‘Yes. God. Yes.’
‘So …?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’ As ever, it came out unconvincingly.
‘Bollocks,’ he said. ‘I haven’t known you long, Jen, but I know when you’re not being straight with me. What’s up?’
‘Perhaps I enjoyed it too much,’ she said after a pause.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means … I’m not in a good place for this kind of thing.’
‘You’re not in a good place? Why did you leave LA then? You know what it’s like round here.’
He misunderstood her deliberately, she realised. He was telling her that he wouldn’t accept any Californian psychobabble.
He bent his head to hers until their brows touched.
‘Listen, sweets,’ he said, and the endearment made her curl her toes with guilty pleasure. ‘You’ve had a rough time. You’ve ditched the selfish bastard you were saddled with. You’ve run away from your life. I get that you’ve got a lot on your plate.’
‘Thanks. Good.’
‘But I don’t think that’s your problem with me, is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, look at me, love. Compared to my fuck-up of a life, yours is the Garden of bastard Eden. But do you see me trying to fob you off with what a “bad place” I’m in?’
‘I … Well, people are different, Leo, aren’t they?’
‘When everything else in your life sucks, you grab anything that doesn’t with both hands, and hold it close. I like you. You like me. We’ve got something a bit like electricity going on between us. Why push it away? Why?’
‘All right, all right. I’ll tell you why. All my life, I’ve made it my business never to bite off more than I can chew. When you swim with the sharks, you have to keep a clear head. I let everyone else around me ruin themselves with drugs and illicit affairs and over-ambitious projects – they crashed and burned and I came up smelling of roses every time. It’s the secret of my success. But now, with you, with what we just did, I feel like I’ve broken my own rule.’
She looked away.
‘Jen,’ he said. The touch of his hand was like a static shock. She thought her hair might be standing on end.
‘You were right about the electricity,’ she said haltingly. ‘I feel like I’ve been switched on and now I can’t switch off.’
‘You’re scared,’ he said flatly.
She nodded.
She was scared. She wanted him to keep touching her, to keep holding her. She wanted him again. She thought she might want him all night.
And the next night.
And the next.
She wanted it too much.
‘I don’t know why you’re scared,’ he said. ‘But I know how it feels. I know how it felt when I went into that house to look for Mia and she wasn’t there, but a whole vanload of Feds were. Sorry. Did I use the F word again? Cops, then. I was scared. I did what I’ve never done in my life before, and I ran.’
‘You got away from them?’
‘Pure luck. The pub was doing a firework display for someone’s birthday do and I’d got a couple of bargain boxes off the back of a lorry for them. Set a couple off in the back kitchen and legged it.’