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He paused to swallow the last of his coffee. ‘While it’s true that Caleb and I go way back, it’s not the same with Addison. Though she’s far too polite to come out and say it, I have a strong suspicion that she might not like me very much.’
Lara frowned. Sure, Reuben was annoying, verging on arrogant, but what possible reason did Addison have to actively dislike the man enough to discourage his presence in her home? Should she be worried?
‘Why do you think it is exactly that Addison doesn’t like you?’ She strove to keep her tone neutral and the wobble out of her voice.
He took a few seconds before he answered. ‘Let’s just say I knew Caleb when we were relatively young guys—long before Addison came on the scene—and we might have been involved in a few...’ he paused to think of the right word ‘...boisterous activities.’
‘Boisterous activities? That’s it? That’s all you’re giving me?’
He nodded. ‘I think that would be best.’
She folded her arms across her chest and looked through the kitchen window into the darkness. ‘Looks like a long, rainy night out there to me...’ She let her voice drift off.
‘You’ve got to be joking? You’d actually ask me to leave?’
She started walking around the kitchen. ‘Absolutely. And just think, there’s a lovely king-sized bed up there, with fresh, clean sheets just waiting for you to jump in and ease your tired bones.’ She folded her arms around herself and rubbed her hands up and down them. She knew exactly how to play him.
He sat down his coffee cup. ‘You’re a manipulator.’
‘And you could be a murderer, a drug dealer or...’ she scrunched up her nose ‘...even worse, a wannabe.’
‘A what?’ He couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice. ‘What are you talking about?’
She waved her hand. ‘You tell me you’re a sports agent, then you tell me you have to sort out badly behaved sports stars. You might just want to hang around them. You might even bring random dubious sport stars back to this place. They could wreck it.’
He shook his head. ‘You honestly think I want to hang around these guys? Some of them are worse behaved than two-year-olds.’
She folded her arms across her chest again. ‘Then give me a straight answer. Explain your “boisterous activities”.’
Boy. She was good. He’d practically walked right into that one.
He stood up, put both hands at his waist and arched his aching back. ‘Fine. We did some cliff-jumping, some free running. There might have been a little police involvement back in the day. Then there was the usual girl stuff. That’s probably why Addison doesn’t like me. She probably thinks of me as a bad influence or something.’
Lara leaned against one of the white cupboards. ‘Why? Because you encouraged her husband to take part in extreme sports, or because of the girl stuff?’
He ran his fingers through his hair. Jet-lag was definitely hitting right now. ‘Truth? Probably a bit of both. But, remember, this was all before her time.’ It wasn’t exactly the truth. But that was as much as he was willing to say.
Lara gave a nod. She’d finished cleaning the kitchen and it was back to its original sparkling white show-home-kitchen appearance. The kind of kitchen that looked as if people didn’t actually live in the house. ‘Well, that’s okay, then.’
She was still watching him with those wary blue eyes. He was trying not to think about the idiot who’d cheated on her and was obviously short of a few brain cells.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said, as he walked back through to the sitting room and picked up her half-empty bottle of wine and glass. ‘Let’s have a toast.’
‘A toast to what?’ She looked completely bewildered.
‘A toast to the fact we’ll need to share this house for the next two weeks.’
He poured some wine into her glass and handed it to her before she could object, then lifted the bottle up towards her. ‘To an interesting two weeks.’ He clinked the bottle to her glass before lifting it to his lips.
Her eyes never left his. ‘To an interesting two weeks,’ she repeated.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS THE weirdest feeling. Somewhere in the space up above her there was another body breathing in and out.
She’d bet Reuben wasn’t having trouble sleeping. At first she’d thought she was too hot and had discarded the thick onesie. After tonight she’d probably never wear it again. Then she’d realised she didn’t have PJs—and sleeping in the nude with a stranger in the house just wasn’t an option. So she’d done something she’d never even thought about before and crept along the corridor to Addison and Caleb’s room and rummaged through a few drawers until she’d found something suitable.
