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She had questions. There was no reason for anyone to send her a car key. She was also busy, could the courier wait for fifteen minutes? Apparently he’d wait all day.
She made it to reception thirty minutes later and there was no sign of the courier. She looked to the two women at the desk. One of them said, “He’s waiting outside.” This got more and more irritating.
She went through the door, impatiently scanning for the leathers of a bike courier or the inevitable cap of a guy with a van. She almost got knocked over by the shock of meeting a pair of the palest eyes in a charcoal grey suit. She took an instant step back and he smiled and that staggered her too. He had no right to smile at her like that, sending her breakfast into instant rebellion.
“How are you, Foley?”
Her fist closed around the key. She could throw it at him, at this distance it might hurt. He was way too beautiful and she didn’t understand why he was here in a suit coat that fitted so well across his shoulders, draped so faultlessly over his chest. He made her throat tight, her chest hurt. Why was he here? Where had he been?
“Why did you send me a car key?”
His smile got impossibly bigger. He had a scar on his cheekbone that hadn’t been there before. She wanted to put her finger to it, put her lips to it, hold onto him, block her ears to whatever excuses he made and throw her self-respect off a cliff.
“What do you want from me?”
His smile softened, but it simmered in his eyes. “Whatever you’ll give me.” His voice was an obscene caress; it flowed across her body and took her breath away.
She threw the key at him. He caught it one-handed and the smile never left his face. It was infuriating. He couldn’t simply come here like this and trick her into seeing him.
“Do you think you can come back wearing clothes that fit, with a decent haircut, and we’d pick up where we left off? Do you think I’ve been waiting around for you? I haven’t. You walked away. I have a life I like now. You had your shot.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” He wasn’t smiling now. He wore confusion on his face as well as he wore that open necked shirt. “I’d have stood in any hailstorm for you. Followed any rule. Risked every convention.”
He reached a hand out to touch her. “Foley.”
She stepped back. “I looked for you. I asked around. I wasted months pining for you. Did you even once think about me, worry about me?”
He dropped his hand to his side. “I thought about you every day. I learned to recite three hundred and eighty-seven names backwards from Z to A because I was trying not to think about you and how I’d hurt you.”
He pushed a hand through his short crop of hair. Her traitor hand wanted to march on through those shiny strands too. But there was sticky tape holding her heart together and she wasn’t brave enough to let him near it again.
“I owed it to you to stay out of your life. I was too screwed up. I couldn’t take you anywhere I needed to go and I’m not apologising for that.”
Foley wrapped that traitor hand around her waist. “Then I guess we have nothing to say to each other.”
He held out the key. “I bought you a car.”
She looked at his hand then back to his face. Was this some kin
d of sick joke? “What piece of stupid logic would make you think I need you to buy me a car?”
“You have a new job but you’re still driving the old one.”
“I haven’t had ti—What business of yours is that?” Her hands came up, an aggressive gesture. “You’d have to have freaking well stalked me to know that.”
He didn’t even have the grace to duck eye contact. “I drove by your flat. That car’s not safe.”
“That’s not your concern.”
He took a half step closer to her. “Yeah, it is.” He looked amazing, Nat was right, he looked younger, sexier, damn him. “It always was. That’s why I had to leave you.” He needed to stop looking at her like he wanted to eat her with chocolate sauce. “I couldn’t keep you safe. I couldn’t be what you needed.”
“You took my confidence away. You ripped my heart out. It was a wet lump of shredded lettuce. If that’s your version of safe, I’ll take dangerous.”
“You already did that. You took my confusion, my anger and my rule making and you smashed it all up. You’re the bravest, finest person I know.”
“Well, maybe you don’t know me anymore. Maybe my life is a thousand times better than it was when you were in it. I don’t need anything from you.”
