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“Hey, there’s the sea. Wow, your own beach.” Ben went immediately onto the sandy path that led to the cove and increased his speed.
“Perhaps we should turn back; we have come some way now.”
“Cool, it’s high tide.”
“Not quite yet. Another half an hour.”
“You come here a lot?”
Annoyed that this younger man could be so sharp when it suited him, Aleksey hesitated but explained reluctantly, “Yes, I ride here.” Trying not to give in to the temptation to roll his eyes when he saw a nose wrinkle of puzzlement, clarified, “Ahorse. I keep a horse here.”
Ben picked up a handful of golden grains and let them run through his fingers. “You keep a horse here? I thought you lived here.”
Fucking hell!“A mere slip of the tongue. Is that your English expression? I would hate to make such a linguistic mistake. Again.”
Ben nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I could always point it out for you, sir, if you did. I like to be helpful. When do I have to let you know, about the job?”
“You are considering taking it then?”
Ben pursed his lips, his concentration still fixed on Aleksey, although Aleksey was now squinting at the sunlight sparking on the waves and could only see this intense study out of the corner of his eye. “Yes, I think I am. Some of the things you’ve told me have been very interesting. Sir.”
An eyebrow raise slipped out from behind the mask before he had time to control his surprise. He didn’t think he’d told Ben Rider anything useful. It was one of his personal rules.
But then he realised that interesting and useful were not the same in English.
Or Russian, come to that.
* * *
Chapter 12
Six Months Before April
Catching Nikolas when he was being entirely normal wasn’t nearly as difficult these days as it once had been, Ben reflected. Sure, he didn’t approach him for anything important first thing in the morning; or while he was working in his study; or when he was hungry and pretending to everyone and himself he wasn’t; or when he was injured, which he frequently was after training with Squeezy; or when they had company and he reverted to the Nikolas of old; or when someone annoyed him excessively and Aleksey appeared briefly like the after-burn of lightning on the retina; but if Ben avoided all of these times, he could often catch a very amenable Nikolas—for pretty much anything.
One of the best times, other than the obvious one (when other distractions ruined the perfect opportunity to get his way), was when he was cooking and Nikolas was at the kitchen table…helping. With the alcohol.
That evening, just such a moment occurred. Ben was making dinner, trying something new that Mailer had recommended to him. He didn’t really appreciate recipe swapping, for all the very unpleasant feminine connotations this slightly furtive activity evoked, but he knew her heart was in the right place—where his was, coincidentally. Mailer had also noticed that Nikolas didn’t like eating and was, in her own way, trying to remedy this bizarre situation.
Pondering this new saffron fish pie concoction now, Ben murmured casually, “I’ve been thinking about the holiday…”
Nikolas immediately replied, “Good, interesting, so have I,” which told Ben he wasn’t listening.
Nikolas had his bare feet up on a spare chair. He was reading a novel, his glasses reflecting the LED lights from the counter area where Ben was cooking. He was already three-quarters of the way down a bottle of red and had another lined up ready to go. He’d been riding for over three hours and was now changed into a thick sweater and some old jeans. Radulf was sitting at his side, and Nikolas was idly fondling the old dog’s hairy ears as he read. If he had not known better, Ben would have claimed that Radulf was reading the book, too. Every so often a paw landed hard on Nikolas’s lap, there was a pause, Nikolas turned the page, the paw was removed. Fortunately, the cover (and presumably the rest of the novel), was in Russian. Ben was saved from incipient insanity: Radulf couldn’t read Russian.
Ben was stunned for a moment by the sense of extreme happiness that flooded him at the sight of the two of them. For all the years Ben had visited at Barton Combe, Nikolas had often been surrounded by dogs. Philipa kept an extensive pack both for pleasure and for her field sports. Four years, dogs at his feet, dogs sitting around him, dogs racing to him whenever they saw him, and Nikolas had never given one of them a glance or one moment of his time—when Ben was there observing him, anyway. But as the dogs had always waited for Nikolas, sat with him, and run to him whenever they spotted him, Ben now understood that, in private, Nikolas must always have treated those dogs as he treated Radulf now.
Possibly not allowing them to read his books with him though.
Ben chopped faster.
Should he permit himself such a moment of such extreme pleasure—this understanding that whatever good parts of his complex nature Nikolas had been hiding in the past were now allowed to flourish openly? That their relationship was the firm foundation giving Nikolas the confidence to just be himself?
The moment wasominousin its perfection.
He chopped harder.
Its very simplicity made it vulnerable.
