Pitch Imperfect(21)

“Wise enough to have kept my dick locked up if I’d seen her in London.” Ben mounted his motorbike. “Dinner here next week?”

Rob nodded. He and his siblings took it in turns to cook a family meal every fortnight. Rather, Mac and Ben did the cooking depending on whose house they were at, and he provided drinks and dessert—straight from the deli shelves in Heaverlock. Ben took over Rob’s kitchen when it was his turn to cook, happy to escape the cramped flat he was currently renting near the police station.

“Craig is staying in Manchester this week and the boys have a sleep over so it’s just us and Mac,” Rob said.

Both men groaned. Craig was a lecturer at Manchester Tech, spending four days a week away from home, but he’d become increasingly busy during the past few months and often wasn’t present for their family meals. Mac was in matchmaker mode, and without her husband to dilute her focus, their fortnightly family dinner would be about “settling down and finding their soulmates.”

Ben’s smile was evil. “I’m going to sit back and enjoy it.”

“Anjuli is off the menu.”

“And I reckon you want to skip starters and have her for main course,” he said, putting on his helmet. “Don’t make the same mistake you did in London. She’s no’ worth it.”

Rob stared after his brother’s retreating motorbike, then into the forest. Ben was right. He should walk away from Anjuli and her restoration. So why didn’t he?

“Fuck if I know.” He shouldn’t have told Anjuli to text him when she needed a man. He’d done it on impulse, but had she believed him? From her expression she seemed to have taken him at his word. And said nothing. Rob frowned and made a disgusted noise. Maybe that sort of thing was common in her world, but he wasn’t in the habit of offering himself to sex-starved women like a stallion at stud. He didn’t have one-night stands and he had no interest in women who did. Relegating her to somebody who meant nothing to him should have been easy, but every time he heard her voice he felt inexorably linked to her.

Her eyes seemed tinted with sadness, as if she were looking through a lens that wasn’t as bright as everybody else’s. He wanted them to shine like they used to, to see the dimple on her left cheek when she laughed. And he wanted to kiss her. The only thing stopping him at Castle Manor had been his pride.

His blood rushed to his cock as he thought of her breasts, full and straining against her cashmere sweater. He’d wanted to rip it off, pull down her jeans and settle into her. Against the sink, on the floor or wherever he could find a strong enough surface against which to brace his thrusts.

“Shit.”

He was swearing too much these days, not at all the right language for a mature, professional man. Maybe he would stop swearing when he stopped thinking with his dick. There was no time like the present. Overextending himself for Anjuli would be madness. Like Ben had said, she cared nothing about him and would obviously sleep with anyone to assuage the craving for her ex.

Except after his rage had cooled he hadn’t been able to shake the sense that Anjuli’s abrupt flip from passionate woman to coldhearted bitch didn’t ring true. She hadn’t seemed able to look him in the eyes, hadn’t seemed...herself. Another frustrated expletive, stifled halfway through. How should he know what Anjuli Carver was like anymore? Eight years had passed but they might as well have been eighty. She wasn’t the woman he had loved and if she wanted to screw the entire village it was nothing to him. Nothing.

The names of single, eligible men in Heaverlock popped into Rob’s head, and he compared himself to each man as if he were indeed a stallion sizing up his competition. Damn it, he didn’t need to examine why his nostrils flared or his vision suffused with red. Residual possessiveness, nothing more. His taciturn, cynical brother was wrong. He was in no danger of falling in love with Anjuli again. So what if she looked sad? What he wanted from her was sex, plain and simple.

Rob let out a string of curses, glad that the forest absorbed his anger. Since when had he been interested in casual sex? That was his brother’s modus operandi. It was time to put Anjuli Carver out of his mind for good. If she phoned to make an appointment he would recommend an architect he knew in Edinburgh, and that would be the end of it.

* * *

The cuts on Anjuli’s hand still hurt like hell. She grimaced as Ash ripped off the old plaster and pulled a new one from the pub’s first-aid kit. The empty platform at the back of the Heaverlock Arms’ great room taunted her. She saw herself back up there with Rob.

“Put one of those over my mouth,” Anjuli said miserably.