His laptop is open on the desk, and I find myself wondering what the Wi-Fi signal is like down here. Worse, I imagine. The room is old and full of brown cardboard boxes, the kind that holds box files full of documents. There’s no sitting area, tea sets, or whisky decanters down here, and I suddenly feel a little sad for him.
He swings back around in his chair the second I duck back around the doorframe.
Close call. But I can’t stay here, and as a roll of thunder sounds from outside, I’m not going back the other way, either.
I’ll count to thirty, then stamp my feet a little before appearing to move past the door. But before I get to fifteen, and Griffin sighs the kind of sigh that seems to bear the weight of the world in it, I realise I can’t go rushing past.
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and . . .
“Oh, Griffin! What are you doing down here?”
Sounds plausible enough, right?
“Jesus, Holly!” he says, lowering from about three foot above his chair. “You scared the living crap out of me!”
“I’m sorry,” I say—giggle—sounding not sorry at all. “I thought you must’ve heard me, all the noise I was making, whistling and humming as I skipped along the corridor.”
Overplaying it, maybe? Once a ham, always a ham.
“Fuck.” He presses a hand to his chest as though to reassure his frantic heart that all is well. There, there, little guy. “Never interrupt a man when he’s deep in contemplation.”
“No?” I ask doubtfully and with a hint of amusement.
“We’re gone.” He makes a shooing motion with the same hand. “Well, physically, we’re here, but mentally, we’re not at all.”
I don’t think I need convincing of that, I think tartly.
“So, where’d you go during this sacred contemplation?”
“To examine the cemetery of our fallen dreams. The dearth of our missed opportunities.”
I can literally feel my eyebrows coming off the top of my head. I’m being out-hammed.
“Really? Whenever I’ve asked a man what he was thinking, the answer has without exception been nothing.” The latter I add in a deep tone.
“That’s the answer we use when we’re thinking about fucking you.” His gaze roams over me suggestively. “Ask me what I’m thinking,” he adds. “Go on, I dare you.”
“Ha. No thanks!” I begin to turn, but the movement is almost one in slow motion as pieces of an unseen puzzle begin to fall into place.
Not Cameron. Not Cooper. Maybe Griffin?
Didn’t Alexander say he wanted me out of the reach of his brother originally?
He couldn’t stand the thought of us being together.
No, I couldn’t hurt him like that.
But maybe it wouldn’t hurt him.
Maybe it’d turn him off.
Make him despise me.
Yes, he would hate me. But taking me out of the equation, what would this do to them? I guess it’s not like I’d be ruining their relationship because they can barely stand each other as it is.
Barely stand might turn to hate.
But what other choice do I have?
I don’t know which part of me hurts more as I turn back to face Griffin.
My head. My heart. My stomach.
I watch as Griffin lifts his face expectantly. If I do this, there will be no going back.
“Do you think the castle has ghosts?” I find myself asking. Maybe I’m stalling for time. “I’m sure I heard a lot of moaning as I came along the hallway earlier.”
“There’s supposed to be,” he answers without a flicker of concern. “The punters love a good ghost story.”
“Huh.” I tilt my head. “I wonder what those noises were, then?”
“If you ask Isla or my brother, they’ll tell you it’s the twelfth duke haunting the place. They reckon the devil gives him a few hours off now and again for good behaviour. The way they describe him, I expect even Old Nick would find him an ordeal.”
The twelfth duke? Not “my father”? I shake my head and the distractions away.
What if Griffin doesn’t go for it?
I’ll make him think I heard more than I did because he wasn’t watching homemade porn. Or at least, that’s not all he was doing. Something is jangling chains down here, and it isn’t the twelfth duke of Dalforth’s ghost.
“I have”—either lost my mind or am truly a horrible person—“a proposition to put to you.”
“That sounds interesting.” Griffin lounges back in his chair with the satisfied air of someone who thinks they know what’s coming.
Foolish man. It’s so not going to be you. Unless you’re using your own hand. And if you are, I hope you have wipes. Those drapes look like they’ve been hanging there for half a century or more.
“I need you to pretend you’re interested in me.”
“Didn’t I make that clear on the bridge? Remember? You turned me down.”
“When you left me with that monster peacock,” I splutter.
“And offered you mine. What about that time in London,” he adds, hurrying on when I open my mouth to protest. “Standing out in the cold.” You mean when you didn’t offer me your jacket, I don’t add. “You’re the one who didn’t call.”
He is such a prick.
Maybe I should’ve mentioned the jacket after all. Unlike his brother, who—
Nope, that is not a helpful thought at all.
“The important word there was pretend.” My hand in the air, pinkie out, I make as though to drop the word between us.
“Why make-believe when the real thing is on offer?”
“Because I don’t want the real thing.” I fold my arms across my chest and lean my shoulder into the doorframe.
“You can come in. I won’t bite.”
“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.”
“Maybe this time you might be listening.”
“No, thank you, Griffin, I don’t want to come in. I don’t want to date you, and I’m not interested in a hookup. I have two weeks left in this place and I need you to . . . to . . .” How do I put this? I think, gazing past him to the darkening sky beyond the window.
I need you to be my shield?
If he was another kind of man, that might appeal to his sense of chivalry.
I need you to do me a favour?
Too ambiguous. Too many sexual connotations. Bleurgh.
“You’re trying to keep Alexander out of your knickers, aren’t you?” he says with a slow grin.
“Do you have to be so crass?”
“I don’t have to be,” he says with a shrug. “I just prefer it that way.”
Urgh. Do I really want to do this? What’s the saying? If you lay down with dogs, don’t be surprised if you get fleas.
But fleas can be squished. Poisoned. And I am pretty desperate.
“Why, I wonder?” Leaning forward in his chair, he presses his elbow to the desk, resting his chin on his hand. “Is the big Boy Scout just not doing it for you?”
“I just told you why. I’m leaving soon, and things are complicated.”
“It wouldn’t need to be complicated between you and me,” he replies suggestively.