“And working on ideas for the restaurant you’re going to own.”
He glanced at her. “You didn’t scrub the entire week from your memory bank, then.”
She focused back on Mia and Ellie. “We shared a lot about ourselves, or at least I thought we did, yet you didn’t tell me the most important part of your life.”
She wasn’t angry, he realized with a start. She washurt.“I wanted to be the Connor you saw. The laid-back, happy-go-lucky single guy with no responsibilities. Plus...” He heaved a sigh. “I didn’t want you to think less of me.”
“Less of you?”
Avoiding her eyes, he looked over at the river. “I fathered a kid at twenty when I had no clue what I was doing in life, no prospects beyond being a reasonably decent bartender. If my parents hadn’t helped me out with a deposit for a place, with taking care of Ellie while I worked nights at the bar, I... I don’t know what I’d have done.”
He didn’t get to find out what she thought because Mia and Ellie chose that moment to turn around.
“Aunt Livia, Ellie says she’s going to Go Ape tomorrow.” Mia bounced on her feet. “Can I go with her?”
He had to give Olivia points for trying, but her smile was too tight, the little laugh she let out too shrill. “That sounds lovely, sweetheart, but I don’t know what plans your mum has for tomorrow.”
“But you took me out today to give Mum a rest. She’s gonna need to rest again tomorrow.” Mia’s grin was wide and hopeful. “Pleeease?”
“We’ll see.”
Temporarily placated, Mia turned back to Ellie.
The moment they started walking again, the laugh Connor had been battling to keep quiet burst out of him.
Olivia gave him a death stare. “You think this is funny?”
“Absolutely not. Watching you being manipulated by an eight-year-old?” The smile wouldn’t budge from his face. “Not funny at all.”
“I’m very happy to take Mia out tomorrow,” Olivia retorted. “It’s you I’m not keen on seeing again.”
It was the last time he had a chance to speak to her alone that day, but it didn’t matter, because he had a feeling he’d see her tomorrow. Whether Olivia liked it or not.
Chapter 18
Olivia had planned to work all day Sunday, and she didn’t know how she’d gone from that to this: staring up at a series of high ropes and zip lines in Battersea Park.
Some of it was her sisters’ fault. The pair of them had engineered it so that Connor now had her number, which he’d used last night to message her with a time to meet.
Can’t have you ducking out. Don’t want to upset the Dancing Queen.
Seems he wasn’t above using her niece to manipulate her.
“That looks wicked.” Mia’s eyes shone as she watched the young boy currently whizzing down one of the zip lines.
And, okay, the moment Mia had said she wanted to come, Olivia wanted to bring her. It was just that she could have done without the addition of Connor and Ellie. No, that wasn’t fair—Ellie was a sweetheart, and Mia clearly enjoyed being around a girl her age.
“Come on, guys, let’s get in the queue.” Connor waved over at them, looking young and sexy in cargo shorts that showed off his muscular legs and a faded T-shirt that clung to the ridges of his chest.Virile. Had she used that word to describe him? “Livvy?”
His magnetic blue eyes gave her a knowing look.
It was Connor she could have done without seeing again. The man she’d convinced herself she was over hadn’t forgotten her the way she’d suspected he would. He’d gone to the trouble of seeking her out in the Tate, of messaging her to remind her to come today.
Hewantedto see her. And God help her, it was so hard to keep remembering why she shouldn’t want to see him too.
They lined up, and he slipped behind her, his mouth brushing her ear as he bent to whisper in it. Her body responded with a long, deep shudder of longing. “What were you thinking just now?”
“I was thinking the ropes look high.”
