AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘No right to meddle!’ she cried. ‘You called him. You pushed him.’
‘Which meant he told the truth now instead of in a few days or weeks.’
‘And it’s just my flat?’
‘No, it’s all three flats on this floor.’
Her stomach somersaulted. ‘Oh, no—Mrs Appleby!’
‘Apparently, she’s going to stay with her sister, a few hours’ drive away. I don’t know about the other flat’s occupants.’
What did it say about her that she didn’t even know their names?
‘I have no idea where we can go,’ she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
‘Like I said. You’ll stay with me. Only this time I’m not offering.’
Effie didn’t miss the edge to his voice, but her mind was too busy reeling for her to be able to take it on board fully.
‘Anyway, my home is expansive enough that we could live in separate wings and not even see or hear each other.’
She hesitated. What other choice did she have? And why couldn’t she shake the part of her which was secretly revelling in this horrible turn of events?
‘Really?’
‘Unless you want us to see each other, of course.’
It was an attempt at a joke, she was pretty sure, but they were both too tense to laugh. The air was so fraught she was almost suffocating. And then something lurched inside her chest that she pretended not to notice.
She tilted her head a fraction higher. ‘You’re funny,’ she said, her voice cracked.
‘Did you just chin-check me?’
He grinned suddenly. It was a stunning, heart-stopping sight. And incredibly, impossibly, everything simply shifted.
‘Why are you being so nice, anyway?’ Effie valiantly fought to eye his obscenely tantalising grin with something she hoped approached disdain. ‘What’s in it for you?’
‘Would it make it easier for you if there was something?’
Would it? Probably.
She lifted her shoulders as casually as she dared. ‘Maybe.’
He laughed. A warm, rich sound which seemed to seep through her very bones like the sun on a gorgeously hot day.
‘Fine. Then what if I told you that my extended family have backed off on the whole arranged marriage idea since word got back to them about me being at the gala with you.’
She didn’t feel a tingle ripple through her. She didn’t.
‘Is that so?’
‘It is.’
She waited for him to elaborate but he didn’t. He was deliberately waiting for her to probe him. To show her hand. She wanted to hold her nerve, but curiosity won out—as galling as that was.
‘Go on, then. I’ll bite. Why isn’t your mother insisting on an arranged marriage any more?’
‘I guess because her endgame is for me to provide her with grandchildren. Whether she sets me up or I meet a future wife on my own terms is really neither here nor there to her.’
