Playing by the Rules by Imelda Evans Page B

fists.
    Kate didn’t know what she had expected. She had been too preoccupied by her own feelings to consider his at all. But it wasn’t this. Suddenly, she felt the need to sit down. She sank onto the box he had vacated and stared at his back while she tried to collect her thoughts.
    ‘Are you saying that all that was true?’
    Josh turned back to face her, still scowling.
    ‘What?’
    Kate swallowed a bigger-than-goldfish-sized lump that had appeared in her throat.
Where was a glass of champagne when you needed it
?
    ‘All that stuff you said about . . . before. When I was at school. Was that . . . true?’
    Josh’s hands uncurled and the scowl faded from his face.
    ‘But I thought you . . . Are you saying that you think I made all that up?’
    ‘Yes? No? Maybe?’ Kate shrugged miserably.
    Josh scratched his head.
    ‘Kate, I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. You must think that I am the best bullshitter in the known universe. Do you honestly think I could have made all that up on the spur of the moment? Or do you think I went into training for tonight? Do I have to remind you that, until this morning, I didn’t even know you were in the country?’ He paused, for another deep breath, then sat down on the box next to hers and looked her in the eye.
    ‘I thought . . . Obviously, I thought wrong. And I’ve upset you. Which I didn’t mean to do. So, for the record, let me be clear. Everything I said tonight is true. Or mostly, anyway. Obviously, we aren’t actually engaged. And I’ll admit I exaggerated a little, to make it a better story. But it was all based on what really happened.’
    ‘Truly?’ Kate asked, still not quite ready to believe.
    ‘Truly.’
    Kate gulped down another throat lump.
    ‘So . . . you really did fall in love with me when I was fifteen?’
    ‘I really did.’ He smiled at her. ‘But do you really need to ask? I always thought you knew!’
    Kate gave him a look.
    ‘How could I know? Why would I ever suspect that
you
would be in love with
me
? When you were so . . .’ She pulled up just in time to stop herself spelling it out: wonderful, sophisticated, interesting, gorgeous.
    ‘So what, Kate?’
    ‘Much older,’ she replied, in what was possibly her first ever successful comeback to teasing. Being an only child hadn’t given her many defences against it. Josh smiled, acknowledging the squashing, and answered the question.
    ‘Didn’t you wonder why I hung around all the time when you were at our house?’
    ‘Jo and I thought that was because your mum made you promise to look after us when she wasn’t there. Or because you were bored.’
    He shook his head.
    ‘No, that wasn’t it. Well, now that you mention it, I probably was bored, but that’s not why I hung around.’
    Kate shook her head, too, at the ridiculous, tragic drama of teenagers. If this was true, they’d both been blind. Too caught up in their own insecurities to see what was under their noses. But she wasn’t quite ready to share her side of that blindness. Not yet. There were more questions that needed answering.
    ‘And you really left the country because of a broken heart? Broken over me?’
    Josh grinned at her. ‘That’s one of the places I exaggerated a little. I didn’t leave
because
it was broken. I left because I was restless and wanted to see the world and I had the money to do it. But it was definitely at least a little broken. I didn’t make that up. Come on, Kate . . . would I lie to you?’
    He tilted his head and batted his eyelashes in such an outrageous way that she couldn’t help smiling. But in spite of his nonsense, she was starting to believe him. Except . . .
    ‘Why did you tell them that story?’
    Josh looked nonplussed, as well he might. Embarrassment was never good for her clarity, and in this case, she was also distracted by his fathomless chocolate eyes, his mouth, the curl of hair straying into his right ear and the tiny scar