by Clare London
Surprising Tate again, Alex looked almost shifty. “Whatever. I’m looking forward to it. Lead the way!”
Things went from the sublime to the ridiculous. The bus journey to the store was interesting, to say the least. After years of the same route to work, Tate knew how to push through to the back to find a spare seat, when to move toward the exit in time for his stop, and when to lean to one side as the bus took the sharp bend around the clock tower a little too fast.
But Alex? The whole thing seemed to be an alien experience for him, as if he really had taken cabs all his life. Who could afford to do that? Within seconds of climbing aboard, Alex infuriated the whole queue when he had no travel pass or debit card—Tate finally paid for him—and almost fell over a double buggy, parked awkwardly in the designated area. When the bus lurched, Alex lurched too, with such a look of shocked disgust and his glasses hanging loose from one ear that Tate laughed aloud. And when it came to jump off at the supermarket, Alex would still have been on the bus if Tate hadn’t hauled him off by the sleeve. It was almost as if Alex were waiting for someone to call him personally to the exit. Probably expected them to hold it open for him too, because he only just managed to yank his ankle out of the way of the automatic doors.
In the supermarket, Alex continued to chat along, and Tate found he actually enjoyed the company. He shopped with the kids sometimes—and Gran, if he couldn’t avoid it, because she could be more of a liability than a help, often wandering off to the cake aisle—but it wasn’t the same as having another similar-aged adult around. And Alex was extremely entertaining, though maybe not intentionally so.
“Let me take half the list,” he’d said to Tate as soon as they arrived. “Or give me a couple of items to find.”
It was like he’d found a whole new game. Tate had genuinely never known anyone with such a cheerful attitude when faced with fighting for the last family-sized chicken pie in crushed cardboard packaging. Funny thing was, he found himself playing along as they trudged up and down the aisles. And smiling more than he could remember for ages.
It was soon obvious that Alex had no idea of how similar foods were displayed together, or that there was a wide choice of brands. He was also crap at steering a shopping cart—he kept forgetting it was there, darting off to look at something on a top shelf or chatting to one of the assistants, or forgetting it turned on four wheels and couldn’t spin around on a fixed spot. Admittedly, his apparent clumsiness meant he nudged against Tate almost every few minutes. The touch was both startling and fun. Tate started to wonder if Alex were actually that crap at driving at all.
They paused a few times, chatting aimlessly about the job at Bonfils. Tate found it a great relief. Yes, a lover outside the company was good for broadening his horizons, offering other points of view and life experiences. But a guy who knew where Tate worked and had some idea what the working day looked like? Tate could appreciate that.
A lover? Jesus, where was his mind leading him? Or rather, his other head.
“What’s amusing you now?” Alex’s curious voice broke in over the piped music wafting through the freezer section.
Tate tried desperately not to blush. “Um. The price of frozen sausages.” They were Amy’s favorite.
“What do you mean, the price?” Alex peered at the display cabinet where Tate had paused. “Where’s that?”
Tate stared at him. “Are you having problems with your sight?”
“What?” Alex looked confused, then reached for his glasses as if he’d forgotten they were there. “Oh. These are just for… um.” He folded them and shoved them in his jeans pocket. “I don’t really need them. You know.”
No, I don’t. But Tate pointed at the price tag on the shelf.
“Oh. Yes, I see. That seems ludicrously cheap. Are you sure they’re safe to eat? You should check first with the butcher.”
Where on earth had Alex been shopping before? He didn’t seem to realize how odd his behavior was. What other grocery store showed prices in any other way?
“What’s next on the list?” Alex asked blithely. “I found you the tea.” He held out an embossed tin almost proudly.
Tate shook his head. “That’s the most expensive brand, Alex. And what’s it blended with?”
Alex looked at him blankly, then turned the tin over. “Ginseng. Lime leaves. I’ve had this before and it’s gloriously aromatic.”
“I’m sure it is. And three times the price of the plain supermarket version. Gran likes the generic breakfast tea bags.”
No doubt about it—Alex paled. “Bags?”
Tate laughed. “Yeah. You look like I asked you to eat a baby’s head. It’s a perfectly good option. And safer for Gran, whose hands can’t always grip a spoon very well.”
“Oh.” Alex frowned, as if he’d never had to think of that before. “Is she ill?”
Tate drew a deep breath. “Just arthritis. But bright as a button still.” He didn’t often talk about Gran to people. “Um. Don’t tell her I said that about her hands. She doesn’t like admitting it. Well, if you ever meet her, that is. Which is, you know. Unlikely, I expect.”
“I don’t know about that,” Alex said.
“You—? What?”
“You’ll need help with all this on the bus.” Alex said the last word like it was a bizarre spaceship of some kind and piloted by a hostile nation to boot. He reached across Tate to pull a packet of sausages out of the cabinet, his forearm brushing against Tate’s. His skin was warm, set against the chill from the open door. Tate felt the contrast all the way to his neck and throat, a trickle of goose bumps along his flesh.
“Oh,” Alex said very softly. Had he felt something too?
Tate stilled for a long moment, unable to respond. He could only watch as Alex gave him a mock salute and abruptly wheeled away with the cart. He didn’t look back at Tate, but Tate was vividly aware of every single goose bump as it gradually faded. Only then did he feel braced enough to set off after his loose-cannon companion.
Lou was right—he really did need to get out more.
THE minute Tate opened the front door to his family home, his hectic household greeted him in its usual fashion. Someone was singing a Beyoncé hit at painfully top volume, crockery clattered in a clumsy spin on the distant kitchen table, and Freddie started barking from the front room, as if he only just realized he was meant to be guarding the house from intruders. Young footsteps thundered along the hallway toward Tate, as the children appeared from the kitchen.
“Tate! Tate!”
“Did you remember the sausages?”
“Sausages! I want sausages!”
“Hattie won’t share the laptop. Make her, Tate!”
“Hugo’s a liar, liar, pants on fire.”
Tate felt Alex tense up beside him, shortly before Amy hurtled into view and, without any break in momentum, threw herself at Alex’s legs.
Tate raised his voice to be heard over the ruckus. “Let me get in the house without you yelling, kids. Hattie, Hugo, help with the shopping bags. Amy, leave Alex alone.”
“Alex, Alex,” Amy chanted into Alex’s denim-clad leg.
“Who’s Alex?” Hattie said.
“Is he your boyfriend?” Hugo challenged.
“Can he be my boyfriend?” Amy whined.
Tate groaned inwardly. Alex had stood stock-still beside him while all this was going on—an explosion of kids, four-way conversations, and—oh, God take me now—here was Gran tottering down the hallway with a plastic spatula in her hand and sporting a bright yellow kid’s apron, covered with red stains that Tate hoped weren’t blood but would need to check to be sure.
“You missed dinner I’m afraid, Tate. I was trying out a new Moroccan recipe, too.” Gran grinned rather mischievously. “But don’t worry, I left some in the fridge for you for later.”
Tate opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again when words failed him.
Beside him, Alex tentatively moved his legs, but Amy clung tight. “Good God
,” he said weakly. “Are you running a school?”
Tate winced. “This is my family. There’s my gran. Hattie and Hugo are the twins—”
“I can see,” Alex said drily. “They’re wearing the same clothes.” He peered at the H’s. “Don’t they have any sense of personal identity at that age?”
“I wanna wear a pink skirt,” Hugo said loudly, with a triumphant glare at Tate. “But Tate won’t let me.”
Alex raised his eyebrows and turned to Tate. “I don’t know for certain your personal situation, but surely you wouldn’t prevent him expressing whatever he wants—”
“You misunderstand,” Tate said grimly. “It’s got nothing to do with gender stereotypes.”
“It’s ’cos of me,” Hattie chimed in loudly and gleefully. “Pink makes me sick.”
Tate sighed. “You just don’t like it, Hattie. You make yourself sick. Deliberately.”
“And you’re not the one wearing it,” Hugo snapped at her.
“Wear it and I’ll vomit in your lap!” she snapped back.
Alex blinked hard.
“They like to bicker,” Tate, frowning, explained to him. “That’s the only explanation I have for them not murdering each other by now.” He grasped an arm from each twin and marched them in front of him into the kitchen. “Punishment for disgraceful behavior and talk of vomiting? Unpack the shopping for me, and then wash up after Gran’s cooking.” Their aghast expressions were enough to make him smile again. Gran could be trusted to make a meal, albeit a bit wacky on the ingredients, but the mess she made of every saucepan and utensil was legendary.
Then he turned back to see Alex still frozen in the hallway. God, the embarrassment! Yet another reason why Tate rarely dated.
“Sorry,” he said, quickly sidling in front of Gran who was now a foot away from Alex, peering up at his face with undisguised interest, and waving the bloody spoon—surely it was only tomato sauce?—a dripping inch from Alex’s smart shirt. “Um. Thanks for the help with the shopping. You’ll want to get off home now.”
“I will?” Alex tilted his head. Just slightly, but in some unfair way he looked even sexier. His smile seemed genuine, though his expression was definitely puzzled.
“The kids,” Tate said, and threw his arms wide as if that was surely enough excuse. “Evenings are a noisy, frantic time for us, what with meals, and the excitement of all being together again after the day at school and at work—”
“Where’s home, Alex?” Gran suddenly seemed to remember the spoon in her hand and licked the end of it experimentally.
“Oh, just a local budget hotel. The Crown.”
“Budget? Hardly.” Gran raised her eyebrows. “I’d say it’s very smart.”
“Is it?” Alex looked pained, as if he’d messed up with something.
“Gran,” Tate muttered. “Alex only helped me with the shopping. Can you leave me to have a quiet word with him?”
Gran’s smile at Alex turned to a frown when she faced Tate, but she sighed theatrically, wiped the spoon on her already stained apron, and pottered away into the living room.
Tate sighed. He could feel Alex’s intense gaze on him, and he had an overwhelming desire to smooth down his hair. “Well. I have lots to do, so this isn’t really a good time to… you know.”
That tilt of Alex’s head again, and the smile grew.
“Chat, I mean,” Tate added desperately. “Relax. Whatever. I need to make the meal plan for the week ahead, the H’s will need to finish homework, and Amy needs a bath and a bedtime story—”
“Story! Story!” The limpet on Alex’s leg that was Amy piped up happily. “I want Alex to read to me.”
Freddie gave a muted bark in the background; Gran was probably tickling him. Tate wondered if his family actually had a Grand Plan for whenever they saw their brother/grandson with a potential date, involving a whole bunch of devious ways of making him feel the most uncomfortable. “Amy, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not rickerless.” She let go of Alex, and sat back on her heels, gazing up at him with soulful eyes. “Do you have a dog?”
Alex blinked hard. “A dog? No, I don’t. Not at the moment, anyway.”
“They can host billi-virus, y’know. It will kill the whales.”
“No, I didn’t know,” Alex said. Tate was secretly impressed with how calm he was under Amy’s questioning. Her thirst for knowledge meant she was often super-precociously blunt. “Is billi—what you call it—common in the UK? I wonder how frequently a British pet dog may meet a whale to pass on the infection.”
“It’s morbillivirus,” came Gran’s voice from the living room. “She’s investigating whale diseases now.”
Amy’s expression lit up at Alex. “We could ’vestigate them together!”
Tate broke in sternly. “Bedtime is not negotiable, Amy.” He glanced at Alex’s cute gray eyes. When he smiled, the skin crinkled more beside his right eye than his left, though both were equally attractive. “She loves searching the internet, some people would probably say she spends too long on there.”
Alex nodded sagely, though Tate suspected he hadn’t had much experience with small children. “I believe current studies do recommend that young people only spend a few hours a week—”
“Ten minutes is too much for Amy’s skills and imagination,” Tate said frankly. “By that time, she’ll have researched everything from whale diseases to a life in the Mafia, and a family tree that links her with Lucrezia Borgia. Amy, go and get your towel and pajamas ready, I’ll run your bath. I can unpack the shopping with the H’s, and Gran will cover bedtime routine.”
From the living room came a dog’s yelp and a loud, cackling whoop. Gran was obviously enjoying some TV program or other. The cheer sounded strong enough for a much younger and lustier football supporter, though Tate suspected Gran’s current attention was on one of her beloved cookery channels. She did get overly excited by some of the chefs.
Alex touched his arm. “Don’t disturb her,” he said. “I’ll happily do the story reading. Or if you don’t feel you can trust me…?”
From halfway up the stairs came a small “hooray” from Amy, on her way to the bathroom.
“Well. I hardly know you,” Tate said. He wanted to trust everyone, he really did, but he’d make sure Amy’s door stayed open so he could hear what was going on. “And that’s not the only issue.”
“I know it’s not.”
“What?”
Alex moved nearer, now that they were mostly alone in the hallway. His shoulder brushed against Tate’s. “You don’t let go, do you? You have control issues. I understand. But you’ll exhaust yourself if you don’t allow others to take on some of the burden.”
“They’re not a burden,” Tate said hotly.
Alex just rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was talking about you and your need to relax and enjoy life.”
“My—?” Just give up, Tate. This strange man is beyond your understanding.
“Please,” Alex said more softly. “After you’ve done Amy’s bath thing, sit with your gran, or with the twins—” He smiled and waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the kitchen where there were sounds of splashing and raucous laughter. He’d obviously forgotten their names. “Just one question. What do I read?”
Another call came from upstairs. “I’ve got my favorite book right here!”
When Alex looked at Tate, Tate could only give a rueful smile in reply. “I’m afraid I have no idea what it is tonight. She has library tickets of her own. It could be anything from Dickens to Spot the Dog.”
“I’ll be led by you,” Alex said gravely, though the smile still lingered. “As long as it comes recommended by educational authorities—?”
“It’s my absolute favorite,” Amy’s call interrupted, more firmly this time.
“That’s that, then,” Alex said. “I assume?”
Tate laughed. “You learn fast, newbie.”
Chapter Seven
TA
TE scrabbled awake with a shock, realizing he’d dropped off to sleep on the sofa. Beside him, Gran snored, her mouth wide open and her apron skewed around her waist. Freddie was slumped on her lap, also snoring. The last Tate remembered was finishing Amy’s bath, then sending the twins to their rooms to revise for the next day’s geography test at school. He vaguely recalled offering to watch Supreme Sausage Suppers with Gran, or something similar. The TV was now showing a gritty Scandinavian crime drama with a dismembered torso being dragged up out of a frozen river, so something had definitely slipped in the space time continuum.
My God, he must have needed the rest. But what about Alex? Is he still here?
Groaning a little, Tate eased gently off the sofa and padded upstairs in his socked feet, picking up a small handful of laundry that had been left at the foot of the stairs. On the top landing he paused, listening to the gentle bickering from Hugo’s room where the H’s were currently based. From the occasional word he caught clearly—like “volcano”—it sounded like they were successfully getting on with their homework.
“Tate?”
Alex was just coming out of Amy’s room. He smiled as Tate approached; Tate felt rather oddly vulnerable in front of him. Had Alex seen him fall asleep?
“How did it go?” Tate said softly. He peeked into Amy’s room to find her warmly wrapped up in her Frozen quilt and fast asleep. He closed the door as quietly as he could. “She can be a little madam, if you know what I mean. At heart she’s just a little kid, but she’s so very bright for her age, you need all your wits about you.”
“Well, I couldn’t read this to her, I’m afraid.” Alex said in a similarly lowered voice, holding up the luridly covered book that Amy had presumably chosen. “The story didn’t make any sense, and the language was bizarre. Plus none of the characters are anatomically correct. Don’t they have curriculum-based reading matter nowadays?”
Tate chuckled. “I’m sure they do, but that doesn’t always appeal to Amy. But she still fell asleep okay?”