Pitch Imperfect(48)

Calling him by surname was a slip into the past, to a time when they’d been able to tease each other, a time when he’d exacted his revenge in the best way possible. Rob walked over to Anjuli, holding his hand out for the lighter. Their fingers touched and he looked down, surprised at her skin’s coarseness. Red and chapped, no longer the smooth fingertips that had tapped melodies onto his skin after they made love.

“What have you been doing, lass?”

She yanked her hand away. “Dish washing at the pub, stripping wallpaper in the hallway...playing Canadian logger in the back garden.” She gestured at a small pot on the windowsill. “I’ve tried all sorts of creams, and Ash’s homemade moisturiser smells as bad as her Monday specials.”

Rob lit the hob, then firmly grasped her hands and examined them. “I’ll bring you what I use tomorrow.” At the lift in her brows, he gave her a self-mocking smile. “A man ought to take care of himself—a woman too.”

A rueful glance at her hands. “Well, this woman has filled that bin liner over there with mouldy wallpaper from the kitchen.”

“I’ll hire someone to do that for you.”

Something like alarm flashed in her eyes. “I prefer to do it myself.”

“You’re no’ a pampered celebrity?”

Proudly, she surveyed her handiwork. “I can strip with the best of them.”

Didn’t he know it.

Reiver whined and Anjuli looked at him, a worried expression on her face.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rob asked, crouching to give Reiver a scratch.

“I don’t know, but it’s time to call Damien for a checkup,” she murmured.

As long as he didn’t give her one. Rob opened his mouth, then closed his lips over demands that she see the vet only at the clinic. The kettle’s sharp whine disguised his long, deep breath, and by the time Anjuli had put mugs, milk and sugar on the table he was under control. Somewhat.

“Mrs. P. phoned this morning,” Anjuli said, the tiny space between her brows furrowed. “I’m to receive an invoice for works carried out to date. How much...” She paused and sucked in her bottom lip. “How much do you need?”

As soon as he saw Mrs. P. he would tell her to stop making decisions about his client accounts. He would charge Anjuli as per their arrangement and not a day earlier. He didn’t appreciate her interference and neither, it seemed, did Anjuli. Her tense, watchful expression set his back up. Did she think he needed the money or that he was going back on their agreement? “I told her your job is on account and it’s staying that way unless you wish otherwise. I’m a man of my word.”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “It’s fine. I can pay but I’ll need to sell some shares and that takes time. Better to do it in one lump sum to avoid...paying too much tax.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have worried about her not being on the ball with the restoration. “I never thought I’d see the day you kept control over your finances.”

“I didn’t either,” she muttered, and set the coffee in front of him.

She’d made it black, two level spoons of sugar, exactly as he liked it. But he couldn’t drink it. Funny how sometimes the little things cut the deepest. How many times had she made coffee for him in the past? At his parents’ house, during his finals at his flat in Edinburgh. After sex.

God damn it! The past was gone and Anjuli was a different woman. One who spent her time doing DIY instead of singing or—

“Where’s the piano?”

She rubbed her collarbone, drawing his eyes to the rise and fall in her throat. “I put it into storage. All that dust from the upstairs walls being knocked through for the en suites wouldn’t be good for it, not to mention the dust from gutting the kitchen.”

He agreed. “You can’t have under-floor heating by the way. The flagstones are part of the ‘listed features’ so all we’ll do is replace the missing ones. If you want marble-top counters, a big range cooker and everything else you detailed in your kitchen wish list, be prepared to spend another twenty grand when the time comes. We’ll have to order the marble cut in advance.”

A barely audible sigh. “I might decide to leave the kitchen as it is for a while. It’s got a certain charm.”

Rob lifted his eyes to the holes in the wall. “You’ve papered them over with the Saltire. I’d say that’s charming.”

Not so charming, the nationalist article against the influx of English moving to Scotland, “stealing” jobs and housing, applying to Scottish universities and “pushing out” supposedly more worthy academic candidates. Battle re-enactments and newspaper articles reminding the population of the bitter past between the two countries were on the rise. Alarming, the increase in xenophobia, and even more so, the spate of new graffiti on the outside walls. Sassenach, go home.