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Following that impulse, I lean forward and kiss his smiling mouth.
When I pull away, he raises his eyebrows slightly as if in question. I tap my lips with a finger. “Hopefully, I’ll catch some luck off you now.”
“Mm, that kiss wasn’t very lucky, I could tell. Here.” He presses a kiss to my mouth, a kiss that tastes soft and warm and sweet as sugar cookies. “Now you’ll definitely catch my luck.” Taking my hands in his, he kisses both of them. “Lucky hands, too.” He reaches up and kisses my eyelids. “Lucky eyes.”
I laugh and push him away. “Alright, alright, enough. You’ll have no luck left for yourself if you continue.”
He tilts his head. “You can give me some of it back if you wish.”
“No, Romeo, you’re not getting anything back.” I push myself away from the bannister and resume walking down the stairs, but Zachary stops me with a gentle hand on my arm.
“Theo.”
“Yes?”
“Come spend the holiday with me.”
My heart falters and stutters to a stop like a failing engine. My mind malfunctions: I stare at him with my mouth in an O, incapable of formulating a reply.
“Pardon?” I say finally, more to buy myself time than because I want him to repeat himself.
“Come spend the holiday at my house. My parents always have family and guests over and host those outrageous Christmas parties, so you wouldn’t be the only guest—and I think my parents would enjoy meeting you—even if they can be, well, excessive at times. And you can meet my little sister.”
“I—I wouldn’t want to impose,” I say, stealing the sentence straight out of my mother’s diplomatic phrase book.
“You could never impose,” Zachary says. “And in any case, I intend to take Mr Ambrose’s assignment very seriously, and for research purposes, it would be best if I didn’t have to be parted from you for the entirety of the holiday.”
“I’d have to ask my parents…” I say in a murmur.
The thought of it fills me with dread.
My father would probably rather hang me himself than let me spend the holiday at a boy’s house. On the other hand, Zachary isn’t my boyfriend, and his family is old, powerful and influential—the kind of family my father married into.
And if there’s one thing I know about my father, it’s that he never underestimates the importance of making friends in high places.
The reality is that the moment I stand in front of him to ask him, my words will crystallise like a marble egg in my throat, and I’ll choke on it before I can ever speak.
“What if we send an official invitation?” Zachary says. “From my parents, in their letterhead, to your house? Your parents might say no to you, but they might think twice before declining a Blackwood invitation.” He raises an eyebrow. “We could invite them too if you wish.”
“No.”
“No?”
I hesitate and then give him the most tactful version of the truth. “I need to work on Mr Ambrose’s assignment too, and… I could do it around you, but not around them.”
His expression changes almost imperceptibly.
A flash of something appears in his eyes—something that almost looks like pain—and disappears just as quickly. He watches me in silence for a while, searching my face with those clever eyes of his.
Finally, he nods. “I understand.”
It’s the simplest of replies, but it makes my throat so tight I can barely breathe. I feel like I just handed Zachary a tiny, delicate morsel of myself, a morsel I’ve never shared with anyone else before, never so much as revealed.
And Zachary just took the morsel and folded it away, in his careful, calm manner, and tucked it, safely and softly, right inside his heart.
Chapter 31
Black Doberman
