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‘But when will I see you again?’
‘I wouldn’t bank on any more dates in the future.’ Nico began rising to his feet, asking her whether she wanted to accept his champagne compensation offer and then telling her that he would phone Ronnie in advance so that there were no problems at the door.
He vaguely registered that it was a result that his date hadn’t thrown her dinner plate at him. Flavia might be a catwalk model and tough as nails when it came to guys, but walking out on her halfway through a meal was not something he would ever have considered doing, however bored he might have been with the conversation.
In this instance, though...?
He could have contacted his driver but this felt like a very personal mission so he detoured only to grab his Ferrari and, on the way, the most expensive bunch of flowers he could find that late in the evening from a florist’s close to the Underground.
His body was alive with edgy restlessness, but he was doing something. He was figuring out his life and he was doing something about it. He only hoped it wasn’t too late.
Tommy was talking. He seemed to have been talking for most of the dinner she had painstakingly prepared to the point where most of it was still on his plate.
Grace knew that she should be happy, but she felt as though she were being battered from all sides, which meant that most of the food onherplate also remained uneaten.
She’d been on a low when her brother had arrived that morning. She’d plastered a bright smile on her face, but her head had been worrying over the misery sitting like a lump in the pit of her stomach.
No more Nico. No more job. No moreanything.Fair as he was, he had allowed her to walk away without the discomfort of having to work her notice.
She would have her pay kept intact for as long as it took for her to find suitable employment. His references would be glowing. Could she have asked for more? Hadn’t she already concluded that working with him was going to be impossible?
And that kiss...
The nail in the coffin. So much had been given away in her response, in the way she had clung to him with the desperation of a drowning swimmer clutching at a lifebelt thrown in the water. He had seen and smelled andtastedall the passion that was still there, simmering under the surface, waiting to be ignited at the spark of a flame.
Good heavens, she had been asked to book a dinner date for him with his latest blonde, and, even knowing that he was back to his old tricks, shestillhadn’t been able to resist his touch. He had lazily and idly tried it on, and instead of pushing him away she had capitulated without even the whiff of a fight.
So now she was staring at a bottomless void and on top of that... Tommy.
She’d expected him to be querulous...in need of the usual soothing pep talk... She’d braced herself to bite down on any hint of impatience. Instead, he had been fighting fit and, having had a break from her, had decided that the time was right for him to launch into what, she assumed, had been on his mind for a while.
He wanted her to back off.
She was too intrusive. He felt stifled. He could manage just fine without her calling him all the time to make sure he hadn’t done anything silly. Heknewshe meant well...heknewhow bad things had been after the accident. But that was years ago, and it was time for her to do her own thing and stop fussing over him.
Then he had gentled his tone and informed her that he had met someone, a girl in the same block as him. They’d been seeing one another for nearly four months and he hadn’t mentioned it because he knew that if he had she, Grace, would have given him so many well-intentioned warnings that she would have ruined the whole thing.
Now, as she stared at her beautiful and in her head permanently dependent kid brother, she had to struggle not to feel mortally wounded by everything he had just laid at her door.
He’d finally dived into the chicken pie she had cooked but she shoved her plate to one side.
When, she thought miserably, had she morphed from the sister who picked up the pieces to the sister who became a bore? She felt rejected in her love life, with all her silly expectations, and rejected by her own family, who clearly no longer needed her suffocating concern.
Tears pricked the backs of her eyes, but she squeezed the hand that suddenly covered hers.
‘You’re amazing, sis,’ Tommy told her, his blue eyes caring. ‘But it’s time you let me live my life and you go and live yours. I feel you’ve always put your life on hold to look after Ma and then me and, okay, I’ve been pretty pathetic for a while, but I really thought about stuff when you were stuck out there and it’s time for me to stand on my own two feet. Hey! You should be married with a kid of your own by now!’
Grace was struggling not to burst into tears of self-pity at that well-meaning but, oh, so way-off-target remark when the doorbell buzzed.
She wasn’t expecting anyone, but she was glad for the distraction anyway.
How much more could she take? She was hopelessly in love with the wrong guy. Married with a kid of her own? She might as well try and find some magic red shoes and float her way to another planet because that was how impossible the dream of marriage and kids felt right now.
‘Sorry to interrupt, Tommy. Doorbell!’
She fled, leaving Tommy to his chicken pie, and pulled open the door without thinking.
It took Grace a few seconds to register who was standing outside.
