Down London Road

each other. I drew a deep breath and decided to be a grown-up.
    ‘What’s up?’ I asked congenially as I approached them.
    Joss gave me a surprisingly uneasy look. ‘Cam asked about your family. I thought you’d already told him. Sorry.’
    My heart flipped in my chest, a rush of queasiness making my skin prickle. ‘Told him –’
    Realizing what I thought she meant, she rushed to clarify. ‘About your mum’s
illness
and how you have to take care of her and Cole.’
    An immediate rush of relief overwhelmed me and I let out a deep breath. ‘Right.’
    Unfortunately, I’d given away too much. When I chanced a look at Cam, I saw his suspicious gaze flickering between me and Joss. He had just opened his mouth, presumably to ask another question, when Joss derailed him. ‘So what about you, Cam? Your family from here?’
    Although his eyebrows were still drawn together in curiosity, he nodded. ‘My parents live just outside Edinburgh. Longniddry.’
    Nice
, I thought. Longniddry was this lovely village situated near the water. It was a beautiful place with rough beaches and old cottages. I wondered what it must have been like to grow up in such a place.
    ‘No overbearing brothers or sisters?’ Joss continued her interrogation. ‘No car crashes or drug addicts or medical problems?’
    I tried to contain my snort.
    Cam shrugged good-naturedly. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’
    Looking nonplussed, Joss eyed him warily. ‘Are you telling me you’re actually a well-adjusted individual?’
    He threw her his hot grin and I succumbed to another heated flare of sexual attraction. ‘I like to think so.’
    Joss shot me a look that said,
Well, at least I’ve got you
before she shook her head at Cam as though she were disappointed in him. ‘And here I thought we could be friends.’
    Cam laughed. ‘I could invent a tragic past if that helps?’
    ‘Or unearth some deep, dark family secret I can turn into a book.’
    ‘I’ll get back to you on that.’ He smiled and then looked at me carefully, his gaze lowering a little under his eyelashes. He had sickeningly long eyelashes for a man. ‘I made the mistake of telling Becca I had this Saturday off and I hear she’s booked a table for four at Martin Wishart.’
    Yeah, I’m sure the last thing you want to do is sit down for a meal with me.
‘Malcolm told me.’
    ‘So I guess we’re having dinner together.’
    Joss chuckled, and as she turned to serve a customer she rather unhelpfully advised, ‘Try not to kill each other.’
    I smirked and shot a look at Cam, then immediately wished I hadn’t. He appeared to be trying to work me out, as though I was this mysterious puzzle he was drawn to solving.
    My body flushed with pleasure at his attention, but my brain screamed at me to run as far away from him as possible.



8
    As much as Joss acted as a buffer between me and Cam, the tension between us refused to dissipate. Friday night I danced around him like an idiot, desperate not to have a repeat of the previous evening. Joss kept eyeing me as if expecting me to hatch an alien at any moment, I was acting so strangely.
    When Malcolm had phoned me during the day I’d felt this whoosh of guilt at the sound of his voice, as though I had cheated on him in a way with my impure thoughts about Cam. I wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been ruthless when going after men. I tried not to think about the girls who had been hurt by their defection, and I tried to rationalize that somehow it was okay to have been party to such a betrayal because Cole needed me to marry someone like Malcolm. There was no truth in that. That somehow suggested there hadn’t been a choice for me, but of course there was a choice. I had chosen. And I had chosen selfishly.
    I drew the line at physically cheating on someone, though. I particularly drew the line at being the direct betrayer.
    Lusting after Cam seemed like one step too close towards that.
    Thankfully, as always, Friday was really too busy to make much conversation with my colleagues. Cam crackeda few jokes, made us laugh, and Joss, as always, was her witty self. I, on the other hand, decided to try to diminish my awareness of Cam by focusing on filling up the tips jar.
    I flirted my ass off and ignored the way Joss rolled her eyes at my girlish giggling. She’d once told me I had a fake giggle and a real giggle. My real giggle was apparently ‘adorable’, but my fake giggle – the one I used to convince a guy