‘Do you know her address?’ Jack asked.
‘Yeah. I’ve done this before.’
After a fifteen-minute cab ride, they pulled up outside a three-storey building. Set back from the road, it had at least twelve stone steps leading up to the front door.
‘What are you doing?’ Jack asked Rachel as she unbuckled her seatbelt.
She made a face at him. ‘Kemi’s never going to get up those stairs by herself,’ she pointed out. ‘Andshe lives on the second floor of the building.’
Jack sighed, then scrambled out of the front passenger seat and walked around the car to open Rachel’s door.
‘Want me to wait?’ the taxi driver asked.
‘Not for me,’ Rachel said. ‘I only live five minutes away. Jack?’
‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said, then shook his head at the driver and handed him a twenty-pound note. Kemi, who nobody had thought was listening, burst into triumphant laughter.
Once they’d deposited Kemi safely in her bedroom, Rachel and Jack strolled in the direction of Stroud Green Road.
‘I’ll never hear the end of this,’ Rachel sighed. ‘Kemi was already convinced that there’s something happening between us. After tonight she’s going to be unbearable.’
Jack just laughed.
‘It isn’tfunny,’ Rachel said. ‘Nothing that people are saying is true, but it makes me look terrible.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, for a start,’ she replied, straightening her spine, ‘I have a boyfriend. But also, a woman who has a workplace romance always ends up with the rough end of any rumours that go round. It’s alwaysherwho’s supposed to have seducedhim.’ Rachel wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘And if the man is someone senior,’ she continued, ‘it’s usually assumed that she’s shagging him for the sake of getting on. When have you ever heard of a bloke being accused of sleeping with a co-worker to help kickstart his career?’
‘Never,’ Jack admitted. They were standing side by side outside Rachel and Anna’s building now, their backs against the wall that separated the front yard from the street. ‘You’re wrong, though.’
‘About what?’
‘You were wrong when you said that none of the gossip is true.’
His voice was low and urgent. Sparks skittered down Rachel’s spine.
Self-reproach mingled with anticipation as Jack turned his body 180 degrees to face her, planting his hands either side of her on the wall, boxing her in. She could feel him breathing. His air smelled like mint leaves and bourbon.
‘People are saying there’s something between us, and there is,’ he went on. ‘People are saying I want you, and I do.’
Rachel shook her head, refusing to look at him. ‘Peopledon’t have all the information. They don’t know we were together at uni. They don’t know what a bastard you were. They don’t know that I—’
‘—have a boyfriend,’ Jack finished, sounding bored. ‘That makes them … ill-informed. It doesn’t make them wrong.’
He skimmed a fingertip over the skin on the back of her hand, tracing up from her knuckle and then dipping it inside the sleeve of her jacket. He circled her wrist, then turned her hand over and placed his palm on top of it. It felt something like being electrocuted.
He lowered his face towards hers. Just as she thought he was going to kiss her – just as her mouth opened a fraction in readiness – he stopped.
He wasgrinning.
He stood up a little straighter so that, for their lips to touch, she’d have to reach for him.
No. Nowaywas she going to kiss him.
‘Such a pity you’re attached,’ he breathed, his mouth so close to hers she could practically taste it.
She pulled her hand out from beneath his, tipped her head to one side and said, with far more composure than she felt, ‘Not for me, it isn’t.’