Your Room or Mine? by Charlotte Phillips Page B

did this mean? Did he want to take things to the next level? The thought made her stomach flutter with excitement that she couldn’t acknowledge. She glanced down at herself as she climbed into the pristine Maserati. At least she wasn’t in her steel toe-caps. She shook away the self-consciousness.
    It was just a drink. It meant nothing.

    ****

    â€˜Order whatever you like,’ he said, taking her right back to that first night in the hotel restaurant.
    â€˜What’s this about, Oliver,’ she said. ‘You didn’t need to do this, you know. I don’t need a steak dinner to say thank you, it was a business transaction.’
    â€˜It’s our last night,’ he said, putting into words what they both knew.
    â€˜And you wanted to signify that in some way?’ She took a sip of her drink. Had she really thought this might mean something? Why did she even want it to? She forked up some fries and swallowed them quickly to stop the stupid churning in her stomach. This was playing out exactly as it was meant to. As they’d
both
meant it to from the start.
    â€˜I thought it might be nice.’ His face was inscrutable, his tone stilted.
    Nice? The easy banter they’d developed was missing, presumed dead. And didn’t that make sense? Easy banter and drinks in pubs didn’t sit well between them because those things belonged to people in proper full relationships. Weeks on and they were basically still living that one-night-stand. Their relationship began with sex, and that was how it was going to end. Apparently there was no room for anything more than that between them.
    She realised with a flash of clarity what this whole encounter had really been about for her.
    â€˜Maybe it’s a good thing that this is ending,’ she ventured. ‘I’ve got my head straight now. All this time I’ve been thinking this thing between us has been about Joe. Maybe I felt like I was owed some fun, maybe I wanted to be the one playing the game for a change. But these last few weeks I’ve been thinking more and more about my parents too and that’s unusual for me because we’re not close.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe this whole fling has had more to do with them than with Joe.’
    He watched her as she toyed with her wine glass. Fidgeting. Uncomfortable. Oliver Forbes didn’t do shoulders to cry on or sympathetic ears. He should be making a swift exit right now before he got sucked into anyone else’s problems. What the hell had he been thinking, taking her out for a drink, moving the goalposts? He couldn’t do full-on relationships, already the ease of their company was unravelling. If he let this go further, let them get closer beyond that physical connection, how long would it be before he walked away and hurt her?
    â€˜How do you mean?’
    â€˜Joe wasn’t right for me,’ she said. I think I even knew that before his cheating smacked me between the eyes. I wanted that relationship to work, Oliver, I wanted to be part of a couple where both of us gave everything to the partnership, where we were a team. My father had a string of affairs and my mum turned a blind eye. One of them even turned up at the house once, when I was about ten. She had blonde curly hair and she wore a lot of make-up. And do you know what my mother did?’
    He shook his head, thinking how confusing that must have been for a kid.
    â€˜She invited her in and made tea.’ She uttered a strangled little laugh that tugged at his heart and before he could think about it he reached out and squeezed her hand.
    â€˜When I found out about Joe I threw him out of my flat. I grabbed as much of his stuff as I could and lobbed it into the street after him. The last thing I gave a damn about was what people might think. But she didn’t want the neighbours to gossip.’
    â€˜Perhaps she was staying put for you,’ he said. ‘Trying to give you a stable