“Are you dating Andrew West?”
“What?” Rachel glanced back over her shoulder to see Meghan standing in the doorway of the kitchen, her hands planted on her bony hips.
“I think you heard me.”
“Dating?” Rachel repeated, simply to stall for time. “Of course not.”
“He’s been around here an awful lot.”
“Two weekends,” Rachel dismissed. “He’s being kind.”
“It doesn’t seem like pity to me.”
“I didn’t say pity.” She didn’t know what was going on with her and Andrew, but she certainly wasn’t about to talk to Meghan about it. Things had eased up a bit between them, but they were hardly confidantes. And she hated how Meghan had found her weak spot so easily and slipped the blade right in, all with a smile on her face. Pity. God, she hoped not.
“What’s going with you and Mystery Man, anyway?” Rachel asked. “You haven’t seen him much this week.”
“You asked me to be around.”
“Since when does what I’ve asked make a difference?”
Meghan sighed. “The truth is he’s married.”
The statement, delivered so flatly, so hopelessly, made Rachel turn around from where she’d been scrubbing a pan in the sink. “Seriously?”
Meghan’s face was sober, all traces of sisterly malice gone. “Seriously.”
“Oh, Meghan.” Rachel sorted through all the responses she instinctively wanted to say—how could you being at the top of the list—and came up with “That sucks.”
Meghan gave a hollow laugh. “Yeah. It does.”
“Why . . . ?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Meghan said. “No one wants to have an affair with a married bloke.”
“So what happened?”
“He came into the pub one night. He wasn’t a regular, I’d never seen him before. He started chatting me up, and then he asked if I wanted to get a proper drink somewhere else, after my shift.”
“And you went? With a stranger?”
“Just down to Raymond’s. I wasn’t going to get in his car or anything like that.” Meghan drew a shaky breath and pushed a hand through her hair. “He was nice, Rachel, okay? And interesting. And even better, he was interested in me. Do you know how long it’s been since someone’s seemed interested in me?”
“Do you know how long it’s been for me?”
“Are we having a competition about how unlovable we are?”
Rachel cracked a small smile. “Maybe.” She turned back to the pan in the sink, its bottom blackened from about a thousand grilled sausages. “Did you know he was married then?”
Meghan was silent for a long moment. “I suspected,” she said at last. “But I pretended I didn’t.”
“Pretended to yourself?” Rachel glanced back at her sister, and Meghan lifted her chin.
“Yeah. I did.”
Could she really criticize? Rachel sighed. “Are you still seeing him?”
“I don’t know.” Meghan folded her arms, lowered her head. “He hasn’t called in a while.”
