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“Like I said, to change.”
“That’s not our room.”
“We don’t have a room, Leonie.”
He heard the tap-tap of her heels behind him. As he pulled off his suit jacket she stood in the doorway with her arms folded over her breasts.
“When’s she going back to the UK?”
He froze for a second.
“Who?”
“You know who.” She strutted in, took hold of a blue glass bird on the bookshelf. “She’s Alice’s cousin, right?” She toyed with the bird, a disgusted look on her face. “Whatisall this stuff? It’s like a second-hand bric-a-brac shop in here. It’ll have to be gone before we put the apartment on the market.” She popped her eyes at him. “So, when’s she leaving?”
He looped his hands on his hips and stared at her, anger and exasperation mingling.
She tossed her head. “Kind of… incestuous, isn’t it, having a fling with your brother’s wife’s cousin?”
“Will you please leave me to get changed, Leonie?” Oliver gritted out. “Then we’ll talk.”
With a decidedly stony glare and another hair-flick, she huffed out.
By the time he’d flung on something casual and joined her she was in the kitchen, her head in the fridge. “Have you got any of that grapefruit tonic?”
That had always been her drink. Gin and grapefruit tonic. Way too sweet for him.
“Nope.”
“Oh, dear, cheap old Schweppes.” She took a lemon from the fruit bowl, sliced it with a sharp knife. Glanced at him under her lashes as she handed him a glass. He couldn’t be bothered to argue.
“Don’t look at me all angry and sulky, babe,” she said. “Can’t we talk this through like adults?”
Being adult, he realised now, with the clarity of hindsight, was not something Leonie did well. And it struck him, gripping the cold glass in his rigid fingers, that he’d colluded in that.
They went and sat on the leather sofas opposite each other.
After a couple of heavy sighs, she said, “I guess I can’t blame you—about her.”
“Thanks,” he said, and heard the heavy sarcasm in his voice. “Very magnanimous.”
She grimaced. “I guess it’s confession time. There’s been someone else for me too.”
“Your business advisor in Bali,” he responded grimly.
“How did you know?”
“Your tone of voice when you mentioned it on the phone.”
“Oh, you read me so well, babe.” She cast him a look that would melt a glacier. “I need you to know thatnothing,absolutely nothing happened before we split. You have to believe me.”
He didn’t, but if he refuted it, she’d cry and he wasn’t at all in the mood for that. “Who is he?”
“A property developer. You know, big hotels, upmarket resorts.”
“Well, thanks for filling me in. It’s always good to know why your fiancée pissed off on your wedding day.”
“Please babe, don’t be crude. It wasn’t like that. He just helped me set up over there. But, you know… one thing led to another.”
