Page 63 of Friends Who Fake It

“Yes, you could say that.” She pulled away from him, walking deeper into the penthouse suite.

“How?”

She stared out at London, unseeing. She’d wondered about him often since she’d walked away from him. She’d wondered if he thought of her. If he wished things had been different. She wondered if he felt guilty for sleeping with her when he was engaged to another woman.

“We met at the theatre,” she said, indignation showing in her voice, that he’d forgotten their weekend together.

“When?” He was across the room. She heard the telltale clinking of glasses followed by the spilling of liquor.

The sense of insult grew. “A long time ago.”

“When?” He was closer now. She braced for the moment when he would come to stand beside her, but it was of little use. The second he was there, she felt him like a tidal wave. There was no bracing for his nearness. He handed her a drink and she took it, arranging her fingers to avoid any accidental contact with his.

“Years.”

He nodded, as though that made sense. “How many years? You can’t be more than twenty two. It can’t have been that long ago…” Was that unease in his voice?

“I’m twenty four,” she corrected.

He looked relieved.

“And did we …date?”

She snorted again, and took a sip of the drink. It burned her like the fires of hell. She spluttered then coughed, handing him the glass with a mutinous expression before crossing to the kitchen and pulling a bottle of water from the fridge. She cracked it open and drained half of it before she felt like she could respond.

“No, Xavier. We didn’t date.”

His eyes widened and she knew why. Fool! He had always loved the sound of his name on her lips.

You say it as though it is sex. You make my name sound like a seduction.

And it had been. She’d called it over and over and over, an incantation and an invitation; a plea.

“So what happened between us then?”

She put the water bottle down heavily on the table, her eyes full of barbed accusation. She thought of Joshua and it was the only thing that saved her from raining all her anger down on this man. She had to be careful. She had to be smart.

She looked away, focusing her mind on their son, focusing her thoughts on what mattered most.

“It was a long time ago. Nothing good can come from dredging up the past.”

“Damn it, I don’t even know your name, and yet I have the strangest sense that you were… important to me at one time.”

It was too much for her heart to bear. “Important? I was neveranythingto you. I was nothing, except a quick lay.”

His eyes narrowed but he didn’t otherwise react.

“Sex,” she continued, wanting to shock him, wanting to shock herself back to common sense. “A distraction. That’s all.”

“I see,” he nodded, apparently accepting her version of events.

But fire was spreading through her now; a fire that he had lit, and flamed with the gasoline of his enquiry. “God knows how many women like me there were, if you can’t even remember my name.”

He prowled towards her, and she instinctively stepped backwards, but her expression was defiant, her body stiff, poised, ready to fight.

“I have no idea,” he said, apparently uncaring for how callous the words were.

“Well, why don’t you ask your wife?” She hissed, and now he reacted, his expression shifting, his skin paling.

---