This Could Change Everything(93)

‘My pleasure.’ The sensation of his warm fingers touching her forearm was electrifying; it took all her self-control not to jump.

‘I’m glad you were with me,’ said Lucas.

Essie’s mouth was dry. ‘I’m glad too.’

Really glad.

‘Then again, if you hadn’t made me stop, we wouldn’t still have a five-hour journey ahead of us.’ His tone was wry. ‘We’d have been home by now.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘Was Paul expecting to see you this evening? If it helps, I could drop you at his place on the way back.’

‘No need,’ Essie said casually.

‘He hasn’t called you today.’

Time to come clean. ‘That’s because we aren’t seeing each other any more.’

‘Seriously?’ Lucas sounded outraged. ‘Just because you came up here with me? He finished with you because of that?’

Cheek.

‘Thanks for making that assumption.’ Essie shook her head. ‘If you weren’t driving, I’d push you out of the car. Actually, I was the one who finished with him.’

Silence.

Then Lucas said slowly, ‘Because he wasn’t happy about you coming here with me?’

‘That was one reason. But it wasn’t the only one.’ Essie knew she had to tread with care. ‘It wasn’t working anyway. The last few months have made me realise . . . well, certain things. Quite a few things, really. We should never have got back together.’

‘So you’re not upset?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Well, that’s good.’

Essie nodded. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘And you’re sure you’re OK?’

‘Completely sure. Completely OK. Relieved it’s over.’ As she said it, Essie remembered he’d said the same about Giselle. She glanced sideways at him, wondering if he’d noticed, just as he looked over at her. For a moment their eyes met and it felt like stars colliding.

This time the silence seemed turbo-charged and the unspoken message in his gaze was enough to send adrenalin rocketing through her bloodstream.

If he only knew what she was thinking.

If only she knew what he was thinking.

Oh God, this was intense.

Then the smile returned, that irresistible, magical smile, and Lucas said, ‘We’ll be home by midnight.’





Chapter 44


Well that just about put the tin lid on it.

Conor searched through the rest of his overnight case, but the phone charger wasn’t there, either in the side pocket where he’d left it or anywhere else in the case.

‘I don’t believe it.’ He gestured with exasperation. ‘I told her to put it back afterwards, and she couldn’t even be bothered to do that.’

‘Who?’ said Belinda. ‘Evie?’

‘Not Evie. Caz.’ Who else? ‘She asked to borrow my charger yesterday afternoon because she’d broken hers, and I made sure she understood that I needed to bring it away with me. So she told me to chill out, of course she’d put it back. And guess what? Didn’t happen. I knew it.’

‘If you knew,’ Belinda told him, ‘you should have checked it was back in your case before we left.’

‘I should have done. I forgot.’

‘And Caz forgot too. It’s easily done,’ Belinda protested. ‘It’s not as if she did it on purpose!’

Conor sighed, because any criticism of Caz never went down well, but surely he was allowed to be annoyed? His phone was out of battery and now he had no way of charging it. God knows, he hadn’t even wanted to come down here to Winchester, but Belinda had insisted.

‘It’s been six weeks since the last time we were meant to see Annette and Bill,’ she chided. ‘They’ve started calling you the invisible man. And it’s their wedding anniversary . . . Oh please, we have to go!’

So he’d relented and they’d driven down yesterday morning, and as Belinda had promised, Annette and Bill were lovely people. Although he wished they weren’t quite so enthusiastic about his relationship with Belinda.

To hear them talk, you’d think the wedding invitations had already been sent out.

‘Come on, don’t be so grumpy,’ Belinda said now. Up in the attic bedroom, she took Conor’s dead phone out of his hand. ‘We’re having a great time, aren’t we? And now we’re all going out to dinner, so why would you even need your phone anyway? It’ll do you good to give it a rest for one night and manage without it.’

Hmm.

Almost home, almost home.

As they crested the hill that would lead them down into Bath, the lights of the city glittered like a constellation of stars and Essie’s stomach tightened with anticipation, because some of those lights emanated from Percival Square and within minutes that was where they would be too.

And then what?

‘Nearly there,’ murmured Lucas.

‘Nearly.’ Aargh, she sounded like a parrot, but she couldn’t help herself. Her heart was galloping away too. If they were to be flagged down now by a police car and ordered to open the window, would the police officers be able to tell how she was feeling? Would they know at once that here was a girl whose hormones were on the rampage?