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Or at least they’d thought they had. Right up until the night her father had offered him money to leave town and never come back. And Kane had taken it.
Without even a goodbye.
Something somersaulted inside her and she told herself not to react. Not to be bitter. But then she realised it wasn’t bitterness, it was pain, running along scar lines that were so deep she had forgotten they were there. And then something else unfurled inside her.
Hurt.
And shame.
She’d thought that Kane had loved her. Wholly, loyally, unconditionally. Turned out she’d been wrong.
‘Kane...’
‘Stop overthinking things, Matz.’
She stopped, the words evaporating on her lips.
Was she?
‘Where’s your group?’
‘My group?’
‘I presume you’re not drinking all of these yourself?’ He leaned over to scoop up into his large hands the collection of drinks she’d ordered. ‘You get the margaritas, and I’ll carry this lot over.’
‘Carry them over?’ she said weakly.
It was like the cogs in her brain had been frozen in position and she was desperately trying to work them loose. Her thoughts were all over the place, skittering like a puppy on ice.
She was lurching wildly from old feelings of resentment to old feelings of...well, not love, of course. That would be insane. But...lust. Yes, that was what it was. Old-fashioned, unadulterated lust. Possibly with a generous dusting of nostalgia.
As ludicrous as she knew it was, it was far easier to hold onto that notion of lust than the truth of anything else. The truth of anything deeper. But once that proverbial seed had been sown in her head, she realised her mistake too late.
Because now her mind was running riot with a hundred other ridiculous notions.
Like how much harm could come of indulging that lust.
Just for one more night...
She tried to put on the brakes, but her thoughts were like a runaway train of carriages, with no way of halting them.
Indulging in this lust for each other would be foolhardy. Ludicrous.
Mattie knew it down to her very bones, yet all she could think was how in a matter of days her three-month posting at the Castleton University Teaching Hospital would be over and she would be beginning her three-month stint in a field hospital thousands of miles away.
So what harm could one night do?
‘This is insane,’ she muttered, though more to herself than to Kane.
And if he read her lips as the words were snatched away by the loud, sinuous bass of the music, he didn’t respond.
She had to stop this before it started. Reaching up her hands to push him away—at least, that’s what she was telling herself—Mattie watched in horror as her palms flattened against his chest. Her fingers spread out like they were blooming over him, feeling their way.
And how they revelled in what they felt.
One more moment...
Snatching her hands back abruptly, Mattie glowered at him, but for once he merely stared back at her wordlessly.
