Page 71 of Her Brother's Billionaire Best Friend

“It’s absolutely fine,” I said. “Rich weirdo with a secret room in his bedroom where he keeps his medals. I get it. Really, I do.” I purposefully didn’t mention the journal, wanting it to slip from Laura’s mind.

“It’s not that,” said Laura. “I still find you…” she said, blushing, “I wanted to apologize. It was wrong of me to go poking in your private things.”

I wondered how I should react in order to make her think I was just angry about it. Rather than nervous. Rather than mistrustful.

“It was,” I grunted, looking a little pissed. “But hey, I never said not to go in there. And besides, it’s not like you found anything…creepy, right?”

“Right,” said Laura. “But all the same, if I wanted to know, I should have asked you. You’d have just shown me, right?”

“Right,” I said. Not on your life. It had been a mistake to even put anything in that room.

“Anyway, hope you brought lots for me to do,” said Laura, setting down her bag. “Kyle’s going to a friend’s house after school, so I can work a bit later today if you need.”

“Is that so?” I said. “He’s not doing any hiking, I hope.”

“Not with his cast on!” exclaimed Laura. “Still, he’s technically grounded but Marie Shawes, friend’s mom, has said she’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” I said. “As a matter of fact, we’ve got a hundred and one things to do. And they all need doing by the weekend.”

*

Despite the tension that Laura’s sneaking around had caused, it was nice to have her by my side. As the sun began to set and I made some dinner for us, we retreated downstairs to the sitting room to work comfortably. I couldn’t believe that Laura and I had kissed in this very place just two weeks ago. The whole house seemed charged with energy and tension. I knew that I wanted her, but I was keeping my desire under control for two important reasons.

The first was that we simply had too much work to do. The second was that I felt there was something different about Laura. She seemed a little on edge. Friendly, and sometimes even flirty. But rarely relaxed. No doubt I’d spooked her before, and it was going to take time to build up the trust between us again to the point where we could be ourselves.

As the shadows lengthened in the room, I looked up from the stack of files on my lap and the laptop with which I’d been cross-referencing the info. Laura looked up from her work too, and our eyes met by the firelight. I smiled, and so did she. This was nice. It was good of her to stay here with me.

Then, the doorbell rang.

A faint scowl of irritation must have crossed my face, because Laura stood up when I did. “Is something wrong?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just…I wasn’t expecting anyone tonight.”

I crossed in my socks to the front door, and hit the intercom. “Who’s there?” I said warily.

There was a crackle of static on the mic. “Come closer,” I said. “I can’t hear you.”

I heard a curseword hiss faintly through the mic, and then the sound of a car door slamming as the would-be intruder got out of his vehicle. “Hello?” said a familiar voice.

It was David.

“David?” I said. “Hi…what do you want, buddy?”

“Lucien,” drawled David. “Is Laura there?”

“Sure,” I said. “She’s working.”

“Working? At this time of night?” I couldn’t help but catch a sneer of derision in David’s voice. He must have known by now that Laura had been back here with me at night not once but twice already.

“We’re just working on something,” I said. “Hold on. I’ll open the gates.”

I pressed the button on the control panel, which opened the gateway. It was how I let Laura in. But the system was deactivated. I must have done it yesterday, paranoid about intruders.

“Hold on,” I sighed. I didn’t want to let David in. But as I turned round, I could see Laura standing awkwardly in the hallway behind me, rubbing her arm. If I got into a fight with him now, it could ruin everything between us.

“David,” I said. “Can you see the codebox on the left of the mic? The keypad?”

“Yep.”