Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Ambrose

T he honeymoon cabin was sweet. The front door had two pretty stained-glass panels set in it that made coloured patterns dance across the wooden flooring when the weak afternoon sunlight hit them. Ambrose remembered Liam's grandad preening over dinner last week because he'd managed to get a job-lot of heritage doors from a salvage yard. He'd insisted that the doors would add some character to the cabins, " a bit of old-world charm ," as he called it, and Ambrose didn't know much about construction or tourism, but even he could see that Grandad Billy was right. The door looked great—although it did take two tries to get the key to turn in the lock.

Everything else was clean and new, the tang of fresh paint lingering faintly in the air. The cabin was basically just a large room with a massive bed in it. Ambrose dumped his bag on the floor and flopped face-first onto the bed, sinking into the fluffy doona like it was a cloud with a happy sigh. Then, because he needed to breathe, he rolled over onto his back.

Liam was standing in the doorway awkwardly. Liam seemed to do most things awkwardly. It was cute .

"So," Ambrose said. "Bed, TV, wine rack, of course, and oooh!" He rolled off the bed and bounced on his feet as he pushed open the door to the small glass-enclosed back patio. "Hot tub! We have a hot tub! We are definitely using that at some point, and I'm not getting out until I'm a lobster."

He came back inside and opened and closed the other doors. He found a closet, the bathroom and, hidden away in a little alcove towards the back of the cabin, a tiny kitchen. Then he returned to the main room and spotted the hamper on the little table in the corner. He tore it open, cellophane crinkling.

"Wine," he said. "Naturally. Ooh, breadstick things and crackers and…what's quince paste? Huh. Body chocolate! Flavoured condoms and lube! Is this…" He inspected the packaging. "It says it's a personal body massager, but it looks like a vibrator to me. Holy crap. Liam! Your parents have given us a sex basket!"

Liam's face did something complicated. "Sorry! Mum was talking about doing baskets, as part of the honeymoon experience…"

"She knows we've only been ‘dating' for two weeks, right?"

Liam's flush was gorgeous. "She's a bit overbearing. We're probably lucky she's not already planning the wedding." He didn't meet Ambrose's gaze. "We can just ignore it."

Ambrose paused with one finger dipped in the jar of body paint. "Or, we could eat the good stuff, and then I could be obnoxious about the brand of lube she bought over breakfast?"

Liam's face did the complicated thing again. "Can we…can we talk about that?"

"About what?" Ambrose asked, licking body paint off his fingers. He didn't miss the way that Liam's gaze was drawn to his mouth, and a thrill ran through him, as quick and sharp as electricity.

Liam sighed and sat down on the end of the bed. "Can you…can you be an arsehole without it being about other people? Like the Turkish thing with Orhan."

Ambrose looked away briefly to hide his burning face. "Yeah. I'm sorry about that."

"I know." Liam chewed his bottom lip for a moment. "And, like, if you're obnoxious about the lube, that's going to make Mum feel bad." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "God, I can't believe I'm defending my mum's choice of lube. Actually, I can't believe that sentence just left my mouth. It's just that she's worked really hard on these cabins, and on the gift baskets too, and it'll upset her to think she got it wrong, you know?"

"Yeah," Ambrose said. "I get it. What about…I tell her she got it right, instead? Equally cringey but doesn't upset her. I like your mum," he added, and found that he meant it.

Liam showed him a relieved smile. "That would work, I think. Like the stuff you did for Kelly's parents. The multi-level marketing and the cult and…" He went red.

"The porn," Ambrose reminded him helpfully, dipping his chocolate-covered fingers into his mouth again. He held up the jar. "Want a lick?"

Liam blushed scarlet. "I'm—I'll pass, thanks."

Ambrose regarded the jar thoughtfully, if only to stop himself from focussing on how adorable the pink tips of Liam's ears were. "We should ask for another jar tomorrow. Tell them you're a two-jar kinda guy, with how tall you are."

Liam went even redder and huffed out a laugh. "You're a fucking menace."

"It's the cornerstone of my business plan," Ambrose agreed cheerfully .

He opened the breadsticks and dipped one in the chocolate, then took a bite. "It's sexy Nutella on toast," he decided.

Liam grinned. "Right? I've never got what the big deal is with body paint. You just get all sticky and there'd be pubes in your chocolate."

"Or chocolate in your pubes," Ambrose said, just to see Liam blush again. Liam responded by picking up one of the throw pillows on the bed and pelting it at him. Ambrose ducked, laughing, then plopped himself on the bed again, settling back against the headboard. "Four-poster," he observed. "Probably in case anyone wants to break out the handcuffs."

Liam paled. "Please don't mention that to Mum. She'll have a set added to the bedside drawers just in case."

Fuck, he really was cute with those wide brown eyes and that deer-in-the-headlights look. Ambrose wasn't sure how someone as reserved as Liam had come from a family as boisterous as the Connellys—maybe he was a throwback—but Ambrose found himself increasingly drawn to Liam's whole awkward turtle demeanour. He gave himself a mental shake. Liam was cute, but it wasn't what Ambrose was here for.

He was here for five hundred bucks, and the sooner this weekend was over and he was back in Sydney, the better. Mum was clearly starting to spiral—she wanted Ambrose to come and help find whoever had broken in and stolen her Bert Newton photograph—and Ambrose needed to be there before she crashed. He wondered if he should text Isadora and see if Mum had already started to hassle her as well. Usually it was Ambrose she called for help, not just because Ambrose lived locally, but because it was Ambrose who was her little star, the kid just like her, the one who was going to be famous. Isadora had never been interested in acting, or the theatre, or the stories Mum spun about her amazing career and all the wonderful people she'd met. As a kid, Isadora had been jealous of Ambrose, but she was having the last laugh now wasn't she, safely far away from the drama in Brisbane? Well, that was unfair, because none of them were laughing. But it was Ambrose that Mum relied on, because he'd been her little shadow once upon a time. She only called Isadora when things were about to get really messy.

He thought about texting Isadora but decided it could wait. If Mum had called her, Issy would have let him know.

Besides, there was a selfish part of him that wanted to just enjoy this weekend—as much as he could while he was working, anyway—and pretend that this was real, that Liam was his boyfriend, and that he really was welcome somewhere for a change. If Mum got to live in her fantasy world all the time, why shouldn't Ambrose at least get a weekend?

He forced a grin and screwed the top back on the jar of body chocolate. "Do you think if I suggested it, she'd get anchor points screwed into the bedposts? Maybe I'll float the idea of Velcro restraints."

"Please, no. She'd have the sewing machine out and a pair whipped up in ten minutes flat." Liam groaned.

Ambrose laughed. "Your family is pretty great."

"Yeah," Liam said, shooting him a shy smile. "They are."

"But a bit overbearing when it comes to you being single," Ambrose said, wondering if he could draw Liam out on that any more.

Liam shrugged and wrinkled his nose. "It's Mum, mostly. I think she doesn't get that you can be perfectly happy single, you know? And Dad thinks I study too hard. So they kind of meet in the middle with their whole ‘Liam needs to have a boyfriend' thing because Mum thinks I'm lonely, and Dad thinks I'm not having any fun. Also, Bridget and Neve are both a lot more outgoing than me, so they think that I'm some kind of a shut-in or something."

"I can see it would be difficult to be the quiet one in your family," Ambrose said.

"I'll bet you weren't the quiet one, were you?"

Ambrose laughed. "No. But me and my sister were both very loud in very different ways." He met Liam's steady gaze and felt a pang in his chest. He looked away and fiddled with a thread coming loose from the hem of his T-shirt. "I think it's nice that they worry about you. That they pay attention."

"Your parents didn't?" Liam ducked his head as soon as he asked, Ambrose noticed, as if he were worried that he'd crossed a line. He had, but he didn't know that, so Ambrose was able to shrug it off and give something that resembled an answer.

"It was just Mum and us kids. And she tried, but she had a lot on her plate." He raised his eyebrows. "Speaking of plates, is it pizza time yet?"

It was clumsy, but Liam obviously recognised a diversion when he saw one. "Not quite. Wanna walk back through the vines? By the time we get back to the house, it'll be dinnertime."

Ambrose forced his mouth into a smile. "Should we be late, tell them we were taste-testing the body paint?"

Liam grinned back. "We're here for four days. Save something to throw at them tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yeah," Ambrose agreed. "Piss them off in instalments." Then he wondered why even the suggestion of upsetting the Connellys made him feel like the worst person alive. "Okay, let's go and swing through the vines like Tarzan."

Liam's smile was a little exasperated, and a little fond. "You know they're not that kind of vines."

"Dear TripAdvisor," Ambrose said. "Worst. Vineyard. Ever. No swinging in the vines, complete lack of Tarzan look-alikes. Zero stars."

Liam's laugh carried them outside again.

Dinner was okay. Ambrose had been glad that Liam had asked him to tone things down, because it gave him the chance to take back a little of the ground he'd lost with the Connellys, and when he wasn't being an arsehole, they didn't hate him. He could tell that Bridget and Orhan were still a bit reserved with him, and Fi didn't quite know how to take him, but Will, and Grandad Billy and Riley were happy to include him in their conversations.

He knew that there'd been some sort of conversation between Liam and his dad over the afternoon tea dishes earlier, because when he'd offered, deliberately grudgingly, to help, Fi had told him that no, a boy and his father needed time together, and if that wasn't a big fat ‘stay the fuck away', Ambrose didn't know what was. However that conversation had gone down, it seemed to have made Liam's dad like him more.

"What did you think of the vines, Ambrose?" Will asked now, leaning forward expectantly with his elbows on his knees. "Aren't they something?"

Ambrose felt like he'd just been asked if someone's ugly baby was attractive, because the vines had looked like nothing more than a bunch of sticks with some leaves strung along wires to him. The sheer volume of them was impressive though, and Liam had assured him that they didn't look like that all the time, honestly, and he'd been almost as weirdly proud of them as his dad. Ambrose tried to think of a diplomatic answer. In the end he settled on, "There are a lot of them, aren't there? But where are the grapes?"

"Ah, they look like they're half-dead, to be sure," Grandad Billy said, "but come harvest, you've never seen a more beautiful sight than acres and acres of green, with all the fruit. Come back at Christmas, and you'll see what I mean."

"Ooh, yes," Riley said, "you can come and pick. It's a shit job, and we've all done our share, so no reason you shouldn't have to."

Except Ambrose wouldn't be around at Christmas, but he couldn't say that, could he? So he settled for a shrug and said, "Maybe. I don't really like hard work."

"That's probably why you want to be an actor," Bridget said, and Orhan choked on his drink laughing.

"Hey, some families are into grapes, and some families are into the arts." Ambrose picked a piece of spinach off his wood-fired pizza. He immediately regretted it—the family comment, not the spinach—because he never talked about his family, at least not his real family, when he was being a Bad Boyfriend. He'd once told a date's parents that his father was the One Nation Party member for their local electorate, and that had gone down, as intended, like a lead balloon. But even when he'd said it, he'd wondered if they would think it was worse to have an imaginary father with some shit right-wing politics, or no father at all.

"Oh, your family are artists?" Fi asked, looking interested. She was probably looking for a redeeming feature and clutching at any passing straw with the same desperation as Jack had grasped at that door in Titanic .

Ambrose bit his lip, deciding how much to reveal. But in the end, he decided, In for a penny, in for a pound. He could work it in somehow, make the arrogance of an almost-Logie- winner's child part of his act. Besides, they probably wouldn't even remember who his mum was. Nobody else did.

"My mum was an actress," he said at last. "Soapies, back in the nineties. Harbour Med . She played Angela."

Grandad Billy's face lit up. "Oooh! You aren't Bella Newman's son, are you?" He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as he inspected Ambrose as carefully as a piece of slightly bruised fruit on the Reduced for Quick Sale table. "Oh! I can see it! You've got her eyes, don't you? Oh, she was a pretty one, and feisty too. Will, you remember your mum used to love that show?"

Will smiled and got a faraway look in his eyes. "Yeah, Mum loved it. She was mad about that doctor, the one with the moustache and the good hair."

Grandad snorted dismissively. "Pfft. Who wants a pretty boy anyway?"

"Well, I do for one," Ambrose said before he could stop himself.

"Our Liam's not too rough on the eye, is he?" Grandad Billy asked.

Ambrose couldn't help laughing as he took in Liam's mortified expression. "No," he said, "he's not too bad at all. I did all right there, I reckon."

Liam ducked his head.

"And what about your father?" Grandad Billy asked. "Was he an actor too?"

"No," Ambrose said around a mouthful of pizza. "He was a magician. Right after I was born, he disappeared."

He wasn't sure if the sudden silence was because of that little revelation, or the terrible joke he'd wrapped it in for delivery.

"Oh," Fi said at last. Her forehead was creased with concern. "Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Ambrose. It's his loss, I'm sure."

Jesus. Even when she didn't know what to think about him, she was still so nice. Who the hell were the Connellys, and why were they so kind? Ambrose had grown up watching families like this on TV and realising from a very young age that like everything else on the screen they were just made up. They were no more real than Daleks or werewolves or superheroes. Except here they were, trying their hardest to take him under their wing even though he was waving more red flags than Stalinist Russia.

"Eh," he said, and shrugged, like it didn't matter. And it shouldn't have mattered, not to him and not to anyone else. Most times Ambrose didn't give a fuck, but then some cute guy like Liam Connelly came along and shoved his big, happy, loving family in Ambrose's face and all of Ambrose's hard-earned indifference got a little shaky.

"I'm sorry," Liam said quietly a little while later as they walked back to the cabins, their path illuminated by the bouncing light of the torch that Ambrose carried. "My family are busybodies."

"It's all good," Ambrose said lightly, even though it wasn't. It wasn't Liam's fault, though, or his family's. He was glad he couldn't see Liam's expression, because he had the idea he could see right through him.

"Okay," Liam said, and they continued on in silence to the cabin, along the curving path that wound through the trees and bushes and around the edge of the pond.

It was cool and dark, and quiet apart from a rustling in the trees and the distant soft hoot of what Ambrose assumed was an owl, but really had no idea. He was used to a different symphony of night-time noises—brakes squealing, sirens, bottles breaking on the street, the occasional drunks shouting and yelling to one another as they stumbled by.

Ambrose stepped up onto the front porch of the cabin and wedged the torch under his arm while he unlocked the door. For a moment he was almost nervous about going inside, about being in a small space with Liam Connelly when the lights were on and there was nowhere for him to hide. He was afraid of what Liam might see. He was afraid he might also see nothing at all. Then, shaking off his stupidity, he turned the key. There was a second where he didn't think the door was going to open, but then the tumblers clicked smoothly into place, and he pushed the door open. He stepped inside and slid his hand up the wall to find the light switch. He flicked it on, and a moment later the cabin was filled with soft, warm light.

"Well," Ambrose said with a grin, "here we are in the honeymoon cabin. Just you, me and most of a jar of body chocolate. Shall I ravish you first, or the other way around?"

Liam gave an awkward wince. "How about we just go to sleep?"

"Boring, but okay," Ambrose said. "Will you hold me if the drop bears attack?"

Liam mustered up a smile for that and rolled his eyes. "Sure, in the unlikely event of a drop bear attack, I'll hold you."

"We'll both still die because drop bears are vicious, but at least I'll die wrapped up in a cute boy," Ambrose said, and regretted it immediately, because now he was thinking about what it would feel to be wrapped in Liam, and that wasn't where he needed his mind to go, not right before bed.

He kicked off his shoes and dug around in the closet, pulling out a spare blanket.

Liam frowned. "What are you doing? "

Ambrose indicated the dainty armchair in the corner of the room. "I was going to sleep in the chair?"

Liam's frown deepened. "You won't fit."

Ambrose was fairly certain that he'd have to fold up into a pretzel, but he could make it work. He shrugged. "For five hundred bucks, I can cope."

Liam bit his lip. "You, um, don't have to do that," he said, ducking his head. "We can share. The bed's massive." Ambrose stared blankly, and Liam added, "How can I hold you while we await death by drop bear otherwise?" His smile was, Ambrose was pretty sure, ninety percent nerves and one hundred percent fucking adorable.

"Sure," he said. "For drop bear protection purposes." He opened his bag and pulled out his toiletries, a pair of sleep pants, and an old tee with a faded AC/DC print on the front, then they took turns in the bathroom to shower and change.

When Liam emerged, the ends of his hair were curled and damp, and a stray drop of water trickled down his neck and across the collarbone that was peeking out of his sleep shirt. It was too fucking cute, and Ambrose had to look away for a second as he fought the urge to kiss the droplet away. He found himself wondering if Liam would like that, then he found himself wondering where else Liam might like to be kissed. He reminded himself that it was none of his business what Liam liked, because whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn't Ambrose.