at Scotland, and would have given anything to spontaneously teleport over to the far bank.
‘I should have had more control,’ he said. ‘This is my fault.’
Oh, please. ‘I came up here willingly.’
‘Not expecting that, I’m sure.’
No. Definitely not expecting that. She just wanted to get to know him a little bit. But she’d discovered a whole other Zander hidden inside the first one. ‘So now what? We just go back to how it was?’
He looked at her.
Did he need it spelled out? ‘You ignoring me?’
‘I won’t ignore you, George. I couldn’t, now.’
George. The same nickname her friends used for her. The irony bit hard. ‘So then business as usual?’
Silence was nod enough.
She pushed to her feet. ‘OK, then. Well, my first order of business is to get back to London before dawn.’
‘I’m staying at the Arms. Maybe they’ll have a second room?’
Was he joking? Stay anywhere near him and not want to be with him? While he found her so...ill-equipped?
‘I have a prep session for the personal makeover tomorrow morning. Measuring and stuff.’ Never mind that she’d never felt less like doing anything. Despite—apparently—needing all the help she could get. She grasped her excuses as she found them.
‘I’ll walk you to your car,’ Zander said.
For a guy who had protested so vehemently about her catching the underground home after a couple of wines, he was sure very willing to let her drive a deadly weapon half way across the country with still-scattered wits.
Maybe he wanted her gone as much as she needed to be there?
They walked, in silence, back up the road to her vehicle. The rapid journey from body-against-body and lips-against-lips to this awful, careful distance was jarring, but the cold night breeze helped her to blow the final wisps of desire from her mind like fog from shore.
It was for the better. Almost certainly.
She turned and faced him, a bright smile on her face. ‘See you Wednesday night, then?’
Salsa class.
She held her breath. If he was going to pull out of his pledge to go with her, now was the moment it would happen.
He stared down at her, leaned forward as if to kiss her again, but pulled on the handle of the car door behind her instead. ‘See you Wednesday.’
Him being chivalrous with the door went exactly no way to making her feel any better about what an ass he’d just been back on the bank of the firth. She grunted her thanks, slipped into her front seat, and slammed the door shut on his parting words.
Drive safely.
The best run of his life turned into the worst night of his life.
Not the evening—the evening touched on one of the most special moments he’d ever had. But the night, after Georgia drove off so quickly down Bowness’s quiet main street... He barely slept that night despite his exhaustion and even Sunday was pretty much a write-off.
He spent the whole time trying to offload the kiss he had stolen from her like a fence trying to move appropriated diamonds. Failing abysmally.
After all these months—even after the stern talking to he’d given himself after getting all touchy feely with her at spy school—why had he let himself slip to quite that degree?
Kissing her. Touching her.
Torturing himself with what he couldn’t have.
There were endless numbers of women back in London that he could kiss. And touch. And sleep with if he wanted. Bold, casual, riskless women. Georgia Stone was not one of them. She wasn’t made of the same stuff as any of them. She wasn’t bold or casual. And Lord knew not without risk.
But then she’d walked into his world, the only woman—the only person—ever to watch him race, to wait with a cold drink and a proud smile at the finish line, and he’d let himself buy into the fantasy. Just for a moment. Then one fantasy had led to another until they were lying in the long, cool grass, tongues and feet tangling.
He’d let himself slip further than any time since Lara.
Worse, to trust. And he didn’t do trust.
Ever.
He’d finally tumbled into an exhausted sleep Sunday night, but his mood was no better today.
As evidenced by the way his staff were tiptoeing around him extra carefully. Even Casey, who usually only gave the most cursory of knocks before walking into his office, actually stood, waiting, until he gave her permission to enter.
‘Zander,’ she started, lips tight. She looked as if she’d rather be calling him Mr Rush.
‘What is it, Casey?’
‘I wanted to...’ She changed tack. ‘Georgia just emailed these instructions, and I thought I’d better run them past you.’
That got his attention. Not just because the sentence had the word Georgia in it, but because his assistant and their resident scientist were thick as thieves, so Casey ratting her out meant something big was going on.
She stood across the desk from him. ‘She’s made some changes to the programme.’
No big news—Georgia changed things around regularly. He was getting used to it. He stared and waited for more from Casey.
‘Big changes.’ She held out a sheaf of papers.
‘How big?’ But as he ran his eyes over them he could see instantly. ‘Ankara? Are you kidding me?’ He eyeballed his assistant. She took half a step back. ‘Ibiza’s already booked isn’t it?’ Their flights to Spain were in a few weeks. Georgia’s big holiday. Now she wanted it to be Turkey?
‘Actually I can still make changes—’
Not what he wanted to hear.
Casey’s mouth clicked shut. She started backing out of the room. ‘I’ll leave you to read the—’
‘Stay!’ he barked, though deep down he regretted commanding her like a trained dog. None of this was her fault.
All of it was his. He’d been stupid to give into his baser instincts and kiss her. As though either of them could go back from that.
He flipped to the next page. Georgia had ditched the cocktail-making class in favour of life drawing. She’d dumped aquasphering on the Thames to go on some underground
