To Love, Honour and Disobey by Natalie Anderson Page B

spacious, actually.’ Liar. She’d been too close to him for her nerves. Now they were beyond frayed and almost at break point.
    ‘Come on, Ana. The guy follows you halfway round the world. You can’t have nothing to say.’
    ‘Look,’ Ana said tiredly. ‘It was nothing.’
    Phil pounced. ‘So there was an “it”? Define the “it”.’
    ‘Why do you want to know?’
    ‘Because I’m worried about you!’ He walked and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘You looked washed out.’
    ‘I told you the flight was long.’
    ‘It’s more than the flight.’
    ‘Well, what little there was is finished now.’ Ana sidestepped and moved to the door. ‘Sorry, Phil, but I really am tired.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘Leave it,’ Jack said to Phil.
    But Phil didn’t leave it. ‘I thought you’d come home happier than this.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ She looked at him.
    ‘I thought…’ He frowned. ‘Ana, there’s so obviously something between you and Seb.’
    ‘Something. Yes. We slept together again, Phil—is that what you wanted to know?’
    ‘So now what?’ He looked confused.
    ‘Now nothing.’ She shrugged, not wanting to feel confusion herself. ‘It’s over.’
    But Phil frowned, followed her to the door. ‘Last time you hooked up with him you went away togetherfor a week and when you got back you then disappeared for months . Now you’ve had another week or so away with him—can you blame me for wondering what is going to happen next?’
    ‘Nothing’s going to happen, Phil. We’ve just…scratched the itch. Finished off the unfinished business,’ she said, unable to find a better cliché.
    ‘Can women do that?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well, you know, be so casual? I always thought it was harder for you to take the emotion out of sex.’
    ‘It’s hard for anyone to divorce emotion from the act of love,’ Jack chimed in.
    ‘Oh, please.’ Ana rolled her eyes. ‘It wasn’t an act of love. It was lust. Pleasure. Physical need. Nothing more.’
    Phil and Jack stared. Silent. Sceptical.
    Ana sighed. ‘Goodnight, guys.’ She strode to her room, focusing on one thing only: sleep—blankness of mind, nothing .
    During the day she got busy with work. Went window-shopping. Immersed herself in the smells and sounds and sights of the big city—filling her senses with so much stuff that thoughts of the beach, the sand, the silence and the sex were banished from her mind.
    But at night she tossed and turned and told herself again and again that the itch was all gone.
    Friday she walked into the kitchen where Phil and Jack were opening a bottle of wine for their post-work snifter. ‘Let’s go out to dinner. My treat.’
    ‘Yeah?’ They looked delighted.
    ‘Yeah.’ She held up a pair of shoes she’d oncethought she’d never wear. ‘But if you see me talking to a tall, dark, handsome stranger, come and smack some sense into me, OK?’
    ‘Deal.’ Phil laughed.
    Ana grinned. ‘I need to get out.’
    ‘Yeah, you need to show off that tan.’
    Seb knew the minute she arrived. Of course he’d had his eyes glued to the door so it wasn’t as if she was going to be able to sneak in without him knowing.
    Even so his body seemed to sense it was her the second before she stepped into the bar. Adrenalin zinged along every vein. And unerringly she saw him too—in that first instant. Her brows lifted, something flashed in her eyes but he didn’t have the chance to read it—too soon she’d veiled them, too soon she’d looked away.
    But she sidestepped her way through the other patrons and came over to him. Smile in place. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here. I thought you said you’d forsaken this kind of lifestyle. Aren’t you all about mountain biking and marathons now?’
    He eyed her over the rim of his glass. ‘And I thought you’d be too busy setting up the business to have time to socialise.’
    ‘No. I can do social as well. I feel quite refreshed after Africa.’
    She looked it too, damn her.