Page 23 of Enticement
“Don’t do anything stupid, Kit.”
“You mean stupider than I have already.”
“Don’t—”
“Like falling in love with you?” Kit said, cutting Ross off.
Ross’s mouth dropped open. He closed it, only for it to fall open again. “You’re not.”
Kit looked him right in the eyes and let his expression convey his emotions. Not simple desire, but whole-sale longing, of the type that bordered on full scale obsession. Ross found it hard to look at him and keep a neutral visage. Fuck! Kit had been pushing for picking things up from where they’d left off, but he’d never realized his feelings ran that deep.
Sweat began to pepper his brow, his temperature spiralling out of control more fiercely now than it had while Kit had been sucking him.
Maybe, he had known it all along, but confronting that sort of thing head on—Fuck, he didn’t know what to say. He gulped. “Fuck, Kit! Are you serious?”
“Of course… I’m not.” Kit gave a little burst of laughter, just enough to clear the worst of the tension between them, but not enough to entirely dispel the notion that what he’d said might actually be true. Of course it was true. It was bloody obvious. The bond between them ran far deeper than simple friendship, always had, and physically, it was hard sometimes not to just give in and stuff the consequences. Just because they’d never mentioned love before didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
It was there. Shit, if he didn’t feel it writhing about like a maggot in his guts, making every interaction between them a challenge in self restraint. He wasn’t about to make a confession though. “You know I’m with Evie,” he said instead.
Kit saluted him. “I know it, and I won’t screw it up for you.”
Nevertheless, something about that promise niggled.
Ross sat down and pressed his thumbs into his eye sockets once Kit had left the consultation room. Shit! Today really wasn’t shaping up so well. Nervous jitters were playing havoc with his insides, and he had to trust that whoever had taken that pot shot at Kit didn’t try anything else, particularly while he was with Evie. To top that, he’d swear Kit had something major up his sleeve, as if that confession hadn’t been movement enough on the Richter scale.
Iris came in, her face crumpled into a sour expression. “I can’t believe you’re sending him over to Evie. Is that safe?” she asked in a fashion that plainly said she didn’t think it was. “You know what happened before.”
“Nothing—nothing happened before. Kit never did a thing.”
The fact that he’d been with Kit at the time in question made that obvious, but even without that, he trusted his guts on this one, and they said Kit was clean. He was no killer.
“Evie Latham! What’s this about you and a houseguest?”
“Huh?” Evie looked up from the chart she’d been doodling on for the last two hours as she tried to predict what would sell over the coming month, to find Lillianna Stainbrook stretching over the counter towards her with one pencil-thin eyebrow raised. Once a dedicated goth chic, Lillianna had recently thrown out the porcelain-white and boxes of black hair dye in favour of a flame-haired temptress look. The result was a clash between Bette Midler and an orangutan as frizzy red curls stuck out from her head at alarming angles.
“Spill!” she demanded, slapping her palm down on top of Evie’s order form, which successfully prevented Evie from resuming her naughty stick figure drawing of a girl going at it with two guys. Evie dropped a napkin over the sketch and smiled sweetly at Lillianna.
“They’re nice.” She grabbed her friend’s outstretched hand in order to examine her new acrylic fingernails. Truthfully, the gold and red looked rather grotesque against the black base, rather like someone had had a nosebleed over her nails, but humouring Lillianna was the easiest way to distract her from latching onto the subject of Kit. Evie didn’t want to discuss Kit. She’d hardly mentioned him to Ross all week, and it had been a relief to find he wasn’t constantly around cramping their style. Mostly he came home to eat and sleep, and sometimes he skipped the food part.
“Ooh! Do you think so?” Lillianna cooed, now waggling her fingers as if she was showing off a fifty carat diamond, not a few bits of airbrushed plastic. “Molly did them. She’s set herself up in her conservatory, and in exchange for being her practice dummy, she’s going to do them for me once a week for the bargain price of a tenner. These babies would normally cost me fifty.”
“Wow.”
Lillianna’s brows both shot into her hairline. “Not just wow, Evie. It’s an absolute steal, especially as she lives right next door to Kirkley’s most eligible bachelors, Jason and Saul.” She swooned a little and rested her head in her palm.
“Aren’t they gay?”
“No.” She perked up again immediately, staring Evie straight in the eyes, before adding in a breathless, rather childish voice. “You can see right into their place from the manicure chair. Wednesday nights, six o’clock prompt. It’s wild, I tell ya.” She clapped her hands. “But see, we’re getting sidetracked. You were going to tell me all about your new lodger, before I tell you what the boys get up to.”
Evie nonchalantly tapped the end of her biro to her lip. “How many scones do you think we need for next week?”
“Hot is he?” Lillianna shrewdly remarked. “You wouldn’t clam up if he wasn’t. So give me a rating. Ross being a six and Jason and Saul, nines.”
“Um, twelve,” muttered Evie. Six wasn’t a very fair score for Ross, but they’d been over her boyfriend’s merits in the past, and actually it was a relief to know Lilli’s interests didn’t stray too far in that direction. Kit was a different matter, being neither Evie’s to defend, or anything less than pure raw sexiness. The fact was, rather than dim her interest, Kit’s long absences during the week had made her increasingly aware of him, so that she’d actually started looking forward to and anticipating his appearances. Annoyingly, the kitten had taken to him in much the same way, only the cat got to curl up on Kit’s lap and purr in a smugly contented fashion. More irritating still, she’d started to respond to Kit’s name for her—Mimmy.
“Evie.” Lillianna poked a fingernail into the back of Evie’s hand, making her squawk. “Seriously, you need to qualify a twelve. Nobody rates a twelve. Not even Bauhaus’s Pete Murphy.”
“Kit does,” she said absently and immediately regretted imparting his name when Lilli’s face filled with wonderment.
