About Last Night

Nev frowned, unhappy with the implication. “I’m a mistake then?”

“I don’t know yet. You have to admit, we didn’t meet under the most auspicious circumstances.”

“True.”

He did have to admit it. He didn’t have to like it. And it didn’t have to matter how they’d met. She was here, wasn’t she?

Cath didn’t feel like a mistake to him. She felt like a beginning. A clean canvas, ready to be painted. A gorgeous new idea.

She lowered her face to the pillow. “I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Want me to distract you again?”

“Yeah.”

He turned her over, kissed his way down her soft stomach, and spread her legs wide with his shoulders. No doubt he’d been someone’s mistake in the past. Perhaps more than one person’s, at that. But he wasn’t hers.

He’d simply have to prove it to her.

Chapter Six

Cath was dozing on Nev’s chest, his fingers tangled in her hair, when a loud knock at the front door startled her awake. He tensed beneath her.

“Expecting someone?”

“No.” He slid her onto the mattress and sat up, reaching for his jeans. “Stay here a moment, I’ll get your things.”

Half dressed, he disappeared down the hallway and returned with her shirt, skirt, and shoes, placing them beside her on the bed. Then he leaned down and kissed her quickly, her face cupped in his hand. “I’ll just go see who it is.”

Cath sighed and sat up, dismayed to find herself plunged so suddenly back into reality. She’d been perfectly happy, lying there with Nev. Maybe it had been a false happiness, a soap bubble headed toward the floor, but it still sucked to have it punctured, because now all the thoughts she’d pushed firmly to the back of her mental space were crowding around the barriers, ready to break loose. None of them was going to make her as blissful as ignoring them had.

She pulled on her clothes. They were stiff from air-drying, but at least they were clean. There wasn’t much she could do about the wrinkles—or about the rest of her. She ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing down the worst of the bed head.

At the door, Nev was speaking in a low voice to another man. She heard them move into the hall. Whoever it was, he didn’t seem to be leaving, so Cath shoved her feet into her heels and opened the door. Though she had no idea how the visitor would react to her presence, she wasn’t going to cower in the bedroom like a dirty little secret.

They didn’t notice her right away, giving her a chance to check out the other guy. He was attractive, nearly as tall as Nev but noticeably older, his neatly combed dark hair going gray at the temples. Dressed in a polo shirt and slacks, he had a casual polish that made a stark contrast to Nev, whose bare chest and mussed hair gave him a feral aspect. The bite mark on his shoulder didn’t help.

The visitor caught sight of her and stiffened. His eyes raked over her slowly, his mouth—a less friendly version of Nev’s—set in a disapproving frown. This guy had to be a relative, maybe Nev’s older brother. And he was looking at her like something he’d found on the bottom of his expensive loafers.

Nev turned to look at her, too, his eyes cool and his expression unreadable. Suddenly he was a stranger again, not the man who’d kissed her moments earlier. He was City waiting impassively for the train.

There was an awkward silence as Cath realized he wasn’t going to introduce her.

She’d been called a lot of things, but no one had ever accused her of being slow on the uptake. He wanted her gone. Whatever had been happening between the two of them, this man’s arrival had brought it to a close, and now it was time for her to hit the road.

And that was fine. That was what she would have expected, if she’d bothered

to form expectations. It still surprised her, which was probably why her eyes were watering and her chest felt sort of squeezed and smooshed, like a big dog was sitting on it. But tears and moderate physical discomfort were no big deal. Symptoms like this were bound to strike on a day like today, when she was already off-balance from the whole waking-up-in-a-strange-place thing. Plus the drunken-night-on-the-town thing. The incredible-sex-with-Nev thing.

Not a problem. She knew how to leave. She practically had a degree in it.

Spying her purse near the door, she slid past the two men, her heels clattering on the parquet floor. “I’m off, then. Thanks again for everything. I’ll, uh, see you around.” She snagged her purse, wrenched the door open, and escaped, refusing to look back.

As she made her way down the stairs to the street, she reminded herself it was probably for the best. She and Nev didn’t make sense together. And if the thought of never kissing him again made the squeezing sensation in her chest worse and the tears spill over, well, that’s what she deserved for getting herself into this mess to begin with. After a two-year hiatus, she’d let Bad Cath out to play, and Bad Cath had royally screwed everything up, same as she always did.

But hey, the good thing about living in a big city like London was you could start over as many times as you wanted. She didn’t have to see Nev again. She could run a different route through the park, take a different train, and he’d disappear altogether. She’d show up for work on Monday as New Cath, and sooner or later this whole episode would become a blip. It might take a few years to blippify it completely, but she’d manage.

It wasn’t as though sleeping with him had been a huge mistake. The guy didn’t even come close to meriting a tattoo.