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Four hours later Grant was called into Cecil’s office. Lisa seemed to be avoiding him today, as the summons came from the man himself over the intercom. And he didn’t sound happy.
Christ. Had he somehow found out that Grant had spent the night with Dare? No, he couldn’t have. Grant might feel like the whole world could tell it from his face, but when he glanced at his reflection in the windows dividing the boardroom from the corridor, he looked just the same as always.
He just felt different inside.
But it turned out Cecil didn’t have anything to say about Dare. Instead, he was poring over the blueprints for the Lansdown Development—a block of luxury flats and exclusive retail premises they were building in the centre of Bath. “Grant, I’m going to need you to head over to Bath,” Cecil said without even looking up from the plans. “I’ve just had the site foreman on the phone. He’s had a visit from English Heritage this morning, and there’s some kind of issue with the sewerage connections. I didn’t understand half of what the man was saying—awfully thick accent he has when he’s agitated—but it sounds serious. I need someone with your negotiation skills to smooth things over.”
Grant looked at where Cecil was tracing the underground schematics with his fingertips. Although neither of them were architects, Grant knew his way around a blueprint as well as his boss did, and as far as he could tell, everything looked perfectly reasonable.
Then again, building in a world heritage city with its layers and layers of underground cellars and ruins came with a unique set of rules and regulations. He’d never had to deal with English Heritage getting involved, though. “I’ll head over right away. Probably easier to work out what’s going on in person than over the phone.”
“You do that.” Cecil paused and then slammed his hand down on the tabletop. “Damn it, I knew we might get trouble with this one, seeing as how we outbid the mayor’s son for the project, but I wasn’t expecting it so soon. I thought they’d start getting picky when it came to all the finishing touches. If they’re going to pick holes at this stage, we could be in for an expensive build.”
“I’ll sort it out. Don’t worry. It’s probably not as bad as Piotr made it sound.” Their Polish foreman was an incredibly gifted builder and knew how to run a site efficiently, but he did have a tendency to over-dramatise. Hopefully this would be something relatively simple to solve.
Two hours later Grant was beginning to wish for the naive optimism of his morning. And for a pair of decent work boots and sturdy trousers like Dare always wore. His hard hat was chafing his ears, his feet were freezing, and his suit was probably completely ruined after spending the last hour wading around in the Roman ruins their foundation excavations had exposed. The man from English Heritage was droning on about it being a site of historic interest, but all Grant could see was a set of low, crumbling stone walls, ankle-deep in icy water. That and all the idle workmen just sitting around above them, being paid for doing bugger all. Cecil would not be happy.
“But this whole city is built on Roman ruins,” Grant argued. “What makes this so special that we have to stop work? Can’t we just take some photos, reseal it and preserve everything for future archaeologists?” That was the usual procedure. The site had to be very special indeed to stop the onward thrust of progress.
“You don’t understand. Look at what we found over here. Coins. Thousands of them.”
Grant stared down at the watery pit full of tarnished, muddy coins. “So? You found some rich person’s stash.”
“Hardly. This has all the hallmarks of a sacred spring, and I think these are votive offerings. If so, we might be standing on the site of a previously undiscovered temple. I don’t think you understand what that means. This is huge. The biggest archeological find here in decades. I’ve called in a team of experts to check it out. They should be here in a couple of hours.”
Half an hour later, Grant tugged off his hard hat, threw it onto the site office’s desk and called Cecil. “We might have to postpone work for a few weeks,” he said before Cecil had a chance to chime in. “Turns out it’s a site of significant historical interest, and they’re insisting on a chance to do at least some rudimentary archaeological digging before we can build. Looks like they’ll be working around the clock too, trying to find something that means they can stop the development altogether and turn it into another tourist attraction.”
Cecil was not happy. And even worse, he insisted on Grant staying in Bath to oversee everything. “Make sure they don’t drag things out or plant false evidence. They’ll feel the pressure with you breathing down their necks.”
“But what about things in Bristol? The scrap yard buyout?”
“That can stay on the back burner. It’ll still be there when you get back, if this Mr. Nelson is as stubborn as you say.”
Grant hung up with a heavy heart. He should have been glad of the heat being taken off him in that respect, but the prospect of having to work eighteen-hour days out here in Bath, miles away from Dare, wasn’t an appealing one. Especially when you added the wading around in freezing mud into the equation.
First things first, he had to go and buy himself some proper site clothes. And a comfortable hard hat. Surely they sold a deluxe model somewhere? Grant sat himself down at the foreman’s computer and got googling.
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THERE WAS SOMETHING about watching Jase shovel in a forkful of chicken, spuds and carrots that made Dare grin. Sunday lunches had become so much more lively with Rain around. Dare had to hand it to her, she might be a junkie and he knew they were both still using, but she was way more positive than Jase. And Jase was better around her too. Like she lit him up inside, or something. It reminded Dare of the way Perry was now he had Mas in his life. Or Brandon when he was talking about Jos.
Perhaps it really was true love after all.
“More roasties?” Dare offered. One thing he’d discovered with the two of them was that love seemed to increase your appetite. Funny, that, because his own was dwindling. At least that proved he definitely wasn’t in love with Grant, though, because that would be a real fucking disaster. The two of them couldn’t manage to spend more than a couple of hours in each other’s company without it all going pear-shaped. And clearly Grant was ashamed to be seen with the likes of Dare.
“What’s up with you?” Rain asked him. “Don’t you want your chicken or something?”
Dare realised he’d just been pushing the meat around his plate for the last few minutes. “Nah, I had a big breakfast,” he lied. “Do you want it?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Rain swooped in with her fork and nabbed it straight off his plate. Her table manners might be pretty terrible, but for a skinny thing, she sure could pack away the grub.
“Hey, what if I wanted seconds?” Jase protested.
“Fight you for it,” Rain said before putting a large chunk of chicken between her teeth and leaning towards him.
“Oh no, I’m not sitting here watching you two reenact scenes from Lady and the Tramp.” Dare stood with his plate and headed over to the sink. He could start the washing up while the two lovebirds did their thing. He drowned out their murmuring by stacking dishes.
“Hey, what’s up with you?” Jase asked. “Someone piss in your cornflakes?”
“Sadly, I ate breakfast alone.” Dare turned the hot water on in an attempt to drown out further conversation. But Jase didn’t take the hint. He came and stood right by Dare, and even picked up a tea towel. “Bleedin’ hell, you know if you pick that thing up, you have to use it?”
“Yep,” said Rain from his other side. “And I’m going to wash up while you make us all a cuppa, and then we’re going to sit down and you’re going to spill the beans about what’s eating you. All right?”
It was very far from all right, but then again, this was the first time Dare had ever seen Jase lift a finger to do any housework without having to be nagged. Dazed, he turned to the kettle and followed orders.
Ten minutes later, they were all sitting around the kitchen table with mugs of steaming tea in their hands.
“Needs more sugar,” Jase muttered and got up for the sugar packet.
“I already put in four,” Dare protested. For some reason, heroin seemed to turn people into sugar junkies too. Rain was just as bad, and she shovelled in another couple of spoons from the packet Jase brought over.
“Come on, then,” Rain said when she’d taken a sip of liquid sugar. “What’s going on? You got man trouble or something? My mate Chards, she always has that face on when it’s a bloke.”
Dare stared at his tea. “I wouldn’t exactly call it man trouble. It’s not like we’re in a relationship or anything.”
“Ooh, but you want to be!”
Did she have to sound so thrilled about it? Dare scowled. “Not exactly. I mean, not a relationship like you two have got. I don’t want to live in his pockets and do all that soppy shit couples do. But a regular arrangement would be nice. You know, a bloke needs to get his end away pretty regularly if he’s not going to go loopy.”
Jase made a sound of agreement, but Rain frowned. “So this is just a sex thing? Can’t you just pick anyone up if that’s all you’re after? Anyway, I thought you gay blokes had sites for hooking up and stuff. You know, on the Internet. What’s that thing? Grindr?”
“Yeah, we do, but I’ve been there, done that. You can end up shagging some total arseholes if you just go by their profiles.”
“I thought that’s what it was all about,” Jase sniggered. “You know, shagging arseholes.” He made an obscene hand gesture, just in case Dare hadn’t caught the lame joke.
“Har-bleedin’-har. You know what I mean. But Grant, he’s a decent enough bloke. I actually like spending time with him. And he’s fucking gorgeous too, like a movie star or something. But seriously, we’ve got just about nothing in common, and it’s not like we ever go out anywhere together.” And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Grant didn’t actually want to be seen with him.
“So what’s the problem?” Rain prodded.
“The problem is, he’s this high-powered property developer or something, and he doesn’t want anyone else finding out about the two of us. He just comes sneaking round in the dark when he’s drunk and horny.” Dare probably wasn’t being entirely fair to Grant, but it was clear the bloke wanted to keep Dare completely separate from the rest of his life.
“Have you let him know how you feel?” Rain asked. “Jase gave me the impression you kinda liked to keep things that way. You know, that you weren’t after a boyfriend. Maybe he doesn’t realise.”
She might have a point, but still... “I used to be like that. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting old or something, but it seems like everyone’s shacking up on me now. Even all the gay blokes. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of them start getting married soon.”
“Aww! Your brother wants to get married,” Rain sing-songed to Jase.
“Shut up. I don’t want to get hitched. I just... I keep thinking it might be nice to have something more with someone. You know, I’m not looking to move in with Grant or anything. And it doesn’t need to be exclusive on his side if he’s not into that. And maybe it doesn’t even have to be him. I just want the chance to get to be with someone over the longer term. Get to know them properly. To have someone make a fuss of me on my birthday and shit. And to do the same for them.” As he spoke, feelings that had been swimming around inside him for some time started to slot into place. Bleedin’ hell, he really was ready for this now, wasn’t he? Scary stuff.
“And you really haven’t mentioned any of this to him?” Rain demanded. “Coz I’ve gotta tell you, in my experience, blokes aren’t very good at picking up on all that kind of thing if you don’t spell it out for them. He might be well up for it if you just let him know. Has he had long-term relationships before?”
“That’s kind of the problem. He’s in the middle of a messy divorce. He’s got kids and everything.”
“What, married to a woman or a man?” Jase and Rain were both leaning over the table now, like this was the most interesting thing they’d heard in ages. Crap.
“A woman. And yeah, before you ask, he’s not even out yet. Not at work, anyway. I don’t want to go forcing any of my shit onto him when he’s got his own going on. Nah, I’ll just have to wait. Hope he gets back in touch soon.”
“You could try phoning him,” Rain said.
“No way. I don't want to go looking all needy and shit.” Rain was giving him a pitying look, so Dare steered the conversation onto something more comfortable. “Hey, I just remembered, I’ve got something in here you might both enjoy.” He reached under the table to his rucksack and pulled out the box he’d bought from Mas’s shop. “You remember this game, Jase?”
“Oh my God, Kerplunk! I used to totally thrash you at Kerplunk.” Jase’s eyes were shining.
“Fibber.” Dare thought about it. “Okay, so maybe you did beat me a few times, but not every time.”
“Yeah, and I was five years younger than you. Face it, bro. You were outclassed. And you still are.”
Rain was looking between the two of them, a fond smile on her face.
“That’s tough talking,” Dare said. “Care to make things interesting?”
“I haven’t got any money,” Jase said.
“I’m not talking about money. We could gamble chores. Best of five games. The loser has to clean this kitchen properly. It’s fucking minging.”
“You’re on.” Jase reached across the table, and they shook on it. “Fancy joining us, hon?”
“Nah, I’ll just watch for now,” Rain said.
Half an hour later, they were all laughing, and Jase had admitted defeat. “Not fair,” he protested. “You’ve been practising.”
“I haven’t, but I’ll even things up for next time. I’ll leave it here for you to practice on. It won’t go missing if I leave it here, will it?”
“We’re not having parties anymore, if that’s what you’re getting at.” That was Jase, sounding defensive. But his face softened. “Don’t need ’em now. What with Rain around, I don’t get lonely anymore.”
Dare’s heart gave a sick little pang—you need someone like that, it seemed to be telling him—but he grinned at the two of them. “So, next week you’ll not only both be Kerplunk masters, but the kitchen will be gleaming.”
“I’ll make sure it happens,” Rain assured him.
Dare even believed her. It was a pity he didn’t feel so optimistic about the prospect of Grant getting back in touch.
Maybe he needed to take Brandon up on that offer of a double date, provided Brandon could supply him with a bloke. Shame the very idea filled him with horror.