I wasn’t expecting this. I’ve never seen her this earnest, this vulnerable, and she suddenly looks like a kid again.
‘Sorry, Tig. Of course I’ll do it. It would be an honour.’
She pulls me into a hug so tight I worry she might crack my ribs.
When we part, she’s got a tear in her eye, but she’s smiling.
‘Thank you.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘It would have been embarrassing if you’d said no. The whole point of tonight was to officially sort this.’
‘All good?’ asks Theo, when we’re back in the kitchen.
‘All good,’ says Tig, a soppy grin on her face.
The happy picture is interrupted by the doorbell.
‘Maybe Pen decided to come after all?’ I ask.
Tig’s busy with the rice, so I bustle out of the kitchen to the front door.
I open it, expecting Pen.
It’s not Pen. It’s Mark Marino.
Chapter 12
I take an involuntary step back.
Mark.Here?
I’ve managed to avoid him for fifteen years, but now he’s at my sister’s flat? Some warning from her would have been nice.
He’s easily a whole head taller than me, but the stoop is lower than the door, so we’re eye-to-eye. His gaze has always been unsettling. He’s olive-skinned and dark-haired, and you expect his eyes to match, but they surprise you by being the colour of clear honey.
There’s nothing sweet in his expression, though.
It’s lightning fast, but he scans me up and down. If he says anything about my Britney top, I’ll slam the door in his face. The look that passes across his features is hard to read, though. What’s clear is that heisn’thappy to see me.
He frowns. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Having dinner with my sister. Weird, huh?’
I don’t want him to know he’s affecting me, but I can’t keep the sarcasm from my voice.
He narrows his hunter eyes. ‘You’re supposed to be in Paris.’
Someone told him I was going to Paris, but not that my plans had changed catastrophically?
‘Well, I’m not.’
I throw in a shrug that saysno biggie.
He waits on the step, both of us seemingly frozen to the spot.
He could always stop traffic but unfairly, he looks better now at thirty-four than he did when he was nineteen. He’s filled out,his shoulders are more powerful, the shadow on his jaw darker, his brow bone more pronounced. All the testosterone markers that scream, ‘I can give you lots of babies’, and whether you want babies or not, something primal in you reacts to it. It’s psychology 101 – we’re programmed to notice this stuff.
I never understood what all the fuss was about when I was at school, but I understand better now, at least on an intellectual level.
Leo was his opposite – light hair, wide-set eyes, and soft cheeks. Cherubic, angelic. There was nothing angelic about Mark – not in how he looked and certainly not in how he behaved. His MO was arriving at school on Monday still recovering from Sunday’s hangover and sporting a cut lip from Saturday night’s brawl.
