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"Yes. Very sad childhood," he grins, eyes still sparkling as ever.
"Good afternoon, sir," Kylian says coming up to us, and stretches his hand out to shake my dad’s hand.
"Oh Kylian, you're here. I would've made it a little later but sunset is coming earlier now and I didn’t want to waste the daylight."
Kylian hands him a wooden wine box. "It's a bottle of 1976 Penfold Grange Hermitage."
"Oh my. Kylian, what a special gift.” He runs his hand over the writing on the box, like it’s precious and rare.
"My brother, Damien, has a small boutique winery in Barossa Valley in South Australia. And his fiancée’s second cousin has a winery there too, Simpatico Winery, and they got together to win an auction with fifteen bottles of the Penfold's Grange Hermitage. I helped him with his fiancée once so he gave me this as a thank you. I thought you would enjoy it much more than I would.”
Kylian helps him pull the lid off and Dad's hand runs over the simple paper label, lost in his thoughts. This is a special bottle and I don't know how Kylian knows, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
"We drank this on our... My wife and I drank this on our…" Dad’s voice cracks and he stops.
"Honeymoon trip to Australia,” Kylian finishes, with a kind smile.
Dad beams and hugs the box to his chest. "Kylian, this is just… I don't know what to say."
"How about 'Kylian, I've opened a bottle of that Argetinian you like so much that I brought back from my last trip’?"
Dad laughs and carefully hands me the wooden box so I can put it on the table, and he hooks his hands through Kylian's arm. "Kylian, my dear boy, I’ve opened a bottle of that Argentinian wine you like so much."
Kylian pats my dad’s hand. "Wow, sir. That sounds absolutely perfect." He turns around and gives me a sneaky wink as they make their way out to the grill area.
“Charming fucker,” I whisper under my breath. If he can charm Dennis Yin then I had no chance. My dad was one of the fussiest people on the planet. If you did one thing he didn’t like, he would secretly hold it against you forever.
"Speak of the devil and the devil appears!" Nathan says, coming in from the garden, clicking a pair of tongs in his hand.
"What were you saying about me?"
"I didn't say anything. You said 'charming fucker', and voila, here I am!"
He comes over and give me a hug and I resist the urge to flip him onto his back, only because if he breaks a bone, I’d be the one expected to pick up the slack in his life and that was a ‘no deal’ for me.
"You're late,” he says after we pull away from the hug.
"Nice to see you, too."
He waves the BBQ tongs in the air like it’s a sword and he’s fighting a dragon for ancient scrolls. He flips in the air and lands with a flourish, raising his eyebrows at me, as if I should be impressed. I’m not. I’ve seen him flip, tumble, jump off a roof and break his wrist enough times to not be impressed by his tong taekwondo. "How did you get here?" he asks when he sees he’s not going to get applause from me.
"Um, Kylian gave me a ride.” I try to keep my voice as light as I can, which isn’t easy when it comes to talking about Kylian.
Nathan eyebrows flick upwards.
"What?” I snap defensively. “We were talking about work and then he said he might as well give me a ride."
He flicks his eyes to my torso and then back at me. “Whose jacket is that?”
We both know exactly whose it is. It’s the jacket that Kylian covered me with that first night in the car when I was cold. I had been wearing it since the day, and the only indication that he even noticed was the other morning, he’d raised his eyebrow when he saw me pull it off the back of the chair and take it with me.
"Kiara."
"Nathan…”
"Be careful."
"And what am I supposed to be careful about?”
