Page 12 of The Invitation

“I just went in the steam room,” I say, needing to get this off my chest. “And someone joined me.”

Abbie’s eyes widen, and Charley is sitting beside me in a second. “The barman?”

“No, not the barman.” I laugh.

“The God?” Abbie breathes.

I nod. “He asked me out to dinner.”

“In a steam room?”

“No, outside the steam room.”

“In your bikini?”

“I had a towel on,” I mumble, mortified. “Until it fell off. Oh my God, he asked me to dinner while I stood there in front of him sweating my fucking tits off—and only partly because I was cooking in the steam room—red in the face, hair everywhere, while he dried his obscenely perfect, sweaty, hard body with a towel.” With a smirk on his face, and that tells me all I need to know. He’s a player.

“Hard?” Abbie asks.

“Yes, hard, cut, dazzling.” Fucking perfect.

“You can just tell if a man’s got a good body under his clothes,” Abbie says. “And I looked at him and knew there was something special going on under all those expensive threads.”

Charley rolls her eyes, even though I know she agrees. “What’s his name?”

I frown. “I don’t know.”But he knew mine.

“And you agreed to dinner, right?” Abbie presses.

“No, I did not agree to dinner.”

“Why?”

I stall, thinking.Yes, why?Because he shows all the signs of a player? But he also looks exactly like the kind of man who wouldn’t want anything serious right now. Like marriage and kids.

That’s perfect.

Isn’t it?

“Wise move,” Charley says, patting my bare knee and standing. “Because hot bod and a face like a god aside, we all know a fuckboy when we see one.”

I laugh half-heartedly, taking the towel to my hair and rubbing.

Dangerous. Fuckboy.

Avoid at all costs.

Chapter 4

Abbie and Charley permitted me to check my emails on the way home. Thankfully, there was nothing drastic that needed my attention, and Mr. Jarvis had, surprisingly, blessed me with only one brief note apologising for overreacting this morning. Rest assured, he wouldn’t apologise if he hadn’t seen for himself the market sitting steady all day and close out looking more positive than when it opened. Panic over.

As Abbie pulls into my parents’ street, I exhale, feeling the suffocation looming. I reach over and drop a kiss onto her cheek. “Thank you for today, it’s been so lovely.”

She smiles softly, sensing the despondency creeping into my bones. Because no thirty-year-old woman wants to be calling their parents’ house home. “You know you could come stay with me,” she says for the hundredth time since I left Nick. But I know she’s just being polite. Her apartment is on the smaller side of tiny, and I’d drive her nuts with the endless files I bring home from work.

“I know,” I say, returning her smile.

“Or me,” Charley chirps, grinning. “You can bunk with Ena.”

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