LITMIR.BIZ

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Mr Spanish Inquisitor,’ she said, with a roll of her eyes, ‘but I have to work with what I have. And what I have is a professionally shot ad campaign that I paid a lot of money for.’

      ‘Sephy –’

      ‘What?’ Sephy whipped her head around to look at him, ‘I asked you for help, but you said “no”.’ There was a flash of guilt that dulled the green of his eyes and she really didn’t like how that made her feel, so she added, ‘which you were perfectly entitled to do. I’m a big girl, Luke. I’m not going to hold that against you.’

      ‘Right. You’ve decided not to resent that the one time you asked me outright for something, I said no?’

      ‘That’s right, because the last time I checked, I wasn’t a child.’

      ‘Ha. Let’s put the clucking like a chicken on the evidence table.’

      Sephy blushed. ‘That was a mistake.’ She took another bite of food and, after swallowing, said softly, ‘I really don’t resent you for saying no.’

      Luke turned back to the TV and lifted the pizza to his mouth before dropping a casual, ‘You know, you could ask Ryan to be your model.’

      Sephy snorted and lowered her plate to her lap in shock. ‘I am not asking Ryan.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because.’

      Luke turned his head to watch her closely. ‘Because…?’

       Because he’s not you.

      Sephy was very afraid her eyes had become rather round and large as the realisation that she hadn’t even considered asking Ryan, or anyone else, took proper hold.

      Ryan may still have his bad-boy, wild-child looks, but his previous lifestyle had added a tired and jaded edge and, if anything, he now looked like a man who simply wanted peace in his life.

      Luke, on the other hand, looked…

      Sephy fiddled with the crust of her pizza.

      Luke looked like still waters ran deep.

      Luke had this quiet, serious and confident, can-take-care-of-himself presence.

      But then those dimples would come out to play and that automatically translated as ‘and-I-am-more-than-capable-of-taking-care-of-a-woman’s-needs-at-the-same-time’.

      The moment she’d seen Luke holding her bra, she’d known unequivocally the response images of him would evoke. No, she couldn’t afford a professional model, but the truth was she didn’t want a professional model. She wanted Luke.

      Not for herself. Obviously. She already knew that kind of complication would lead to her losing his friendship.

      Picking off a piece of pepperoni she popped it into her mouth, curled her tongue around it and then said, ‘I’m only just getting to know Ryan again. We’re,’ she broke off to search for the right words, ‘we’re both somehow the complete opposite of how we were when we knew each other the first time round.’

      Luke said nothing and, after a moment, reached past her for another slice of pizza.

      Sephy’s gaze fixed on his sinewy forearm and the twist of brown leather cord that wrapped around his wrist and rubbed up alongside his chunky, masculine watch. She wondered if the leather had been a gift. God, his hands and arms really would have looked so wonderfully sexy in those photographs.

      ‘So how is it all going, with Ryan?’

      ‘Huh?’ She really, really had to snap out of sinking herself into the mental images she kept dreaming up to re-shoot her ad campaign.

      ‘I was asking about Ryan. It’s all going well?’

      ‘I guess,’ she answered and then frowned. ‘At least I thought it was.’

      ‘Why, what’s happened?’

      Sephy didn’t know whether to tell him. She was probably worrying about nothing.

      ‘Seph,’ Luke pushed and the hint of protectiveness in his tone made her smile.

      ‘He broke up with his girlfriend.’

      ‘I see.’ Luke finished off the last bite of his pizza, tore off a piece of kitchen roll, rubbed it between his hands until it formed a ball and tossed it onto his plate. ‘And that’s your problem because?’

      ‘It’s not really,’ she answered, telling him what he wanted to hear and wondering if anyone would ever believe she could care about Ryan simply because he was the father of her child and not because she was starting to develop feelings for him again.

      If there was one thing Sephy could rely on about herself it was that a lesson learned was a lesson learned. She didn’t do repeat mistakes. Years of trying to get her father to notice her had taught her that life was too short to keep banging your head against a brick wall.

      ‘You’re worried Ryan’s going to relapse?’ Luke asked.

      ‘Maybe.’ It was a distinct possibility. Breaking up with his girlfriend was Ryan’s first real test after coming out of rehab four months ago. What if the upset made him start gambling again?

      Her sister Nora was engaged to Ryan’s brother Ethan and Sephy had been dithering over whether she should ring Ethan and let him know. She kind of hoped Ryan had already told him and had been leaning on him for support, but Nora hadn’t said anything and that made her question what shape Ryan was really in.

      ‘Haven’t you got enough to be worrying about at the minute?’ Luke prompted. ‘Ryan Love is not your responsibility.’

      ‘I know. I just want him to be the best version of himself. You know? For Daisy. She deserves to have a decent father figure in her life.’

      ‘She was doing okay before he came along.’

      Sephy’s heart dipped at Luke’s automatic defence of her, and then dipped again because she knew that Daisy had already lost her granddad and the special bond the two of them had developed. Then, just as they were all getting to know Jared again, he’d had to return to his own life in New York.

      The only constant male figure in Daisy’s life was Luke and in those hours before dawn when Sephy did most of her waking-up-in-a-cold-sweat-parental-worrying, she acknowledged her friendship with Luke was getting to be dangerously close to something she counted on. What if Daisy became too attached to Luke and Luke finally found someone to get serious with and drifted out of their lives?

      ‘All I really want is for Daisy to get to have that balanced parenting that Ryan could add,’ she admitted to Luke. Before Ryan had broken up with his girlfriend, Sephy had only allowed a few short visits so Daisy could start getting to know him. She hadn’t wanted to force too much contact until she could trust Ryan to stay in the area and want a relationship with his daughter. Now, she worried that if Ryan was struggling and needed to concentrate on himself for a while, and Daisy noticed, things were going to get messy.

      ‘I’m already dreading how to handle the teenage years,’ Sephy continued. ‘It’ll be just my luck if she ends up like I was at that age.’

      ‘And how were you when you were that age?’

      ‘I was –’ Sephy broke off as memories flooded her of all the times she hadn’t so much as snuck back into the house late at night as deliberately announced her return as loudly as possible. Back then she had seen any attention as good attention. She cleared her throat and finished with, ‘Let’s simply say I was not the best version of myself that I could have been.’

      Luke looked like he wanted to know more, but she was suddenly filled with the need for a little reciprocation. ‘What were you like as a teenager?’ she asked.

      He hesitated, as if quickly weighing up what to go with before finally responding with a one word answer of, ‘Shy.’

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