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The initial fuck up was resolving itself rather well.
Phone call made satisfactorily, his phone was confiscated once more.
Time passed slowly, the old house and all its occupants paused, expectant.
It was different, he had to admit, waiting for Ben to arrive knowing he wouldn’t hear his motorcycle. It hit him then that he always listened for Ben’s arrival with an almost childlike anticipation that he felt for nothing else. Had not felt, in fact, since he’d gone to live in Russia.
As he stared out into the dark night, he wondered, therefore, why he’d never greeted Ben with anything other than weary disdain or cool disinterest, if not outright ignoring him.
How would Ben’s behaviour have changed had he gone to the door, watched as he climbed off his bike, gone forwards and welcomed him, let Ben sense the strength of his truer, better feelings?
He pursed his lips and began to trace small circles on the table. Childhood’s cold hostility had set patterns to his behaviour that he had been unable, no,unwillingto break. He never showed any expectation of being loved so when he wasn’t it didn’t hurt as much.
But he wasn’t stupid. Anything but. He knew what a self-fulfilling prophesy was.
Aleksey sighed deeply. You only got so many good years in this life, and he was beginning to think he was wasting his.
He suddenly sensed Ben’s presence in the house—a shift in the balance of the universe which portended a great deal more than the outcome of just this one night.
Well, all right, he’d heard a creak from the corridor outside the kitchen, but he was in a mood to attribute signs and omens to a great many things that were unfolding that night in this house.
* * *
Chapter 58
Nine Years Ago
Pavlov’s dogs had a lot to answer for, Aleksey reckoned. He was attempting to calculate how many times in the past he and Ben had met without having sex. Not often, he realised, because his body had responded to the other man’s presence like one of those salivating canines. Well, dampness was involved anyway. Maybe it was seeing Ben Rider in action for the first time since hiring him. Vertical action, that is. Although to be truthful, which he always tried to be, he had not actually seen a lot. Once the fight had started, he’d lost time. He always did. Some men he knew, hardened soldiers, swore time slowed down during fire fights; that they felt events transpired in slow motion, each movement dizzying in its delayed-time-frame effect, but not for Aleksey. He’d always assumed it was his impulsive nature that sped life up for him at times of high adrenaline, staccato notes flashing past, discordant. So he recalled a kiss in a darkened stairway, avowals in hasty words, and then cold night air, a man speaking of fire, and red mist.
He came back to himself on the gravel driveway outside the house, standing next to Ben Rider, his ears ringing, but with the certain knowledge that it was over.
All who knew the story of the fire were now dead.
Some secrets must never be told.
But in ridding himself of the Iraqis, he had dug a deeper hole than even he could escape. Aleksey acknowledged he could not lie his way entirely out of the fallout of this debacle.
Fortunately, Ibrahim’s death served two purposes—silenced him twice in a way. He could not now tell Ben about the fire, but equally, he could not tell anyone that the man in the great hall had actually been dead before he’d arrived.
Suddenly sure he could feel the speckles of the man’s blood on his face, the red mist slowly descending upon him, Aleksey put his fingertips to the dampness, but they came away clean.
He tipped his head back and realised it was snowing.
He’d been lucky, he knew this.
He had narrowly escaped being the man who’d had the heir to the British throne murdered. Frustrated, angry, Allouni’s thugs had amused themselves by abusingBen Rider’sbody. The vaunted SAS operative. They’d even shot poor Gussy’s finger off. But it could have been Philipa abused or murdered. It could even have been the little puncher.
He’d wanted a small personal problem taken care of, not World War Three.
So, yes, lucky.
But his cosy life as the owner of Barton Combe manor in Devonshire would not survive this night. Pity really. He’d miss the old place.
He cast a covert glance to Ben.
Ben was catching snowflakes on his tongue.
The universe didn’t give you second chances very often. He was alive, Ben was alive, and through these miracles, his path, perhaps, was being revealed.
