Page 32 of The Invitation

“Just letting my hair down while I have breakfast.” On that, I reach for my ponytail and pull out the hair tie, shaking my hair out.

“I know. Mrs. Hobbs just called me.”

“Who’s Mrs. Hobbs?”

“The old dear upstairs. She tried knocking on the door, but you obviously couldn’t hear her.”

I cringe. “Shit, sorry.” I hurry to the door and pull it open, finding an empty corridor. “Bring some flowers home for her?”

“Behave while Mummy’s at work, will you?” She hangs up, and as the screen clears, I see some missed calls. Five in total. Not Abbie. My heartbeat increases as I stare down at the known unknown number.Hisnumber. I go back to the table and lower to the chair. And it rings in my hand.

“Shit.” I startle and toss it across the table. It’s as if my head is telling me to get it as far away as possible to lessen the chances of me folding and answering. And it rings. And rings. And rings.

Shower.

Leaving my mobile on the table, I go take a shower, my hands working roughly through my hair, scrubbing the shampoo in as I mentally chant to myself. Tell myself to resist temptation. Walk away from the danger. Listen to my head.

By the time I’m done, wrapped in a towel, and have made it back to the kitchen, I have four more missed calls. “Jesus, give in, will you?” I murmur, wiping the screen clear.

It rings again. I freeze where I stand. My quivers increase. This is bloody crazy. “Hello,” I answer assertively, and yet I can hear the breathiness of my voice as well as I can feel my trembles. I don’t know what it is about this guy, but he ruins me.

“Do you always play hard to get?” he says, ruining me further with that rough but silky voice. I can suddenly smell him.

“I’m not playing anything,” I assure him.

“Sure. And what have you done on this fine Saturday morning?”

“I’ve been to the gym.” Are we having a chitchat? “And M&S.” My frown is massive. “You?”

“I was in the gym too.”

I still. “Which gym?”

“Not yours,” he confirms, and I deflate. “Because that would be weird, wouldn’t it?” I snort to myself. And this isn’t? “So tonight,” he goes on. “You’ll come to dinner with me.”

“That wasn’t a question.”

“It wasn’t intended to be.”

My forehead bunches as I sit, my mind turning in circles.It’s just dinner.But his approach, his tenacity, tells me otherwise. He doesn’t only want dinner. I growl at myself with frustration. “I don’t want to have dinner with you.”

“Then we’ll skip dinner.”

And there it is. My brain just can’t compute such bolshiness. “Look,” I say, standing. “I have other things going on in my life right now.”

“What, so you can’t fuck?”

“Are you real?”

“Oh, baby, I’m very real, and youwillgive in.”

I scowl at thin air, hating his cockiness. And the fact that he could be right. He looks like an experience no woman should pass up.Fucking hell.“I’m going to hang up now,” I say, my voice noticeably wobbly.

“Where are you?” he asks.

“What?”

“Where are you?”

---