He nodded. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I knew he wasn’t your boyfriend.’
‘How?’
‘I asked your colleague Emily and she said you didn’t have a significant other.’
‘I don’t believe it!’
He smiled. ‘You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met, and bumping into you last night and seeing your friend’s reaction when I deliberately referred to your boyfriend only confirmed what I suspected.’
‘Which was what?’
‘That you’d go to extraordinary lengths to keep me at arm’s distance when my only crime, as far as I could tell, was to find myself attracted to you. And I’m well aware that just by making this confession, I’ve now made things extremely awkward for you.’
‘We could pretend you never said it,’ she murmured.
‘You’re right, we could. As a matter of interest, what did your friend think about you suddenly kissing him the way you did? He looked pretty pleased from where I was standing.’
‘I think he was shocked. Very shocked. He’s Rachel’s brother and we’ve known each other all our lives.’
‘That’s tricky for you both.’
‘Very. What’s more Rachel is furious with me for using her brother the way I did.’
The lift finally arrived and after stepping inside and the door closing, Blake said, ‘This is the first normal conversation we’ve had. We must have lunch together another time, it’s been fun.’
‘Fun for you maybe, I feel thoroughly humiliated.’
‘You’ll get over it.’
‘You’re actually quite nice, you know, when you’re not being a total jackass.’
‘Good to know. Lunch tomorrow, then? Purely as friends?’
She pursed her lips.
‘As co-workers,’ he said.
‘Maybe.’
The lift stopped at her floor and she got out.
‘See you at one o’clock tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Maybe,’ she said over her shoulder as she walked away and the door began to close.
There, finally, she’d had the last word!
But then she heard the lift door opening again. ‘I’m sorry you thought I was pestering you, that was never my intention.’
Damn, he’d done it again!
Chapter Twenty-One
It was one of those perfect summer evenings, the air still and warm, the sky dramatically splashed in the west with coral and indigo as the sun began its descent.
‘I could never leave here,’ said Callum, watching a yacht sail silently by, while the heron that had been keeping guard from the branch of an alder tree on the other side of the river for the last twenty minutes looked on. He and Alastair were sitting on the wooden bench at the end of the garden, on the opposite side of the lawn to the pavilion. The seat was perfectly placed to give an uninterrupted view of the river, with Linston church tower in the far distance to their left, and Linston Mill to their right.
‘I used to think the same,’ responded Alastair.
