Page 71 of The Pop-Up Cake Shop

‘Okay. But dinner will be on me.’ I looked at him coldly, while trying to ignore the way his warm smile was sending little shivers of desire through me. ‘I’d like to pay you back for helping me with the van.’

‘There’s no need for that.’ His eyebrows knitted in confusion.

‘I insist.’

‘Okay, well... shall we go? Pick up the van?’

‘Great.’

On the drive to the garage, he kept trying to make me smile. Getting little response, he eventually asked if he’d done something to upset me.

I looked him straight in the eye. ‘You have a visitor.’

‘What?’

‘Loretta. She’s let herself in. She’s cooking you your favourite lunch apparently.’

‘Right.’ He stared at the road ahead, taking this in. ‘She never mentioned that. She just said she wanted to come over at lunchtime and pick up a book she’s been wanting to borrow from me.’

‘That’s because it’s supposed to be aromantic surprise, I imagine,’ I said scathingly.

He looked across at me. ‘There’s nothing going on, Katja.’

‘Really? Well, according to her you’ve been gettingmuch closerlately.’

If I was expecting him to deny it, I was disappointed...

He sighed. ‘Look, she stayed over a few weeks ago and we shared a bed because the spare room wasn’t made up. We had a kiss but that was all.’

‘So youaren’tjust friends, then, like you told me.’

‘Well, it’s complicated, I suppose, when you’ve been in a relationship. I guess it’s easy to slip back into the old ways if you’re both still single.’

I gave a harsh laugh. ‘I wish you’d told me that before... before last night!’

‘I’m just trying to be honest here, Katja. I mean, obviously, if I started seeing someone else, there’d be absolutely nothing going on with anyone else.’

‘Including Loretta?’

‘Including Loretta. That goes without saying.’

‘Does it, though? What if you had an argument with your new person and Loretta just happened to be there, wanting to comfort you? Might you “slip back into the old ways” then?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Well, anyway, it’s nothing to do with me how you choose to lead your life and who you choose to lead itwith!’

‘Isn’t it?’ He frowned across at me. ‘I was rather hoping it was.’

‘Look,no! This was just a one-night thing, okay? We both enjoyed it but let’s not spoil it by trying to pretend it was something it wasn’t.’

Beneath my bravado, I was grasping my hands together to stop them from trembling. I had to stay strong and not let Caleb convince me that Loretta was past history – because it was fairly clear that she wasn’t. And if I let him into my life, it would only end in more heartache. And I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be Caleb who’d be crying...

He drummed his fingers on the wheel. ‘It’s funny, you know, because it was you who was into protesting about men being scumbags, presumably for treating women badly, sleeping with them and then ‘forgetting’ to call afterwards.’

‘I wasn’t “protesting”. But yes, men do that sometimes.’

‘But isn’t that exactly whatyou’reabout to do?’ He frowned at me. ‘You’ve just told me it was a one-night stand and nothing else. Maybe you should have thought to mention that to me last night. Before we slept together.’

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