Page 37 of Stuck

“You?” he asked, interrupting my spiralling thoughts.

“Yes, I played rugby too—at school.”

His eyebrows shot up.

“Hey!” I said, laughing. “I might be small, but I’m zippy. I always played number fourteen. But you’re right, I wasn’t very good. I prefer watching.”

“Yeah?” he asked in a soft voice. He looked almost bashful—until he cleared his throat and frowned. “You really don’t like watching football, then?”

“Not so much.”

“That’s unfortunate for Bingley.”

Bollocks. I’d forgotten about my supposed boyfriend. I made a vague, dismissive gesture. “We do other stuff together.”

Darcy nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry he’s had to be away for so long.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the truth right there and then, but his earnest expression chased away all my courage. And I was distracted by my increasingly homicidal thoughts about my sister’s boyfriend.

I smiled tightly. “I am certainly impatient for him to get back.”

Darcy nodded once, then announced that he needed to return to work, thanked me again for his lunch, and left. As soon as he was gone, I whipped out my phone and opened my text thread with Bingley.

You have to tell him. SOON!!!

17

DARCY

Elizabeth delicately brushed the crumbs from her fingertips onto the open sandwich wrapper on the table in front of her as she talked. She’d had cheese and pickle for the third day in a row. It was definitely her favourite.

“LiDAR is my go-to every time. You’d be surprised how many estates still don’t use it, even for one-off projects. It breaks my heart.”

A smile lingered on my face as I listened to her. We were discussing rewilding, a topic we’d discovered was close to both our hearts. The various ways our expertise overlapped were fascinating. As was the meticulous way she folded the empty sandwich wrapper, careful that no crumb should spill onto the table for someone else to clear up.

I knew I shouldn’t be doing this. She was my closest friend’s girlfriend, and I had no business enjoying her company this much, but I couldn’t stay away from her.

I’d told myself, when I returned to Quick Bite at the same time yesterday as on Monday, that it was to fit lunch around my planned meetings. That, when I’d spotted Elizabeth about to pay for her lunch and I’d reached over her shoulder to tap my card instead, it had been nothing more than a lucky encounter—an opportunity to repay her for her kindness the day before. That, when she’d agreed to eat with me again, I was a normal level of gratified by it.

None of this reasoning was robust enough to excuse my coming here at the same time again today, and there was nothing normal about the gratification I’d felt when she agreed to sit with me for a third time, or the pleasure I was taking in our present conversation.

I couldn’t lie to myself anymore; I wanted to be around her, even if it meant enduring the accompanying guilt. It was worth it. Talking to Elizabeth was like a breath of fresh air. She didn’t pry into my personal affairs or presume to know anything about me, as so many people with access to the internet did. She talked about, knew about, things of real interest to me. Case in point, her vast knowledge of the 3D laser scanning technology we happened to use on almost all of our projects at Pemberley.

The traitorous thought that my father would have adored her popped into my head, and I had to clear my throat to dislodge the knot of guilt that abruptly wedged there. No doubt Bingley’s father would have been equally charmed to meet the woman who was perfect for his son in every way. I sucked in a breath, sickened by a fresh wave of shame at the wrongness of what I was doing.

“Are you all right?” Elizabeth asked with a little frown of concern for me that didn’t alleviate the situation in the slightest.

I nodded and took a swig of my water, noticing as I did that her phone, face up on the table, had lit up with a message. She glanced at it, and her expression instantly changed. I looked again, but she swiped it off the table, and I only caught a brief glimpse of the screen. It was enough to see the first line of a message preview that read, “Call me? Really need you.”

It was from her “friend,” Kev—the same man she’d been so evasive about the last time he messaged her.

I felt my own face redden. “Are you all right?” I asked tightly.

“Yes… um, yes, but I probably ought to get back to my desk. Don will be wondering what’s become of me.” She pushed her chair back and stood up. “See you later.”

I blew out a heavy breath as she walked away. I didn’t want to believe she was up to anything behind Bingley’s back—had already convinced myself she wasn’t capable of it. But if this Kev was just a friend, what did she have to hide?

Really need you.