PLAYING DIRTY WITH THE HOT CEO

Heidi It’s Tuesday the twenty-sixth of July, the first week of the English school summer holidays, and I’m in the kitchen making bread when my phone vibrates in the back pocket of my jeans, announcing the arrival of a message. Assuming it’s another unwanted text, my heart sinks as I take the phone out with floury fingers. I do a comical double-take when I see it’s a f*******: message from Lawrence Oates. I feel a wave of relief, then a flutter of pleasure deep inside. My heart racing, I go over to the sink and wash my hands, then pick up the phone and bring up the message. It’s short but sweet. Your Royal Highness! Don’t suppose you’d be around for a Zoom call at 8 p.m.? I laugh at his greeting. My full name is Heidi Rose Huxley, and the first time we met, he commented that my initials were HRH. Still smiling, I sit on the kitchen chair, bring up his f*******: profile, and study his picture. His real name is Lawrence, but everyone calls him Titus. He got the nickname from the Antarctic explorer of the same name who sacrificed himself for his teammates in 1912 by going out into a blizzard. That Lawrence Oates was nicknamed Titus after the English priest who invented a conspiracy to kill the English king, Charles II, in 1678. How do I know all this? Because when I was sixteen, tipsy on one glass of sparkling wine at my brother Oliver’s twenty-first birthday party, I asked his gorgeous mate for a kiss. Instead of getting exasperated with the irritating young teen who was trying to pretend she was sassy and sophisticated, he proceeded to kiss the living daylights out of me. Shy and innocent, I’d never even had a boy kiss me on the cheek before, so to be French kissed by a gorgeous older guy completely blew me away. After the kiss, I found out everything I could about him, convinced I’d found my Prince Charming and that we were destined for a happily ever after. We weren’t, of course, and unsurprisingly after the party he didn’t contact me and declare his undying love. We did see each other relatively frequently over the years, either at Oliver’s business club or at my parents’ house. Every time our gazes met with a mischievous smile as we both clearly recalled that kiss, although we never spoke of it openly. We’ve been friends on f*******: for some time, although we’ve never communicated on there. Two years ago, I moved to England, and I haven’t spoken to him since. He was the first guy to burst my girlish, romantic bubble, but he wasn’t the last. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I think, from that definition, I’m pretty bonkers, as the English like to say. His profile picture is an old one, taken when he was at university, of him with his arms around Oliver and their friend Mack. It’s a bit blurry and doesn’t do him justice. I remember him as tall, dark, and handsome, and being impressed because he’d been approached to play rugby for the Auckland Blues. The only other thing I remember about him is that his mother is Scandinavian, and he has Viking tattoos down each arm. As I scroll down through his f*******: feed, I can see why I’ve never read any posts from him—he hardly ever goes on there. Oliver has mentioned him in passing when I’ve spoken to him on Zoom over the past two years, but I don’t know anything about what he’s been up to, apart from that he works with computers. Why on earth does he want to talk to me? Then it comes to me—it must be about Oliver’s wedding. Oliver is marrying his girlfriend, Elizabeth, next month, and I’m flying to New Zealand for it. Maybe Titus is organizing something he wants me to be a part of. Yes, that would make sense. Much more sense than him deciding he wants to chat up the tipsy teenager he snogged eight years ago. Blowing out a relieved breath, I reply to his message. Hey Titus! Sure! 8 p.m. your time or my time? He responds almost immediately:UK time.He includes an invitation to the Zoom call, then says:Great, speak to you tonight.Wow. Captain Concise. Putting the phone aside, I return to making the easy-bake bread, adding a can of beer to the flour with the baking powder. I mix it all up and tip it into the loaf pan. Then I scoop it back into the bowl, add the salt and sugar I’d forgotten, and put it back into the loaf pan again. I top it with grated cheese and salt and pepper, and slide it into the oven. Then I remember I haven’t added any olive oil, take it back out, drizzle the oil over the top, return it to the oven, and set the timer. Even though it’s clearly not a romantic call, he has me all flustered. I huff an irritated sigh at myself and check the time on my phone. It’s nearly ten a.m. now, and I’m due to have another Zoom call with my sisters. I go into the living room and collect my laptop, then take it out of my tiny cottage into my even tinier garden, and set it up on the plastic table under the umbrella. I’ve learned that summer in England can be extremely variable, especially where I live, in the county of Devon in the southwest, where the hills of Dartmoor generate mild, wet weather. Last year, it rained the whole of July and a good part of August. This year, June proved to be one of the wettest on record, but the weather has miraculously cleared up for the start of the school holidays, and today the sky is the color of bluebells. I click on our Zoom link and discover that two of my three sisters—Chrissie and Evie—are already there, waiting for me. There’s a moment of delay, and then their pictures spring up on the screen. “Hey!” They smile and wave as they see me, and I grin and wave back. “Hey you lot!” “Ooh, it looks like a lovely day there,” Chrissie says. “It’s a beautiful summer morning,” I reply. Evie shakes her head. “It must be so weird to have summer in July!” “You get used to the seasons being reversed,” I tell them. “Christmas in winter wasn’t as strange as I thought, because our cards Down Under tend to feature wintry scenes despite it being in summer. And it makes sense that Easter takes place in spring here, with all the lambs and chicks being born.” “I guess,” Evie says. “But Halloween in autumn? That’s just weird.” I smile. I can’t imagine that either Evie or Chrissie would take to living in England. There’s a tendency for Kiwis to think of the English like cousins because so many of us have relatives back in the UK, but the fact is that the two cultures are very different. Chrissie is thirty-three and, like me, a schoolteacher, although she teaches science at a large secondary school, which is a world away from my position teaching five-year-olds at a tiny Devon primary school. Evie is twenty-seven and a police officer, bossy and no-nonsense. They’re both quite frank and outspoken, and I think they’d struggle with the way most English people are reticent and reserved. “Where’s Abigail?” I ask, referring to our oldest sister. “She’s in the South Island with Sean at the moment,” Evie says. “They decided to have a weekend away to celebrate their third wedding anniversary, so she won’t make it tonight.” “Oh, that’s a shame. Have they taken Robin with them?” Their little boy is eight months old. “No, they’ve left him with Mum and Dad,” Chrissie replies. “I can’t wait to see him,” I say longingly. Robin is my first nephew, and I’m desperate for a cuddle. “Not long now,” Evie says cheerfully. “It’ll be great to see you. We’ve missed you so much.” “Yeah, me too. It’s going to be such fun. Hey, do you know if Titus is organizing something for Oliver?” Chrissie shrugs. Evie says, “What do you mean?” “I don’t know. I’ve just got a message from him asking if I’m free for a Zoom call tonight. I assumed it was something to do with the wedding.” “Are they having a stag do?” Evie asks Chrissie. “Not as such. Hux says he didn’t want one,” she says. Even though his first name is Oliver, everyone calls him Huxley or Hux, except me. It always feels odd to me, especially as my surname is Huxley too. “He says he’s too respectable,” she adds. Evie and I snort. Chrissie grins. “When we go to Lake Tekapo, the night before the wedding, the guys and the girls are having some kind of separate wine and whisky event. That’s all he wanted, as far as I know. And Mack’s organizing it, so it’s nothing to do with Titus.” “Hmm.” Now I’m puzzled. “What do you know about him?” “He’s got a big knob,” Evie says. My eyebrows shoot up as Chrissie bursts out laughing. “Jesus,” I say. “Evie!” “What?” she grins. “You asked.” “I meant, you know, his personality, what he does for a living.” “Oh… sorry.” “How do you know how big his knob is, anyway?” Chrissie asks. “I didn’t think you were in the knob business.” “Claire referred to it once,” Evie says, ignoring the jibe, used to her sister’s teasing about her sexuality. “She’s his ex,” she explains to me. “They were together for a couple of years, but they broke up a while ago. I met her at Huxley’s club one evening. She was absolutely out of her tree, and she told us she called his d**k ‘Sir Richard’ because it was so big.” “Oh my God,” I say, as Chrissie dissolves into giggles. “Now I’m not going to be able to think about anything else while I’m talking to him.” “I wonder what he wants,” Evie says curiously. “He works with computers, doesn’t he?” I ask. “He doesn’t just work with computers,” Chrissie says. “He’s the CEO of NZAI. New Zealand Artificial Intelligence?” “Oh. Wow.”