I frown. ‘No.’
‘Then no.’ His grin tips up on one side. ‘I work at a vampire-themed bar. In Dracula country. What can I say? You’re not my first undead.’
‘You work here?’
‘Yup,’ he says, popping the p sound. ‘Live here too. It’s actually my night off.’ He nods to the armful of toilet rolls he’s been cradling through our entire exchange, his smile turning a little sheepish. ‘You just caught me in the middle of stealing supplies for the flat.’
A shocked laugh honks out of me, and the sound of it makes him grin so widely that a dimple pops high up on his cheek. A strange mix of emotions begins to swirl in my chest.
Josiah didn’t have a dimple.
‘He’s not me,’I hear Josiah whisper.
I hiss, ‘I know that,’ and it makes Quinn look at me strangely.
‘What?’ he asks, a crease forming between his brows.
I don’t explain, of course. I’ve just jump-scared him, accused him of being a ghost and then told him I’m immortal in the same conversation. Admitting that I’mbeing haunted by the dead fiancé I mistook him for might be a bridge too far.
‘Nothing,’ I say instead, and then I smile at him. ‘Sorry I called you a liar.’
‘S’ok,’ he says, one single, lazy word. ‘Sorry I’m not your dead fiancé.’
But those eyes stay on mine a little longer. Just a beattoolong, in fact.
And with that, something I thought was gone forever flickers to life in my chest.
ChapterThree
QUINN
Isn’t it just exactly my luck that on the day I run into the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, two things would happen.
Firstly, that it would fall on the very day that my divorce was finally granted. And secondly, that when I met her, I’d have my arms full of toilet rolls.
I carried sometoilet roll,for fuck’s sake. Not exactlyDirty Dancing, is it?
Anyway, maybe the universe has done me a favour. Maybe this whole thing is it trying to show me that I should probably steer clear of love for a while. I’ll be honest– I don’t have a particularly strong history of making good choices in relationships. I mean, I did end up here, divorced at thirty.
To be honest with you, it could have been worse. Robyn was actually the third woman I’ve proposed to in my life, so the fact that I only ended up making it official with one of them is somewhat of a blessing.
First there was Stella. In my defence, Stella was nice. Maybe a littletoonice, in fact. We ended up being engaged for almost six months, because she was too nice to tell me that she was still in love with her ex. He sure as hell let me know he was still in love with her, though. His fists were very clear on that.
Next was Abby, who, in retrospect, might have been a rebound thing. I remember almost nothing about our time together, other than that we fed off each other’s bad energy. I proposed while steaming drunk, and we were engaged for all of seven hours until we woke up the next morning and realised it was a terrible idea.
By the time I actually made it down the aisle– or to the registry office, as it happened– with Robyn, I was determined to prove that I had the capacity to be a real grown-up. Ahusband, no less, and not the stupid kid that most people thought I was. Unfortunately, it turned out that I actuallywasa stupid kid. We both were. And we made each other miserable for two long years before I finally tapped out.
Ironically, it was the end of the marriage that taught me that I had the capacity to be a real grown-up. Those months in the divorce trenches were absolute hell, but I treated Robyn with a grace that she very often did not deserve, and I walked away a better man.
A better man who is trying his best not to jump headfirst into any more relationships, no matter how pretty the woman who just accosted me in a hallway was.
ButGod, pretty isn’t even the right word for it. She was a vision there,all glossy brown hair and caramel-coloured eyes, a faint trace of freckles high up on her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose. She had the kind of beauty you might see in a painting, something not entirely real.
Weird that I obviously have some kind of family resemblance to her late fiancé, too. I always hated that I looked so much like my dad, given how terrible a person he proved himself to be. I sometimes wondered, in my darker moments, if that meant maybe I would turn out to be like him in other ways.
So it was kind of a relief to discover that I look like someone else in the family, too, maybe someone not quite as flawed. Someone decent.
He must have been, to deserve a woman like her.