Death's Ink-Black Shadow E-Book

John Wiltshire

• Herausgeber: Decent Fellows Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

“Learn to love death's ink-black shadow as much as you love the light of dawn.” Yeah? Well, Nikolas doesn't do early mornings. It takes a certain kind of courage to live as if favoured by the Gods, ignoring the ever-present ghosts of your past--or perhaps not bravery, but arrogance. And maybe not even that. Ben genuinely believes that the past is behind them—that they deserve to enjoy the life they have created. So it's not hubris that leads him to overlook the signs that Nikolas does not share his faith, it's love. But Nikolas knows something is coming. He can't stop it; he can only decide how he will choose to face it. And without Ben's support, he is entirely alone.

Leseprobe

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

DEATH’S INK-BLACK SHADOW

MORE HEAT THAN THE SUN #6

JOHN WILTSHIRE

WWW.DECENTFELLOWSPRESS..COM

Copyright © 2021-2023 Decent Fellows Press

ISBN: 9783757950095

Second Edition

All rights reserved worldwide. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the Author, except for the purposes of reviews. The reviewer may quote brief passages for the review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

The characters and events described in this book are fictional. Any resemblance between characters and any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Death’s Ink-Black Shadow, Copyright © 2021-2023

Decent Fellows Press

Cover Art Design by Isobel Starling

Chapter One

Ben could pinpoint the exact moment his thoughts toward his daughter changed. It was the moment Molly Rose made Nikolas laugh.

Of course, Nikolas did occasionally find something amusing for other reasons, but usually only in bed when only Ben was present. If he laughed at any other time, it tended to be a cynical snort of recognition that life just wasn’t all that funny. But Molly Rose made him laugh.

Nikolas went to visit Kate’s parents more often than Ben did. But then Nikolas went to London more frequently. When he did, he often took the train to St Albans and sat with Jennifer and Reginald Armstrong and, of course, Molly Rose.

Ben had seen her only twice since the first great revelation of her existence, and she was now five months old. He was in London for an army reunion, and the last thing he wanted to do was waste a whole afternoon travelling out to St Albans to visit a baby. He didn’t dislike the baby at all. But it was a baby. He’d almost retorted to Nikolas,

“I wouldn’t waste a whole afternoon to see my baby,” before he remembered that Molly Rose was his. His daughter. It was so remote and so ludicrous that he couldn’t take it seriously. She had been presented to him as a fait accompli from an event that would not have happened had he not been ill—suffering from amnesia, his whole world turned upside-down.

Perhaps there was a sliver of resentment for what Kate had done to him and Nikolas that was colouring his reactions to Molly Rose. Which, if there was, was beneath him and wrong, so he’d suddenly agreed that, yes, he would go with Nikolas and see her that afternoon. He even suggested taking a present, which made Nikolas smile. For some reason, he happened to know a very good toyshop.

They rode the train together, Ben holding the large wrapped parcel on his lap. As they passed the ugly, north London sprawl, he caught their reflection in the glass. Two women in the seat opposite them were staring openly, taking the opportunity of him apparently not able to see them.

He supposed he and Nikolas did look…different. Both dressed as they habitually did in bespoke suits, they stood out in the increasingly dress-down world they inhabited. Both the tallest men anyone would probably ever meet, this exquisite tailoring was enhanced by model-lean length. Long cashmere overcoats on six-foot-four, one hundred and sixty pound frames said something, and it said it loudly.

Two men holding a present wrapped in pink paper with unicorns on it said something, too, he supposed. The unicorns were…fuzzy, textured. Nikolas didn’t do cheap anything, and the shop had been one his ex-wife frequented for gifts for “the family”, and he had asked for the present to be gift-wrapped. The wrapping paper, Ben noted, had cost twenty pounds a sheet, and it had taken four sheets to accommodate the large toy Nikolas had selected. He seemed to take it all in his stride, and Ben knew without a shadow of a doubt that Molly Rose had many other gifts from this shop. Nikolas liked spending money.

Nikolas was reading a newspaper, and was apparently not aware he was under scrutiny either from the young women on his left or Ben. Or perhaps he did know. He was spooky like that. Nothing passed him by. If he was conscious of being studied, he didn’t seem concerned. On the surface, Nikolas was less worried about a lot of things these days, ironically just at a time when, to all intents and purposes, he should be more so. Molly Rose’s mother had been killed. Her murderers had obliquely threatened other people in Nikolas’s past. Nikolas had been a few hours away from drawing the threat away from Ben by leaving him.

But Ben had intervened.

Ben had broken Nikolas.

He literally saw it like this in his mind. Sometimes, in dreams, he heard a crack. He’d snapped Nikolas out of his protective shell, and for the first time, Nikolas had been raw and naked and vulnerable before him. When you’ve told someone that you love them enough to leave them, despite that fleeing killing you, you haven’t got much carapace left to hide under.

Perhaps the honesty, the spilling out of the poison that was choking him, had given Nikolas this new, laconic lease on life. Nikolas had never been so calm and easy-going as he was lately—on the surface. Even their friends had commented to Ben that Nikolas had spoken to them politely once or twice. He’d asked them a question without them feeling like he was interrogating them. Tim claimed Nikolas had made him a cup of tea when he’d called round for Ben and been a few minutes early. Ben didn’t actually believe this last fallacy, but it was indicative of the change the others reckoned they saw.

Ben, however, wasn’t convinced. He not only got to see surface Nikolas, he lived with the underneath-the-water Nikolas too. True, Ben didn’t actually feel frantic paddling beneath the surface going on, but sometimes he imagined he was jarred by the ripple effect from it. Tiny things that no one else would notice. Nikolas’s default setting was indolence. If he could get away with it, his perfect day would be feet up on his desk, a laptop—on which he would claim he was doing vital research—and a cigarette for sustenance. Now, this passive, serene Nikolas only appeared when he was present. Ben always got the impression that if he could come into a room ahead of himself he’d see the tail end of something else, catch Nikolas just before he sat down with his paper, just before he stretched idly and smiled at him. Quite what Nikolas would be doing just before he reverted to normal-Nikolas Ben didn’t know, but something else. Something he suspected he wouldn’t like.

Sometimes, returning to the house, he heard music so loud that it would have been impossible to think at all if he’d been inside. It clicked off whenever he came in and then the silence was all the more noticeable.

He couldn’t explain any of this for whenever he’d brought it up with Tim, he’d come back with evidence of the new Nikolas—just how chilled out he was.

So Ben was aware of a certain dichotomy between the Nikolas he lived with in plain sight and the one he suspected lurked behind the mask. It wasn’t as blatant a separation as when he’d first known Nikolas, when he’d discovered he was actually a different man entirely. It was much more subtle than that.

* * *

Ben put a finger to Nikolas’s reflection in the train window. Ironically, in the mirror image, Nikolas actually was who he said he was…the twin, the right-handed Mikkelsen, the flip side of Aleksey. Ben scrunched up his face. Perhaps he should ask the reflection what was wrong. He was more—

“Stop it.”

Ben blinked and turned to Nikolas, who was filling something in on a crossword. “You’re thinking too loudly.”

Ben huffed then murmured in Danish, “You have admirers.”

“I suspect it is you they are enjoying.”

Ben doubted this. If he were a woman, he’d be staring at Nikolas. Nik was looking particularly fine this morning.

They’d made love only two hours ago. That was something that never changed between them—the need overwhelming them as they’d dressed, a fastening of a cufflink leading to holding a wrist, seeing a strong, muscular arm, and that leading to shirts flung aside and a joining of their bodies—but Ben wanted him again. He shifted the present discreetly on his lap and Nikolas snorted.

“It’s those kinds of thoughts that have led you to carrying a baby gift. The irony is delightful.”

“That’s your only advantage as far as I can see. You can’t get—what’s the word in Danish for having a baby?”

Nikolas glanced up from his paper. “You regret her?”

Ben shrugged. They pulled in at the station and any further discussion was lost to the disembarking.

* * *

The laugh happened when they were left alone with Molly Rose for a few moments while Jennifer Armstrong went to fetch a tray of tea.

Sitting in the large, elegant sitting room, the baby had been placed upon a play mat. The new gift—a wooden horse on wheels which could be ridden or pushed and came with its own genuine leather saddle, blanket, and grooming equipment—was in the middle of the room. As Jennifer had pointed out, oh so politely, in another year or so Molly would probably enjoy it. Ben was pretty sure Nikolas didn’t care. He’d wanted to buy her a horse, so he had.

Freed from her grandmother’s supervision, Molly Rose suddenly appeared to think the same as Nikolas. She fell to one side, pushed onto her hands and knees and crawled toward the gift. When she reached it, she pulled herself up, holding onto the handle. She looked at Nikolas and grinned, and he chuckled at her expression.

Ben was astounded.

His daughter had made Nikolas laugh.

Maybe it was triumph that his present had been right after all—Ben could not help but notice tension between the grandmother and Nikolas. He could understand it. It would only take a word from him and Molly Rose would be with them. He was her father, and he was more than able to employ someone to care for her. Jennifer must have seen this only too clearly, and also realised the influence Nikolas would have on this decision. It wasn’t Ben who visited, after all. What she thought about him and Nikolas was less obvious. Ben sensed she was confused. She must suspect they were lovers. She was the product of her upbringing, though, and Ben felt fairly sure she could not work out where Molly Rose fitted into it at all. How could a man like him father a child?

Molly Rose couldn’t walk yet, even with the support of the new gift, but she stood boldly, her extremely rare green eyes the same shape and colour as his, the same dark lashes, the same appearance of having been smeared with kohl, the same jet black hair, although hers was curly and his tousled (he’d had this argument between curls and artful tousle with Nikolas only that morning as he’d tried to sort his newly regrown locks after the sex). She balanced on her weirdly shaped baby feet and beamed at her own brilliance—and Nikolas had laughed back.

Molly Rose amused Nikolas.

This was something Ben needed to think seriously about.

He spent his waking days, and had done for almost eleven years, thinking about Nikolas and wanting to make life better for him. He loved him. Sure, he nagged him almost to death and made his life hell, too, but that was his job—he loved him. This—she—gave him genuine, unfettered delight.

His daughter.

He frowned.

That little package suspiciously wearing a dress he’d also seen in the shop they’d just visited—all hand-smocked (and what the fuck did that mean?), so he’d been told, and embroidered with little roses and costing just shy of a thousand pounds—was his. A sliver of him jettisoned without thought but grown. A miniature, female version of him.

“You like her!”

Nikolas glanced over, his mind still clearly on the great triumph he was witnessing in the middle of the room. “Who?”

Ben motioned toward Molly Rose. He didn’t like saying her name. He felt daft. He hadn’t even told anyone outside his closest friends Tim and Squeezy that he had a daughter, and even to them he termed her the squirt. “Molly.”

Nikolas seemed puzzled. “What’s not to like?”

Ben copied the frown unconsciously. “But she’s just a…” He wrinkled his nose. “Baby.”

Their profound conversation was interrupted by Jennifer bringing in the tea, which she placed upon a table well out of small crawlers’ reach. She considered Molly Rose who was wobbling a little and then sat suddenly, bouncing slightly on the padding of her nappy.

Jennifer didn’t seem as happy with Nikolas’s horse as her granddaughter.

* * *

Chapter Two

Ben went to his regimental do that night and Nikolas knew he’d crawl in incoherently drunk sometime in the early hours of the morning. He’d then vomit (hopefully not over him, but this was a distinct possibility), and then not wake until the afternoon, when he’d swear never to drink again and be very quiet and contrite and loving until he felt well enough to go for a punishingly long run to sweat out the last of the poison, at which point he’d be ravenous and extremely turned on. So, Nikolas reckoned he had about twenty-four hours of unpleasantness to endure until things got distinctly more enjoyable. Ben horny was always very agreeable indeed.

An evening without Ben was actually something to be treasured. In the past, he’d have immediately indulged more unhealthy pursuits. Their siren whispers were still audible, but he’d ignore them for the moment. He had other things to keep his mind distracted. He turned on a classical piece—full volume—a recording of Jacqueline du Pre playing Bach at the Royal Albert Hall accompanied, amongst others, by Nina Mikkelsen on piano.

Ben, Nikolas knew, would be ranting at this, refusing to tolerate the crap noise. One day, Nikolas thought he might try to explain to Ben how his life had once been filled with such sounds, his mother practising up to eight hours a day, music, always music, scales and arpeggios accompanying all the great triumphs and disasters of Nikolas’s childhood. She’d been playing Stravinsky’s Sacrificial Dance from The Rite of Spring when he’d tumbled off the roof of the villa and broken his leg. He’d always hated perverse dissonance in music ever since. But then he’d lain for over an hour before his mother had come for him. Nikolas knew she’d heard him fall, and the racket he’d made subsequently, lying in the courtyard, but as she’d told him later, Stravinsky negated human feeling.

He’d never tried flying again.

If he’d thought of it, he’d have pushed Nika off first to see if their homemade wings actually worked.

When the recording was to his satisfaction, he logged onto the online chess game he was playing with a surprisingly challenging opponent. Chainsaw had gone Nbd7, which was a good move, Nikolas had to concede. He replied with a better one. That done, he texted Emilia to see how she was getting on and received, How’s Molly? back.

How was Molly? It was a good question.

He’d managed to get Ben to visit his daughter a total of three times now. Each time he’d seen a gradual increase in Ben’s acceptance of the fact that he did have a child. Quite what Nikolas wanted Ben to do about this was something yet to be decided. He wrote, Standing now, with a grin, remembering her little look of rebellion.

Nikolas hoped she’d respond. Something. Anything. Chainsaw hadn’t replied yet. Perhaps he was busy colouring in coastlines. It was about all Nikolas could remember from school, aged eight—inking blue around endless coastlines of countries he would one day visit and kill people in. Not such a wasted education then.

He couldn’t sit still or stop for a moment when he was alone these days. Background silence had to be filled with sound, music, or if he was desperate, the radio, a report about the situation in the world—war, immigration, missing planes, death, tragedy—anything other than his own thoughts.

If he started to think, then he’d feel again the suffocating realisation that it was all coming to an end.

He’d tried to tell Ben.

He’d tried to leave him first, but when that had failed, he’d tried to tell him, in those bad few hours when Ben had broken him open, forced him to be honest. Honesty had never done Nikolas any good in his life, and it hadn’t then. Ben didn’t get it. Something was coming. It was coming for him, or for Ben, which was pretty much the same thing these days, and then all of this would be over.

Better enjoy it while he could.

* * *

Nikolas had just got his first cigarette of the night lit, a glass of Russian Standard poured, and a bottle of Romane Conti lined up for later, when he heard the front door click. He didn’t have time for his usual sanitizing of the scene.

When Ben appeared in the sitting room doorway, he didn’t seem to know what to wince at first—the cigarette, the noise, or the alcohol. Nikolas made an annoyed sound, which he hoped covered all three sins, and turned the music off.

Ben stared at him. “Seriously?”

“I thought you were at…”

“Seriously?”

Nikolas twitched his nose and stubbed out his cigarette.

Under the steely green gaze, the glass of vodka was carried to the kitchen and emptied down the sink.

When these things were done to his apparent satisfaction, Ben flung himself onto the couch and turned the TV on. He wasn’t watching it, Nikolas knew.

Nikolas sat down alongside the sulking figure and offered him a glass of wine. Ben glanced at it then took it.

Nikolas cheered up fractionally (but covertly); the night wouldn’t be wholly without pleasure. Of all his addictions, of all the things he now craved to keep the demons at bay, to prevent the inevitable end of everything arriving, Ben Rider’s body was at the top of the list. Hands down, best distraction ever.

He ruffled Ben’s hair and commented cautiously, “I thought you were gone for the night.” Ben could take it as enquiry or apology—however he wanted.

Ben flicked his gaze over from the screen. “So I see.”

“Was the reunion cancelled?”

“No.”

Nikolas studied the perfection of light through the red in his glass, debating whether to push. Ben would tell him in his own time. He always did. Ben didn’t have the capacity for…Nikolas swirled the wine a little. He’d underestimated Ben recently. It wasn’t a mistake he wanted to make again.

“It was boring.”

Nikolas raised his brows a little, regarding the frowning figure. Boring? Ben had never gone to a regimental do and called it that before. Ben never called anything that except books that didn’t rely on zombies for their interest or films that had subtitles.

Ben finally turned the TV off. “I’ve got nothing in common with any of them any more.”

Nikolas decided silence was the best conversational companion, so resisted the temptation to point out the obvious.

“They were all talking about jobs and girlfriends, wives, kids—shit like that.”

The temptation to prompt, “And?” was overwhelming.

“And I can’t say anything, can I?” Nikolas tried not to wince as Ben downed the thousand-pound-a-bottle glass of wine in one gulp. “So I came home.”

“In defeat?”

Ben suddenly turned to him, slamming the glass down on the table. “Fucking hell. You moron.” He pressed himself to Nikolas, claiming him with a savage pressing of wine-brushed lips and wide open mouthing, tongue seeking. Into the possessing, he murmured, “I wanted to tell them about you.” He began to unbutton Nikolas’s shirt. “I wanted to shout out that I was fucking a man. That I was fucking you.” He began to kiss down Nikolas’s belly. “And then I didn’t want to tell them anything. I just wanted to come home and do it.”

Nikolas responded to the kissing, to the sudden passion, fumbling for Ben’s zip. They undressed each other desperately and fucked upon the sofa until their bodies were languid and sated and they couldn’t have said, if asked, who was in whom, or where the last tingles of release came from.

Eventually, senses other than ones below the waist returned, and Nikolas could hear faint street noises, Radulf snoring, the occasional tick from the fridge. And this was the best of times for him now, when they were more one body than two, joined by sweat and semen, saliva shared, leisurely kissing with the soft grind of pelvic bone to bone, and nerves firing off from a residue of intense pleasure.

* * *

Ben mouthed into Nikolas’s ear, “It’s never defeat when I think about the fact I have you.”

Nikolas chuckled. “What do you want, Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen? You’re being blatantly manipulative—not that I don’t agree with just how lucky you are…”

Ben punched him but then conceded, “I was wondering…Stop it!” He hated that Nikolas could read him so easily, although there had been a time only recently when Nik had not read him at all. Misread all the signals, in fact. Perhaps, one day, they would talk about what had happened, but not now. Nikolas wasn’t ready.

“I was wondering whether we could ask the Armstrongs to Devon for a few days. With…the baby, I mean.”

“Molly.”

“Yes, obviously.”

“Say her name then.”

“Stop laughing! It’s not funny. I’m not being funny!”

“Yes, you are a little, Ben. She’s your daughter. Say her name.”

“All right! Molly then. Invite Molly to Devon. And they’d have to come as well, I guess. What do you think?”

“Ben?”

“What?”

“It’s your daughter and your house. You don’t need to ask me. It’s your life.”

Ben arched a little away from Nikolas so he could see his face. He shook his head. “I ask myself if you are the biggest pillock I’ve ever met and then tell myself no, how could you be? I was in the army. But then you go and say something like that and just prove yet again that you are! Jesus, Nik, you are my life.”

Nikolas sighed and stretched with very evident delight. “Well, in that case—”

No one ever rang the bell this late in the evening.

It wouldn’t have fazed them especially except for the nakedness, the dried cum, and the smell of sweat and sex.

But they were both ex-soldiers, both able to dress and assume the façade of nonchalant innocence very quickly when required.

Nikolas even poured himself another glass of wine. But just as he did, his hand shook, a small spasm. The wine spilt on the coffee table, a blood-red pooling. Nikolas closed his eyes for a moment, but Ben had the strangest thought that he wasn’t shutting them to the mess, but to what had caused it, to whatever, whoever, was at the door.

Many weeks later, Ben recalled that pooling red liquid with profound sadness. If he’d known what was waiting for them on the other side of the front door, would he have still opened it? Let it in?

No. He wouldn’t. Ben wasn’t someone who believed in seeing life as a learning experience—that all things, good or bad, could be used for personal growth. He was mature enough and so was Nikolas. He would have saved both of them the pain that was to come.

But despite his belief in fate and omens, when Ben remembered back to that evening, he knew he’d sensed nothing ominous about the softly chiming bell when it repeated its ring.

He only finished zipping his jeans, ruffled Nikolas’s hair and answered its summons.

* * *

Chapter Three

Once or twice since meeting Nikolas, Ben had experienced a sensation of his heart stopping and then restarting—just a tiny break in its normal beat. He knew it wasn’t physical, more a mental reaction to Nikolas’s occasionally jarring dissonance. This time, however, opening the door, the reaction was decidedly physical, and Ben found it hard to breathe for a moment, almost staggering.

He was profoundly grateful that he continued to take air in and out and that he didn’t collapse.

Nikolas was standing on the doorstep.

Not his Nikolas, of course. His Nikolas wasn’t Nikolas though. His Nikolas was Aleksey. But this was Nikolas. Ben knew this, was sure of it with a certainty he’d have stuck with under torture, because this boy was a photograph made manifest. This was the boy with the seashell, the boy who had once spoken to Ben and said, as clearly as if he were a real person who could speak out loud, “The man you love is a fraud.”

Ben then realised his error. Boy. Whoever this was, it couldn’t be the Nikolas from the photograph, because that Nikolas was, would have been, almost forty-seven—and he was dead. That seemed important somehow as well.

Then he got it.

Stefan. The dead child. Who were they to make the arrogant assumption that the dead stayed dead?

Ben began to laugh, but there was very little humour in the sound.

The young man’s face creased with confusion and he glanced at a piece of paper in his hand. “Sorry, I think I might have the wrong house? My name’s Steven Sky, I’m looking for—” His eyes slipped past Ben to something, someone, behind him. Ben didn’t need to look.

There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, and then the man who had obviously got he was at the right address, ventured, “Uncle Nikolas?”

Ben was absurdly grateful that he had not completed the young man’s earlier sentence for him. If he had, he’d have prompted, “Aleksey? You’re looking for Aleksey Mikkelsen?”

Ben couldn’t see Nikolas’s reaction to the mistaken assumption, but it was embarrassing to be doing nothing, and clearly Nikolas could hardly deny that the man had the right address—in a way. He was definitely a Mikkelsen—same hair, same face, same build. He was Nikolas half a lifetime ago—the half Ben had not shared. The half he coveted.

Ben felt a hand on his arm and began to relax into it until he realised it was just moving him out of the way.

Nikolas took his place in the doorway and Ben could not see his face.

He could see the young man’s though.

His eyes were…scanning, seeking. Any conclusion made from this study was unclear to Ben, as there was nothing to read in the expression other than those quick flicks of gaze over the slightly taller, older figure.

“You’d better come in.”

The visitor looked pleased at Nikolas’s neural comment.

They were all over six feet tall. Too big and too many for the hallway, and it was awkward, for many reasons, until they were in the kitchen and sitting, and Nikolas was leaning on the counter, silent, watchful.

If Ben had sensed furious, secret paddling to stay afloat before, there was none of that now. There was just laser-sharp concentration on Nikolas’s face and not a muscle of movement other than breathing, and even that wasn’t noticeable.

Ben sat at the table, also regarding the new arrival in the better lighting. The similarity to the photograph was no less pronounced now—the resemblance to Nikolas, come to that.

Nikolas suddenly took a breath. “I was not aware my brother had a son. This is something of a…surprise.”

Ben felt like laughing. Surprise? That was one way of putting it.

The boy nodded. “I only found out about my real father a few weeks ago. My mother never told me about him. When she died I was given—”

“Your mother is dead?”

“Yes. Two weeks ago. I’m sorry; did you know her? She never mentioned anything about—”

“I met her very briefly actually, last summer. Before that I had no idea about my brother’s life. We were not close. How did she die?”

The tension in Nikolas’s voice was evident then to Ben. He doubted this visitor would notice, but he did. He knew all Nikolas’s inflections and that one screamed Kate again at him.

“Cancer. She had breast cancer.”

Ben had the sudden and very sad image of a beautiful woman with an obvious wig—obvious even to him, and he didn’t give women’s hair as much consideration as other men his age might. Kristina had been so thin, so…fragile. He felt a little sorry for her now, angry with himself for being jealous of her.

If Nikolas’s thoughts were whirling and assessing, too, there was no manifestation of anything other than mild regret in his tone when he murmured, “I’m sorry.”

“So when I was sorting her estate, I was given all the papers she’d put together about my father, his family—I didn’t know she’d met you just before she died. She didn’t mention it. Perhaps that prompted her to gather all that together for me though. She was researching my father’s death mainly, and you were mentioned as being there…I mean…a witness.”

“I was mentioned? You thought you would…seek me out?”

“Well, yes. When I discovered you were in London. My father’s identical twin. It’s incredible.”

“Yes, isn’t it.”

“Can you tell me anything about him?”

“No. I hardly knew him. We had very little contact after he went to live in Russia with our father. We were…oh, perhaps ten?”

The boy pursed his lips. “Oh. I thought you both went to Russia. And you were at school together.”

Nikolas waved his hand in dismissal, a gesture Ben had seen better executed, another sign that Nikolas wasn’t taking this unexpected arrival as calmly as he appeared to be. “We were in entirely different classes, and I went home to Denmark for the holidays. Very little contact. I can tell you almost nothing about him. You said your name was—?”

“Steven. Sky. My mother’s family name was Aronofsky and she called me Stefan, but I’ve…you know, school, easier to pronounce.”

“Yes. Easier. Stefan is a nice name though.”

“Well, I actually go by Stevie. Stevie Sky. Maybe you’ve read some—? No? I’m a writer.”

Ben frowned trying to work this out. How old was Stefan? Steven…

So far, he’d gone unobserved between the mutual blond staring, but now his expression and slight lean back caught Steven’s attention. He turned to Ben with raised brows, but when Ben didn’t fall for the very Nikolas-like tactic, Steven had to ask, “Sorry, I didn’t catch your…You are…?”

Ben didn’t think it was any business of this interloper who he was, but he needn’t have worried. Nikolas replied for him very swiftly. “Ben Rider. He’s my media spokesman. I run a private charity.” Nikolas pushed off the counter and put his back to them, ostensibly switching on the kettle. “What sort of books do you write, Steven?”

“I’m—I started a course in film production and scriptwriting, but I kinda found it…I’m a blogger at the moment. I haven’t actually written a book yet…or I have, I just haven’t got it published, but I’m hoping this new one will be my breakthrough.”

Ben wanted to ask, he really did, but he was still sifting through the fact he was Nikolas’s media spokesman. Would a media spokesman speak? Would a media spokesman take any part at all in this bizarre situation? Perhaps a media spokesman would just stand up, tell his boss to fuck off, and leave. One called Ben Rider might.

Engrossed in imagining this happening—seeing Nikolas’s face—he only caught the tail end of Steven’s reply to something Nikolas had apparently asked him. “…good story. She’s coming back into vogue.”

Nikolas had turned and was considering Steven. Ben flicked his gaze between them, awed still by the similarities. “What? Who?”

Nikolas clarified for Ben, never taking his eyes off his doppelganger. “Steven is writing a book about my mother, apparently.”

“Nina?” Fatuous, but Ben reckoned he was allowed a sliver of inanity, given the circumstances. It wasn’t every day you got to meet a dead child. Nikolas only nodded in response: yes, that mother.

Steven was more vocal. “My mother left all these papers—that’s where I found out about you, Un—”

“Nikolas. Just call me Nikolas.”

Ben resisted the urge to wince as Nikolas said this. Perhaps it was the wine he’d drunk too quickly, but he was beginning to feel light-headed. Even though he’d been dismissed as nothing more than a colleague, Ben suddenly had the overwhelming need to go up to Nikolas and hug him. How the fuck was Nikolas staying on his feet?

He’d just met the son he’d thought was dead.

He’d just discovered he was a father.

* * *

Chapter Four

If Steven Sky—Stevie Sky—thought he was going to be welcomed into the fold, embraced, and offered a bed for the night, he was sadly deluded, Ben reflected.

Nikolas made his excuses, claiming pressure of work—early morning meetings—and ushered Steven to the door.

Whether he promised to meet again with Steven some other time, Ben didn’t catch. He did hear the solid click as the door closed then the silence. He could actually hear Nikolas thinking, but unfortunately not the actual result of those thoughts.

He got up and finished off the making of tea, which Nikolas had feigned doing during his conversation with his…son.

By the time Nikolas came in, Ben had two mugs on the table. The hot liquid sloshed as Nikolas sat too heavily in the chair opposite. He was as pale as he’d been when he’d lost blood once on a mountain in New Zealand. Ben pushed an offering of sweetened tea toward him.

When Nikolas took a sip, he flinched and suddenly seemed to come back to himself. Ben had sugared it—liberally.

Nothing more was forthcoming after this instinctive reaction, however. Ben waited patiently. Nikolas’s eyelashes cast shadows on his cheekbones as he pondered something on the table, or possibly a great deal further away. Ben sighed inwardly.

“I’m glad I didn’t stay at the dinner night.”

No response.

“Or you’d have been on your own when he got here.”

Nikolas lifted his eyes to the window, as if he could see through the blind to the street beyond.

“Who knows what might have happened.”

Nikolas’s gaze travelled to Ben for a tiny moment before returning to its place on the blind.

“You might have embraced him as your long-lost son.”

Nikolas took a long breath and focused more fully on Ben. “I was not prepared for this.” There was some awareness in Nikolas’s eyes, as if he had a desire to tell Ben more. I wasn’t prepared for this because I’d been planning for…But if he’d been about to confess something to Ben, he stopped and added only, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell him we were…”

“Go on, you’re almost there.”

Nikolas smiled faintly, acknowledging that Ben wasn’t being all that funny and shrugged. “I’m sorry, anyway. You know I don’t find it easy, and this was a shock, even for me.”

Ben got up to fetch himself a biscuit, keeping his back to Nikolas. Something was definitely…off. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he wanted to mull over the possibilities—other than the fact Nikolas had just met his son and pretended that he was, in fact, his uncle. Other than that there was something definitely wrong about Nikolas’s words.

It was the apology.

Since when did Nikolas do apologies? Since when did Nikolas admit he found anything difficult? It was a diversionary tactic to camouflage something else that wasn’t right. What had he seen in that guarded expression? What might Nikolas have told him if the old joke about their relationship had not conveniently arisen to distract them both? Ben had taken twelve years to get to this stunning level of intuitiveness about Nikolas. He suspected he had many more years to go before he could make any use of this newfound ability, but it gave him somewhere to start. Nikolas was hiding something—other than how he felt about this new development in their lives.

Ben suddenly had a thought and began to laugh. He could hear the bitterness so he wasn’t surprised when Nikolas jerked his gaze toward him questioningly. Suddenly, shockingly, he’d recalled the image in the train window. The mirror image Nikolas. Ben shook his head. “I was just wondering if I’m about to find out that maybe you really are Nikolas Mikkelsen and you killed Aleksey and now you’re afraid Aleksey’s son is going to discover your deception.” He was only joking of course. Possibly.

Nikolas frowned deeply. “What deception?”

Ben felt a stab of panic. It was true? Nikolas shook his head, clearly bewildered. “If I were Nikolas, I wouldn’t be pretending, so where would the deception be?”

“Huh?”

“Exactly.”

Ben opened his mouth to counter this stunning argument when Nikolas just put his head in his hands and muttered gloomily, “I need a drink.”

Ben wholeheartedly agreed. He wished he’d stayed at the regimental dinner and got stonkingly drunk and reeled home oblivious to all of Nikolas’s over-complicated life. Then he remembered Molly Rose and saw his behaviour for the last hour held up against Nik’s since she’d come into their lives.

He was being a complete dick.

He went over to Nikolas and wrapped his arms around Nikolas’s blond head, kissing into his hair. “She stole him from you all these years. I’m sorry.”

Nikolas shook his head, standing and freeing himself from Ben’s embrace. “She saved him. Come, I need to sleep on this and then think what is to be done.”

Ben pulled him into a standing hug, hating the way even Nikolas’s speech seemed to be reverting back to the Nikolas of the shadows. “We need to sleep on this, I think you meant to say.”

Nikolas didn’t put on his martyred air of nagged partner as he usually did at such pronouncements from Ben— “Yes, Benjamin, of course I meant to say we.” He only nodded and went to secure the house.

And that missed opportunity to show Ben up was almost the most worrying thing of all.

* * *

They didn’t make love that night. It wasn’t so unusual that Ben was going to consult a doctor about it, start worrying Nikolas was dying or anything. After all, they’d had a pretty good session on the couch just a few hours previous, but it did make him restless and uneasy, which then allowed him to notice that Nikolas wasn’t sleeping either, only he wasn’t tossing and turning and punching the pillow into different but equally unsatisfactory shapes. Instead, Nikolas was lying on his back, his face a still mask.

Ben didn’t want to think that this was also like the old Nikolas, but it was a concern that nevertheless crept unbidden into his mind at just gone three, when Nikolas didn’t even appear to have blinked for the last five minutes.

Ben finally swore and poked him in the ribs.

Nikolas sighed. “What?”

“No! Not what to me! I say what to you! What are you thinking?”

Nikolas folded his arms behind his head. Ben loved it when he did this, the temptation to stroke down the cool insides of his bicep almost irresistible. He ignored the temptation, sensing the intimate gesture wouldn’t be welcome. “I was thinking about the ocean and wondering if you put a small drop of boiling water into the sea here, whether you could measure the increase in temperature in, say, the Pacific—if you had sensitive enough measuring instruments.”

“Oh.” Huh?

“What do you think?”

“I…yes. I think you could.” What the fuck?

Nikolas frowned and turned his head. “You do?”

“Sure.” I don’t fucking know! What the fuck are we talking about? “If they were sensitive enough.”

“Good. That’s what I think, too.”

Ben flopped back to his side of the bed. He was considering a suitable rejoinder when Nikolas added in the same neutral tone, “I was playing my mother’s music tonight, and then my son, my dead son, came to the door and said he was going to write a book about her. I think the earth has shifted on its axis, but I will be the only one who will see the implications of that movement, because there are no instruments fine enough to measure it except those in my mind.” Nikolas pulled Ben over to lay his head upon his chest. “Go to sleep. I need to think.”

Ben slid his hand down Nikolas’s hard belly to see if he was likely to get any fun, but Nikolas caught and held it. Again, it wasn’t exactly the first time Nikolas had denied him, but it was a rare enough event to keep Ben awake for some time more.

It had been a shock. He couldn’t deny that. But now he’d had time to get used to the idea, Ben really couldn’t see that this latest event would affect the day-to-day running of their lives.

Nikolas had a son. But he’d negated much that could or should come from that relationship by continuing the deception that he was merely an uncle. Twin of the father, sure, but, as he’d told Steven, not close. If in reality two brothers had not met since they were ten, almost forty years previous, how familiar would they be to each other?

---ENDE DER LESEPROBE---