Page 32 of Read My Lips

I sucked in a breath. Next to Sev, Simon’s fingers stilled on the laptop keys, but he didn’t look up. In the wing mirror, the visible half of his face stayed passive. Fully zoned in on his work, he hadn’t heard her.

That didn’t make anything better.

Never mind talking about him, if Sev found out I’d been unhealthily obsessed with Simon forever, it would be game over. No one wanted an interpreter with an agenda. I didn’t even have one, really. I was only waiting for my doomed crush to die. But no one was going to believe that now.

“He can— fuck Richard all he likes. No skin off my nose.”

Sev snorted another laugh. “Really? Because, if it was me, pining after my boss⁠—”

“Honestly”—liar—“I’m not.”

“If it was me, I’d want to know the score before I did anything else idiotic.”

My denial beached itself in the back of my throat. “What, like agree to be filmed half naked?”

Bit bloody late for that. Line me up for the Nobel Prize for screwing yourself over in the most spectacular way possible. Or was that more of a Darwin Award skill set?

What had I been thinking?

The car in front crept forward, and Sev rolled us on, still watching me far too closely in the mirror.

“Oh, babes.” She stopped drumming her ring against the wheel, looking at me through the mirror with something terrifyingly close to sympathy. “It’s only going to be a bit of skin on skin. You’ll survive.”

Easy for her to say. She hadn’t spent the last three years inventing scenarios in which I might get to see Simon Azie’s upper arms.

My phone buzzed again and a message pinged through.

Gran

Nearly out of milk. And tea. Don’t get the nasty cheap stuff again. Biscuits. Not own brand. They don’t taste the same. You’ll have to...

I locked the screen without reading the rest. Own brand biscuits were the very last of my problems now.

Sev skidded the car to a halt, spraying an arc of pea-shingle against the sprawling expanse of sandy-coloured stone in front of us.

Heybourne had actual wings. Legitimate columns. A clock tower. And that was probably a stable block in the distance. Fuck me with a bar of gold bullion. I hadn’t remembered it being this big when we’d come for the photoshoot with Beau Monde.

Wrenching her door open, Sev scrunched to the boot of the car, unloading her gear onto the shingle before I unclipped my seat belt. Simon flipped his laptop closed, smothering a yawn with the back of his hand. The bags under his eyes were breaching the hand-luggage limit. Any self-respecting airline attendant would slap a label on him and conveyor belt him off to the hold.

Which was none of my business, was it?

Speaking of hand baggage, he fished an immaculate wheelie-case out of the boot. It actually colour-coordinated with his suit. I stood there clutching a rumpled Bag For Life. Like a pillock. I hadn’t had a list of items required for impersonating a minor celebrity in a fake sex tape to hand. The three pairs of boxers I’d grabbed (in case the colour mattered), and my toothbrush (because fake kissing was going to be involved) hadn’t felt like they merited a rucksack. So now I had to walk up to Richard Whittaker’s mega mansion holding a plastic bag with a hole in it.

“You reckon country estates are like sports cars?” Sev shouldered a padded camera bag.

“You what?”

Pebbles scattered as she turned around, walking backwards so Simon could lip read. “Gratuitous wankery to make up for penis size.” Her eyes flashed with mischief. “Simon could tell us.”

He cleared his throat, all haughty disapproval. Which I might have believed, except for his smirk. “As a lesbian with an over-tuned hatchback, I’m surprised that’s a stereotype you’re comfortable leaning into.”

Sev rolled her eyes. “Oh shut your face, I will give you penis envy.”

Snorting a laugh, Simon shook his head, already scuffing up the sweeping steps in a casual not-quite-jog, and pressing the bell like it was any old suburban semi.

The tendons in my shoulders went tight. Richard’s estate stretched in all directions – perfectly landscaped fields as far as the eye could see, with strategically deployed deer for maximum bucol-points. Bet he wasn’t compensating for anything, was he? His dick probably had its own stall in the stable right next to the Grand National winning progeny of the moustache-bearing stallion in his precious painting. Bet he never got performance anxiety either.

We waited for someone to answer the door. And waited some more.