About Last Night

by Ruthie Knox

  “I find it very attractive.”

  “Hello,” Cath said. “I’m right here.”

  Nev looked over at her and smiled. “Hello, darling. How am I doing?”

  She shot a glance at Judith, whose expression was truly terrifying. “You’re holding your own, but don’t push your luck.”

  “What do you do?” Judith asked abruptly.

  “I work in the City. Haverford Bank.”

  Judith snorted. “I should’ve guessed. You dress like money. You’re probably going to take her out for sushi at one of those awful trendy places.”

  “I was thinking of Italian, but if you have suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them.”

  “Still standing right here,” Cath said, starting to prickle at being so thoroughly left out of whatever odd power game the two of them were playing. This time, they ignored her completely.

  Judith pronounced her sentence. “Cath needs someone creative. I don’t think a banker will do.”

  “I paint, too,” Nev offered.

  “Are you any good?”

  He looked at Cath. “Am I any good, love?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, momentarily surprised out of her irritation. “Of course you’re good. You’re great.”

  He looked back to Judith. “You see? She thinks I’m great.”

  “She only thinks that because she’s sleeping with you.”

  Nev shrugged. “Quite possibly.”

  Cath had never in her life felt so much like crossing her arms, stomping her foot, and screaming. “What is with the two of you? This is, like, the world’s most bizarre pissing contest.”

  Judith’s eyes twinkled with mischief. Cath hadn’t seen her boss so entertained since the time she’d engineered a meeting at the Christmas party between Christopher’s wife and the female security guard he was having an affair with. “Is he actually good?” Judith asked.

  “He’s incredible.”

  “Sorry, are we talking about the painting or the shagging?” Nev asked.

  “The painting!”

  He grinned. “Right.”

  She let out an exasperated breath. “For heaven’s sake. He does portraits,” she told Judith. “They’re gorgeous. Tell her how much they go for,” she instructed Nev, “and then let’s please get out of here.”

  “I would,” he said, “but I’ve never sold one.”

  The announcement caught her off guard. She’d always assumed Nev had a gallery somewhere that sold his work. She’d figured he was as quietly successful at his painting as he was at whatever he did at the bank. He was such a Golden Boy, and the paintings were so excellent, all of them alive and full of character. “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t show them.”

  “Why not?”

  Nev frowned slightly. “To be honest, I don’t even know how one goes about it. I wasn’t raised to be a painter. According to my mother, art is a fine hobby for a gentleman, but only a hobby.”

  In her shock, Cath had forgotten all about Judith, so it was a surprise when she piped up. “All grown up now, though, aren’t you? Maybe you should cut those apron strings.”

  Nev laughed, which served to confuse Cath even more. She couldn’t see what was so funny. Did he not know he’d just been insulted?

  He caught her eye, then took her hand and squeezed, explaining, “If you’d met my mother, you’d understand. She’s not the most nurturing woman. Hardly the type to wear an apron, much less tie me to it.”

  “You’re Evita Chamberlain’s son,” Judith said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it took me so long to figure that out. You look just like your father.”

  “So I’m told.”

  “You know his parents?” Cath asked Judith.

  Judith ignored her, addressing her remarks to Nev. “She’s a formidable woman. Must have been one hell of a mother. My condolences.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Richard did tell me once his younger son was a painter. He seemed very proud, come to think of it.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I suppose you must be good. Richard knows his art. I hear he’s not a bad painter himself, though he never shows anyone his work.”

  “He paints excellent landscapes.”

  “Will someone please tell me what the hell you’re talking about?” Cath asked, without much hope of being answered.

  “Your boyfriend’s parents are major art patrons,” Judith said matter-of-factly. “Filthy rich, too. You should hit him up for a donation.”

  “Wow,” Cath said. “That was crass.” She was having a hard time processing all the turns the conversation had taken, and apparently the social filter that kept her from saying rude things to her boss had gone offline.

  It was only fair. Her boss didn’t seem to mind saying rude things to her date.

  Judith smiled, and the expression twisted her face into such an unaccustomed shape, it was all Cath could do not to gawp at her. It was like seeing Count Dracula smile—you hadn’t known he was capable of it, and you hadn’t really wanted to know. “In the arts,” Judith said, “you gotta hustle.”

  Then she turned back to her computer, dismissing them with a wave of her hand. “Go have fun with your banker. I like him, even if he does dress like a stiff.”

  Grateful to bring the interview to a close, Cath pulled Nev out of Judith’s office by the hand.

  “Aren’t you going to show me where you work?” Nev peered over at the manuscript-strewn conference table.

  “I think you’ve got the general idea,” Cath said. “And if you still want to take me to dinner, you’ll have me out of this room in the next five seconds.”

  “Ah.” He scooped up her bag, retrieved his briefcase from the floor, and gestured to the open door with one arm. “After you.”

  She showed him the quickest way out of the museum, and they walked through South Kensington, past the Tube station toward Chelsea Embankment. It was hot enough that Nev took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, transforming himself into a character from an old movie. In his vest and trousers, his blond hair a little messy and gleaming in the sun, he looked like he should be busting down the doors of speakeasies or shooting dice in an alleyway.

  Sometimes she had trouble believing such a gorgeous man would want anything to do with her. This was one of those times.

  He glanced over and caught her staring. “What? Do your feet hurt in those shoes? The bar isn’t far, but we could stop and rest if you’d like. Or find a taxi.”

  “My feet are fine. I like walking. You, uh—” She looked down, suddenly shy. “You just look kind of incredible, is all.”

  He stroked the back of her neck, and when she glanced up again he was smiling at her. “So do you. I didn’t know you owned clothes with colors.” She’d worn a sheer, short-sleeved red blouse with a black camisole and a black skirt to work. It was nothing fancy, but she’d hoped it would pass for both office and dinner attire. And, okay, she’d also hoped he’d like it.

  “I have a few things that aren’t black.”

  “Of course you do, darling. Only all the ones I’ve seen are very small, and I get to take them off with my teeth. You’ve trained me to salivate at the sight of color, like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Your top is making me very hungry.” He gave her his Big Bad Wolf smile, and she laughed, enjoying the rush of heat down her spine. He was kidding, but not really. The look in his eyes told her that given the opportunity, he’d have her naked in two minutes flat.

  She’d been so nervous about letting down this last barrier and actually dating Nev, she hadn’t considered the advantages of going out to dinner with him. There was a lot to be said for stepping out on the arm of the best-looking man in London and knowing he would take you home later and make you come over and over again.

  “Thanks for letting me meet Judith,” he said. “I like her. She’s funny.”

  “She was completely awful to you.”

  “Yes, but only because she loves you.”

>   “Are we talking about the same person? Judith doesn’t love anyone. She tolerates me because I keep her organized, and because I amuse her.”

  Nev chuckled. “Trust me on this. She’s trying to protect you because she thinks the sun rises and sets on your pretty little head.” He ran his hand down to her waist, tugging her closer and holding her still for a moment so he could drop a kiss on her lips. “I know the feeling.”

  She took his hand, and they strolled along down one of the wealthy residential streets between the station and the river. Being with Nev turned down the volume on the panic and desperation she’d been feeling since hearing the news about the catalog, but it didn’t banish them. The lull in their conversation gave the bad feelings an opportunity to creep back in, tightening her shoulders and unsettling her stomach. She needed to talk.

  “I had no idea that you don’t sell your paintings,” she said. “You could, you know. You should at least show them. They’re too good to hide away in your apartment.”

  A worried crease appeared between his eyebrows, and he shot her a glance that held none of his customary confidence. “You really think so?”

  She did, but she didn’t want to have to tell him. She wanted Nev to be skilled at everything he did and perfectly aware of it. It was unfair of her. In the past, part of the allure of the men she’d gone for had been their flaws. She’d fall for their slightly-too-large ears, their pointy elbows and skinny calves. The mixture of artistic talent and social awkwardness had been enough to make her giddy, knowing she would be the first to appreciate some guy’s real skill at the same time she repaired all his flaws with the power of her love.

  She didn’t think about Nev that way. He’d never needed her help, and the thought that he might made her uncomfortable.

  “Yeah, I do think so,” she said, ashamed of herself for being so unsupportive, if only in her own head. “And I know what I’m talking about, too.”

  They reached the shady embankment and turned to walk along the path beside the river. Motionless on the still afternoon, the Thames was utterly unimpressive. The first time she’d seen it, she’d been astonished by how little there was to it. For all its history and fame, England was built on such a small scale compared with home. Rural Illinois had rivers four times as big that no one had ever heard of, but here the sorry old Thames got an embankment with a paved path, a beautiful stone wall, and wrought-iron lampposts. This was a country that knew how to make the most of what it had to offer.

  “Can I ask you something?” she asked, staring out toward Chelsea Bridge.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you like working at the bank?”

  He considered her question for a long moment before answering. “It would be fair to say I loathe working at the bank.”

  She’d known this. She’d seen it on his face when he came home exhausted, and she’d heard it in all that he didn’t say about his job. She felt chagrin for never having asked before, and slightly resentful, too, that he’d never volunteered the information. “You could quit and be a painter.” He’d pick up commissions easily, particularly with his family connections.

  Nev as a painter was easy to imagine. Last weekend, they’d hung out at his flat, and he’d painted all Saturday morning, then taken her along to his rugby game on Blackheath Common. They’d gone out to the pub afterward with some of the guys he played with, and she’d settled into the anonymity of the crowd and watched him interact with them, a different man from the one who boarded the train to Bank five mornings a week. With cadmium red under his fingernails and a bruise blooming on his cheekbone, he’d been all teasing smiles, telling self-deprecating stories that made everyone laugh. Unfettered, Nev had taken her breath away.

  The worry line deepened between his eyes, and he shot her a glance in a language she couldn’t read. “No,” he said. “I couldn’t.” He steered her across the street toward the bar where they’d have drinks before dinner. “Here we are, love.”

  The light touch of his hand on her back was as affectionate as ever, but dread made the skin prickle between her shoulder blades. He’d never looked at her like that before, with frustration and even a hint of anger. His tone said, in no uncertain terms, Drop it.

  She would. She was the last person in the world to go digging around in someone else’s secrets.

  It was just that she hadn’t known Nev had any.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked once their drinks had arrived. They had a small table in the corner, tall enough that Cath’s feet didn’t reach the floor and she’d had to hook her heels over the rung of her bar stool. “Or will I have to get you tipsy and coax the information out of you? I can be quite persuasive.”

  He winked, hoping to lighten the mood. Talking about painting had put his back up, and she had something on her mind that was making her fingers tap the side of her wineglass and one knee jitter relentlessly beneath the table. Whatever it was, he didn’t like having it between them. He didn’t like having anything between them. Tables. Clothes. Secrets.

  Perhaps dinner had been a bad idea. He’d been wanting to take her out for a proper date for the past month, but now that she’d finally agreed, he had to repress the urge to get her back home and into bed. It was the only way he knew how to unlock her, the only thing that reliably solved their problems.

  She sighed, lifted her glass, and knocked back half of it in one go. Then, with her eyes closed, she said, “My catalog got the ax. The museum lost a sponsor, and they can’t afford to publish it anymore.”

  “Oh, bugger. I’m sorry.”

  She stiffened, and he recognized his mistake. She wouldn’t want sympathy. Whatever the opposite of the standard response was, that’s what Cath would be most comfortable with. So no sympathy. No offers of assistance. A sarcastic comment or a joke followed by a quick change of subject, and she’d settle right down.

  But what Cath wanted and what Cath needed were rarely the same thing.

  He’d become quite the expert on her. She’d told him very few of her secrets, but what he did know he’d used—piecing it together with thousands of observations to create an ever-evolving portrait of her character. He knew she was far more upset than she’d let on, even to herself. The catalog meant the world to her.

  “How much did the sponsor take with them?”

  “Fifty thousand pounds.”

  Not a lot. More than he had in the bank, but only because he’d used his savings to purchase the building in Greenwich last year, thinking it made more sense to own the property and rent out the other flat than to become a tenant himself. He couldn’t give her fifty thousand pounds, but he could get it for her. His father would write a fifty-thousand-pound check to the V&A if Nev asked him to. Or, rather, he would if Mother didn’t stop him.

  Unfortunately, Evita wasn’t in the mood to do her second-born any favors just now. Not until he brought home an appropriate fiancée for her to coo over.

  He sipped his whiskey, thinking. When Judith had said, You should hit him up for a donation, he’d thought she was joking. She hadn’t been joking.

  Cath would never do it, though. She didn’t want his money. She needed it, but she didn’t want it.

  The question was, how could he get her to take it? If he simply handed her a check for fifty thousand pounds, she’d tear it up. She insisted on paying her share of everything, leaving neat stacks of pound coins on his kitchen table whenever they split a take-away meal. She’d only accept small gifts from him. It was important to her that their relationship be reciprocal. If she were to take fifty thousand pounds from him, it would only be because she thought she’d given him something of equal value.

  Cath needed money. He needed a fiancée.

  Actually, no. He needed a wife.

  “What are you smiling about?” she asked, slightly grumpy.

  He studied her from across the table. The blue light of the bar turned her top purple and cast an otherworldly glow over her pale skin. She was a faerie woman,
small and lovely and full of terrible power beyond his ken. He’d been wanting to buy her dinner for weeks, needing to declare to the world at large that this woman belonged to him. He was crazy about her. And he wanted, of all things, to take her home and introduce her to his parents.

  It was mad. Mother would dislike her on sight. Worse, she’d make the weekend difficult for Cath, who would in turn hate everything about Leyton. Nor would Cath appreciate the deception, though Mother and Winston absolutely deserved it.

  Utterly mad. But there was brilliance to the idea, as well. Because if he pulled it off, he’d manage to help Cath while sending a long-overdue message to his mother that he no longer intended to play along with her schemes.

  Whether or not he could pull it off remained an open question. He looked Cath over, head to toe. Her short black skirt. Shiny heels. Her blouse, red as a phone box and sexy as hell. She wouldn’t do at all. But he could fix that.

  “Do you trust me, love?”

  She hesitated a great deal longer than he’d have liked, but she gave him the answer he’d hoped for. “Yes.”

  “Excellent. Because I need a favor.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Tell me again why I’m doing this.”

  Nev was driving them along the A25 toward Hertfordshire. She hadn’t even known he had a car. Though of course he did, and of course it was elegant and understated, and he drove it with cool self-assurance. That was Nev—confident, competent, and crisp as a fall apple.

  She, on the other hand, was freaking out.

  “It’s going to be fine, Cath. Relax.” He dropped his hand to her thigh and squeezed it through the fabric of her dress. Her very expensive brown raw-silk sheath dress that would be terribly wrinkled by the time they arrived, because she hadn’t realized it wasn’t the right thing to wear in the car. She’d never had a dress like this before. Everything she owned contained at least a small amount of polyester.

  She was in way over her head here.

  Screwing her eyes shut, she concentrated on Nev’s hand on her leg. It was warm, heavy, and alive, and her body responded with the heat his touch always aroused. If he could keep one hand on her at all times, she might make it through the weekend.