Page 53 of Slow Burn Summer

“Everyone loved you there today,” he said, deflecting the conversation back to her.

“They loved you more,” she countered. “Several of them would have preferred your number to my signature in the front of their books.”

“Not once theSunday Timesnews breaks in the morning,” he said. “Those signed books will soar in value.”

She still couldn’t quite believe the bestseller news, it had reallythrown her into a spin. “Thanks for what you said today,” she said. “About the Russian dolls. It helped make sense of things.”

He scrubbed a hand along the five-o’clock shadow on his jaw. “Someone misconstrued it and told Fiona they’d seen us holding hands,” he said.

Kate all but laughed at the absurdity of someone bothering to report back, let alone misreport back. “What are we, school kids?”

He shook his head and shrugged, nonplussed. “I’m pretty accustomed to people spreading shit about me. I’m done justifying or defending myself, but the fact is, innocent things get misconstrued all the time. We know nothing happened today, but that doesn’t stop people spinning the truth into something else. What if they’d seen us running in the rain like a scene from the damnNotebook,or could see us here right now? Photos could so easily end up splashed around, which could be a disaster for the book. This whole house of cards relies on the secret staying a secret.”

Kate saw his bleakness, his weariness. He was a closed book when it came to what happened in L.A., but this was clearly opening up old wounds.

“Then I guess the best we can do is make sure we don’t give people anything else to misinterpret,” she said, finishing the last of her wine. It was almost midnight and it had been one hell of a long day.

He nodded slowly. “It’s probably time you got yourself out of my bedroom.”

She stood up. “I’ll find you a blanket.”

28

“It’s not so bad,” Charliesaid, testing out the makeshift bed he’d made up on the sofa a few minutes later.

Kate leaned down to turn the lamp out and jumped back when an electric shock buzzed her fingertips.

“Static from the storm,” Charlie murmured.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Night, Charlie,” she said into the quiet darkness.

“Goodnight, Darrowby.”

—

Kate stood at her bedroomwindow watching the quiet harbor beneath the clear, star-studded sky. How could the universe throw them together for one night in this place that was neither his life nor hers and ask them to still play by the rules? She thought of all the years spent doing the right thing as a wife and a mother, and of her makeshift home over the fancy-dress shop. She’d spent her whole life reacting to circumstance rather than directing the action. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she studied her toes, remembering sitting on the edge of her bed on other portentous nights of her life. Her wedding night. The first night in the hospital aftergiving birth to Alice. Her first night alone in the flat above the shop. All first nights, all scenes written in bold black ink.

Pressing her fingers to her lips, she realized something. She couldn’t bring herself to get into bed.

Tiptoeing back across her room, she stood at the top of the stairs, racked by indecision, then moved before she could lose her nerve. She didn’t speak as she sat silently beside the sofa on the wooden floor, resting her head on his blanket. He didn’t speak either, just smoothed his hand over her hair. Pale shafts of moonlight spilled across the floor, stars hanging in the midnight sky over the harbor.

“You said ‘Goodnight, Darrowby,’ ” she whispered. “I wanted you to call me Kate.”

He lifted the edge of his blanket. “Come here.”

She climbed up and he settled the blanket over them.

He turned his back against the sofa and shifted her into the crook of his arm, her head tucked beneath his chin.

“It’s been a long day,” he said. “Get some sleep now, Kate.”

She was exhausted to her core, his heartbeat a lullaby against her ear. She curled herself deeper against him, her mouth close to his neck, his arm warm around her shoulders.

“I wrote the scripts,” he said, so quietly she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming as she fell beneath heavy layers of sleep. “I’m pretty used to ignoring whatever people say about me, but not that.”

“I believe you,” she breathed.

—

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