wrong when it came to Leesa Magdalena Kubicka – as that disaster in September had proved.
But when I turned and she snapped her gaze away a second too late, I couldn’t help the suspicion that therewassomething strung tight between us.
