She’d never heard City talk or seen him crack a smile. He didn’t even fidget, just stood stoically in place until the train pulled up, then stared straight ahead once seated in the car. Cool as a cucumber and veddy, veddy English. At least, that’s how she imagined him when she wrote about him in her journal. She’d bet her next paltry paycheck he had a posh accent, an expensive education, and a boring job moving piles of money around. He was her polar opposite.
Still, she always kept an eye out for him. She saw City two or three mornings a week, either here or at Greenwich Park, where both of them liked to run. In motion, he was a beautiful thing, a Scandinavian god with flushed cheeks. She loved that flash of pink on his face—such an endearing crack in his cool perfection. It made her want to muss his hair and tie his shoelaces together when he wasn’t looking, just to see what would happen.
And now he’d helped her win access to the piece she so badly wanted for the exhibit. You really had to love him.
“When can I pick that jacket up?” she asked Amanda, turning back to face her.
“Hmm?” Amanda was still staring at City. “Oh, right.” Her mouth tightened, her eyes growing cagey. “That was a good trick. How long have you been practicing?”
“First time,” she answered honestly. Far from impressive, her ability to predict who’d arrive next on the train platform was evidence of how sad her life had become. She was a people-watcher by nature, and now that she’d cleaned up her act, she had nothing better to do than make up stories about the strangers who shared her morning commute.
The saddest part was, she didn’t always take this train. If she’d run into Amanda while waiting for the 6:43 or the 7:43 instead of the 7:09, Cath still would have stood a good chance of pulling off the trick, predicting the arrival of an entirely different set of familiar strangers.
She didn’t have to tell Amanda that, though.
“You really want that jacket,” Amanda said. “It’s important to you.”
Cath stared at City’s broad shoulders beneath his suit coat and shrugged, feigning a nonchalance she didn’t feel.
Should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy. Nothing ever is.
“We’re friends, right?” Amanda asked, throwing an arm across the back of the bench.
They weren’t friends. They’d had a handful of mutual acquaintances a few years ago. These days, Cath pantomimed familiarity when they ran into each other around Greenwich so that she could legitimately harass Amanda for the straitjacket.
Cath didn’t have any friends. She had a roommate who didn’t like her, a socially awkward boss who did, and an empty life that revolved around her job.
“Sure,” she said, because it was what she was supposed to say.
“And you need a favor.”
Just smile and nod, Talarico.
She tamped down her temper, refrained from pointing out that she’d just won her favor fair and square, and did as her good sense instructed.
“We’ll do a trade.” Amanda grinned, a smile that announced,
This is the best idea anyone’s ever had. “Eric and I are going to a concert tonight at a club with his cousin. He’s in town from Newcastle for the weekend. We could really use a fourth.”
A garbled announcement of the train’s approach came over the loudspeaker, and Cath kept her expression neutral as she stood and shouldered her bag.
Christ on a crutch. She’d walked into a blind date.
For any normal woman, this wouldn’t be a problem. No one wanted to be set up with some random warm body from Newcastle, of course, but spending an evening being hit on, ignored, or bored out of her skull ought to have been a fair exchange for getting her way.
For Cath, though, Amanda’s proposal was worse than a problem. It was a disaster waiting to happen.
She hadn’t been on a date in two years. No concerts, no bars, no men. These were the rules that set New Cath apart from her irresponsible predecessor—the restrictions that kept her from making the kind of mistakes that had necessitated the creation of New Cath in the first place.
Cath didn’t want to break the rules. She needed the rules.
But she needed that straitjacket more. It would be a coup for the exhibit, which meant it would win Judith’s gratitude, and Judith’s gratitude was Cath’s ticket into a permanent curatorial position.
She had to do it.
“Sounds like fun,” she said, her cheerful tone the first of many frauds the evening would no doubt entail.
Surely she could spend one night with a guy in a club without doing anything she’d regret.