I groan quietly and scrub my hands down my face. Get it together, Jack, I chastise myself.
I look at him again and fix the lovely picture in my head, and then I very deliberately turn over and away from the tempting sight of him.
Arlo
I come awake slowly. I’m lying in a patch of sunshine which is warm on my face, and the duvet is wrapped around me, forming a snug little cave. For a few seconds, I think I’m late for work, and then I realise that I’m on holiday and don’t have to see any demonic and spoilt children for at least three weeks. I hum happily and hear a husky chuckle from my right. My eyes fly open, and I find Jack watching me from his bed.
He’s lying with his iPad propped on his chest, his hair is a dark mess against his blue pillow. He has glasses on, and the black frames make him look incredibly hot, whereas mine just give the impression that I’m five and should be queuing to go into a Disney film.
His stubble is as sexy as any pirate on a romance book cover, and I have a front-row seat to gawp at his bare chest. He’s got a lot more hair now than he did last time I saw him shirtless. It’s dark and looks like it would be soft on my face if I rubbed against it and—
Jack clears his throat, and I abruptly remember that he’s not porn on my iPad, but my brother’s best friend. I quickly pretend to yawn to cover up the leering, which turns into a real one involving showing him a lot of my tongue and teeth before I remember my manners and put my hand over my mouth.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
He chuckles. “For what? You slept well.”
“That’ll be the wine,” I say. “I didn’t think I’d drunk that much, but I was obviously being drunkenly optimistic.”
“Well, you didn’t drink heavily if you compare yourself to Mel Gibson. A vat is nothing these days.”
I laugh and groan as pain slices through my eyeballs. “Shit.” I press my fingers against my eyes. “I need some paracetamol.”
“I’ll get you some,” he says.
I force my eyes open in time to see him throw the sheets back and get out of bed. For a wild second, I think he’s naked, but then the sheet clears his middle, and I see he’s actually wearing blue-checked pyjama shorts that are hanging low on his hips. In the bathroom, he rummages through his shaving bag, and I can’t help but eye the view. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, and lots of lean muscle that reflects how much he loves running.
He paces back to me, carrying a bottle of water and two tablets. I take the tablets, gulp the water, and watch as he strides to the tea tray and switches the kettle on.
“I’ll make some coffee,” he says over his shoulder.
“Why can’t I always share a room with you?” I say plaintively. “You’re so much nicer than Tom. I was always stuck with him when I was a kid.”
“Well, it’s a fact that I don’t snore like Tom.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say with feeling, propping myself against the pillows. “I’ve never heard anything at that decibel unless it was a jumbo jet. I’m fucked if I can work out why Bee doesn’t stab him in his sleep.”
He chuckles. “It is bad. I spent a year rooming with him at uni, and at the end I must have looked like Beetlejuice.”
I laugh and reach out eagerly for the mug he hands me. I inhale the fragrant steam and look at him. “This smells good and not at all like normal hotel coffee.”
He shrugs. “This place has a cafetiere.”
“Not at all like the youth hostel, which is the last place where Tom and I shared a room. It’s also the place I hitchhiked home from rather than listen to him snore anymore.”
He laughs. “You all argue like cats and dogs. I never could understand it because we didn’t do that at my house.”
“No need when your parents can kill someone with the force of their glare,” I mutter.
He shakes his head and carries his drink over to his bed. The mug has a string and a little label hanging from it, so I’m pretty sure his drink is so powerfully healthy that it’s detoxing him through the china.
He settles back into bed. “You feeling better?”
I try a cautious shake of my head. “A bit,” I say judiciously. “Nothing that a nice greasy fry-up won’t cure. I’ll shower and get dressed in a minute and then we can go down to breakfast.”
“You sure you’re up to it?” he asks, eyeing me dubiously.
“Of course,” I say robustly. “Tom’s paid for this, and it’s probably cost more money than the European Union’s tea budget, so we’re going down there and eating every expensive morsel.”
He looks a little unsure but doesn’t say anything, sitting back against his pillows and sipping his tea. It’s lovely and so domestic being with him like this, and I wish it were real. I dismiss that stupid idea immediately.
“You don’t look at all hungover,” I observe. “Why on earth not?”
He grins, his teeth flashing white against his stubble. “Because I, unlike the Wright clan, stopped when I’d had enough.”
“What is that alien concept?” I say, enjoying the way laughter relaxes him and makes his face glow. He’s always wound so tightly. “You need to get with the plan,” I observe, sipping my coffee. “Freddy’s hoping for a piss up today.”
“I can never understand his obsession with viewing Europe via its bars.”
I laugh, my headache easing its stranglehold on my temples. “Apparently we’re doing culture tomorrow. They couldn’t get tickets for any of the museums today, and Freddy decreed that a spare day must be filled by a pub crawl.”
“He’s like a drunk version of Brendan from Coach Trip.”
“Well, I’m very happy that I drank heavily last night,” I observe. “It at least will drown out the memory of Tom trying to propose to Bee and failing miserably.”
He winces and then laughs. “I still can’t believe he bottled it. He had the ring in his hand. It was there, ready and waiting. He just had to say the words and give it to him.”
“Well, unfortunately, thanks to Tom’s shaky hand, the ring was instead baptised by alcohol. But at least now we know for certain it’s platinum. Dropping it in a vodka shot would have stripped another metal.”
He snorts, and we look at each other only to burst into laughter. “Oh my God,” I finally say, rubbing tears from my eyes. “That was classic. Bee now thinks that Tom has become very penny-pinching, because his excuse for sticking his hand in Bee’s vodka was that he’d dropped a euro in the glass.”
He laughs harder, setting me off again.
Finally, we sober. “It was truly epic,” I say happily. “I like watching Tom flounder.”
“I can’t understand him. I think he’s wound himself up into a state of hysteria, because he believes it’s got to be perfect for Bee.”
“There’s no such thing as perfect,” I say, stretching. I glance over to find him staring at me. “What?”
“Do you really think that?”
I shrug. “Of course. People who expect perfection in relationships are doomed to disappointment. Anyway, it’s the imperfections that make the best stories. In years to come, Bee and Tom won’t remember the cinematic moment when Tom asked Bee to marry him. They’ll remember that he dropped the ring in Bee’s vodka and nearly lost it.” I smile at him. “It’ll become just another Wright family dinner-party story. I know all about those, because my boyfriends have largely become apocryphal at this point.”