I shook my head. “I can’t get involved. Not because I don’t want to help you—I’d be the happiest person if you two got back together—but because she’s more stubborn than a mule with oppositional defiance disorder and me trying to persuade her to get back together with you would just push her the other way.”
“So do the opposite,” Dave said. “Tell her you’re glad we’ve finished and we were never right for each other. Set her up with someone else.”
“What are you going to do?”
He smiled, taking the coffee gratefully. “Wait. And if she does want to see me again, I’ll make her feel like the leading lady in one of her romance books.”
“As long as you never give me details,” I said, deadly serious. I never, ever want details of my mother’s personal life. Ever.
Dave looked slightly better than he had when I first saw him; there was a glimmer of hope where there’d been nothing but loss before. I felt a pang in my chest, possibly hunger, possibly something to do with the tiny blonde I had only seen once since I’d left her bed on Monday. We’d both been busy; she with work and her dad, me with the stores, the gallery that my dad was investing in and various work events in the evenings. We’d grabbed a quick lunch together on Wednesday and it hadn’t been weird; we’d talked like we usually did and before we parted, I’d held her and given her a quick kiss, one that didn’t know what it was meant to be.
“I promise never to disclose anything,” Dave said. “I’ll also tell my lawyer that I’m no longer interested in selling my part of Cases. Is that okay with you? Unless you do actually want to buy me out and then I’ll agree to the price the mediator suggested.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. My breakfast arrived and I wondered whether I was actually drooling. “You can pay my legal fees though.”
“Happy to. Your lawyer was a bit of a talent, wasn’t she? Richard said she pretty much tore what he wrote to pieces, word for word.” Dave’s eyebrows were raised in alarm and he looked genuinely impressed.
Payton would love to know what he’d said. “She’s incredible,” I said and knew I hadn’t managed to stop the goofy grin appearing on my face. “She’s bright and quick and funny.”
“And you’re completely in over your head with her,” Dave said, leaning over and pinching a mushroom. “That looks good.”
“Get your own then,” I said. “Appetite coming back?”
“I feel better now I’ve spoken to you. If you’d have been against me trying to get your mum back, I’d have sold,” he said, then shouted over to the waitress for another breakfast. “I am sorry you got caught up in this.”
I shrugged, devouring a rasher of bacon. “I’m thirty-two; it’s the first time it’s happened so I think I’ve done pretty well.”
“Tell me about your lawyer.”
I sat back, chewing, unsure where to start. I hadn’t really talked to anyone about Payton. The friends I’d seen since I’d met her hadn’t been the ones I’d confide in, if I was going to do that at all. I usually sorted out my own shit, not that this was shit. She felt like the best thing that had happened to me, but I wasn’t sure if I was the best thing that had happened to her.
“I walked into her at Cases in Soho. She was taking a picture and we argued. I needed a lawyer so I called her and we became friends. I was with her when they took her sister in for an emergency caesarean and we just kind of clicked.”
“What’s the issue?”
“A relationship isn’t on her agenda. She wants to be friends. With benefits.”
“Why doesn’t she want a relationship?”
“She’s been hurt in the past because she’s always gone out with wankers and she’s been run down with work,” I said, keeping it factual to what she’d told me rather than psychoanalysing her. “It feels like we’re in a relationship with how much we talk and how we are with each other.”
“Romance her. Maybe you need to do what I should’ve done.”
I nodded. “I do. But not yet. I need to get her to agree to go on a date first and she has to decide that for herself.”
* * *
A tall redhead was sitting at the coffee bar in the Soho branch of Cases when I finally arrived there. A tall, familiar redhead. She was sipping a cappuccino and laughing with my mother who was next to her, a stack of book on the bar. Their heads turned to me like sheep, as if they were one and I paused, folding my arms. I knew an ambush when I saw one.
“Owen,” Amber said, rushing towards me. She looked like she always did: model tall, almost model thin and beautifully put together. Today must’ve been a down day from work as she wasn’t wearing a suit. I used to tell Amber she was born wearing a trouser suit she was in them that much. “You look amazing. Your mum said you’re playing rugby again.”
“Yep,” I said, arms still folded. I still had a good seven inches on her height wise and I planned to make the most of them. “What can I do for you?”
“You always assume I’m after something.”
“Because you usually are.”
She narrowed her eyes and then grinned. “I suppose you’re right. How’s business? It looks like it’s booming.”
