“Only when I was ill,” I confirm, before grimacing. “The rare occasion that Mum would bother to show she cared. Guess that’s why I find it so comforting.”
He looks sad and I feel bad for making the conversation so deep all of a sudden, so I brightly add, “I’m glad that I passed on honey tea to someone else. I hope you still dabble?”
“I certainly do. It’s great on a hangover.” He gestures to my mug. “But you don’t have it at work anymore?”
“No, just at home. Only because I’m so lazy and never remember to bring honey into the office with me,” I say, pickingup my tea from the side once his coffee is done and strolling back to our desks together.
The next day, by the time I come in—which, Cosmo gleefully announces so that everyone can hear, is twenty minutes after my contracted hours (and he doesn’t care if I was on a work call)—Ryan is already typing away on his keyboard and looks up momentarily to say hi before focusing on his writing again. I throw my bag down on the floor and then notice something waiting for me among all my belongings scattered across my desk: a jar of honey.
I pick it up in wonder.
“So you can have your honey tea here,” Ryan explains simply, standing up and wandering over to the printer to collect something before being called into Cosmo’s office.
Stunned, I watch him go.
“What’s that all about?” Mimi asks, resting her chin in her hands and smiling coyly.
“Nothing,” I say with a wave of my hand, lowering myself into my chair.
She leans back. “Doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
Ignoring her, I log on and start going through my emails, every now and then stealing a glance at the jar of honey, unable to stop a smile spreading across my face.
I have to admit that work is a lot more pleasant without constantly arguing over everything with Ryan, but it’s slightly unnerving, him being so nice and me enjoying it so much. I’ve startedlooking forwardto seeing him every morning, a flutter of butterflies hitting my stomach at the sight of those amazing blue eyes and the crinkles around the corners of his mouth when he smiles hello. And Mimi is right—he definitely does seem to pay more attention to me than to anyone else in the office. He’s quiet in group conversations, but when we’re together, it’s easy to get him talking.
This is bad. I have aboyfriend.I shouldn’t be getting excited about someone else’s smile, especially when it’s a person with whom I have history. Not just any history. Checkered history.
But I’m starting to have doubts over Liam.
I thought it was going to be hard to keep the story about Isabella’s baby secret from him, but it turns out to have been unbelievably easy because he hasn’t asked me one question about the party. Instead, he went on about how proud he is that he put himself out there, bravely approaching people to introduce himself, and how he’s pretty much signed that band Halo Skewed, some of the best performers he’d ever seen play live.
“You have to come to their gig next Friday,” he said on Tuesday night when I met him at the sushi restaurant near his flat. “They’d be perfect for a big article in the magazine.”
“In my magazine?”
“Yeah, course,” he said, chuckling. “A piece all about the hottest new band about to go skyrocketing into the charts. Trust me, when you come to the gig, you’ll be blown away. So, you’ll come?”
“Uh…”
I hesitated, selecting a spicy tuna roll with my chopsticks. I knew nothing about this band. And I couldn’t shake Ryan’s implication at the party that Liam was much more interested in networking than he was in… well… me.
“I’m so excited for you to see them live,” he’d continued, taking my pause in answering to be a resounding yes. I couldn’t be bothered to correct him, so I’d left it.
Part of my uncertainty about Liam is that I know very well that I have a tendency to put work before anything else. It’s the reason none of my previous relationships have worked out. I’m not an easy person to date, so maybe I shouldn’t give up on Liam quite yet. He’s gorgeous, smart, driven…
But he didn’t buy me honey for my tea.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
I jump at Ryan’s voice, having been fretting over Liam while waiting for an iced coffee in Roasted, the café closest to the office.
“Oh hi,” I say, blushing. “I was… uh… thinking about work stuff.”
He puts his hands in his pockets. “Something that’s vexing you.”
“How do you know I was vexed?”
“You got the crinkle in between your eyebrows,” he admits.
