Sid turned his head a fraction. “What?”
“Isaid, the garden party is on the sixteenth, and you haven’t told me what display you’re building or where. You think you can fill me in? We’re running out of time.”
Sid rolled his eyes. “I’m not building anything anywhere. If you want to show posh people around the gardens, do it. I’m not transplanting an entire ecosystem up to the main house because your horrible friends don’t want to get their shoes dirty.”
Benjamin turned his gaze to the sky and back before he fixed Sid with an exasperated glare. “Every year. Can you not, for once, just do what I need you to do without giving me shit?”
“Don’t swear. It doesn’t suit you.”
“And being an awkward pain in the arse doesn’t suit you as much as you think it does. Can we fast forward through this nonsense to the part where you tell me what you’re going to do so I can make plans accordingly?”
“Nope. Because I’m not doing it this year, for real this time.”
“Why not?”
“Lots of reasons.” Sid let his gaze wander back to the window. Dante was staring at his phone again. Sid frowned. In all the time they’d spent together, he could count on one hand the occasions Dante had even glanced at his phone, especially at work.What’s up with him?
It was the million-dollar question, and Sid reckoned the answer changed on a daily basis. Dante Pope was a beautiful soul, but a complex one. Fragile when he thought no one was looking, not even Sid, and made of stone when he thought the whole world was against him.
He was a stubborn fucker too. Sid’s cock hadn’t turned up to party since Dante had seared it alive with his wicked mouth, and he’d only let Sid make him come once since then. But they’d kissed a lot. Touched. Slept pressed up close together and naked on the nights Sid had coaxed him into staying over.
But Dante had meant it when he’d said he wouldn’t take more than Sid’s body allowed him to give, and he wouldn’t budge. Sid knew because he’dtried.
A lot.
“Give me a breakdown of these reasons,” Benjamin said, reminding Sid that a world outside the heady nights he spent with Dante existed. “Be straight with me.”
“I’m not straight.”
“Hilarious. Be clear then. Or at the very least, humour me.”
“You’re not funny.”
Benjamin’s aristocratic brows cinched, pale skin flushing red as his frustration rose to boiling point. He folded his slim arms across his chest. “You’re not being fair. I’m not going to make you do something you don’t want to do, and you know it, so you could at least give me the courtesy of telling me why. And don’t rant at me about people’s shoes. Whoever it is that’s offended you so much, they pay our wages.”
Sid tore his gaze from Dante’s hunched shoulders and forced himself to give Benjamin his full attention. “Okay, think about it from my point of view. If you want me to build a display at the main house, I’m going to have to lug plants, soil, equipment, and everything else up there to do it, and every time I’ve done that since I got diagnosed, I’ve ended up in bed for a week after. I haven’t got time for that shit anymore.”
“But you have Dante,” Benjamin said carefully. “That’s why we hired him, so he could help you with things like this and do the heavy lifting for you.”
Sid let his glare deepen. “He does help me, more than you have any idea, but he can’t help me with this because you banned him from the main house, remember?”
“Okay, but that wasn’t me. It’s trust policy. I’m just the messenger.”
“So? You enforce it, don’t you?”
“Not because I like it. And not because I don’t like Dante. It isn’t personal, Sid. It’s safeguarding. What if we take more people on from the release scheme and they’re not as rehabilitated as Dante seems to be?”
“What if they are and you’re wasting their potential by hiding them away?”
“But—” Benjamin shook his head. “All right, you’ve got a point, but this is a tangent I don’t have time for right now. What about if I paid Dante overtime to help you do the build out of hours. Would that work?”
“You’re not getting it, are you?”
“Gettingwhat?”
“That this isn’t about logistics, it’s about respect,” Sid growled. “The garden party is to showcase what we do here, right? You summon anyone who’s anyone to show the very best of us, and then you invite all the staff and their families to kick back after to thank them for their hard work all year round.”
“Right.” Benjamin’s frown deepened. “What’s wrong with that?”