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Her laugh was more of a bark. ‘Definitely not. My gran raised me mostly. To give me some stability. My mother really wasn’t...well adapted...to parenting.’
He threw her a sideways look. ‘I’m the youngest of six to older parents so maybe we were raised by a similar generation?’
It took just a few minutes to walk down to the station and something in her speech or her steady forward movement or her riveting, non-stop chatter about her childhood must have convinced him she was fine to be left alone because he didn’t try and stop her again.
He paused by the white entry gate. ‘Well...’
‘You’ll be in touch?’
‘Casey will. My assistant.’
Of course. He had minions.
‘She’ll pull together a schedule for the next few months, to get us started.’
‘So...I guess I’ll see you at the first one, then.’
‘Remember, we’ll be strangers as far as anyone else is concerned. I’m just your shadow. I won’t even acknowledge you when I arrive.’
Weird. But better. If they were doing these things together she’d just get too comfortable. And that wasn’t a good idea, judging by how comfortable she’d been for the past few hours. ‘I’ll remember. See you then.’
She stepped towards the ticket gate, then turned back and smiled. ‘Thanks for letting me drive the Jag.’
‘Any time.’
Georgia waved again and then disappeared into the station. Zander turned and jogged across the pedestrian crossing, then ducked down the commercial lane that led to the back of the garden of his nearby house where they’d parked the Jag. Except she thought they just got lucky with a street park convenient to his favourite bar, not parking in front of his house.
He was really out of practice. Who took a woman to a bar, then drank so that he couldn’t drive her home? Who let a woman ride the tube alone at night?
A man who was trying really hard not to feel as if he was on a date, that was who.
He’d first caught himself back at his office when she’d thrust her hand out so professionally and he’d felt a stab of disappointment. What did he expect, a kiss on each cheek? Of course she was all business. This was...business.
And this was just an after-hours work meeting. He’d almost sabotaged himself by inviting her back to his house to eat, but it had just tumbled from his lips. The old Zander never would have let so many hours pass without taking care to make sure they’d both eaten. It had been a long time since the new Zander came along. This Zander had perfectly defined business muscle but it had come at the expense of social niceties.
Any muscle would atrophy without use.
And then the coup de grâce. Any time. He could have said ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘think nothing of it’ but he went with ‘any time’. As though there’d be a repeat performance.
He pushed through the gate to his property and started down the long, winding path between the extensive gardens to the conservatory.
Clearly something of the old him still existed. Something that responded to Georgia’s easy company and complete failure to engage with him the way others did. She just didn’t care who he was or that he was the only thing standing between her and a lawsuit. Or maybe she just didn’t recognise it.
She stared up at him with those big brown eyes and treated him exactly like everyone else.
No one did that any more. Even Casey—the closest thing he had to a friend at work—was always super careful never to cross a line, to always stop just short of the point where familiarity became contempt. Even she was sensitive to how much of her future rested in his hands.
Because he was so thorough in reminding them all. Regularly.
His minions.
He smiled. The irony was he didn’t think that way at all. Not deep down. He believed in the power of teams and much preferred collaborative working groups to the way he did things now. They’d served him well back in the day when every programme he’d produced had been the product of a handful of hard-working people. But there was no getting around the fact that EROS really did run better with a clear, controlled gulf between himself and the people who worked for him. And he didn’t mind the gulf; it meant no complications between friendships and workplace relationships.
And driving Georgia home would have been a complication.
Having her here, in his house, would have been a complication.
He had a signed contract; the time for courting The Valentine’s Girl, professionally, was over. He should have just given her a list of activities that the station was prepared to send her to and been done with it. Instead of being a sap. Instead of reacting to an event fifteen years old and letting it colour his better judgement.
Instead of empathising.
Just because he’d been exactly where Georgia was; on the arse-end of a declined proposal. Only in his case, he got all the way down the aisle before realising his fiancée wasn’t coming down behind him because she was on her way to Heathrow with her supportive bridesmaids. What followed was a horrible half-hour of shouting and recriminations before the priest managed to clear the church. Lara’s family and friends all went wildly on the defensive—as you would if it was someone you loved that had done something so shocking. His side of the church rallied around him so stoically, which only inflamed Lara’s family more because they knew—knew—that there were a hundred better ways to not proceed with a marriage than just not turning up. Less destructive ways. But she’d gone with the one that would cause her the least pain.
And, chump that he was, he actually preferred that. He wasn’t in the business of wishing pain on people he loved back then.
The heartbreak was bad enough, slumped in the front row of the rioting church, but he’d had to endure the public humiliation in front of everyone he cared about. Their whispers. Their pity. Their side-taking. Worse, their determined, well-meant support. Every bit as excruciating and public as Georgia’s turn-down live on air. Just more contained.
Like atomic fusion.
But the after-effects rippled out for a decade and a half.
He jogged up the stairs and headed straight for his study. The most important room in his house. The work he got done there was the difference between just-hanging-on in the network and excelling. No one excelled on forty hours a week. He was putting in eighty, easy.
It was the one thing he could thank Lara for.
Setting him up for the kind of success that gave him a luxurious study in a big house in Hampstead Heath and had him rubbing shoulders with some of the most powerful people in the country.
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