“Believe what you want. It doesn’t make it true.”
I slid a hand up to his neck, my gaze fastened on his lips and my thumb stroking over his pulse point. A surge of satisfaction shot through me as it sped up. All I could think about was kissing him, the want a steady thrum that consumed my entire body. We’d kiss. Laurent would soften. Then we’d have make-up sex, and all would be right with the world.
“LAURENT? WHERE ARE YOU?” I stiffened at the familiar voice coming from inside the flat. “I MADE YOU TEA.”
I drew back, my hand falling from his neck. “She made you tea?”
“After a somewhat shaky start, I made it clear I was no threat to your relationship, that we weren’t even on speaking terms. Which is true.”
“Itwastrue,” I said. “We’re speaking now.”
“Semantics.”
Seizing on the last few seconds of privacy we had, I pressed a quick kiss to Laurent’s lips, Laurent doing nothing to stop me.Releasing him, I stepped back just in time for the door to come flying open.
“There you are!” Katrina announced. She wasn’t talking to Laurent, though. She was talking to me. She flew across the space between us and flung herself at me, holding on like a limpet when I tried to extricate myself from her embrace. “We’ve been apart for far too long.”
My eyes met Laurent’s over Katrina’s shoulder, Laurent rolling his eyes. “We should have that tea,” he announced with false cheer. “All three of us. I feel like there are things we need to discuss.”
Katrina let go as suddenly as she’d grabbed me. “Like the wedding,” she said as she went back inside.
Laurent waited for me to go inside before following, like he thought I might make a run for it. I had to admit that now I’d seen he was okay, it was tempting.
Katrina was in the kitchen. “I only made two mugs,” she said in explanation. “But don’t worry, darling. I’ll make one for you.”
The “darling” felt like someone taking a cheese grater to my nuts. How were you supposed to deal with someone this delusional? When Katrina turned her back again, Laurent waved a hand that said, “get on with it.”
I mouthed “how?” at him, Laurent’s shrug in response not at all helpful. The silence continued until Katrina finished making the tea and deposited it in front of me on the breakfast bar. I eyed it, calculating whether she could have slipped something in it without Laurent or me noticing. I had no desire to find myself Rohypnol-ed into an impromptu wedding.
“So…” Laurent said as she slid onto the stool opposite him while I remained standing. “How did you two meet?”
I blinked. How was that helpful? “At a zoo.”
Laurent’s eyebrows shot skywards. “Unusual.”
“It was,” Katrina said with a nod. “I was holding a snake.”
Laurent took a sip of his tea at the wrong time, almost choking on it.
“Katrina works there,” I provided for context.
“And you were there because…?” Laurent asked me.
“I’d taken my niece and nephew to the zoo.”
He nodded. “Of course. And a woman holding a snake was what you’d been searching for?”
Katrina laughed. She’d had a haircut since the last time I’d seen her, her dark hair much shorter. It suited her. She wrapped her hands around her mug to give me my first glimpse of the ring on her finger. It was quite the rock. Either it was a convincing fake, or someone had paid a pretty penny for it. The only thing I knew for sure was that it hadn’t been me.
“We got talking,” she said with something of a coy smile, “and hit it off. I think Mac asked me out on a date within the first ten minutes.”
“He moves quickly,” Laurent agreed. I shot him a sharp look, but he seemed impervious to it.
“And I of course, said yes because he’s very handsome and charming.”
“He is,” Laurent said. “And the proposal came how long after?”
Something flickered in Katrina’s expression. Something there and gone in the space of only a second or two. She waved a hand in my direction. “Are you going to let me do all the talking?”
