After a moment, Gloria said, “Why didn’t you tell her?”
Matty turned back from the hallway. “Tell her what?”
Gloria fixed her with a look. “Don’t be clever.”
Matty leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “And what would that achieve?”
Gloria said nothing.
“She’d spend the rest of the day worrying about you,” Matty said. “And you’d be humiliated.”
Colour crept slowly into Gloria’s cheeks.
Matty shrugged. “I don’t play that game, Mrs S. I’m here to help you, not embarrass you.”
Gloria stared at her.
Most of them couldn’t wait to report back. To prove they were coping. To make sure Sloan knew exactly what they’d had to deal with, as if Gloria were a problem to be logged and handed over.
But this one had kept her mouth shut.
Not out of pity, either—that much Gloria would have recognised and hated on sight.
Something else, then. Something steadier. Something that felt uncomfortably like respect.
Matty pushed off from the frame and nodded at Gloria’s plate. “You going to eat that, or just judge the geometry?”
Gloria looked down at the sandwich.
“Triangles,” she said.
Matty grinned. “Knew you were classy really.”
Chapter fourteen
When Sloan let herself in again that evening, she was halfway through mentally drafting the email she still needed to send before she could properly switch off for the evening.
The hallway light was on.
She frowned.
Matty was there, crouched by the radiator with her rucksack open at her feet, stuffing her purse and phone inside as though she’d been about to leave. She looked up at the sound of the door and froze for half a second.
“Oh,” she said. Then she smiled. “Hi.”
Sloan stopped with one hand still on the door. There was something disarming about finding her there in the narrow hallway, coatless, hair tied up in that scrap of fabric she seemed to favour, one foot tucked under her as she crouched. She looked comfortable, familiar—as if she belonged in the shape of the house.
“Hi,” Sloan said.
Matty stood up, dusting her hands on her jeans. “Perfect timing.”
Sloan frowned slightly. “For what?”
Matty stepped forward, fingers already at Sloan’s lapel, light and quick as she eased the jacket from her shoulders before Sloan could decide whether to object.
The touch was brief. Barely anything. But Sloan felt it anyway—a clean line of heat that seared from the point of contact straight down her spine.
Matty pulled the jacket free from Sloan and turned to hang it up.
