“He’s a nice dude.”
You’re not. Neither of them said it, but they didn’t have to. The truth was the truth.
“Okay,” Paolo said. “You’ve got pasta. What else?”
“Olive oil and vegetables. That’s pretty much what he eats most days.”
“What kind of vegetables?”
“Any kind that’s in season. He grows them all here. I think he likes the green shit the best. Or he’s fucking Popeye, I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“You sound almost human.”
A ghost of a smirk twisted Dante’s lips. “Almost.”
“Hey.”
Dante jumped.
Benjamin knocked on the shed door, a nervous grin on his aristocratic face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Away with the fairies?”
“Uh. Yeah. Sorry. What do you need?”
“Nothing in particular. I was passing.”
“Okay.” Dante waited for Benjamin to spill whatever was on his mind, because there was zero chance he’d braved the muddy yard in his suede loafers for no reason at all.
“Did Sid ask you to help him with the display on the pumpkin field yet?”
“The what?”
“The summer garden party is coming up. Sid’s doing a visitor display on the pumpkin field. I was hoping you’d help him.”
“You’re having a party in a field?”
“Well, no...” Benjamin cringed a little. “It’s at the main house, but Sid said if people wanted to see the gardens, they’d have to get their feet wet.”
Dante chuckled, couldn’t help it. It was such a Sid thing to say. “He hasn’t mentioned it, but he keeps disappearing up there, so I guess that’s what he’s doing.”
“You should help him,” Benjamin said, “even if he doesn’t ask. It’s a big job on top of everything else you guys do. I’ll pay you for any overtime you work.”
“I’d help him anyway,” Dante retorted absently, already drifting to the door to look beyond Benjamin in the direction Sid had headed in that morning.
“I know. But you don’t need to work for free any more than he does. Keep me posted, okay? On Sid, I mean. If you think he’s doing too much, come and tell me, and I’ll call Anna.”
Dante spared Benjamin a flat look. “I’m not going to rat on him. He makes his own decisions.”
“Just not always the right ones, eh?”
Benjamin walked away before Dante could respond, and Dante instantly forgot about him.Where the hell even is the pumpkin field?Dante knew every corner of the Wilburn estate that he was allowed to roam, but he’d never heard talk of a pumpkin field.Maybe it’s somewhere you’re not welcome.It would explain why Sid had disappeared there by himself. They stuck together most days, unless Sid was resting or stuck in bullshit meetings that gave him the royal hump.
Still, moody or not, the pull in Dante’s chest to be close to Sid was so strong he couldn’t think straight. Or not straight.You’re a funny bloke, Pope.
He wasn’t. Of all the things Dante had ever been accused of, hilarity wasn’t one of them.
Obsessed was, though. And Dante couldn’t deny that he was obsessed with Sid. But it was different to the fixations he’d had before. So different, he didn’t know what to do with the flare in his heart whenever Sid crossed his mind, or the desireburninginside every time Sid touched him. And,fuck, it ran deep. Since that night in the shower, Dante had grown addicted to Sid’s magic fingers inside him, sweeping, probing, searching out that bundle of nerves Dante had heard about but never quite believed existed.
Newsflash: it existed.