“Okay then.” Benjamin rose from his stoop. He started to walk away.
Knowing there was more, Dante waited and lifted his gaze from his work at just the right moment for Benjamin to speak again.
“Sid has emergency contact numbers by the phone in the hallway. If you’re worried, call his sister.”
“Anna?”
“Yes. She’ll come if he needs her.”
“What about you? Should I call you too?”
“Only if he asks you to, and that’s as likely as hell freezing over.” Benjamin grinned, and the refined edges of his face fell away, leaving a young man that was kind of cute if pressed shirts and cufflinks were a man’s thing.
They weren’t Dante’s. He let Benjamin go and went back to chopping lavender and ruminating over the earth-stained hands and rugged jaw that made his heart thump and his blood heat. As the morning sun grew stronger, so did the urge to sit back on his heels, close his eyes, and let the fleeting magic he’d found last night wash over him. He licked his lips, tasting Sid on them, even though hours and hours had passed since they’d kissed. He felt Sid’s unshaven jaw against his own, his hands on his chest, and his hot puff of breath as he’d gasped against Dante’s mouth.
Jesus fuck.Dante dropped the shears in his hand. Reclaimed them and tried again to cut the woody lavender stems and lose himself in the heady scent. But the only scent that came to him was Sid’s, and he couldn’t wait a moment longer.
Abandoning his work, Dante washed his hands outside the tool shed and approached the staff barn. Breakfast was long ago finished, and lunch wasn’t served for another couple of hours, but Dante had observed the women who worked in the kitchens and knew they adored Sid. Hell, everyone did.
Even you.
Dante licked his lips again and ventured closer to the kitchen door. It opened on cue, and an apron-clad woman bustled out with a tray of baked bread, stopping short when she saw Dante, as most people did on the rare occasions Sid wasn’t with him.
“Oh!” she said, discomfort creeping into her kind eyes like the plague.
Dante found a smile he hoped help him appear less threatening than the grapevine had painted him before he’d arrived. “Have you got anything I can take Sid? He missed breakfast.”
Sid was the magic word. The woman sprang into action and vanished back into the kitchen.
She came back with sandwiches, cakes, and a cardboard punnet of fruit. “Come back later if he wants something hot. I can make him up a dinner tray too, something he can heat up and eat in bed.”
“Thank you.” Dante accepted the box she held out, noting that she seemed to know that the only reason Sid would miss breakfast was if something was wrong.
Not because Dante had kissed him.
Definitely not because of that.
Dante escaped the barn and trooped to Sid’s bungalow with the summer sun beating down on him. The air was humid too. Sticky and close, though not as close as tight quarters with a hundred other men. Dante wiped his brow and knocked on Sid’s door, a light tap that sounded like an apology even to his own ears.
There was no response.
Unwilling to disturb Sid if he was sleeping, Dante crouched to set the box on the step and send him a message to say it was there. He pulled out his phone with its mighty contact list of three numbers, Luis, Paolo, and now Sid, the first one he’d actually used.
He tapped out a text.
Dante:left food on the porch. call if u need anything.
The message disappeared into the ether. Dante rose and stepped off the porch, mind already half on the lavender he had to finish and what he could do next if he got it done. Sid had been grumbling about deadheading the summer bedding plants for days, and Dante was fairly sure he could tell them apart from the perennial flowers around them.Stake the dahlias too. It’s going to be windy tomorrow.
It was a far cry from shifting coke along county lines, and Dante shook his head as he traversed the yard to the main gardens.How is this my life right now?
He had no clue and zero complaints. The only thing missing was—
Dante’s phone buzzed. Startled, he tripped on his half-undone bootlace.
Smooth, Pope. Real smooth.
He fished the phone from his pocket and knelt under the pretence of tying his lace. A message lit up the phone screen.