Right Number, Wrong Girl

I didn’t even know if she would remember it all this morning. Given the look of horror in her eyes when I’d left, I’d assume she’d sobered up pretty swiftly after she’d kissed me.

Her meeting with Mum was in thirty minutes, and I didn’t know how she was going to react to me this morning. I’d tried to text her a thousand times to see how she was, but every message sounded stupid.

There was no way to ask her if she remembered what had happened the night before.

In hindsight, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have hugged her. I hadn’t lied when I said to her that I wasn’t a hugger—it just wasn’t something I did a lot of, but something had compelled me to pull her against me the way I had.

If I hadn’t done that, maybe she wouldn’t have listened to the wine and kissed me.

Fuck, who was I kidding?

It didn’t matter what I told myself. Maybe it would have happened anyway at some point. Fucking God only knew how badly I was attracted to her, and if I wanted her before, I was on my bloody knees begging for her now.

That one kiss, that one fucking light little touch, had made me crave her.

And the way she’d looked at me as I’d left didn’t give me much hope that it was a craving that would ever be fulfilled.

“You look like shit.”

I looked up at my brother as he walked past me to the kettle. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Late night?”

“Weird night,” I muttered.

“Yeah, there are rumours.”

I covered my face with my hand. “I can guarantee none of them are true.”

“So you didn’t leave the pub with Cait and Sophie?”

“That’s true, but I bet nothing else after it is.”

Grandma hobbled in and looked at me. “You’re a slut, Hugo.”

I looked from her to Henry and said, “Absolutely none of it after that is true.”

“Two women!” Grandma said, her stick clinking against the floor. “Back in my day, that never would have happened.”

“It didn’t happen,” I said dryly.

“You left the bar with Caitlyn and Camilla!” She sniffed. “Charles could never.”

I was not going down that route of discussion.

“Camilla and I had a working dinner,” I said. “We were finalising some stuff before her meeting with Mum this morning, and after we got done, Cait finished work and they both had some wine.”

Grandma eyed me.

“I hadn’t even had a whole glass, so I drove them both home. Kellie took Caitlyn in, and I stopped in at Camilla’s to make sure she drank water and took some ibuprofen, then I left when I knew she was all right.” I rubbed my hand down my face. “I swear. That’s all that happened.”

Theoretically.

They didn’t need to know the rest.

“I’m sure,” Grandma said, turning to Henry. “Do you believe him?”

“He doesn’t have a reason to lie, does he?” Henry shrugged. “I don’t think he’s so stupid as to start something illicit with someone who’s working for us, either.”