Page 4 of Scotch on the Rocks

“Yes.”

Clearly, he thought I was talking shit, yet when the waiter approached, he put in the exact same order – minus the olives – then sipped his drink with rapt attention while I pretended he didn’t exist and sampled one of everything on the table.

I didn’t ask him to leave. I should have. Because in the short time it took for the waiter to return with his food, an invisible third body had squeezed into the seat between us. Alistair, who at that very moment was probably a ten-minute walk away in his fancy high-rise apartment.

“What are you doing here?”

He seemed relieved by the question, or perhaps relieved by what Ididn’task.

“Met up with some old army pals. And you?”

“A small business conference in the city.”

He nodded, thick fingers tracing the rim of his glass. “You’re running Ivy House now, how’s that going?”

Awful,I wanted to shout.Fiona has turned into a control freak ever since Alexander died and refuses to let me change a thing. Heather and I barely talk, and I’ve got no fucking idea what I’m doing.All I said was, “It’s going.”

His brow furrowed, clearly reading between the lines. “Ah, family fun … I’m really sorry about your dad, I wanted to talk to you at the funeral—”

I snorted into my martini. “Absolutely not. If you start with that you can take your food to go.”

“What?”

“Pity.” My nose wrinkled.

“It’s not pity, it’s sympathy.”

“They are the exact same thing and I don’t want it.”

“Okay.” He slung an arm over the booth’s curved back, fingers a hair’s breadth from the sharp ends of my bob. The last time he’d seen me it had fallen down my back in long waves. “Whatdoyou want, Juniper?”

Fuck, it was suddenly stifling in here. I couldn’t remove my jacket without him thinking it was some sort of come-on.

Maybe I should remove it.

“I want to drink my two martinis in peace.”

“You only have one.”

“I have another on a tab.” I pointed to the waiter who flushed adorably and raised his hand in a half wave.

“Hmm.” Callum’s eyes slid to the waiter and back to me. Then he shifted closer, the leather of the seat creaking under the weight. “I don’t think that’s what you want. I think you love that I came over here and ruined your lonely little evening. And when those two martinis hit, you’re going to thank me for interrupting an evening of disappointing sex with some two-pump twenty-something.”

I rolled my eyes. Hard. “Christ,I’d forgotten you were like this.”

“Honest?”

“No, arrogant.”

“Harpy, I’ve had sneezes last longer than that boy will between your legs.” His eyes swept over my every feature, ending at the line of my jaw where my shorter hair now brushed. I did the same. He’d grown more handsome in the year since I’d seen him, features a little more chiselled with age, the scruff of facial hair a little longer. I used to find him too rugged, favouring Alistair’s morerefinedfeatures.

He looked different now.

Or maybe he looked exactly the same and something else had changed.

His throat bobbed.

“I like your hair this way,” he said. Rough and low, as though he meant something else entirely. It was like he’d licked the words into my skin for all that my body reacted. Still holding his gaze, I lifted a hand to signal the waiter.

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