Page 8 of Daddy's Christmas Elf
Grey started. They were already crossing the Thames at Vauxhall bridge, and they’d be in Stockwell within minutes. He’d been so caught up in memories, he’d not noticed the journey. Of course, Colin would need Eli’s address. Grey shook Eli’s arm to wake him. Eli looked around him, blinking as wakefulness came back to him.
“Oh. Right. We’re nearly there.” He leaned forward and gave Colin the address. A right turn, a left and a left again, and the car came to a stop in a small street lined with terraced houses. “Thanks, I appreciate the lift.”
Eli unbuckled his seatbelt, hesitating before he opened the car door.
“I was only going to borrow your coat because I was desperate, and I would’ve returned it, I swear. But I wouldn’t have taken it back to the hotel because I doubt you’d have seen it again. Hotels are terrible places for theft. I’d have found your work address and taken it there.”
Eli’s two-coloured eyes rested on Grey’s, the same proud tilt to his chin as earlier.
“I believe you.”
Eli smiled, and there was something bashful about it, and suddenly it was as though he was the teenager Grey had first mistaken him for.
“I never asked your name, did I?”
No.“Grey. Grey Gillespie.”
Eli’s brows lifted. “Grey? Were your parents stoned old hippies, too?”
Grey laughed, throwing his head back. Eli couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Anything but. One an accountant, the other a maths teacher.” Good people both, yet they could have done with more than a little hippy to warm their chilly blood.
Eli’s smile turned into a grin. “Goodnight, Grey. And thanks again. Happy Christmas.”
A second later, Eli was gone, and bounding towards a short set of steps leading to a front door.
“Home, Mr. Gillespie?”
“Yes, thank you Colin.”
The car glided away from the kerb, and Grey resisted the temptation to twist around and look out of the back window before the car turned a corner and they made for the main road and all points north of the river.
CHAPTERFIVE
“You have got to be joking. I don’t believe it, I don’t fucking believe it.”
Eli looked under the mat. He looked under the plant pots that framed the steps leading up to the front door. He looked under the gnome. Again. And then he did itagain.
The key. Where was the frigging key? But Eli knew, he just knew.
Lenny. It had to be. Benny wouldn’t have deliberately removed it. Or at least Eli didn’t think he would…
Ever since moving in, Lenny — Benny’s boyfriend — had been bitching about Eli and Benny’s habit of hiding a door key outside. Maybe keeping it under a bloody gnome wasn’t exactly smart thinking, but they’d never had any trouble during the two years Eli had been Benny’s lodger.
He wasn’t to know I’d get my stuff nicked…But what Lenny did know was that Eli had a habit of letting the front door slam shut, only then to remember he’d left his keys in his room. Or in the kitchen. Or the bathroom. It was why he and Benny had put a spare under the gnome in the first place, the gnome whose cheeky smile now looked like a smug leer.I might only be a cheap plaster gnome, but you’re a sad loser.
And that was exactly what he’d been today, a day when nothing had gone right. Well, one thing had, or kind of.
The lift home in the warm and comfy Jag, with the hot as fuck Grey Gillespie. Hot as fuck, in his dark suit that must have been made for him, as it showed off his broad shoulders and long, slim legs. But his luck had once again run its pathetic, short course as the car had slipped away and turned the corner, taking it and the very tasty Grey out of sight and out of his life.
Eli hammered at the door again, but it was pointless. Benny and Lenny, who were starting to sound less and less like a comedy duo, would be in Austria by now, getting pissed on glühwein and stuffing their faces with whatever you stuffed your face with in Austria. They were away for the whole festive season and when they got back, Benny would be expecting Eli to pack his bag, turning the little terraced house into a love nest for two instead of a gooseberry patch for three.
“Shit.”
Eli dropped to the step and let his head hang, wracking his brain for what to do next. He had nowhere to go. Family and friends, they weren’t anywhere nearby, and with no phone he couldn’t contact them in any case. He looked at the houses either side of the terrace. Like Benny’s place, they were in darkness, the owners finding someplace better than the small, tucked away South London street in which to spend the festive season.
There was only one thing he could do, and the second time he’d considered breaking the law within the last couple of hours. He’d have to smash a window and break in. Was it technically breaking in, if he lived in the house? Even if he wasn’t the owner? He didn’t know but what choice did he have?
