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  “Nevertheless, I shouldn’t have allowed my tongue to run away with itself like that.” Tristan kept his voice low and leaned a little closer to Con. That was better. That was far more like the Tristan Goldsmith A game. “I’m afraid sometimes I can be a little tactless when my nerves get the better of me.” Should he have added a self-conscious laugh? Tristan held his breath.

  Con looked up at him sharply. “What, you? Nervous?”

  “Of course,” Tristan prevaricated. “There I was, in an unknown place, with an unknown group of people, all of whom knew each other well, my skills as an actor on trial. Who wouldn’t be nervous?”

  “Yeah, but… You’re a professional. I mean, you’re good.”

  The praise was so obviously sincere—and so unexpected—that Tristan felt a strong urge to brush it off, deny his own talents. Which was absurd, obviously, because if there was one thing Tristan didn’t suffer from, it was a lack of confidence in his abilities. Well, on the stage, at any rate. If (God forbid) he were forced to be honest, he was having the occasional sleepless night over the looming New York job. But that was the last thing he wanted to think about right now. “I… Thank you,” he managed, and took a gulp of tea.

  Con smiled in the direction of the carpet. It was a cheap-looking low-pile one with a pattern of flowers in queasy 1970s shades of orange and brown; Tristan couldn’t really see what there was to smile at. “Before you came on board, yeah,” Con continued, “Hev was trying to get me to take the part. Bet she’s bloody glad now I said no.”

  Tristan blinked, then rallied. He could hardly let an opening like that go by. “Oh, I’m quite convinced you’d make an excellent Bottom,” he purred, slipping a hand onto Con’s knee and giving a little squeeze.

  As a seduction technique, it didn’t quite have the desired effect. Con choked on his mouthful of tea and, his cheeks bellowed, went red in the face with the effort of not spraying it over the carpet.

  Tristan drew back a few inches and prudently refrained from making any gags on the virtues of swallowing. “I, ah, wasn’t aware you acted,” he said, once the coughing fit seemed to have died down.

  Con took a careful sip from his mug, then cleared his throat. His colour was slowly returning to normal. “Sorry about that. I don’t. Act, I mean. I just do the scenery. Shows you how desperate she was getting, though. It’s her first time directing, and what with Alan dropping out, she was having kittens over it all.”

  “What an arresting image,” Tristan said politely.

  Con laughed. “Yeah. Not so much when you’re in the firing line, though.”

  “There is a certain steeliness to her direction, I’ll admit. Have you known her long?”

  “Only since I moved into the village.” He grinned directly at Tristan. The force of it was a little unnerving. “She saw my card in Tesco and all. ’Cept when she rang, it was ’cos she wanted me to do stuff for free. You know, for the amateur dramatics.”

  “Oh? And do you provide other services for her gratis?” Tristan arched an eyebrow.

  Con frowned, then, adorably, blushed. “Oh. No, she’s got a bloke. Chris, who plays Flute, yeah? And, well, I’m not really into girls.” Once more the carpet received a thorough examination.

  Even as he mentally punched the air in celebration, Tristan had to admire Con’s constitution. If he lived here, he’d make it a point to look at the hideous flooring as little as possible. “And tell me,” he purred, sliding so close one couldn’t have fit a cat’s whisker between them on the sofa and putting his hand on Con’s knee once more. “Are there any young men you’re particularly, ahem, into at the moment?”

  Annoyingly, Con stiffened, and not in a good way. Tristan got the distinct impression that if he weren’t already pressed up against the arm of the sofa, he’d be edging away. “I… Uh. No. Um. You? Um. If you’re into blokes, obviously.”

  “Mmm, I can think of one…” Tristan ran his hand up Con’s thigh.

  And had to duck out of the way as Con stood up abruptly. “Um, it’s not that I don’t… But you’re going off to New York in a couple of months. It’s not gonna work, is it?”

  Tristan lolled back in the cushions with a pout, manfully restraining himself from rolling his eyes. “I was after a bit of fun, not your work-roughened hand in marriage.”

  “That’s the point, innit? Look, I don’t do casual. It’s just not me.” Con wrapped his big arms around himself.

  Tristan felt a surge of jealousy. “Why on earth not?”

  “I just don’t, okay? I mean, I like you and all, but I just don’t wanna…”

  Tristan frowned. “It’s the height, isn’t it? Just because I’m not constructed on Herculean lines—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with how big you are.” Con flushed. “I mean, tall.”

  “It’d better not be because I’m Jewish.”

  “You’re not bloody listening. We just want different stuff, all right?”

  “Sex is a biological imperative. Men are programmed to want it. Why would you even try to deny that?”

  “I’m not denying nothing, okay? I just don’t wanna sleep with you. End of.”

  One day, Tristan thought dully, he’d be called upon to give a performance as Julius Caesar being shivved by his senators. All he’d have to do would be to remember the precise degree of stabbing pain he could feel now in the chest area, and the Olivier Award would be in the bag.

  “Well, you’ve made yourself perfectly clear,” he heard himself saying. He stood up. “And now I come to think of it, good thing too. It was a ridiculous idea, anyway. After all, what on earth could you and I have in common?”

  Con blinked slowly a few times. Then his face hardened. “Right. So I guess you’ll be going now, then.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to take up any more of your no doubt valuable time.”

  Tristan was halfway down the stairs before he heard the gentle click of the door shutting behind him. He felt sick. This was… This was all wrong.

  This never happened. Not to Tristan.

  Chapter Six

  The Raveled Sleave

  Con lay on his bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling. The light coming in from the street lamp outside his window spread in little wavy patterns drawn by the tops of the curtains. Every now and then, a car would go past, and there’d be a flash of light as it went over the speed bump outside, the headlights pointing up for a second or so.

  Tristan had left half an hour ago. Con had been so bloody tired, everything ached, so he’d just brushed his teeth, pulled off his clothes and fallen into bed, but sleep hadn’t come. Right now he felt like he’d never been more awake in his life.

  Just what the hell was Tristan playing at? Was it all some…some acting thing? Like he wanted to try slumming it with Con for a bit, so he could expand his range, like Heather would put it? Or was he just bored? Yeah, that was it. He was bored, ’cos let’s face it, he’d be used to a lot livelier nightlife than you got around Shamwell.

  He was probably used to going clubbing every night… Although, hang on, he’d have been at the theatre every night, wouldn’t he, what with him being a professional actor? Maybe he went clubbing after the performance. After all, how long would it take Tristan bloody God’s Gift Goldsmith to land a bloke for the night? Half an hour, tops. Even if the clubs all shut at one like they did round here, he’d have plenty of time.

  If Con was honest, he hadn’t been surprised Tristan had tried it on. What with all the flirting, and the looks he’d been getting. And some of those posh gits liked a bit of rough, didn’t they? Yeah, he’d known Tristan fancied him.

  He just hadn’t expected Tristan to make it quite so bloody clear a quick shag was all Con was worth to him, that was all.

  A tight, painful feeling in his chest, Con rolled over and punched his pillow.

  Chapter Seven

  Love�
��s Labour’s Lost

  “He turned me down, Amanda. Me. He turned me down.”

  Amanda’s face, which was looking a little on the puffy side as—finally—displayed on Tristan’s computer screen, showed none of the sympathy Tristan had been expecting. “Have you got any idea what time it is here?”

  Tristan frowned in concentration. “GMT plus eight, but we’re on British Summer Time, so that’s only plus seven…” He beamed. “Six o’clock in the morning.”

  Then he realised what he’d just said.

  “Oh. Sorry.” He made a face at her, the one that was supposed to convey aren’t I a scatterbrain, but I’m so adorable you forgive me. It didn’t appear to have the desired effect.

  God, Tristan was losing his touch with everyone.

  “So you bloody well should be. I get one lie-in here, Tristan, one, and it’s on a Sunday morning. I do not appreciate being woken up from it.”

  “Then you should have shut your laptop down properly when you went to sleep. Watching naughty pictures before beddy-byes again, were we? Darling, don’t you ever worry someone will hack your computer and use the webcam to watch you sleeping?”

  “Not everyone has a nasty little imagination like you, darling.”

  “Or at the very least, you should have turned off that wake-up-when-called function. I don’t even know why you have that. I didn’t think you were that attached to your old friends that you couldn’t bear to miss a call from them. Well, present company excepted, of course.”

  “I do have a family too, you know.”

  “Sweetie, you hate your family.”

  “Not as much as I hate you right now. The Skype thing’s for emergencies.”

  “This is an emergency, darling. I told you. He turned me down, Amanda.”

  “Who did? Oh God—not your mentally negligible village stallion?”

  Too downcast to protest the insult to Con’s intelligence, Tristan nodded sadly, wondering if it would be overdoing it to let a single tear drop from his eye.

  “Maybe he’s straight.”

  “Please. You know perfectly well half the men I’ve slept with have been straight.”

  “Maybe he’s gay, then, and your particular blend of waspish camp and intellectual snobbery doesn’t do it for him. Perhaps he’d rather be off shagging straight men.”

  Tristan pouted. “Are you implying I’m not manly enough for him?”

  “If the diamante cap fits, darling.”

  “Ouch. You’re going to be back in Britain for Christmas, aren’t you? I’ll make an appointment with the vet. It’s been far too long since we last had you de-clawed.”

  “Oh, I expect I’ll be back, but I don’t suppose I’ll see you. You’ll be in New York, and you know they don’t take much time off for holidays there. You won’t even have time to get on a plane.”

  Something seized up uncomfortably in Tristan at that thought. God, that was going to be his life in a few short months. Long days of drudgery in a job he despised, with colleagues who thought days off were for wimps.

  “I could come and visit you, I suppose,” Amanda said, with the air of one grudgingly condescending to toss a lifebelt to a drowning man. “Christmas in New York would be all right, I expect. You could take me to Macy’s, and ice skating in the park.”

  “Better bring some bolt cutters to unchain me from my desk, then,” Tristan muttered, nonetheless cheered by the prospect.

  “Poor love. It’s just not fair, is it? That you should have to work for a living like, oh, every single other person in the world. In the real world, that is.”

  Tristan frowned. “When we were with the Players we were working for a living.”

  “I think the word you were looking for is pittance. Remember all those ghastly times we were forced to eat supermarket own brands and get tanked up on cheap wine before we went out, because we couldn’t afford to buy rounds?”

  Well, yes, but Tristan had actually found it quite fun at the time. Like one of those survival adventures, where they sent you off to the outback with nothing but a penknife and a piece of string and made you forage for your own food. Tristan had become remarkably adept at foraging in the bargain bin at Lidl.

  Amanda, he recalled, had never quite entered into the spirit of it. “The point still stands. And anyway, I didn’t call you to talk about work.”

  “Oh yes, the stallion. Are you sure he actually realised you were asking him out? I wouldn’t normally accuse you of being too subtle, but you did say he’s not the sharpest dagger in the prop drawer.”

  This was too much. Tristan bristled on Con’s behalf. “Just because he’s not particularly academic doesn’t mean he’s retarded. Yes, he realised.”

  “So what did he actually say?”

  “I’d rather not repeat it,” Tristan said stiffly. “But it was very final.” To his horror, the tear he had contemplated shedding earlier in a bid for sympathy was now making its way, entirely unbidden, down his face.

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “God, Tristan, for a supposedly nice Jewish boy you have a hell of a lot of ham in you sometimes. Save the tears for your next starring role.”

  Tristan scrubbed his face vigorously with his hand, and tried to look suitably caught out in counterfeit emotion. “Mmm, not a lot of call for tears in Dream—not from Nick Bottom, at any rate.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? No, that’s right, they only asked me this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “The local amateur dramatics society. Affectionately known as the Sham-Drams. They’ve asked me to be in their production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I must say they seem rather impressed with my portrayal so far.”

  There was a pause before Amanda spoke again. “Why would you even want to be in an amateur production? Or should I say, a shamateur one?”

  Tristan frowned. “Why on earth not? It’s acting, Amanda. It’s a stage. Don’t you miss it?” Aware he was likely prodding a raw nerve, Tristan braced himself for an outburst.

  It didn’t come. Amanda’s tone, far from wounded, simply dripped with disdain. “Of course I miss it. But a village society? It’s hardly the same thing. If you told me I could never eat salmon again, I expect I’d miss that. But it doesn’t mean I’d take every opportunity to gorge myself on fish fingers. I suppose it must be a sop to your ego, being the only actual actor in the production, but don’t you think it’s just a little pathetic?”

  “Not in the least,” Tristan said icily. “But I’ll let you go now, sweetie. I wouldn’t want to keep you when you’re so clearly behind on your beauty sleep.”

  She smiled sweetly. “You always were bitchy when thwarted. Some people might say it was time you grew out of it. Do try not to let one humiliating rejection ruin your whole summer, won’t you?”

  They hung up, and Tristan flung himself down on the sofa, one arm over his eyes. God, when would he learn that calling Amanda for sympathy was like asking a shark to kiss a boo-boo better?

  She was wrong about the Sham-Drams. There was nothing pathetic about it at all. Was there? No, no, there wasn’t. And yes, all right, perhaps there was a touch of the old ego-boost involved in showing a bunch of amateurs how it was done, but mostly, it was just fun.

  Well, it had been fun. Now, he supposed, it was going to be a bloody nightmare, having to face Con all the time.

  Chapter Eight

  Constant in All Things

  “Tristan’s trying to get into Con’s knickers,” Heather announced as Sean put the tray of drinks down on the table.

  So much for mates keeping your secrets.

  Sean grinned. “Yeah? How’d that go, then?”

  “It didn’t, all right?” Con took a swallow of his beer. They were up at the Sticky Wicket pub for an early Sunday lunch with Sean’s and Heather’s boyfriends, so he was already feeling a bi
t of a sore thumb for not being all coupled up.

  “Playing hard to get, are you?” Heather grinned too. “Never saw the point of that, personally.”

  Chris put his arm around her and squeezed her so tight she squealed. “Yeah, gotta love a girl who’s easy.”

  “Oi! I’m not easy, all right?” She smirked. “Made you buy me dinner first, din’t I?”

  “Bag of chips, wasn’t it?”

  “And a bottle of Beck’s. Don’t you go making everyone think I’m cheap.”

  Sean’s bloke, Rob, was looking at them sideways, like he couldn’t decide if they were really sweet or just the sort of lager louts with no morals people like him wrote letters to the Times about. Sean and him were in their cricket whites, ready for the match at two o’clock, and they’d driven up in Rob’s posh car, all white leather seats and looking like it ought to have Audrey Hepburn sitting in the back powdering her nose.

  “Speaking of which,” Heather went on, “are you going to go and order my lunch or what? Some of us are starving to death here?”

  “Fine, I’m going. Veggie curry, yeah?” Chris grumbled, standing up with a smile. “Bloody hell, Sean, was she this high maintenance when you were going out with her?”

  “Worse,” Sean said easily, laughing when Heather gave him the finger with both hands. “And cheers, mate. Me and Rob’ll have the ham salad. Don’t wanna weigh ourselves down before the match.” He handed Chris a twenty pound note.

  Con dug hastily in his back pocket and handed over a tenner. “Lasagne, cheers.” His mind wasn’t really on his stomach. Was he the only one who found it a bit weird, hearing everyone talk about Sean and Heather being exes in front of the people they were with now?

  No—Rob was staring into his lime and soda, looking a bit pink. Sean must have noticed too, as he grabbed Rob’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “So have you met this Tristan bloke yet?” he asked.

  Rob looked up. “No, I was about to ask who he was, actually.”

  Heather rolled her eyes. “Oh, you’d probably like him. He’s dead posh and all. He’s our new Bottom.”