“You know,” he shrugged. “I heard you spent some time alone together in Sorrell Slater’s new study.”
Holy shit. Just what she needed to be - the centre of Severton gossip. She needed to talk to Oliver and explain, because he was going to be thinking the absolute worst of her if he’d heard this.
“We were talking,” she said.
“That’s what they all say. Anyway, Chuckles, I’ve a date with a hot man so I need to get my sweet ass over to Leeds.”
“No comedy night? You couldn’t tempt him over here?” she said. Chuckles had been his pet name for her for over a year. She’d never corrected him as he never used it in front of patients.
“Definitely no comedy night. Ever. As much as I love this cute town, I’d rather keep my liaisons out of any tweets with the hashtag ‘what’s occurring in Severton’,” he said, grabbing his jacket, a designer piece he was very precious over.
“Please tell me I’m not mentioned in any of those?” she said. Whoever had taught the Coven how to tweet needed to be shot.
“One or two. There was a photo as well of you and Scott making eyes at each other,” he said, waving his phone with its glittery case.
“At this point I really think that you’re trying to provoke me,” Keren said, looking up from the mouthwashes.
“Have a look. I think this photo says a thousand things, none of them insults either.” He showed her the photo.
Someone, she suspected one of the Card Shark Club, had snapped them as they had bumped into each in the kitchen. In fact, the photograph looked like it was more focused on the tiling arrangement behind Sorrell’s Aga and just happened to have caught her and Scott staring at each other as she had reached behind him to get a double chocolate chip muffin.
There was enough heat captured in their eyes to bake another dozen muffins.
Shit. If Rayah had seen this she was going to have a million and twelve questions. In fact, never mind Rayah, she had a million and thirteen questions herself.
“He was hiding the muffins,” she muttered.
“If that’s what you want to call it…” Kiefer said, smirking. “Where was he hiding the muffins? Don’t answer that. I’ll use tonight to play hide the muffins with Saul.”
“I don’t want details.” There was no point in protesting. She would get the details with graphic description.
He laughed. “Have a good evening. Be careful about seeing Scott – someone in Severton will be watching!”
Keren arrived at the bar to find Rayah, Patsy, Stevie, Abby and five huge pizzas waiting for her. Lunchtime seemed a long time ago and her stomach was making an audible protest that the pizza wasn’t already in her mouth.
“Girls’ night?” she said, squashing next to Rayah. “I see no one with a penis.”
“Jake’s on his way,” Rayah said. “And Zack. Sorrell’s working. I think Jonny’s making an appearance too when the kids are in bed and Oliver is coming also.”
“Damn. That’s a shame. I was looking forward to missing the testosterone,” she said, grabbing a piece of what looked like a chilli beef thin-based pizza. “Scott’s working, I see?”
“Hmmm,” Rayah said, stuffing pizza into her mouth too. “We need to talk about him.”
Keren shook her head. “We really don’t. Did you manage to find a babysitter, Stevie?” Keren tried a totally obvious change of conversation. Get a woman talking about her kid and whatever was being discussed before would be forgotten.
“Oliver’s neighbour has offered to have her for a couple of hours. She’s got two kids of her own and is a paediatric nurse. It made it so I could come out without feeling guilty,” Stevie said. “We saw the photo, by the way.”
Keren looked to ceiling and asked for divine intervention. “A total fluke.”
Rayah’s mouth was still full. She guessed that was the only divine intervention she was getting.
Stevie shook her head. “I disagree. I’ve heard all about your fiery relationship.”
“There is no relationship,” Keren said. “He hates me. And he’s open about the fact that he does too.”
“Beg to differ.” Abby banged a tiny hand on the table. “There’s a very fine line between love and hate. I work with him and whenever you’re in here he’s hyper aware of you to the extent he will have to have time out in the cellar. When you’ve been in here on dates – which hasn’t been often – he’s horrendous. I often thought he was jealous.”
“I’m pretty sure we went out to the hotel restaurant because he knew you were going to be there,” Patsy said. “On a date.”
