Lainey knew her sister would be hurt. “I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Why?”
“Because then I’d be acknowledging it.”
“What exactly would be wrong in acknowledging you were getting some with that hot bit of man stuff?” Imogen found a box of chocolates and opened them.
“Because then I’d be known as the woman who was sleeping with Jake Maynard. I move to a small town and jump into bed with the town Romeo. That’d be how I was defined forever, even after we broke up.”
“What makes you think you’d break up?”
Lainey glared at her sister. “Who turned you into a therapist?”
“Ignoring that to stay focused. Why do you think you’d break up?”
“Jake Maynard isn’t going to give up his lifestyle to be serious with me.” Even though he’d led her to believe the opposite.
Imogen shook her head. “Jake’s never had a proper long-term girlfriend, has he?”
“No. He’s more of a dater. Or one-night-stand king.”
“Why’s that?” Imogen tapped the arm of her chair with her free hand. The other nursed her prosecco.
“I don’t know, other than he won’t leave Severton for anyone, and he knows it’s not that attractive a place for someone to move to. And he likes his freedom.”
Imogen took another chocolate. Lainey knew full well her sister would be up running ten miles in the morning as penance.
“But you’re here. You live in Severton. You’ve chosen a life that involves early mornings and early nights, and some days when you don’t go to bed because you’re helping a foal being born. You ever think you both ended up next to each other for a reason, and you being here’s changed his outlook? He did not look happy when he came back into the bar.” Immy shook her head. “Does he want to keep all this secret?”
“No, the opposite.”
“So he wants to tell everyone you’re together?”
“Pretty much. He hates it being a secret.”
“You remember that time you jumped off the diving board when we were kids in France?”
Lainey was used to Imogen doing a complete swerve in conversations. “I didn’t jump. You pushed me.”
“And you did the most perfect dive. It was Olympic worthy. I remember Dad mentioning that you had a hidden talent.”
The eye roll Lainey produced couldn’t have been any more dramatic.
“After I pushed you, you started diving properly – when it was a pool, and you could check the depth. What I’m saying, Lay, is that sometimes you need a push. Believe in something good. What if you start dating Jake properly? What’s the worst that happens? He breaks up with you, it hurts, he gets another girlfriend, she moves in with him and they have babies. You can sit there and thinkthat could’ve been meor you leave it to the universe and sayit wasn’t meant to beand you had a good time while it lasted. Or you might be the one living there and having babies with him.” Her grin was full and excited. “Fate’s fun.”
“I get what you’re saying.”
“Okay, let me ask you one more thing. How much do you like him? Because you might be like this because you don’t like him enough.”
“I like him. I more than like him.”
“Then are you really going to let some other woman win him in an auction?”
Lainey stood up a little straighter. There was a clear answer to that.
No.
Lainey had just managedto fall asleep when her phone started to vibrate. When it stopped and then started again, she pushed herself up off the pillows and felt around in the dark for it, managing to knock her book and keys off her bedside table in the process.
