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He stood, took her hand and dragged her to the bedroom.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll make it fast, then you can get back to work.”
“Great,” she grumbled. “That’s four little words every woman wants to hear on the way to the bedroom.” She lowered her voice to mimic him. “I’ll make it fast.”
Lake laughed as Kirsty, more than willingly, followed behind him.
“Are you going to London to help your brother or not?” Alastair asked.
He was sitting on the floor beside his bed. They were eating vegetable curry because it was the only vegetarian meal that Alastair knew how to cook. Rainne didn’t mind, it tasted fine.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It wouldn’t be for long, anyway. These things don’t last that long. A few months tops.”
“Months?” He put the half-finished food down on the floor beside him.
The curry was eerily similar in appearance to the swirls on the yuck-brown carpet.
“I thought it was only one protest,” he said.
The bed behind him was calling to her. They’d been dating for weeks and he hadn’t made any suggestions that they get into it. The bed was beginning to mock them. Rainne guessed that he was biding his time out of respect for her, but that was wearing a bit thin. She had to figure out how to bring the topic up before she died of frustration.
“Rainne?” he said, making her focus on the conversation again and not on that blooming bed.
“These things take time to set up. There’s a lot more organisation involved than you’d think.”
“What I think,” Alastair said as he drew his knees up in front of him and leaned his arms on them, “Is that someone else should do the organising and you should stay here and look after your shop.”
Rainne found she had lost her appetite too. She put her plate beside the one Alastair had abandoned.
“I need to ask Lake what his plans are and what he wants me to do.”
“No,” Alastair said firmly. “It doesn’t matter what your parents want you to do, or what Lake wants you to do. You need to do what you want to do.”
That was easier said than done. Especially when she really wasn’t sure what she wanted.
“I’ve always helped my family,” she said. The words sounded weak, even to her own ears.
“There’s a difference between helping your family and being used by them. Your parents are bossing you around, expecting you to jump when they want something done. Lake took your shop off of you and expected you to do what you were told. When are you going to do what you want?”
“Lake had every right to do that,” she said. “It’s his shop. I’m the manager, kind of.”
She wasn’t even that. These days she was the lackey.
“Aye, and he would have bought an underwear shop all on his own. He did it for you, Rainbow. But he’s come in all gung ho and taken over. Is it even what you want it to be?”
She shook her head. No. It wasn’t. But then, she really wasn’t sure what she wanted it to be. All her great ideas about sustainable underwear were just that, ideas. She hadn’t been able to put a plan together.
“I’ll talk to him,” she said, knowing that she was saying the words more because she wanted Alastair to stop harassing her and less because she wanted to do it.
Alastair sighed and Rainne wondered if he could see right through her.
“I don’t want you to do it because I tell you to,” he said. “I don’t want to be another person who tells you what to do.”
“You’re not,” she said.
She wasn’t sure that was true.
“What am I going to do with you?” he said as he came to crouch in front of her.
