Chapter Twenty

ARCHER

I wasn't sure what happened next, what Ollie wanted. I didn't like being unsure. Evidently, he was more than willing to keep having sex, but I didn't know if he wanted anything more. And the problem was, I did.

At least he didn't seem to have any intention of leaving, even though the sex was over.

"You have a four-poster bed!" he exclaimed, as if I hadn't noticed. "Do you get spiders falling off the curtains onto you in the night?"

I turned onto my back and stared up at the canopy. That possibility had never occurred to me, and I'd have been happier to have remained in ignorance. "I think spiders cling on better than that," I told him.

Ollie snuggled against me again, sliding his arm across my chest. Everything was so easy for him. It had been the way he'd told me to shut up that had finally let me give in and do what I'd wanted to. No one had shown me such open disrespect in years, and it had put to rest my doubts that Ollie was only doing this because I was the head of a family. When he'd said it, I'd been Archer again, someone I hadn't been for so long that I sometimes wasn't sure who he was.

"You're quiet," he said. "Is something wrong?"

I licked my dry lips and put my arm around him, holding him close but not too tightly, so he could move away easily if he wanted. "No."

Except for the fact I had no idea what he wanted.

"You're not Mia," he said out of nowhere.

"Full marks for observation."

"No, I mean—" he propped himself up on my chest and looked into my face. "It was Mia I messaged to come and help me out of the maze. How did you know I was stuck?"

"She forwarded them to me." A few things clicked into place. "I have a feeling she's been trying to get us together."

Ollie beamed at me, his widest smile yet. "Who's going to tell her that her plan succeeded? Actually, no, we shouldn't tell her. If she keeps making excuses for pushing the two of us together, we'll get time together, she'll be happy that her plan is working, and everyone wins."

He wanted to spend time with me. He wanted us to be together, whatever that meant in Ollie-speak. Able to breathe a little more easily, I decided to tackle the subject almost head-on and find out what this was between us.

"Purely in the interests of making Mia happy, would you like to go out for a meal tonight?" I asked him.

"You mean like a date?"

"Yes."

His relaxed happiness vanished, and I could have kicked myself. At least I had my answer.

"Forget it," I said, and rolled over to get out of bed and go somewhere the sting of humiliation wouldn't be so strong. Because why would Ollie want to be with an old grump like me? Of course he wouldn't.

OLLIE

Oh, God. What should I do? I could keep him more than happy in bed, I could entertain him with my chatter, but if he took me on a date, he'd find out I was the good-time guy, not the relationship guy. Get past the physical talents and the laughter, and there wasn't anything more to Ollie Shaw. At least, that was what everyone said, and somewhere along the way, I'd begun to believe it. Yet, for Archer, I wanted to be the relationship guy.

He was leaving. I had to say something.

"Yes, okay, we can do that," I said.

When he swung round, his expression wasn't anything I'd expected. It looked like anxiety.

"But I'm not very good at dates," I added.

"You can't be worse than me," he said. "This will be my first."

I gaped at him. "But you're so fucking hot. How come?"

Archer tucked his hair behind his ear, a nervous movement I hadn't seen from him before. "I've been too busy."

Somehow, I didn't think that was the whole story. My insides were clenching with worry. What would we talk about? What if I said the wrong thing or wasn't interesting enough? I didn't want to disappoint him. But under the panic, happiness was blossoming that he wanted to take me on a date. Me.

I just had to make sure everything went perfectly.

ARCHER

The village pub was as busy as it ever got, but we had no difficulty finding a table in a quiet corner of the restaurant area. It took Ollie ages to make up his mind—"Because I always choose something and when the food arrives, I wish I'd ordered what the other person has"—but once fish and chips were safely ordered, a slightly awkward silence fell.

"I realise I don't know anything about your family," I said. "What do you do when you're not getting sent off to stay with strangers?"

"I work in a call centre." Ollie took a sip of his beer.

"What line of business?"

He choked until his eyes watered. "Sorry," he said eventually. "Just, no one asks that. I don't think my own brothers know. I work in pet insurance."

"That must be tough when you have to decline Mitzi for an operation."

"It is." Ollie was the most serious I'd seen him. "But there are the people you can help, the ones who know their beloved Fido is going to get their treatment. That makes up for the sad ones. And most people who love animals seem to be nice people. At least, we don't get the level of abuse you hear about in other call centres."

"Have they held your job open for you while you're here?"

He laughed, though there wasn't much mirth in it. "I'm a drone, not anyone important enough for them to do that. No, I'll have to get another job when I get home."

That was unfair. But a lot about dragon society wasn't fair. "Are your brothers older or younger than you?"

"They're both a lot older than me." He paused, his shoulders slumping. Very unlike his usual state of being, and I realised family wasn't a safe topic. "Ian's a barrister—a King's Counsel. And Peter is a paediatric surgeon. Then there's me. I bombed my A levels and work in a call centre."

"A call centre helping people," I reminded him swiftly.

"Yeah," he said, but he didn't sound as if he believed it. "Anyway, right now I seem to have a part-time job as your gardener." His eyes gleamed suddenly. "Oh, does that make you Lady Chatterley? Bonking the virile, sexy gardener?"

"Wasn't it the gamekeeper?" Mia had to study it for her English A level, and I'd become all too familiar with her views on the book. They weren't flattering.

He waved a hand. "You're missing the point—virile and sexy."

"In that case, I'm definitely Lady Chatterley," I agreed, just as Liv put a plate loaded with battered cod, golden chips and plump garden peas in front of me.

"If you say so, Archer," she said, and placed an identical plate before Ollie, who was laughing like a drain. He'd obviously seen her coming, but for once, my dragon instincts hadn't been on alert for danger. I'd been concentrating too hard on Ollie.

He squeezed his lemon slice over his fish with such enthusiasm that juice and pips spurted over the table, before he tucked in as if he hadn't seen food for days.

"Those doves of yours are menaces," he informed me after a while, his immediate hunger apparently satisfied. "I swear two of them dive-bombed me before I went into the maze. I thought they were supposed to be wary of dra—us."

"They've probably grown accustomed over the centuries. Worst case scenario, they've adopted our traits."

"With them and the ducks, what is it with you and keeping birds?"

"They came with the Court," I said. "I can't exactly make them homeless, can I?"

"Can't you? The ducks at least. I'm not getting a minute's sleep." A slow smile curved his mouth as he looked at me in a way that brought back all too clearly images of earlier. "Though from now on, that might not be the ducks' fault."

He was making me uncomfortable, sitting in my local pub with a growing erection, so I took my revenge by spearing a single fat chip with my fork and wrapping my lips around it before biting it cleanly in two. His eyes widened, and he looked determinedly back down at his plate. I couldn't tell if he was aroused or terrified. Whichever it was, if it stopped him teasing me in public, I'd take it.

He wanted this thing between us to continue, that was clear. My mind jumped ahead to what would happen when he returned to Tunbridge Wells, and I carefully returned my attention to Ollie, sitting across from me and having issues with the vinegar bottle. I should take a leaf from his book and try living in the moment.

Easier said than done.

OLLIE

As we ate, Archer asked about my life at home. I told him about Jack and the rest of my mates, and how we were pretty tight-knit as a family.

"We mix mostly with the Phipps and the Mansfields, though honestly, I have no idea why. They're really stuck-up." I chased my last mouthful with a swig of beer. "I would have expected you and Mia and Tim to be like that, living where you do, but you seem perfectly normal."

"No point in acting stuck-up when you haven't got the money to back it up."

"But you—" I caught myself. "Sorry, that's way out of line."

"Ask me. I won't answer if I don't want to."

"I mean, you obviously have enough money to keep the place going. It must cost a fortune."

"We've got what's left of Dad's treasure set aside for that. Thank God none of us inherited his taste for palladium. My forge covers the regular bills and just about meets Tim's uni costs, though I'm not sure how we'll manage when Mia goes."

"Maybe she won't want to," I said.

"She has to have the choice." His tone was stern and uncompromising, but I was coming to know him and could see softness in his eyes.

He was being so forthcoming that I took the opportunity to ask something that had been bugging me. "Do you mind if I ask you about Tim? I mean, he's so nice and reasonable when I'm on my own with him, but whenever he's around you, he turns into a raging arsehole."

That was a great way to break the comfortable atmosphere. Archer's eyes grew dark, his brows drawing down. I wasn't sure if it was anger or sadness. The safest thing to do was sit silently and wait for him to introduce another topic of conversation. Or for him to say this date was over and he was taking me home, never to speak to me again.

"He wanted some of the friends he'd made at uni to come and stay over the Christmas holidays," Archer said at last. "Mia's too young."

Being in public, he had to be careful what he said, but I could fill in the gaps. There was a blanket ban on dragons mixing with humans until they were eighteen, due to puberty hormones possibly causing unexpected revelations of the dragon in us. "He argued that she's seventeen and damn mature for her age, so there was no problem."

"But if you made an exception for one person…"

"Exactly. If I said yes to him, I'd have to say yes to everyone else, and what happens when it's a sixteen-year-old who has a compelling reason? Either it's a rule or it's not."

"Tim didn't take it well?" I ventured. That was obvious, but I wanted to keep Archer talking.

"He'd invited them before asking me, so when I said no, I embarrassed him in front of his new friends. Some of them decided he was lying about living where he does because he couldn't tell them why they couldn't come, other than his brother was a dick and wouldn't let them. But I think some sort of blow-up with me had been brewing for a while," Archer confessed. "He's growing up, and having lived away from home for a couple of terms, he thinks he's an adult. He is an adult," he corrected himself swiftly. "But I have duties and responsibilities to more than him, and he doesn't understand that."

I leaned forward and lowered my voice. "But as he's next in line to be head, shouldn't he be groomed to take over?" I managed at the last second to put my sentence in the passive voice because otherwise I'd have been criticising Archer, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I'd seen the expression on his face when he talked about the blow-up with Tim. It hurt him, little though he showed it in front of Tim—which was perhaps half of the problem.

"I don't want him burdened with this when he's so young. There'll be time enough when he's older."

There was no denying Archer's sincerity. He clearly found being head a weight to carry.

"Couldn't Mia go to a member of the family for a few days while Tim has his friends to stay?" It was the obvious solution, so I must be missing something important.

Archer stared at me as if I'd grown two heads. Then he closed his eyes and shook his head. "How the hell didn't I think of that?"

"Because the fight stopped being about what Tim wanted and became about him refusing to respect your perspective?" It spilled out of me before I could think. "Sorry. Sorry. Shit, forget I said anything."

"No." Archer slid his hand across the table and took mine. His was warm and large, rough with the reminder of what he did for a living. "You're right, embarrassing though it is to hear it." He squeezed my hand. "And if that apology was because of my status, when I'm with you, I'm Archer. Nothing more."

"And nothing less," I murmured, lifting his hand to press a kiss on it. Because the head of the Talbot family was impressive, but Archer was all that and so much more.

My lips lingered on his skin, and as our eyes met, I changed my mind about having dessert. At least, not from the pub.