About Last Night

It could happen, and it scared her. But not nearly as much as the alternative did. What if he found out about everything, and he took it all in stride? What would she and Nev be then? Would it flatten them out into something normal? Would they be, all of a sudden, in a relationship?

She couldn’t handle a relationship with Nev. She’d done one-night stands and one-week flings, dirty weekends and friendship with benefits, but she hadn’t done a real relationship since Jimmy, and she wasn’t going there again. Whatever it took to sustain a connection to another person, she didn’t have it. She’d never had it. She was her father’s daughter—all flash and wit, dazzle and good times. Never in it for the long haul.

That’s what the tattoos were for—to record her mistakes on her body and to remind her who she was. That’s what the rules were for, too. She’d marked out her limits so she would remember not to try to go beyond them. The tattoos were supposed to keep her safe.

But with Nev, she’d already drifted so far from safe, she couldn’t even hear New Cath’s warnings anymore. The voice of her conscience had faded, and then the semaphores got blurry and the smoke signals grew faint. She was adrift. With keys.

“Would you like a whiskey?” Nev asked.

God, yes. “Sure.”

He disappeared into the kitchen, and she headed for the couch in his studio. When he reappeared, he’d lost the jacket and tie, and he had two tumblers of Scotch, neat. He slid off his shoes and dropped heavily onto the cushion beside her, handing over her drink. She turned around so they could look out the window together, her back against his chest and her head resting on his shoulder.

He took a healthy swallow, then dropped his own head onto the cushion and sighed. “That’s much better.”

It was. It always was. When their bodies touched, her mind stopped the crazy hamster-wheel shit and settled down.

They sipped in silence, listening to the noises that filtered up from the street as the room gradually darkened and the sky outside reversed itself, white-gray to gray-white. The limited transformation of an overcast London night. The whiskey lit a warm glow in her stomach, loosening all her joints, and he relaxed behind her, his breathing slowing down and deepening as one heavy hand found her thigh and made itself at home there.

This was part of their routine too. The quiet. One more thing she’d only ever found with him.

“I still can’t believe you’ve never seen It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s my favorite movie.”

She was at the kitchen counter, dishing take-out noodles onto plates. Nev slid an arm around her waist from behind and nuzzled her neck. “We’re going to watch your favorite film? I really am making progress.”

She swatted at his arm playfully. “Don’t push your luck, City. I realized at work today I don’t even know your last name.”

He moved his hand down her stomach and between her thighs, making it difficult for her to operate the spoon, both because his arm was kind of in the way and because, well, yum. “My surname? It’s Chamberlain.”

He started doing something with his thumb that made her drop the spoon and suck in a breath, but then her animal brain got distracted by the hysterical shouting of her thinking brain, and she turned in his arms, pushing him back with both hands on his chest.

“What is it?” His eyes were heavy-lidded and hot, as though he’d been thinking about doing her on the countertop. Which he probably had.

“Your name is Neville Chamberlain? Like the prime minister?”

Some of the heat drained out of his gaze, and he sighed. “Yes.”

“Crikey,” she said with a grin. “You’re not related, are you?”

“Very distantly, on my mother’s side. But the name is actually my father’s doing. He’s a history buff.”

Neville Chamberlain. He hadn’t exactly won the name lottery, had he? Her name was no picnic, but at least it didn’t twin her to a prime minister best remembered for miscalculating about Hitler.

Except it had such a nice ring to it. Nev Chamberlain. Her guy. And he was wearing such a hangdog expression, as though he’d been through this conversation a thousand times and hated every one.

She decided to take the high road. “He’s my favorite prime minister,” she told him, giving his chest a pat before wrapping her arms around his waist.

“You’re taking the piss.”

“No, I’m not, I swear. He gets a bad rap for the whole appeasement thing. It always makes me sad to think of him coming back from Munich after meeting with Hitler. He must have been so proud of himself. He’d stood up to the dictator, and they?

??d negotiated, and then he got to come home and tell the people, ‘It will be peace for our time.’ ”

She said this with a little flourish, waving one arm in the air. She’d always liked that line. “Can you imagine what it was like? The country must have gone nuts, everybody totally psyched because no one wanted to have another war—not after how badly the last one had gone, and not in the middle of the freaking Depression. And then poor Neville turns out to be wrong, because Hitler was a psycho who couldn’t be trusted, and the war started pretty much the next day. He must’ve been so disappointed. But it wasn’t his fault, unless you can blame him for being too starry-eyed.”

Nev smoothed his hands down her back, shoulder blades to tailbone, then back up. She loved it when he did that. His hands were so big, it made her feel petite rather than puny. Feminine. He was trying not to smile, she could tell, but he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. He always seemed to like it when she spouted off. “I believe that’s precisely what he’s blamed for.”

Cath shrugged. “He was just doing what everyone wanted him to do. How could he have known Hitler would turn out to be completely evil?”