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“What makes you ask that?”

“You didn’t seem to know what Forster was talking about.”

“I see. Well, don’t worry, I know all about Bingley’s coaching—I just forgot that was the team’s name. Football isn’t my cup of tea, and Bingley tries not to bore me by going on about it too much.”

Bore her? With one of his favourite hobbies? He’d been coaching the local under-elevens team for years, and other than Hydro Crops, there wasn’t much he was more passionate about.

“And in return, I never make him come wild swimming with me,” she added with a grin.

Great. Now I was thinking about her in a swimming costume. “That’s probably for the best since, as I’m sure you know, he never learnt to swim.”

It was definitely exasperation that flitted across her face this time. “Oh, I wouldn’t rule out me trying to drown him just yet. Listen, Darcy, scintillating though this has been, I’ve really got to get on.” She pointed at the door I was still holding shut. “Would you mind?”

She said it lightly enough, but I winced internally at the emphasis she put on the word scintillating. Bingley had explicitly asked me not to make her feel uncomfortable. Why had I thought interrogating her was a good idea? I couldn’t even truly accuse her of anything worse than being an inattentive girlfriend, and Bingley might prefer that after the relentless grasping of the previous two. It was clear from his protectiveness that he liked her a great deal.

I felt a twinge of regret and forced myself to give her what I hoped was a friendly smile as I pulled the door open and gestured for her to go through. “After you.”

A waft of fragrance curled on the air as she swept past me but I resolutely refused to breathe in, because I should not be noticing how good Bingley’s girlfriend smelled. This was insane! Like her or not, I barely knew the woman and had promised to keep it that way, at least for the time being. It was more than a little bloody inconvenient that I should be noticing every tiny thing about her.

Maybe I could swap with Bingley—offer for him to come back to London and let me take over the Edinburgh meetings.

He’d never go for it; he’d worked too hard and too long to make those connections to give the job to me.

I could feign illness and work from home.

I could set fire to the building and force everyone to work from home.

“Ah, good timing, Darcy, we’re about to start,” Gareth Sanchez, the Chief Technical Officer, said in greeting.

With a brusque nod, I sat down at the planning desk where he and five other engineers waited. Usually, the open-plan setup of each team area that Bingley had insisted on leant itself to co-operative working. Today, it meant that every time Elizabeth laughed, sneezed, or made pretty much any sound audible to the human ear, I missed an entire chunk of what was being presented to me.

7

ELIZABETH

I put up a good front the whole time I was talking to Jerry. I laughed at all his jokes and buttered him up with a long and detailed discussion of yield forecasting techniques. I even agreed with his griping about the legal department’s “unreasonable demands” for ever more detailed analysis for the patent application. I did it mostly to maintain the relationship I’d spent months cultivating with the notoriously grumpy data scientist. Yet I couldn’t deny there was a part of me that didn’t want Darcy to know how rattled I was.

I should probably have fessed up about Bingley and me the moment he overheard me talking to Debbie, but his incessant probing was getting under my skin. He was looking out for his friend, I got that. But what was it about me, personally, that he found so objectionable? Was I giving gold digger? Did he think I wasn’t pretty or clever enough for his friend?

Whatever it was, the more blatantly he disapproved, the more I dug my heels into the charade. It was a failing of mine, to always get brash whenever I felt confronted, but today didn’t feel like the time to embark on a path of self-improvement, so my lips had remained sealed.

My stubbornness aside, knowing next to nothing about the man I was supposedly dating wasn’t helping. I’d fired off a quick text to Jane the moment Darcy walked out of reception with Mr Forster, demanding to know what the Junipers were. Her quick response had saved me from looking foolish for about three minutes, until I’d slipped up again with the swimming thing. Seriously, though—Bingley couldn’t swim? How old was he, five?

Jerry agreed to get me the numbers I needed, and I left him with the promise that I’d speak to Don about the current company blackout on publishing research papers.

“It’ll be back to normal once the patent is secured,” I assured him. “But I agree, I don’t think your article discloses anything compromising. I’ll see whether I can persuade him to make an exception.”

That earned me a grunt that was as close to gratitude as I’d ever heard him come and brought a smile to my face as I walked away.

I couldn’t resist glancing over to where Darcy was sitting before I reached the door. He was in a meeting with several of the senior engineers and looked as severe and frowny as always as he listened to one of them speak. No surprises there. What caught my attention was the way everyone else was looking at him. And that was… worriedly. As though he wouldn’t like what was being presented. It gave me pause, because for him to decide he liked it, he had to understand it.

I’d assumed Darcy was bankrolling the show, nothing more. Seeing some of the smartest people I knew work that hard for his approval had me wondering about his background. Not enough to ask him—my plan continued to be to stay out of his way until Bingley told him the truth. Still, I could admit I was intrigued. Call me prejudiced, but if I was going to be judged, I’d rather it be by a fellow scientist than a finance bro. I might even enjoy a battle of wills on that level. I smirked and let the door swing shut behind me.

“Mum, I’m not going to ask him that. It doesn’t matter how much he earns.”

“Of course it matters.”

Mum’s reply came from my phone where it was propped up against the mirror on my dressing table. Only half her face was visible on the screen as she fiddled around with whatever she was doing on her end of the call. Her nails, probably. “You need to be sure he can support you. You don’t want to end up destitute.”