Problematic Summer Romance (Not in Love, #2)(24)

He lets a few pills drop in her palm, without touching it. “No more than one every six hours, CuntGoddess.”

“Thank you for addressing me by my preferred title.” She turns to me. “Maya, did you know that he took three calls during dinner? You cannot allow him to keep working for the entire holiday.”

“I…doubt it’s within my powers to stop him.”

“We’ll figure out something. You’ll figure something out.”

“We are,” Conor grumbles, “in an active deal phase that requires finalizing—”

Tamryn interrupts him with a playful wave of her hand. “Yes, yes, the markets, the country’s GDP.” Holding on to the wall, she lifts on her toes to press a kiss against his cheek. “Do you have time to tuck me in?”

Conor nods, no hesitation.

“Good night, Maya,” she tells me before disappearing with him past the door.

I’m left alone in the deserted hallway, hollow-boned, wondering how the fuck I’m supposed to look away from this.

Remembering a time when I pulled Conor inside my room.





Chapter 11




Three years, two months, three weeks earlier

Edinburgh, Scotland

“What are you doing here?” I half intended for the question to sound confrontational—How the hell did you find out where I live and tele-transport yourself into my kitchen, you psycho? Unfortunately, it comes out breathless, and maybe a little intrigued.

From their perch against the windowsill, Georgia and Alfie study me closely, loath to miss a single beat of this show.

“I know, I know.” Conor puts his hands up, palms open. “I said I’d be arriving tomorrow. But after your text, I couldn’t wait.”

He smiles, lopsided, and I wonder if he’s had plastic surgery. Botox. Face lift. The thing where they suck fat out of your cheeks. Not because his features have changed, but because he looks…young.

Not young young. Not He could sit next to me at a lecture and I wouldn’t bat an eye young. Conor is obviously a man, and the campus reality in which I move is made up of boys. He must be around my brother’s age—thirty-four? Thirty-five? But while I was growing up, Eli and his friends, with their adult problems and adult lifestyles and adult conversations, always seemed ancient to me. Antediluvian. Boring. Now…

Now that I am an adult, too, Conor Harkness just feels like a peer.

And he’s here.

“You couldn’t wait,” I repeat, skeptical.

“I told you.” He scans my face with complete, undiluted attention.

“You told me?”

“Last summer. At the Isle of Harris.” Come on, his gaze communicates. Keep up.

Okay, last summer I did go to the Isle of Harris. But how does he—

“You were there at the same time as we were?” Alfie asks. It was a couples’ vacation: Georgia and Anthony; Rose and Kenna; me and Alfie. Less than a year out, none of the couples have survived. I wonder why.

“Were you there, too?” Conor asks Alfie with an imperceptible, distracted glance at him. “One night, Maya and I met at the bar. I asked her if I could buy her a drink. Remember what you told me?”

I shake my head, dazed.

“That you were in a relationship. And I was devastated. But I asked, if your boyfriend was ever foolish enough to let you go, that you let me know, because I’d come knock at your door. And I’m grateful that you did, love.”

Love.

“You never told me that this happened,” Alfie says, failing not to sound petulant. He’s used to being the hot guy in the room, but I’m struggling to reconcile how juvenile and shrunken he looks compared to Hark. How utterly easy to ignore.

Of course, I didn’t tell him. Because none of this ever happened.

“It was just a, um, text,” I tell Conor. “You didn’t need to come here.”

His chin dips in a self-deprecating gesture that’s so damn charming, it has to be rehearsed. If he didn’t spend his adolescence practicing it in front of a full-body mirror, I will be shaving my head bald and eating my hair strand by strand. “It was my chance. Plus, I was in the area.”

“In Edinburgh?” Georgia asks, sounding on the verge of moaning Awww, how sweet.

“Close. Near Kilkenny.”

In Ireland? Did he fly in from—

“For work?” Alfie asks, strained. I doubt he is jealous, but he could be envious, or understandably distrustful of an older man hanging around a recently un-teenaged ex. If a friend of mine suddenly revealed a surprise suitor, especially one wearing tailored slacks that look like he was born in them, especially an attractive one who oozes fuck-you levels of generational wealth, I would worry, too. Alfie and Georgia have no clue that Conor is my brother’s closest friend.

And I don’t think I will communicate it to them.

“I was in Ireland for a private matter. My family has an estate there, and my presence was required.”

Georgia’s eyes widen. “Is everything all right?”

“My father is ill.”

She gasps. “I’m so sorry.”

“You should be, as it appears that he’ll pull through. The devil really does look after his own.” Conor’s lips curve upward. He is disgustingly handsome. “One day he’ll buy the farm and the world will become a better place. Lamentably, that is not today.”