Page 70 of Just Like You
“Julian, how many times in your career have you met someone and instantly felt a connection? Deep in your soul? I meet hundreds of people every week, through work. Meetings, new clients, potential clients. PAs…even the office cleaners change on the daily. I don’t go asking them to marry me, because…that connection is simply not there. But with you? You stared me down that very first time I laid eyes on you. I don’t remember you from getting on the aircraft, I think I ranted at some other lad at the boarding door, but then you came down and talked to me, and I just… I couldn’t not feel it. Something, deep in my chest. You. You were right there.”
“I was.” Damn it. Taking the words straight out of my mouth. Sonny would bloody kill me.
“I don’t think I care what other people think.” He rose up and looked at me. Straight in the eye.
“I don’t either. Because there is nobody else that matters here. Just you and me.”
Funny how those words felt right. Coming out of my mouth with such ease and confidence.
“You and me.” He smiled. His eyes all crinkly and light. “You and me.”
“So, is that a yes to my very…weird marriage proposal?”
“Ask me again,” he whispered. “I’ve always wanted someone to ask.”
“Kieron, you absolute idiot, will you come to Vegas with me and get married? Come back with rings on our fingers?”
“Julian.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course I bloody will. Nothing else I’d rather do.”
“I’m not giving up my house.”
“Neither am I. It will still work. We’ll just move around.”
“Get Gina to drive us.”
“I have a car. I own a kick-ass Audi.”
“I have a clapped-out Skoda.”
“Lovely. Love a Skoda. Good car.”
“You hate driving.”
“I have no idea where Farnborough is. But I will learn to love it.”
“You will because you and your fancy arse Audi now live there.”
“Oh, and you live in a nice two-up two-down in Highgate. You’d better get used to it. It’s actually handy. Around ten minutes to the nearest tube and then you can change and take the Heathrow Express out to the airport. I usually do. Handy.”
“Handy indeed. So I now have my own personal Central London crash pad?”
“It’s Highgate, not quite Oxford Street.”
“Don’t care. You’re there, so I’ll love it.”
“Of course you will.”
Then he kissed me. Turned me over and spooned me, his arms so tightly wrapped around me that I thought he might accidentally suffocate me in my sleep.
I would have taken it. Because he loved me. And on that note?
I fell asleep.
I hate it when you don’t talk to me. But I suppose you’re with that man of yours, getting a good seeing to. I love that you’ve found someone. I’m actually jealous. Be happy, my friend. You deserve it. And bloody ring me when you get back!
Chapter Twenty
Kieron
