Page 13 of Replay
Spook turned back to his pan to give it a stir.
“Is there a villain amongst your sisters?”she asked.
“What?No.No, they’re ordinary people.I love them.We just don’t have a lot of common ground anymore.”
“And you don’t spend much time in Sweden.”
He nodded.“And I don’t spend much time in Sweden.”
“You must have seen them more than normal last year though, right.You were there for months.”
He shrugged, muscles bunching under his T-shirt.“No, actually.Not at all.We barely left the island.”
“They didn’t visit you?”
He shook his head.
“Then it’s good you managed to see them recently.How are they doing?”
Spook paled to a similar shade of grey the London sky had been that afternoon.“I didn’t go.Didn’t see them.”
Back in Cannes, he’d been enthusiastic about seeing his plethora of nieces and nephews and being an ordinary uncle again.Alle sighed.No doubt this was another fatality of Marshall’s meddling.She was going to kick him so hard when she next saw him.How dare he wreck Spook’s life like this?
“Then I’m doubly sorry about last week and Marshall mucking everything up for you.”
“It’s okay.”
He said that, but she knew otherwise.She stewed over it as she sipped her wine and watched him cook.Visually, he wasn’t obvious chef material, but he tended the dish with an easy sort of confidence, similar to how he played guitar.Cooking was a comfort, she guessed.
Somehow her glass wound up empty by the time Spook set her on her feet for them to eat.She wobbled, a tiny bit tipsy, due to her empty stomach.Spook produced a couple of fold-out stools for them to perch on, and they used the end of the granite island as a table.
“This fricassee is awesome.Where’d you learn to cook?”
“Myfarmor.My grandmother,” he translated.“Don’t get too excited.I only know about five dishes.”
“Well this is still delicious.”
He beamed, lapping up the compliment.It was well earned.Afterwards, following a minor squabble over the dishes—he was adamant she wasn’t washing, and stuffed everything into a hidden dishwasher while she was attempting to locate some washing-up liquid—they relocated to the couch.
“Was it because of the arrest?”she asked, harkening back to their conversation about his sisters.
Spook gave a single swish of his long hair.“Yes and no.My travel wasn’t restricted or anything.I just… I couldn’t face it.You’ve siblings.You know what it’s like.The inevitable, interminable questions.”
She did know.In fact, she remained surprised that, of her four brothers, only Ewan had checked in to berate her over this new relationship.Then again, the other three hadn’t been home much ever since their dad was taken ill.She’d barely heard a whisper from Marshall, Flynn, or Theo in months.In Marshall’s case, that was a good thing.
Ewan, meanwhile, had maintained his grumpy disapproval for forty-eight hours, until he got distracted by a new assignment.Then he’d been far too busy gearing up for a trip to Madagascar to fret over her rock star drama.Following straight on from that, he was talking about another visit to the Svalbard Archipelago.Yay!The potential for further frostbite.This time, if he was careless with his appendages, he could hire a nurse to look after him.
“Alle, have your brothers been hassling you about me?”
She jolted, realising that she’d been deep in her own thoughts for some time.Then shook her head.That seemed to concern him in the way she’d have expected if she’d said they’d all yelled at her, but then he seemed to get jumpy every time she mentioned them.
“I don’t want to be a source of discord for you with your family.I got the impression you were close.”
“Not that close.Not really.And if there’s any discord, it’s Marshall’s doing, not yours.”
“I shouldn’t have hit him.”
“You should have hit him harder.”
