Page 116 of Mistaken Intention

Please don’t let it come to that.

“What did I tell you? You and Ella?” Drew asks.

“That Lexi had dragged you to a party, against your will. That you’d gone to be polite, met Lexi’s sister and fallen for her. Ella made fun of you, because that’s what she does… and because you’d never been in love before. It was a golden opportunity for her, and she wasn’t about to pass it up.”

“I don’t get why I told you. Was that the kind of thing I did? Was I renowned for discussing my love life?”

Hunter smiles. “You didn’t really have a love life. You had a sex life.” He glances at me, looking a little sheepish, but then turns back to Drew. “And you told us because you needed advice.”

“What about?”

“How to ask Josie out. You’d already broken things off with Lexi by then, and you’d worked out that Josie was the one for you. Only you didn’t know what to do about it.”

“What did you suggest?”

“We both told you that you needed to wait. And I said you could try making friends with Josie, rather than dating her… at least to start with.”

“And is that what I did?” Drew says, turning to me.

“You didn’t wait very long, but you called, and we met up for coffee. It was lovely.”

“Romantic?” he says, tilting his head, like he’s trying to work out if that’s what we had before… whether it was different to how we’ve been since the accident.

“No, not especially. I think you must have heeded your brother’s advice and decided to go down the friendship route. Not that I minded. As far as I was concerned, I was just so relieved to hear from you, and so happy to see you… to talk to you. I hoped it might lead to something more… eventually. All I wanted was to spend time with you, and if I had to wait for Lexi to be a little further in the past, I didn’t mind in the least.”

Drew sighs, his brow furrowing, like he’s thinking through what I’ve just said. “Did we meet again?”

“Yes. Twice more.”

“And?”

“Each time was better than the last.”

“Did we do more than meet up and talk? Did we kiss, or…?”

“No, but I wanted to. We seemed to be getting closer, but after that third meeting, you had to go to Hawaii. You weren’t sure when you’d be back, and I was working over the weekend, so you said you’d call. You seemed keen to see me again, and I wanted to see you. I was looking forward to hearing from you… at least until I got that call from Lexi.”

“She called you?”

“Yes.”

“Had someone told her about us? Did she have a problem with it?”

“No. There wasn’t an ‘us’ to speak about. Not really. She called me because she’d found out she was pregnant.”

“Oh.” He lets his head fall, and I can feel the anger and confusion pouring off of him.

“I didn’t understand why she was confiding in me. Like I said, we weren’t close, and it didn’t make sense that she’d come to me… until she explained that her father was livid. He wasn’ttalking to her. She needed someone, and I guess she turned to me.”

“Not me?” He looks up, bewildered.

I shake my head. “You were still in Hawaii at the time… not that she knew that. She didn’t call you straight away because she didn’t want you to think she was trying to trap you.”

“Trap me?”

“Yes. You’re a multi-millionaire, Drew. She thought you might assume she’d done it on purpose.”

“How? Presumably I’d had some involvement? Or did I routinely go around having sex and not taking precautions?”

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