‘This is a very Rhona move,’ said Mo.
‘I think,’ Netta said, taking the box from his hands and flipping it to read the rules, ‘that this will require a pre-drink and possibly several during-drinks.’
‘Agreed.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘But don’t you have somewhere else you’d rather be after that rehearsal?’
‘What do you mean?’
She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘It just seemed like you were—Ah, it doesn’t matter. It’s none of my business.’
‘There’s nowhere else I need to be,’ he said, ‘and nothing else I’d rather be wearing.’ He struck another ridiculous pose and her half laugh was better than nothing but still not quite what he’d been going for. They’d been so easy together at Bianchi’s. He had to get things back on track.
The phone beside her bed rang and she strode over to answer it. ‘Hello?’ Confusion clouded her face, knitting her brow into an actual frown, not a weird Botox squint. It was beautiful. ‘Okay, yes. Please send it up. Thanks.’
‘What was that about?’ Mo asked as she hung up.
‘Seems Rhona has more than one surprise for us tonight.’
Moments later, a knock at the door was followed by an enormous delivery of food and a six pack of beer.
‘Yes!’ said Mo, punching the air before he could stop himself. ‘Indian! Ah, Rhona’s the best.’ He pulled out containers of rice, bags of piping hot naan, three different curries, little pots of chutneys and raita, and a bag of crunchy papadams. He spread the feast over the table while Netta opened a beer for each of them.
‘Right,’ Mo said, with far more authority than a man in his outfit could afford. ‘First we feast and then we play the stupid card game. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
Chapter Thirty
NETTA
Netta and Mo sat cross-legged on the floor with the deck of cards between them.
‘So, how does this work?’ Mo gestured at the cards and lifted his beer to his mouth.
Netta looked away before the bottle made contact with his lips. He might be seeing Lorena, but that mouth of his still had a stranglehold on her. She examined a chip in her nail polish to break the circuit. ‘I’m guessing we just ask each other the questions on the cards and reveal our innermost thoughts and emotional scars to each other.’
Mo looked mortified.
‘I’mjoking,’ she said. ‘It’s probably just stupid stuff, like what your favourite food is and what you’d wish for if you found a genie in a bottle.’
‘A lamp.’
‘You’d wish for a lamp?’
‘No!’ He laughed. ‘The genie would be in a lamp.Not a bottle. A message would be in a bottle.’ He started hammering a beat on his knees as he sang the chorus to ‘Message In A Bottle’ by The Police. Netta joined in on the last line.
‘Hey, you can sing!’ His smile of admiration revealed the depths of his dimples, his perfect lips and those teeth of his sending a shot of warmth through Netta that settled defiantly south. Lorena Long was a lucky cow.
‘In the shower maybe.’ She took a big gulp of beer and lifted the first card from the pile. ‘Righto. Prepare to bare your soul.’
Mo straightened like a schoolkid on his best behaviour, ready to do some gold-star listening.
‘Okay,’ said Netta, looking up from the card. ‘When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?’
‘That’s easy. I wanted to be a rock star.’ He spread his arms wide, as if displaying the evidence of his childhood wish come true.
‘Really?’
