‘Maybe if you’d stop growing...’
‘I have.’ Okay, so he was extra tall and his shoulders were broad. For the most part, he was good with it. ‘You just think I should have stopped sooner.’ He eyed his little double bed with misgivings. ‘That’s not a double bed. It’s a miniature double bed.’
‘Princess.’
‘Are we bickering?’ he asked. ‘Because Poppy tells me she’s heartily sick of our bickering. I thought I might give it up for Lent.’
‘It’s not Lent,’ Lena informed him. ‘Besides, I like bickering with you. Makes me feel all comfortable and peachy-normal.’
Trig snorted. At sixteen, bickering with Lena had been his first line of defence against anyone discovering just how infatuated he was with her. He was still gone on her, no question. But these days the bickering got old fast.
He found his toiletries bag and stalked into the bathroom, only to find that that room was the size of a bath mat and that the spa was filling ever so slowly—a sneaky deterrent to filling it at all. Instead of four walls, the bathroom had two walls, a side door and one of those shuttered, half-walls dividing it from the main room. Trig reached for the shutters.
She-who-bickered would of a certainty want them shut.
He eyed the bathroom door and the floor mat in its way. He could shut that at the last minute. Never let it be said that Adrian Sinclair had more than a regular dislike for small spaces. Just don’t ever put him in a submarine.
‘Hey, Trig.’ Lena’s voice floated through the door. ‘Five things you never wanted to be. And don’t say, “Your babysitter”.’
Never wanted to be in love with my best friend’s sister, he thought darkly. Especially since she’d never once given him the slightest encouragement.
‘I never wanted to be a motor mechanic,’ he said instead.
‘Be serious.’
‘I am serious.’ He turned on the shower taps, hoping for a little pressure. Nope. Maybe if he turned the bath taps off. He shucked his clothes and dropped them on the floor. And Lena appeared in the doorway.
‘Dammit, Lena! Close quarters!’ But he didn’t reach for a towel or turn to hide his body. Most of it she’d seen before, and as for the rest...well...nothing to be ashamed of there.
Lena dropped her gaze, but not to the floor. She swallowed hard. ‘I, ah—’
‘Yes?’ he enquired silkily, half of him annoyed and half most emphatically not.
His brain thought she was objectifying him and he objected to that.
His body didn’t give a damn whether she objectified him or not.
‘I, ah—’ Finally she dragged her gaze up and over the rest of him and then, with what seemed like a whole lot of effort, looked away. ‘Sorry. Pretty sure I’ll remember what I wanted to tell you sooner or later.’
‘Size queen,’ he challenged softly.
‘Yeah, well. Who knew?’ She did the quickest about-turn he’d seen from her in a long time and headed back into the other part of the room, the part he couldn’t see. ‘I mean, I’d heard rumours... Your old girlfriends aren’t exactly discreet.’
‘No?’ He’d had girlfriends over the years—not plenty, but enough. He’d tried hard to fall for each and every one. ‘What are they?’
‘Grateful,’ she said dryly. ‘Now I know why.’
‘You really don’t,’ he felt obliged to point out, and left the bathroom door open and turned back towards the shower. ‘Who’s to say it wasn’t my winning personality?’
‘You do like to win,’ she said as he stepped beneath the spray and closed the shower door. Surely one closed door between them would be enough.
‘You keep saying that.’
‘Only because it’s true.’
All throughout their teens and beyond, he, Lena and Jared had pushed each other to be faster, cannier, more fearless. It had got them into plenty of trouble. Got them into the Secret Intelligence Service too. Jared rising through the ranks because he was a leader born, Trig and Lena rising with him because they had skills too and the suits knew the makings of a crack infiltration team when they saw one.
No space between him and Lena at all when it came to what they knew about each other. No strength or flaw left unexamined. No shortage of loyalty or love. Lena loved him like a brother and like a comrade-in-arms, and that was worth something. It was.
But sometimes she saw the reckless boy he’d once been rather than the man he was now.
Sometimes she coaxed him into competitive games he no longer had the heart to play.
He raised his voice so that she’d hear him over the spray. ‘Is there a burger on that menu?’
‘Hang on...’ She came back to the bathroom doorway, casual as you please now that a plate of frosted glass stood between her and his nakedness. ‘Yes, there’s a burger on the menu. Lamb burger on Turkish. Surprise. There’s also meatballs and potatoes, salads, green beans, and lots of pastries.’
‘Baklava?’
‘Oodles of baklava. Walnut, pistachio, cashew, pine nuts... You want yours drizzled in rose water?’
‘Rather have it in my mouth.’ He squirted shampoo in his palm and raised his hands to his head.
‘Are you posing on purpose?’
‘Are you looking on purpose?’ It seemed like a reasonable reply. ‘Because I’ve no objection. You want a closer look, all you gotta do is say.’ He reached for the shower door and smirked as Lena squeaked a protest and fled. ‘Thought you were fearless.’
‘That was before I got scarred for life. Now I’m wary. Don’t want to get scarred for life twice.’
‘Amen to that,’ he muttered, all playfulness gone as he shoved his head beneath the spray again, the better to chase away the image of Lena on her back in the mud, her guts hot and slippery against his hands while the world around them exploded. Scrub that memory from his mind.
Good if he could.
‘What kind of baklava did you want?’ asked Lena.
‘Is there a mixed plate?’
‘I can ask.’
He heard Lena ordering the food.
He tried to think about the real reason they were in Turkey. Get Lena’s eyes on Jared and Jared’s on her. Let them realise that everyone was okay and then get Lena the hell out of harm’s way before Jared could tear him a new one.
Simple plan.
Didn’t take a genius to know that the execution was going to be a bitch.
* * *
Trig emerged from the bathroom squeaky clean and somewhat calmer about sharing a hotel room with Lena. Lena had the television on and was standing to one side of it, flicking through the channels. She glanced at him, eyes wary. He thought she had relaxed a bit. Possibly because he had his clothes on.
‘Food’ll be here in an hour,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d take longer. I thought I might soak in the spa.’
Soak. Right. Lena was about to get naked and soapy not five steps from where he was standing, and he was going to ignore her and not even think about palming the bulge in his pants, not even just to rearrange it.
‘I need a walk,’ he muttered. And tried not to slam the door on his