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  ‘My labourers will be here any moment to rip that shed down and start clearing out rubbish. I don’t have time for this. We’ve said all there was to say, you made your point of view totally clear.’

  She offered him a brief parting smile.

  ‘Goodbye, Oliver. Could you close the gate on your way out, please?’

  She began to walk down the garden. Please let him just go. Please. Her heart wanted to rush into his arms. Her head was still busy feeling cheap at the way he viewed her, knowing she’d encouraged that. Her head won, easily. Her heart was too fragile to be in with a chance. She couldn’t rely on it anymore. She never should have.

  ‘I came to say I’m sorry,’ he called after her.

  She stopped walking. Looked down at her feet and took a deep calming breath before turning back to him.

  ‘What exactly are you sorry for, Oliver?’ she said. ‘We had a good time and now it’s over. We both knew what we were getting into – right?’

  ‘I miss you. I miss what we had.’

  What we had. There was exactly the point. No intimation still that he wanted any more than that. He’d had his playtime taken away and he didn’t like it.

  ‘We had hot sex,’ she said. She pasted a bright I-don’t-care smile on to emphasise her point.

  She watched him close his eyes briefly. Obviously exasperated that she wasn’t just coming back running.

  ‘It was more than that,’ he said.

  ‘Of course. I’d forgotten the dinners and the chat. Obviously hoops you felt you had to jump through in order to get to the hot sex.’ She gave him a smile. ‘I’m not complaining, Oliver. I went into it with my eyes wide open. And at the beginning that was what I wanted too.’

  ‘At the beginning?’

  She ran a hand distractedly through her hair.

  ‘The thing is, Oliver, this just doesn’t feel like fun to me anymore. It feels cheap, like I’m some bit on the side like that brassy woman who showed up on my parent’s doorstep all those years ago.’

  He walked down the garden and grabbed her hand. Her stomach fluttered in response.

  ‘This is not the same thing at all. You are not some bit on the side, as you call it. I’m not like your father. I don’t have a wife or partner, I don’t have a family.’

  ‘You don’t have a wife or family, no,’ she said.’ You have your work, your ambitions, some stupid misplaced drive that means you’ll never quit until you’ve made a billion or conquered the universe. You have this whole other life that nothing else penetrates. I want to share it but it’s No Admittance. I don’t even know what it is that you’re so desperately working towards, but whatever it is you’re striving for, Oliver, you’re going to end up achieving it on your own. And where’s the enjoyment of that without someone to share it with?’ She took her hand away from his. ‘I’m sorry if you think I’m being unfair, if you think I’m moving the goalposts. When I met you a fling really was all I wanted. No strings, no comeback. But now I know I want to be with someone who shares their whole life with me, not just the scraps they can spare. We want different things, you and I. It was fun while it lasted but it’s over.’

  ‘I didn’t come here to ask you to reconsider.’

  She stared at him. Then what the hell was this about?

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘What I said to you was totally crass, I realise that now. Lining up a contract so we could carry on the way we were. Truth is, I was too afraid to ask you to stay properly so I tried to find a way of holding onto you that didn’t have any risk.’

  She looked at him, not speaking.

  He raked both hands through his hair.

  ‘Izzy, my father was a layabout. I’m not sure he ever did an honest day’s work in his whole life. My mother worked two jobs, sometimes three, so that she could keep things together. She claimed what state benefits she could, and as the eldest I was responsible for cooking and looking out for my kid brother when she wasn’t around. We were always short of money, robbing Peter to pay Paul but my father had no problem spending the household budget at the pub. We were in a vicious circle that my mother could never break out of on her own.’

  ‘Your mother stuck by him?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘There was something about him that made her take him back again and again. She had this inner optimism that somehow he might change. He’d show up, telling her he had the promise of a new job, that things would be different, and it would last a few weeks, maybe a month before he fell out with his boss, or he began to take days off, and then the job would disappear and we’d be back to square one.’

  ‘So are they still together now?’

  She was thinking of her own parents - stick it out until the end, happy or not.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Eventually when my brother and I left home, she drew a line under it. As if she’d given him chance after chance because of us. Once we’d gone I think the motivation went with us and she decided to cut her losses at last. I don’t blame her. I think she should have jumped ship much earlier.’

  He gave her a small smile. ‘I didn’t have much time for my father, we’ve talked about that before. But what he has given me is a strong work ethic. I never feel like I’ve done enough, there’s always this nagging fear that the rug will be pulled out from under me and I’ll lose everything. And after what my mother went through I never wanted to take anyone along for that ride. In case…’

  He paused and swallowed hard, she heard the click in his throat. And suddenly she understood him.

  ‘In case you turn out like him?’ she asked gently.

  He didn’t answer and didn’t look up at her.

  ‘Oliver, just because he behaved that way doesn’t make it a physical trait. You don’t even belong in that world anymore, I mean look at your house, your job, your car. He chose to drift through life without a purpose. It was a choice, not a character flaw. You’ve chosen a totally different path. Maybe he did inspire you, just not in the way you wanted. Reverse psychology. Do you think you would have achieved all you have if he’d been a better father? Maybe you’d have ended up a different person, someone complacent. Maybe you would have drifted through life directionless if your father had been Joe Average. You shouldn’t have regrets like that, it’s destructive.’ She paused. ‘For what it’s worth, you seem to have turned out pretty well to me.’

  ‘I know my work ethic is crazy. The odd thing is, the first time in years that I’ve lightened up has been these last few weeks, knowing that you were at home. I shifted work around so I could make sure I was home for dinner. So I could see you. I realised I was looking forward to ending my day with you.’

  ‘In bed,’ she said, face neutral.

  He clenched his hands.

  ‘Izzy, please, it’s not just about the sex. It never was. Right from the beginning I was trying to convince myself that it was because that made it safe, made it something I could walk away from, something where no one took any risk of getting hurt. But the more I got to know you the more it’s become about being with you, talking to you, spending time with you, getting to know you.’

  He looked up at her and the anguish in his eyes pulled at her heart.

  ‘I was too scared that I’d end up ruining everything to even acknowledge there was something between us worth keeping.’

  ‘You said you didn’t come here to ask me to reconsider,’ she said. ‘So what did you come here for?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I came to ask you on a date,’ he said.

  A surprised burst of laughter bubbled up inside her.

  ‘A date?’ She could hear the incredulity in her own voice.

  He raised his eyebrows with a hint of defensiveness.

  ‘Yes, a date. You know the kind of thing – I pick you up, I bring flowers, we go out somewhere nice, get to know each other, enjoy each other’s company. And at the end of the evening, I drop you home.’

  She stared at him.
r />   ‘Home?’

  He nodded.

  ‘To your place. If you like. I guess what I’m really saying is that we skipped that whole stage, didn’t we? Went straight from not knowing each other to bed. OK so we’ve gone about it all backwards, but so what? Let’s start over.’

  Could it really be that easy?

  ‘You can’t just go back and fill in the blanks like that and expect it all to work,’ she said. ‘It would be like me laying a lawn or planting up beds here without putting all the groundwork in first. It might look great on the surface, might even last a little while. But eventually it would all just wilt and die off. You can’t build something that will last by skipping to the end.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Just give it a try.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then we just see how it goes.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘Us. I want there to be an Us. I want that not to be an afterthought or a side effect or a quick fuck or one night stand. I’m in love with you.’

  She looked at him in shock that he’d used the L-word. The expression on his face was open, his desire to make this work palpable. She had been wronged girlfriend and other woman. Maybe this time she could try and combine the two.

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Absolutely serious. No secrets, no lies…’ he swallowed ‘…no putting work first. A proper relationship. You and me. How about it?’

  Excitement simmer through her, slowly at first then gathering pace.

  ‘Ground rules,’ she began and he pulled her against him and pressed his forehead against hers.

  ‘Not a bloody chance,’ he said.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Charlotte Phillips

  I live in Wiltshire, UK, where I squash writing in between looking after my family, who have been taught not to notice that I’m rubbish at housework. I love watching American TV shows in my pyjamas and I can’t live without coffee and cake.

  About HarperImpulse

  HarperImpulse is an exciting new range of romance fiction brought to you from the women’s fiction team at HarperCollins. Our aim is to break new talent from debut authors and import the hottest trends from the US, bringing you the very best in romance. Whether that is through short reads for your mobile phone or epic sagas that span the generations we want to proudly publish romance fiction that gets everybody talking.

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2013

  Copyright © Charlotte Phillips 2013

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  This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

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  the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

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  Ebook Edition © May 2013

  ISBN: 9780007532032

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