Say Hello, Kiss Goodbye - Jacquelyn Middleton Page 0,50
in common. Love triangles leave me cold too, so…yeah, I’d like to know if you get serious with someone else, please and thanks.” Yeah, so I can hide in bed with a bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of Jack, sobbing my fucking eyes out. He nodded with a tight, all-business grin.
“Oh, that won’t happen.” A chuckle left her lips as she swept her hair back off her forehead. “I’m so done with relationships. I’m happier on my own.” Her words came out light and breezy, as if she’d just shared a minor detail about her life, like the elimination of skinny jeans from her wardrobe or the cancellation of her gym membership.
But the weight of that nonchalant comment pressed heavily on Tarquin’s chest, her words sinking in. He forced out a laugh. “Hey, great minds think alike.” He bit his cheek to keep himself from blurting out even more nonsense. Bollocks. She’s drawn a line in the proverbial sand. But surely… there’s a chance I can change her mind?
“I also wanted to ask, when we hook up, can we come back here? My sister’s place is small and it would be…awkward. I don’t have a bedroom.”
“Whereas I have several,” said Tarquin, trying to sound upbeat. “We could try a different one each time if you’d like?”
“So, I’ll get that penthouse tour after all?”
“If you’re in London long enough. When do you fly back?”
“On the eighteenth.”
Less than two weeks? Tarquin’s stomach plunged. Bugger, it can’t get much worse. “That’s soon.”
“Yeah, but it works to our advantage, right? You said it yourself: we’ll live in the moment, have a laugh, enjoy our time together, and on January 18th, we’ll part without expectations or regrets.” Leia grinned. “The perfect fling.”
Tarquin faked his most sincere smile. The perfect heartbreak, more like.
“I’m telling you, my friend—angels wept, birds joyfully chirped in the dawn of a new day.” Phone to his ear, Tarquin reclined slowly into his large soaker tub, a river of sweet vanilla and marshmallow-scented pink bubbles fizzing around his body, courtesy of his favorite bath bomb. “We were this perfect coming together of—”
“No. Don’t.” Harry chuckled through the phone, half-asleep. “I don’t need to hear about you coming, together or otherwise, Balf…” His voice trailed off. “Especially at seven in the morning—on a Sunday. I’m chuffed you had a great time, but couldn’t it wait?”
“Hazza, last night was everything. I just want to curl up in a corner and purr.” Tarquin’s contented grin greeted the early morning sun sneaking past the gaps in the window blind. “It’s like all the mistakes, drunken shags, dates from hell—they were all worth it if they brought me to Leia.” He sighed, remembering the softness of her inner thighs against his lips, her taste on his tongue, and how she cried out with pleasure, her fingers twisting in his hair. “She’s exquisite.”
“And leaving in two weeks. And, apparently, NOT interested in a relationship!” Harry sighed. “Mate, she left yours at four a.m. This is going to end in tears. Not hers—yours.”
Jesus, Harry. Tarquin frowned and swirled his free arm through the sweet-smelling bubbles. Can’t you just play along? Let me enjoy my buzz for a few hours? “No, it won’t. I know what I’m doing. I have a good feeling about this.” He glanced at the bruise on his arm, a temporary memento from crashing into the rink barrier at Somerset House. “So, how was the film? Was Lucy pissed I bailed?”
Harry ignored his questions. “Shame you didn’t meet Leia last year.”
“And…your point is?” With his heel, Tarquin dunked a bobbing Darth Vader rubber duck under the pink froth. He had hidden the ducks in his en suite’s vanity last night so Leia wouldn’t spot them.
“Well, hookups were your thing until Alex, and then things changed. You changed.”
“Hmm, that’s true.” Tarquin winced. “Well, you know how much it pains my Slytherin arse to do this, but…fine—ten points for Gryffindor, Potter.”
Harry chuckled. “Oh, you know who that reminds me of? That girl you dated before our last year at Eton. She was blonde and set up her friends based on Hogwarts Houses—”
“Oh, Pandora! Yeah, she was un-freaking-forgettable.” Tarquin smiled. That box full of sex toys under her bed… truly life-changing.
“Didn’t she go to that insane party in Wiltshire? Remember it? The outdoors one with the Ferris wheel and exotic turtles roaming the lawns.”
“And strip charades by the pool! Ah, it was jolly good fun until I drunkenly got lost in their garden maze during the fireworks.”