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‘Up Uranus.’
‘Est—Ms Foxbrooke—’
‘Don’t call me that.’
He sighed, then started taking his cashmere jumper off.
She took an involuntary step back. ‘What are you doing?’
He paused, the top around his broad shoulders. ‘I’m hot.’
Her gaze flicked over the expanse of his chest, the white t-shirt stretched over his pecs, the tantalising glimpse of skin where the bottom had become untucked from his jeans. James was right. He was hot. But that didn’t mean she was going to go anywhere near him.
‘May I?’ he continued.
She shrugged, wanting to look away but being betrayed by her eyes, which appeared to be glued to his body.
He pulled the jumper off and tossed it onto a chair behind him. ‘If I can’t call you by any derivative of your name, then what can I call you?’
I don’t know! she internally screamed, whilst her traitorous subconscious supplied the word Star…
‘Look,’ he began, ‘we have to work together, so I’m trying to make the experience tolerable for both of us.’
Tolerable? And no, thanks to Henry, now we don’t have to work together.
‘You think you know me—’
‘I do know you,’ she interrupted. ‘You’re the bully who punched my brother on the arm each time you passed him at school. You’re the one who encouraged others to call him “Viscount Nob-end”. And you’re the arsehole who said Mom and Mammy were—’ She broke off.
James ran a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t remember saying anything about your—’
‘You called them “posh slags”,’ she spat.
He flinched.
‘Remember now?’
James shook his head. ‘But it does sound like the kind of thing I might have said. Look, kids are twats—’
‘Henry wasn’t.’
‘That wasn’t really me—’
Estelle put her hands on her hips. ‘Who was it then? Mr Hyde? Kevin?’
Emotion flickered in James’s eyes, but she couldn’t work out what it signified.
‘I’ve changed—’
‘No, you haven’t. You’ve been an unwanted guest in our lives since I was thirteen. I know you.’
He folded his arms across his chest. ‘Really now?’
She mirrored his stance. ‘Yes.’
‘Favourite colour?’
‘Black. Like your soul.’
