Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 122506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Fin settles back in his chair. “I’ll take that over ambivalence.”
My gaze dips to the remains of Fin’s dessert. I scoop my finger through the rich chocolate torte and bring it to my mouth. “I think I could cope with a gay husband if he made me food like this.”
“Is that my cue to take a culinary course?”
“Cute.” The word hits the air in a small huff as I dig in a second time. This time, when I look up, Fin’s gaze is dark. Hungry. And not for torte. Flustered, I reach for my champagne glass.
“It might be worth it,” he murmurs. “Watching you eat feels like a sexual experience.”
“That’s . . . weird.”
“Is it? I guess I just like to see you enjoying yourself.”
My body heats, flushed with pleasure. Yet I feel awkward and self-conscious at the same time. Not because he’s watching but maybe because he’s paying attention. Caring. The word whispers in my mind. Reaching for my champagne glass, I bring it to my lips. “Enough to let me marry a gay pastry chef?”
“We could just take him home?” Leaning back in his chair, he makes an expansive motion.
I pretend to consider it, tilting my head. Then I imagine Fin kissing another man. Hot or not? It’s hard to tell, given my brain seems to have made me the other man. “That sounds a bit kinky,” I find myself answering eventually.
Fin laughs. Smuttily.
“I meant I could employ him back in London. While I’d love to make all your fantasies come true, maybe we can table that one for a special date. Say, our thirtieth wedding anniversary.”
“Very funny.” But again, I’m pink with pleasure. The man is very practiced in his craft. And I need to remind myself of that. “I think I’d rather have cake than sex, anyway.” My hand flies to my mouth as I chuckle behind it. “Is there truth serum in this?”
“Not by that answer.”
“Shows what you know,” I retort smoothly.
“I know you like sex, same as I know you like cake. But it seems to me you enjoy one more over the other.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it, because last night doesn’t count.”
He slides me a doubtful look.
“Because I don’t remember.”
“Want a reminder? Right here? Right now?”
I pull a face. “Tempting, but I’m sure the sand would be uncomfortable.”
“Say the word, and I’ll carry you back to the suite.”
“You’d have a heart attack carrying me up all those stairs. I’ll just stick to cake, thanks.”
“And what about the closet?” he all but purrs.
“We didn’t have sex there.”
“And you didn’t enjoy it either.” He gestures to my glass. “That’s not truth serum.”
Just as well, not-Ronny whispers.
“But getting back to the other thing.” He leans a little closer across the table. “What the fuck.” His dark tone sends a beetle skittering down my spine. “He made you homeless?”
“I couldn’t afford the rent on my own.” Thanks to Trousseau’s downturn. “I didn’t know how he’d manage it either. Obviously, because I didn’t know he had another woman waiting in the wings.” Maybe I shouldn’t be telling him any of this. He’s not really my friend. I don’t want his pity, and I’m sick and tired of feeling like a blind idiot.
“What a fucking asshole.”
I startle as Fin sits suddenly forward but release a long breath when I realize he’s just topping up my glass. The angry look on his face is real enough, though.
“It’s not as though I found myself on a park bench or anything.”
“I’m gonna ruin him,” he says, leaning back in his chair.
I make a weird ha ha sound, because that’s just nonsensical. Even if he looks like he’s enjoying the prospect. “I just moved in with my grandmother.”
“Baba Roza, right?”
“Yes,” I say, slightly disconcerted. “How do you know?”
“You mentioned her name last night.” His expression doesn’t flicker. It doesn’t reveal a hint of what else I might’ve said. “You told me your father’s family is from Macedonia and that your mom’s people were from Cornwall.”
I nod, not sure what to say. This feels so unnatural. We’ve had sex; we’re married, even; but we barely know a thing about each other. Well, he seems to know a bit more about me. Did I tell him I had to put Baba in a care home? That guilt gnaws at my soul?
“I lost my parents when I was young,” he says. “We have that in common.”
I bite my tongue against asking if he’s reading my mind or my face. I bet his grandmother wasn’t almost sixty when she took over his care. Or an immigrant with an accent as thick as her saggy woolen stockings.
I used to feel deep embarrassment when she’d come to my school’s open evenings. Her headscarf would be fastened tight under her neck and her darned cardigan buttoned right under it. When times were tough, I wore shoes with tattered toes and cardboard-stuffed soles, and I felt ashamed. But Baba had a deep fear of the state, I now know. I’m sure we would’ve been entitled to government benefits, but she feared they might take me away. So we made do. I wore other children’s castoffs and would open my lunch box to cold toasted sandwiches filled with feta cheese and marinated bell peppers. Sounds quite bougie by today’s standards, but back then, all I wanted in the world was a little plastic pot of Kraft’s Lunchables.