My cheeks were warm with embarrassment as I leant forward and gave the driver my address.
‘So, do you get on well with your fictitious sibling?’ Rhys asked as the cab changed direction and began threading its way through the early rush-hour traffic towards my part of town.
‘Incredibly well. Probably better than I do with most real-life people.’
I hadn’t intended my answer to be so revealing, nor for it to be delivered with a plaintive quality in my voice that I swear I’d never heard before. I rushed to self-correct.
‘But that’s probably because for the last three years I’ve put everything on hold to concentrate on getting my business off the ground. It’s been both a passion and an obsession.’
My answer brought tiny frown lines between Rhys’s eyes, and it set me on the defensive.
‘Not that I’d change anything. It’s been worth the effort. I just meant that’s the reason why there isn’t a crowd of people queued up to collect me from the hospital. I’ve kind of dropped off the friendship radar recently.’
I’d been examined and scrutinised by doctors and specialists for most of the day, but I don’t think any of them had looked at me as intently as Rhys was now. Forget kryptonite, Rhys’s gaze was more like Superman’s X-ray vision, and it was starting to make me feel uncomfortably exposed.
I had every intention of turning the tables on him and asking why there’d been no one at his bedside, except for Olly, who didn’t really count as he worked at the hospital, but I never got the chance. Without noticing it, we’d already travelled the length of my road, and the taxi was manoeuvring into an empty parking space right in front of the converted Victorian townhouse where I lived.
‘Oh. That was quick,’ I said, fairly certain even the cab driver could hear the disappointment in my voice.
Rhys leant a little closer to the window to view the building, which was catching the last of the sunlight at all the right angles.
‘Nice house.’
‘It’s only the top floor that’s mine. But the rooms are big and airy, and it has a great view of the church on the heath,’ I said, reaching into my purse and extracting a ten-pound note that I attempted to press into his hand to cover my half of the fare. Rhys gave me a slightly disappointed look and gently shook his head.
‘That’s okay. I’ve got this.’
I gave a small laugh that didn’t come as naturally as I’d have liked.
‘Well, I’ll pay for the next cab we share, then.’ And that came out all wrong too. It really was time to get out of the taxi before I managed to squeeze my other foot into my mouth.
My hand was on the door handle, but curiously so too was Rhys’s on the other side of the back seat.
‘Could you just wait here for a minute, while I walk her to the door?’ he asked our driver.
Rhys was out of the cab before I could protest that I walked unaccompanied to my front door every single evening, often quite late into the night if I’d been working. As charming as it was, I wasn’t used to this kind of chivalry. Except, when his hand came to rest lightly at the small of my back, every single protest appeared to have got stuck somewhere between my brain and my mouth.
Never before had I been so glad that we had the longest front garden in the street. It extended my final moments with a man I should probably never have met, and who I already knew was going to be hard to forget. The meter was running on the cab almost as fast as our minutes together were ticking away.
My key was in the lock of the main front door, but I didn’t turn it.
‘Well, thank you once again for the prison break... and the getaway car... and the...’ I was running out of felony comparisons and my words dried up. I bit my lower lip and looked up into a face I was going to miss in a way that made no sense whatsoever.
‘This is wrong. This is all wrong,’ Rhys said, looking from me to the building, taking in the basement flat, the ground and first-floor ones, and not stopping until he reached the level that I called home.
I followed the route his gaze had taken.
‘No. This is it. This is definitely where I live.’
He gave a crooked grin that only occupied one half of his mouth. I knew that because I’d been spending far too much time looking at his face.
‘I mean it feels wrong to just leave you here on the doorstep when there’s no one to keep an eye on you. What if you have a concussion?’
I didn’t. The hospital had already confirmed that. But even so I nodded solemnly, as though he’d just uncovered a colossal hitch.
‘You could slip into a coma, and someone needs to be there to call an ambulance... and we can’t rely on your imaginary sister to do it.’
‘She is, admittedly, rubbish at stuff like that,’ I confirmed, already feeling a fizz of excitement bubbling in my veins.