This Other Country Read online

  It was a very quiet drive back to the glass house. Ben wasn’t allowed to speak about what they needed to do, but he wasn’t apparently prepared to talk about anything else either. Ben’s silence didn’t bother Nikolas one bit. He chatted amiably to Radulf. He often got more sense out of the dumb, blind dog than he did most humans anyway.

  § § §

  As soon as they arrived home, Ben took himself off to a private spot and called Tim again. He informed his friend of Nikolas’s unhelpful response to their plan. Tim insisted they should do it anyway. Ben agreed, although it made him feel bad to go behind Nikolas’s back.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kate came down to the house two days later. She’d been reading the transcripts from sessions of gay men in crisis since she’d hacked Doctor Wood’s computer, so she wasn’t in the best of moods.

  She sighed as she came into the kitchen. “Where is he?”

  “Riding. He’ll be back soon. What’ve you got?”

  “The ideal couple. Have you talked him around yet?”

  Ben shook his head, making her some tea. “I haven’t mentioned it again. I thought it was best to wait till you had something. Is it going to work?”

  “I’ll wait till he’s here, save me going through it twice. Thanks.” She took her tea to the table and sat sipping it thoughtfully as she looked around the vast, impressive kitchen. She smiled privately and glanced at Ben. He brought his tea to the table and pushed over a plate of biscuits. She nibbled the edge of one. The atmosphere was a little awkward. A few years ago they’d have been ripping each other’s clothes off, not drinking tea and thinking of something to say. She remembered Ben Rider’s body extremely well. It wasn’t something you forgot. She remembered waking up alongside him, awed at his beauty, jealous of his beauty, which seemed to take no effort to maintain.

  Although Kate had once told Ben she’d always known he was gay, she’d lied. She’d not sensed anything from him to hint at this, except perhaps a cold remoteness when they made love, which she’d put down to his job—a sense he was going through the motions rather than connecting. Sometimes, in quiet moments, she compared herself to Nikolas Mikkelsen, trying to assess how and why Ben had decided he preferred that body to hers, that person to her. She couldn’t begin to imagine living with her boss. None of them working in ANGEL could. None of them knew how Ben put up with him. They all revered Nikolas, respected him, obeyed him, worked for him, but they all—even Squeezy who wanted to fuck him—admitted Nikolas unnerved them, exhausted them, and confused them. Ben seemed to float over the tumultuous ocean storms of Nikolas’s presence like a tranquil cloud, entirely unaffected. Which to a casual observer might appear as if the things Nikolas did and said didn’t affect Ben, but of course that wasn’t true.

  She sometimes wondered what would happen to Ben if Nikolas cheated on him.

  Then they’d all see the truth of the relationship: Ben wasn’t the cloud floating above the storm; he was the decreasing pressure causing it, and thus the storm was a manifestation of him. He kept Nikolas Mikkelsen bound to him, and controlled every which way he raged. Kate didn’t relish seeing the storm unleashed, set free to roam on its own and decide its own shape and power. She shivered, trying to cast aside gloomy thoughts. But she couldn’t shake the impression made upon her by the men she’d studied as they poured forth their despair.

  “Are you out, Ben?”

  Ben choked a little on his biscuit (his fourth). “What the fuck?”

  “No, seriously. Do you and Sir Nikolas go out as a gay couple?” Ben was now by the kettle, back to her, finding something that urgently had to be done on the counter. “I guess you haven’t had families to come out to…Do you…?”

  Ben looked as if he’d never been so glad to hear Nikolas return.

  Nikolas nodded to Kate, clearly surprised to see her, ignored Ben and sat down at the table with an expectant fold of his arms. “Well? He’s returned. That’s why you’re here, no?”

  She gestured to Ben and he sat down in the spare chair. She saw Nikolas flick his eyes to Ben for a moment, frown slightly as if he sensed something wrong, and then, although she couldn’t see this or confirm it, she knew without a doubt he’d slid his foot over, for Ben glanced at him with a small smile of reassurance. She pouted a little as she pulled the info she wanted from her briefcase along with her laptop. She didn’t remember having that silent communication with Ben at all. She remembered trips to a motorcycle showroom. She remembered the sex. She remembered a few dates to violent movies.

  Nikolas raised his brows at Kate in expectation. She shook her head. “He’s still missing.”

  “Idiot. Well, he’ll come back when he’s worked it out of his system. I’m going for a swim.” Before he could rise, Ben put a hand on his arm.

  “Nik, there’s something wrong about all this. You know that.”

  “I know no such thing.”

  “We need to speak with the people running this course.”

  “So? Do it. Call them.”

  Kate shifted her chair a little closer to Ben for support. “It’s not enough to just call. We think you should—”

  “No. Why am I having this conversation again? I’ve told you no.”

  She held her ground, despite his attempt to intimidate her. “You need to speak with the patients—clients? Not just the staff, and you can’t do that unless—”

  “I’m not going to fucking attend a gay counselling course! Do you all understand?”

  She hardly flinched, just a tiny flicker of an eye, but it could have been anger repressed. She turned immediately to Ben. “Right. Okay. So, you and Tim will go, yes?”

  Ben nodded. “Do the profiles work for us as well?”

  She wobbled her hand. “Not as well, but…” She began to rummage in her bag for folders.

  Nikolas stood up and went to the counter, his back to them. “Ben isn’t going either.”

  § § §

  Ben felt a surge of unexpected fury toward Nikolas. He didn’t mind Nikolas owning him when it was just the two of them, because then there was only one person present who believed this fiction—Nikolas. In front of Kate, however, it was humiliating—especially after her insinuation that he was…that he and Nikolas were…He stood up. Before he could work out a good strategy to counter this infuriating pronouncement, Kate fumed, “You owe Michael. I was there, remember? I saw him.”

  Nikolas looked around slowly. Ben stared at him then Kate with a frown, sensing he was missing something.

  Suddenly, she added, “Anyway, Tim can’t do this. You know he can’t. But you can.”

  Nikolas sat back at the table and put his head in hands. “I would rather be chained in a hunting shed and tortured. Oh, wait, I’ve already done that.”

  Ben sat uneasily back down. “What do you mean, you saw him?”

  At exactly the same time, Nikolas and Kate chorused, “Never mind,” which made them both smile at each other. She immediately apologised for nothing in particular, and he nodded, apparently accepting it any way he wanted.

  Nikolas ran his fingers through his hair, sat up straighter and relented, “Tell me about this plan of yours—that you’ve obviously been concocting behind my back.” He quirked the corner of his lips at Ben. “And I’m sorry. I obviously didn’t mean to tell you what you can and can’t do.”

  § § §

  Kate’s eyebrows rose fractionally, and she busied herself in her bag, hiding her shock. She couldn’t remember Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen apologising for anything to anyone in the eleven years she’d known him, and resisted peering under the table to see if touching of feet was ongoing.

  Ben waited until she’d taken some folders out of her bag then explained, “We plan to get onto the course properly—infiltrate it as a couple recommended by Doctor Wood. So Kate’s been waiting for a suitable couple just about to go—age wise. We haven’t got time to get the perfect match. It’ll have to be good enough.”

  Sensing Ben was wilting under Nikolas’s scep
ticism, Kate took over. “The doctor had a couple in yesterday who were longstanding patients of his. He wasn’t making any headway with them and persuaded them to give this course a go. They’re not ideal, but they’re the only ones remotely possible, unless you want to wait…?”

  Ben shook his head. “No, we need to move on this now. Whatever Squeezy’s up to, we should do this concurrently.”

  Nikolas just nodded, staring glumly at the folders.

  “Okay then. These two. Similar ages to you two: forty-eight and thirty-eight…” She got an immediate chorus of outrage that she thought Nikolas could pass as forty-eight and Ben thirty-eight. She was highly amused that each defended the other. “Close enough, yeah? Sheesh. I’ve hacked their case notes from the doctor’s database, so you can read up on their profiles and all the history of their therapy.”

  Nikolas eased a file towards him with the enthusiasm of a man pulling over his prostate cancer prognosis notes. He didn’t open the folder. Ben did the same with his. Suppressing a smile, Kate added, “I’ll give you the brief details, but you need read up on them and—and I’m teaching old ladies to suck eggs, yeah?”

  Nikolas frowned deeply at this and appeared to be about to ask for clarification so she continued quickly, “Nigel Stannis is forty-eight—”

  “Nigel?”

  Ben bit his lip, apparently at Nikolas’s disbelieving tone.

  “—and owns a shop in Camden. A florist and—” She lowered her gaze to the hand on her arm then raised it to meet cold amber eyes.

  “A florist? A gay florist called Nigel. Ben put you up to this, yes?”

  She shook her head faintly and tapped the file he had in front of him. “What did you think they were going to be? Ex-Special Forces?” She turned to Ben. “Nigel’s boyfriend, Justin, is thirty-eight. He’s a chef, but he’s—”

  Nikolas had begun to laugh. Ben was obviously trying not to.

  “—He’s leaving his job to be a house husband, because Nigel wants them to adopt—is this really that funny, guys? Seriously?” Kate reckoned she had her answer to the question that had annoyed Ben. Out hardly described these two. They seemed entirely unable or unwilling to see they’d embraced exactly this lifestyle. Sure, they weren’t florists or chefs—Nikolas’s wealth kept them nicely in denial about the mundane business of working at all—but they were gay, for fuck’s sake, so why they were finding Nigel and Justin so amusing was beyond her. It irritated her. It hadn’t been funny reading about Nigel, a forty-eight-year-old man, crying. Not at all. Why should his life be so bloody difficult, when all he wanted was the same things she did—someone to love, children…?

  Ben had stopped chuckling and was watching her. He rested the back of his hand against her cheek. “What’s wrong? Kate? You’ve gone white.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I’m…It’s nothing.”

  Nikolas slid his chair back a little. She could sense him trying to read her hesitation and resolutely tapped the bio she’d handed him. “I’m going to ring Tim, see if Michael’s back. Study these.”

  § § §

  Nikolas watched her leave. “What was she saying to you before I came in?”

  “Nothing important.”

  Nikolas knew that tone, however, and kept glancing at Ben thoughtfully as they pretended to be studying their folders. Eventually, Ben hissed, “Stop it!”

  Nikolas huffed. “I’m not convinced my definition of what’s important between you and Kate coincides with yours. Tell me what she said.”

  “She wanted to know if I was out.”

  “Out of what?”

  The wince of pain was noticeable. “The closet.”

  Nikolas was quiet for a while, pondering this then clarified hesitantly, “She wanted to know if you were gay?”

  “Yes.” The word was barely audible through Ben’s locked jaw.

  “Strange question.”

  Ben let out a long breath of relief. “That’s what I thought!”

  “Out of the blue? Just like that?”

  “I know!”

  “Were you doing anything to lead her to think you might be?”

  “What like, for fuck’s sake? I was making tea!”

  “That’s not particularly gay, I agree. I think she’s just reassuring herself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t want her anymore so there must be something wrong with you. All women do it—every man is gay if he’s not interested in them.”

  Ben appeared slightly floored by this as if he’d been following the argument so far but had now been left stumped. “I guess.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I won’t.” Ben pushed his chair from the table and stood up. “I’m going for a run.”

  Nikolas considered Ben with narrowed eyes as he left.

  He’d committed a tactical error. He made it a rule never to leave Ben alone with Kate. Which he conceded might seem to contradict his recruitment of her in the first place. After all, he could have employed any computer expert—it didn’t have to be Ben’s ex. But Nikolas had studied the art of war. He’d read Sun-tzu and Machiavelli and entirely agreed with them: enemies were best kept close.

  § § §

  By the end of the day, both Nikolas and Ben had their profiles learnt. Squeezy was still missing. Time had begun to weigh on them.

  Nigel and Justin had been together for four years. They’d met at the opening of Nigel’s second shop when Justin had catered the party. They’d moved into Nigel’s house the previous year and were now talking about adoption. Or Nigel was. He appeared to be deeply aware of being nearly fifty, something he spoke about as almost akin to death. He felt the pressure of his years upon him in everything he did. Justin, at thirty-eight, which was not a fantastically young age, still felt they had years left before they needed to settle down and resented having to give up his job to show commitment to starting a family. Having finally met someone, he wanted them to travel together, have adventures, live life to the full. Nigel wanted to nest; Justin wanted to fly. It was something of a dilemma. A friend had recommended therapy. As Englishmen, both Nigel and Justin had responded to this with open derision, but after a particularly bad month—where Justin had moved out temporarily and Nigel had suffered an accident on his bike, riding, Justin claimed, whilst drunk—they’d agreed to seek help. Hence the visits to Dr Wood and the weekly pouring out of their hearts. Finally, unable to resolve their schism, Doctor Julian had told them about the intensive, residential therapy group. They’d agreed to make the call and attend.

  § § §

  Nikolas rang the doorbell of the small house in Barnett. The man who answered was clearly taken aback and objected quickly, “Sorry, I’m not a believer,” and began to shut the door. Nikolas put his foot in it.

  “Neither are we. Nigel Stannis?”

  Nigel nodded, wary, glancing out into the road, perhaps thinking the two huge men in expensive suits were…police?

  Nikolas handed him a card. “My name is Nikolas Mikkelsen, this is my associate B—”

  “Ben Rider!” Sudden recognition made the colour rise high and fast to Nigel Stannis’s face. “Oh, my God, you’re ex-Special-Forces-expert Ben Rider.” He stuck out his hand. “We watch all your shows. That tsunami documentary was amazing. I mean, tragic, of course but…anyway, what can I do for you? Come in.”

  Nikolas gave Ben a look between narrowed eyes. Ben shrugged, apparently amused at Nikolas’s annoyance and followed Nigel into the tiny house. Justin was in the kitchen, making toast. The introductions and exclamations over the fabulousness of actually meeting ex-Special-Forces-expert Ben Rider took place over offers of tea, and eventually all four of them were sitting at the very small kitchen table.

  They’d debated in the car how they were going to approach the task they now had. Nikolas had suggested either taking the two men out entirely—he favoured a tragic suicide pact—or kidnapping them and holding them in a secure place until the op was over. Ben ignored him as
usual and suggested they be totally honest (for once) and enlist their support. Nikolas kept his thoughts to himself about total honesty or asking for help from a gay florist and decided he’d wing it. This method had worked well in the past for him. He let Ben assume his escape from Zaslon, taking up his brother’s life, marrying into the Royal Family and hiding in the shadows of the dark world of the department had been clever, planned moves on his part. The truth was, most of it had been done on a wing and a prayer…like his decision to fuck Ben the first time over the billiard table. It could have gone very badly wrong.

  Now, though, faced with eager, curious, friendly faces, he decided to go for Ben’s option. He told them about a friend—a client of Doctor Wood—going missing…that the last known location they had for him was the therapy group, and that they, therefore, wanted to infiltrate it. This seemed a safer choice than telling them about Jonathan, which might lead to more questions than they were able to answer.

  Nikolas explained that he and Ben wanted to take their places. So far so good. Until Justin frowned and asked, quite reasonably, he thought—it would have been his question had their roles been reversed—“How do you know all this? About us and Doctor Wood?”

  There was an embarrassed silence around the table. Nikolas wished he’d pushed for one of his solutions. Reluctantly, he admitted he’d read the doctor’s notes from their last session. He didn’t add he’d studied the notes of every session and knew far more about Nigel and Justin’s sex life (and other things) than they could possibly imagine (or want). More tea had to be made and consumed while the two men worked through this, but eventually, Nigel asked, clearly very curious, “So, if we agreed, how would you pull it off? I mean, would you employ actors to take our roles? What? I don’t really get how this is going to work.”

  Nikolas was puzzled. “No. We will take your place. I’m approximately your age, very approximately, and Ben is—”

  “No, I mean, this is intensive therapy for gay men. How would you—you couldn’t…” He trailed off.

  There was a pause, which neither Ben nor Nikolas felt willing to fill, although the words that needed to be said were fairly obvious. Justin seemed to hear them in the silence. His gaze suddenly flicked between them and he exclaimed, “You’re gay? Ben’s gay? I thought you were going to marry that model with the cocaine nose job! You can’t be gay!”