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She grinned. He hadn’t given her the expected answer, but it had been the right one.
‘I think I could help...’
‘I don’t want you to help. This is a full partnership and I expect you to tell me what’s wrong with my thinking.’ He could trust Marie to do that. Their friendship was founded on it.
‘It’s a big step for me, Alex. I need to think about it.’
‘Of course. Take as long as you like.’
Alex knew that Marie wouldn’t take too long; she was nothing if not decisive. If she said no then that would be the end of it. But if she said yes then maybe, just maybe, she’d save him from being the man his father had wanted him to be and make him into the one he wanted to be.
* * *
By the time she got home Alex’s email was already in her inbox, with a full job description and a detailed brief of his plans for the clinic appended. It took a while to read through it all, and Marie didn’t finish until the early hours. She decided to sleep on it.
But sleeping on it didn’t help, and neither did extending her usual running route around the park to almost twice the distance. Neither did staring at the wall or surfing the internet.
She wanted the job—very badly. It would give her a chance to shape policy and to be part of a bold initiative that promised to be a real force in helping people to live fuller and better lives.
But Alex...
Before she’d kissed him, before she’d known that he wasn’t who he’d said he was...
That wasn’t entirely fair. Thinking back, he’d never actually said anything about who he was. If it hadn’t occurred to her to ask if his father was an immeasurably rich king in exile then maybe that was a lapse in imagination on her part.
But it still felt as if she’d kissed a man she didn’t really know at all and had let herself fall a little in love with him. A future working closely with Alex seemed fraught with the dangerous unknown.
By Sunday evening she’d distilled it all down. There was no doubt in her mind that this was her dream job, but there were three things she wanted to know from Alex. Could he forget the kiss? Why hadn’t he told her who he was? And what did the clinic really mean to him?
They were tricky questions. She had to find a way of asking indirectly, and after an hour of scribbling and crossing out she had three questions that might or might not elicit the information she wanted.
Marie picked up her phone and typed a text.
Are you still awake? I have some questions.
Nothing. Maybe he’d taken the evening off and gone out somewhere. Or maybe he was asleep already. As Marie put her phone down on the bed beside her, it rang.
‘Hi, Alex...’ She panicked suddenly and her mind went blank.
‘Hi. Fire away, then.’
She’d rather hoped that she might ask by text, as that would give her a chance to carefully edit what she intended to say.
‘Um...okay. Have you interviewed anyone else for this post?’ That was the closest she could get to asking about the kiss.
‘Nope.’
Marie rolled her eyes. ‘That’s not much help, so I’m going for a supplementary question. Why not?’
He chuckled ‘You’re asking if I offered you the job because we’re friends? The answer’s no. I need people around me who I trust and who are the best at what they do. If I wanted to meet up with you I’d call and ask if you were free for lunch.’
Okay. That sounded promising. Alex had drawn the line between professional and personal, and if he could take the kiss out of the equation then so could she.
‘Next?’
Marie squeezed her eyes closed and recited the next question. ‘That Christmas, at medical school, when we all went home for the holidays, what did you do?’
He was silent for so long that Marie began to wonder whether he’d hung up on her. She wondered if he knew how much this mattered, and why.
