LITMIR.BIZ

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saw the burn on her cheeks as his fury built inside and he struggled to contain it.

      ‘Did I earn it tonight?’ Jack asked, and he struggled not to shout. ‘Are you just trying to get it over and done with?’

      ‘Leave if you don’t like it.’

      And he saw her gutter mouth come out for him, because that was where she’d almost been, saw the scared angry kid she had once been. ‘When you say you haven’t had a relationship for a long time …’ She pushed past him, but he caught her. ‘When was the last time you had sex, Nina?’

      ‘Friday night, from memory.’ She opened the door. ‘Just leave.’

      ‘Before then,’ Jack said. ‘Before us.’

      Nina stood holding the door open, but Jack would not move.

      ‘A while.’ Nina shrugged.

      ‘Oh, I think it was a while,’ Jack said. ‘I’d say about six years. Is that what the pro bono centre did for you? They got you off the streets …’

      ‘I wasn’t a hooker, Jack,’ she snarled, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’ He saw all the anger shooting from her eyes and it was merited. ‘But there can be a lot of favours to pay for sleeping on a friend’s couch …’ And then she started to cry.

      ‘And was I the first since that time?’ She just stood there.

      ‘What was I supposed to say?’ Nina shouted. ‘That you’re the first person I’ve even considered fancying, that for two years I’ve had a thing for you …?’ She just looked at him. ‘You’d have run a mile.’

      Jack didn’t know how to deal with this. He just stood there confused, because it had been so much more than sex that night.

      ‘Can you please leave?’ she said when he walked over to her. ‘I mean it,’ she said, still holding the door. ‘Jack, can you leave?’

      And, given what she’d just told him, Jack had no choice but to respect her wishes, no choice really but to do as she asked and leave.

      Jack was angry.

      More than angry and there wasn’t even an actual person he could pin it on. He had been angry enough with what had happened to Janey, but that it had happened to Nina, that there hadn’t been an older sister looking out for her, that she had been left to her own devices had Jack’s mind working overtime.

      There was no one he could speak to about it either.

      Jack tried to imagine the reaction of his parents if he tried to talk about what had happened with Nina.

      The sneers, the turning up of their noses.

      But he knew that the last thing Nina needed was to see that. He had to deal with this himself, had to work out how best to handle it.

      Nina’s cheeks fired the next morning when she saw him in the corridor and she just brushed past him. They fired up again a few hours later when her intercom buzzed and Jack was at her door.

      And she blushed even more when he sat in the chair where she’d, er, once approached him. And then he did the impossible, just as he had the first time he’d come to her office. Jack made her laugh.

      ‘Is the chair okay or do you want me on the mat again?’

      ‘Very funny, Jack.’ She laughed, but she was still cringing about what she had told him last night.

      ‘Nina, don’t ignore me in the corridor again. I told you, I don’t do awkward,’ Jack said, simply addressing the situation between them.

      ‘Thank you.’

      And then Jack got to another reason he was there.

      ‘I heard their might be some news.’

      There was. The news was still fluttering in her chest, still new and shiny and hard to take in, and she hadn’t actually said the words out loud yet.

      ‘I’ve got custody …’ She was shaking just saying it. All those years of study and work and scrimping and saving, just to get to this point, and finally, sooner than expected, she could say it. ‘It’s temporary custody for now, but they’ve been to look at the flat, and apparently Blake isn’t happy where he is.’ She hated so much what they had all been through. ‘They’re not horrible people or anything, they’re just older and can’t deal with him …’

      ‘You’ve got them now.’ Jack came and leant on the desk beside her chair. ‘They’re good kids.’

      ‘They are!’ Nina was adamant on that. ‘I know Janey can be a handful, but I’m really going to work on her. I’m going to show the department just how much better she is with me.’

      And he knew he had to step back here, that it wasn’t his place to tell her how to raise them. After all, what would he know? Professionally, yes, he had his opinion, but on family …? He thought of his own family, the complete dysfunction behind the smiling façade, but more than that he needed to do some serious thinking.

      Serious thinking.

      ‘Say hi to them for me.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘Tell them I’ll come by and see them some time soon.’

      ‘I think we need some time together …’ She saw him frown, saw the slight startlement in his eyes and realised he’d misunderstood what she had said, that he must have thought she was working out a way to schedule some alone time for them, so she made things a little clearer. ‘Not us.’ God, it hurt to lose him. ‘Me and the kids. We need some time to settle in with each other and …’ She gave him a smile when she felt like weeping. ‘Really, Jack, it might just confuse things if you keep coming round.’

      ‘Yeah, well, I told Blake that I’d get him a Rangers top,’ Jack said.

      ‘You can give that to me at work.’

      ‘And I also said to Janey that I’d check in and see that she was okay, wherever she was … so, tough, I’m coming round.’

      He walked back through the hospital and popped into ICU before heading for home, and for Jack things couldn’t be more confusing.

      He was being dumped and surely he should be sighing with relief, cracking open the champagne and celebrating, because Jack Carter with a twenty-five-year-old, anti-fashion girlfriend, who came with two messed-up kids in tow was so not part of the plan.

      And he was still confused when he got home and looked around his tastefully furnished apartment, because all it looked was sterile. He looked into the mirror as he shaved the next morning, saw the fading bruise and decided that if he saw Vince again he’d happily repeat the experience.

      He wanted something more from this relationship, wanted something he had never known, and, no, he didn’t understand it.

       CHAPTER TWELVE

      NINA DIDN’T SAY his name. Instead, she pursed her lips when on Friday night Jack came to her door just as she was about to start dinner.

      ‘I rang your office.’ Jack smiled. ‘They said you left at five.’

      ‘I did.’ Nina tried to move out to the hall so that Blake and Janey wouldn’t realise that he was there. ‘I’ve got a lot to do, Jack—there’s a lot to unpack.’ She still hadn’t set up the chests of drawers in Janey’s room, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

      ‘I thought I might help. Maybe I could go out and get dinner.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Is that chicken? I thought you didn’t eat meat.’

      He spoke too loudly so she did move out into the hall as there was no way she wanted Blake to hear him. ‘Just because I’m vegetarian it doesn’t mean that they have to be.’

      ‘Jack!’

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