Page 61 of Slow Burn Summer

“Just eat,” he said. “Everyone can wait.”

“Today has felt at least four days long,” she said, pushing noodles around her plate. “If I’d known what was coming, I’d have stayed in bed.”

“It would still have come just the same,” he said. “The world keeps turning, even if you hide yourself away from it.”

“I know,” she said. “I just wish I could click my fingers and be somewhere else.”

“I was thinking exactly that on the train,” he said. “Now would be a really good time for you to be somewhere else for a few days.”

Kate pushed her plate away, done. “It feels like running away from my problems.”

Charlie’s phone rang, and he declined the call after checking. “Press again. Taking yourself out of a crazy situation so you can think straight isn’t running away. As your agent, I strongly advise it.” He held her gaze, and then her hand. “I just want to get you out of here to someplace safe.”

Her phone rang again, yet another number she didn’t recognize. She let it go to voicemail and listened back to a sharp-voiced journalist from one of the nationals sniffing around for an exclusive.

“My father kept a place in Henley-on-Thames. Let me drive you over there early in the morning,” he said. “He also had a ridiculous old sports car, you’ll like it.”

Of course Jojo had a sports car and a bolthole in Henley-on-Thames.

Charlie’s tired eyes reminded her that he’d shifted his entire day around to be here. She’d waited all day to hear his advice; now she needed to take it.

Their phones beeped constantly.

“Am I asking too much of you?” she said, realizing she wanted to say yes.

“I asked you, remember?” he said. “Besides, I’ve been looking for an excuse to drive the car.”

She appreciated the lie, knowing he was downplaying things for her benefit. She had no idea how this whole fiasco was going to play out, but at least she didn’t feel alone in it anymore.

32

Charlie rolled up outside theshop at a little before six the following morning in Jojo’s deep burgundy two-seater sports car, soft-top down. Kate had spoken only to Liv about her escape plan, assuring her sister that the whole trifle incident wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t necessarily true—Fiona was hopping mad, but the publishers seemed to be running with the “no publicity is bad publicity” chestnut. Things had certainly gained traction overnight. It was turning into just the kind of story social media loved, micro-scandal on top of micro-scandal, with the ongoing mystery of who actually wrote the book constantly fueling the fire. The book community was ablaze with it, names being tossed back and forth, timelines being spliced together, amateur sleuth senses on high alert trying to be the one to get to the bottom of it. Kate had exhausted herself reading threads into the small hours, a dead weight of anxiety lodged firmly in her chest. Her name was being well and truly trashed, her online absence since the reveal the subject of hot debate. People assumed she’d run shamefaced for the hills when she’d been exposed, like a scammer trying to steal someone’s life savings.

She raised her hand to let Charlie know she was on her waydown, wheeling her overnight case to the door and standing for a second before closing it behind her. She was exhausted, her angel wings tattered from being so tightly folded around the book.

The small flat had become her haven from the world since the divorce, but it was time to swap one temporary sanctuary for another.

“I can imagine Jojo channeling his inner James Bond driving this,” she said, wheeling her case out onto the street.

He loaded her bag into the back seat beside his own.

“Or his inner Bond villain, depending on who he was trying to make an impression on,” Charlie said. “It was one of his many props.”

Kate settled into the cocoon of the ivory-leather passenger seat, already warmed by the morning sun.

“You look knackered,” he said, glancing at her as he pulled away on the quiet street.

“I didn’t sleep so well,” she said, not needing to add what had kept her awake.

Charlie reached an arm behind her seat and handed her a rolled plaid blanket. “Why don’t you close your eyes?”

She unraveled the blanket over herself and sank into the seat, resting her head back. The theme fromA Summer Placeplayed on the radio, big band music that felt somehow more in keeping with Jojo than Charlie.

“Couldn’t bring myself to change stations,” he said, catching her looking at the radio set into the center console.

She studied his profile as he lowered his aviators against the glare of the sun, his tanned hands assured on the leather-wrapped steering wheel, then closed her eyes and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

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