‘Your man is packing some very fancy pants,’ hefished through the neatly folded fabric to produce a pair of silky-looking black trunks. ‘Calvins. Nice.’
‘Put them down!’ I ordered. ‘I don’t want to see his underwear.’
‘Really?’ William waggled his eyebrows up and down. ‘Tall, dark and twattish used to be your type.’
‘I’m in recovery,’ I said as I slapped the underwear out of his hand and watched it float to the ground. ‘What else is in there?’
‘What else is in where?’
The two of us spun around at once, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the open overnight bag, so close together a draught couldn’t have got between us. Charlotte glared at us from the doorway, peach hair backlit by the sunny morning, her oversized blue hoodie and grey jogging bottoms swamping her tiny frame. All my sister’s clothes were either five sizes too big or practically non-existent, there was no in between.
‘What are you two doing?’ she asked, suspicion narrowing her brown eyes. She wouldn’t appreciate me saying it but she really was growing up to be a pure clone of our mother.
‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘We weren’t doing anything.’
‘Well, not nothing,’ William corrected. ‘We were just saying how amazing it is that you’re going to open a bookshop and wondering what your favourite reads of the year are so far?’
I felt a sharp elbow in my ribs as Charlotte’s face lit up.
‘Yes, that’s right!’ I exclaimed. ‘I was telling William how much you lovedIron Flameand how I couldn’t imagine you’d loved anything else quite as much then he said he’d love to hear your current top ten and—’
‘IdidloveIron Flame,’ she replied, so thrilled to be talking about her two favourite subjects – books and herself – that she immediately forgot to be suspicious. ‘But there has been a lot of great stuff this year.Fate Breakerkilled me if we’re still talking fantasy and you know I’m an EmHen girlie, so you’ve got to read her latest if you haven’t already, but aside from romance I’m mostly into dark academia right now …’
‘Is that right?’ William stepped forward and put his arm around Charlotte’s shoulders, pushing her out of the cottage. ‘Tell me, in your professional opinion, Colleen Hoover, is she overrated?’
William turned to give me a wink as they started back down the path. He really was the best brother in the world.
As soon as they were a safe distance away, I stuffed Joe’s belongings back into his bag, the silky black trunks and soft cotton T-shirts falling over each other in their bid to escape. It was wrong for a man to have such lovely things. CJ’s underwear had all been from M&S, all washed to within an inch of its life and in no way, shape or form could it ever be considered sexy. Exactly the way things were supposed to be. How could a woman trust a man who spent more money on his pants than she did?
‘Call me cynical,’ a voice said, right as I fastened the brass clasp with a satisfying click. ‘But if you came in here to find me going through your things, I don’t think you’d be very happy about it.’
‘Someone needs to put a bloody bell on that bloody door,’ I muttered, pressing a hand against my pounding heart. Joe stood in the doorway in silence, arms crossed, waiting for me to defend myself.
‘I wasn’t going through your things,’ I told him, obliging against my better judgement. ‘I was … putting your bag on the sofa. You left it on the floor. I was protecting it, in case there are mice.’
‘Get a lot of leather-eating mice in here, do you?’ he asked, leaning against the doorframe.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Loads.’
‘Then I owe you my eternal gratitude.’
Joe swept his dark, wavy hair out of his face with a careless hand and every muscle in my body clenched at once. ‘I’ll have to think of a way to thank you properly on the way.’
I blinked back at him, confused.
‘On the way to where?’
‘So many questions,’ he sighed. ‘All you need to know is, I volunteered us for a mission and we’re already late, so get your hands out my pants and let’s go.’
With that, he turned and strolled off up the garden, whistling a tune I vaguely recognised from our two-man karaoke party.
‘He’s an arsehole,’ I said out loud, disbelief tempering the volume of my voice. ‘A complete and utter arsehole.’
But that fact didn’t stop my traitorous stomach flipping with anticipation as I grabbed my phone and followed him out of the cottage.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It made perfect sense that central London resident, Gregory Brent drove a brand-new Range Rover.
