Page 53 of Love and Loathing

“Just Maisie,” he agreed.

“How was your trip?”

“Awful. I thought of nothing but you.”

“That does sound awful.”

He gave her a flat look, and she smiled.

“And did you miss me, Evie?”

She shook her head, trying not to grin. “Nope.”

“I see.”

“Not even a little. In fact, who are you? One of Roscoe’s friends, I think?”

He gave her a dark-eyed look, smiling slowly as he backed her up against the door she’d just walked through. “That’s right. I know him from work.”

His palms slid under the skirt of her dress and up her thighs to her hips, holding her firm against the door as his thumbs crept under the elastic of her underwear. Her arms linked around his neck.

“From work?” she prompted, blood sparking at the heat in his eyes.

“Yes.” He slipped his hand fully into her underwear, cupping her mound, his palm warm, the pressure of it firm, sending her thoughts tipping. “Where I do very wicked things.”

“Uh-huh,” she managed, losing the battle as his hand started to move. Her head tipped back against the door, his mouth grazed her neck, and it was all very fast after that, Aubrey taking her up against the door with them both still mostly dressed.

“I might have missed you a bit,” she admitted, still breathless, face pressed to his neck as they both came back to earth.

“Good,” he said. “Time to go.”

He reached past her for the door handle, smiling at her glare. But his eyes were soft and warm, and so was the kiss he pressed to her lips. “I missed you like crazy, Evie,” he said quietly. “Don’t doubt it.”

Aubrey parked on the gravelled drive outside a double-garage, a towering beech tree shading its roof. Several other cars wereparked around the drive. The house was big, detached, on a leafy street between Hampstead and Golders Green.

“Ignore everything they say,” he said, getting out. “Especially Charlie.”

He hadn’t spoken much on the drive over, but she’d managed to get a brief lowdown on his family. His dad, Matthew, sixty-six years old and still practising law full time at the family firm, Ford & Ford. Matthew’s second wife, Priya, twenty years younger, a criminal prosecution lawyer and, according to Aubrey, the loveliest person in the world. He’d used the description as though it ought to be written with capital letters: inarguably true. His older brother, Andrew, also a lawyer at the family firm. His younger brother, Charlie, the human rights lawyer. And Asha, Aubrey’s half-sister, fourteen years old and apparently ready to take over the world.

Evie got out of the car, smoothing down her dress. She didn’t feel daunted, had never been shy, but was wary, reluctant to step into the house and find herself presented with another facet of Aubrey she had no idea what to do with. He was already confusing enough, wouldn’t stay in any kind of box, labels refusing to adhere to him. Enemy? Ally? Friend? Lover? Just Aubrey, being too…Aubrey. Her own personal reckoning.

That first day at his flat when he brought her there from Conyers, she had finally summoned up the courage to return her friends’ many messages. Zig had been indignant, hurt, disappointed, gesticulating wildly over the video call, scrubbing stubby fingers through his scruffy gingery-blond hair. Fi had wrinkled her nose, pushed her glasses into her hair and said, “Youcouldn’tdo it, or youwouldn’t?”

“It felt wrong. I just… I had the laptop right there in front of me and I… I choked.”

“He doesn’t know?” Zig checked. “Doesn’t suspect you? So you can try again.”

“No… I don’t… I don’t want to.”

“But you’re still in contact with the guy? Still got an in?”

Evie had glanced around Aubrey’s flat, with its elegant designer furniture and ordered, masculine simplicity, a bookcase lightly and neatly filled with mostly serious things. And two copies of Joseph Heller’sCatch-22.

Fi had pulled her glasses back down and squinted at the screen. “Is that hisflat?”

Zig’s face had loomed closer. “Is his laptop there? Any paperwork?”

“No, you idiot.” Fi had elbowed him out of the way. “She’sstayingat his flat. She’s sleeping with him. Aren’t you?”

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