This Other Country Page B

for a moment with a frown. “Bribe you? These are for you to practise on.” Her attention drifted back to Ben, her head tilting to one side and then the other. It was incredible. Simple things, but the transition from Ben Rider, to being almost another man entirely was impressive. He resembled the old Ben, but this new Ben only served to emphasise just how beautiful, how perfect the original version of the man was. Kate felt a distinct stirring, and not necessarily the sexual one she always felt around Ben. This time it was more maternal. She wanted to remove the ear stud—tell Ben he didn’t need it, that perfection didn’t need enhancement. She wanted to change the hair back to the luscious black shine with chocolate and vanilla highlights that he seemed so unaware of.
    Perhaps not so motherly after all.
    Then an annoying thought occurred to her—she had probably just had a similar reaction to Ben’s transformation as Nikolas Mikkelsen. Nikolas must also think about Ben’s hair—only he still got to smell it and run his fingers through it. He possibly also gazed in awe as the summer sun created edible highlights—or perhaps not. He didn’t seem the type. Fuck, who was she kidding? She saw the way he watched Ben when Ben didn’t know he was being observed. Yeah, he thought about the highlights.
    She tried to fix her gaze on Nikolas, who was still questioning her about the flowers—but it was impossible—it reverted to Ben as if drawn by an irresistible force.
    She felt a tingle of something down her spine. Not so pleasant. A shiver of warning. Nikolas was a jealous rival. She’d discovered this many times when giving Ben what her boss clearly thought was too much attention. He monitored Ben like a hawk watched prey, which was a trite but very apt analogy, when she thought about it. She knew a great deal about this man who called himself Nikolas Mikkelsen. Killing and eating what he desired wasn’t off his agenda at all.
    And what about Ben? What did Ben really think about this change? For all Ben’s protestations about not being vain, she saw all these men in her life very differently to how they apparently saw themselves. Ben not vain? It was laughable. Perhaps to other gay men, with all their associated body obsessions, Ben would appear the affable, self-deprecating nice guy he wanted to be taken for. She’d seen a different side. What had it said about him as a boyfriend that he’d preferred to spend three hours in a gym than in a bed with her? That he’d gone to parties but stood on the sidelines, watching, cautious, unwilling to join in anything. That he had once reacted so violently to her suggesting he wear a costume to a fancy dress party that she’d left him and gone with an old friend, who’d pranced and preened as Superman with no self-consciousness at all. As any other man she knew would have. Not Ben. He’d gone to the gym instead. So he’d said at the time. Ever since, however, she’d wondered. Sometimes Ben had returned from these apparent sessions with a haunted, restless air that contradicted the whole point of his workouts. Now, knowing about Nikolas Mikkelsen, she suspected he’d been working out another way.
    Ben had told her once that his relationship with Nikolas had started long after theirs. She knew Ben better than he thought she did, and lying to protect his very, very fragile ego was not impossible. Had he come from Nikolas’s bed to hers? Fuck, from Nikolas’s body to hers? It was an uncomfortable thought that sometimes plagued her in the small hours of the morning.
    But did this not entirely prove her point? If Ben were the sweet, kind, simple chap he wanted the world to take him for, he wouldn’t have found whatever he had apparently found in the blond bastard currently trying to read what she was thinking. She knew she was not the only one who pondered Ben and Nikolas’s relationship—what went on when they were on their own. Who did what to whom. And how, come to