CHAPTER THREE

      I’M NOT YOUR GIRL.

      Lucinda’s words from earlier that day bounced off the inside of Angus’s skull like echoes inside a bell tower.

      He hadn’t meant anything by it. She knew it, too. It wasn’t like her to be so pedantic.

      A voice that had emerged from the swampier parts of Angus’s subconscious since he’d sat down at the bar around the corner from work said, It’s also not like her to go on a dirty weekend with some guy you’ve never heard of.

      A hand slapped down hard on Angus’s shoulder, followed by Fitz’s voice. “You look like hell.”

      Angus grabbed his cousin’s fingers and pried them off his shoulder. “Appreciate it.”

      “I, on the other hand, am not sure how anyone survives a single day without getting a load of my handsome mug.”

      As he dragged out the stool next to Angus, Fitz caught the eye of the bartender, tapping Angus’s drink and asking for one of the same. “So, what’s the haps?”

      “Does a man need a reason to have a drink with his favourite cousin?”

      Fitz snorted. “Only cousin. And, yes, I don’t think you’ve wasted a single minute in your entire adult life. Then there’s the dark cloud hovering ominously over your head, and the fact your leg looks ready to take off…”

      Angus looked down. His left leg was shaking so hard it all but crackled with excess energy. He stopped, only to find he couldn’t, so gave up and let it jiggle for all it was worth.

      “Did someone have a better idea than you at work?” Fitz asked.

      Angus shot him a look.

      “You’re right. What was I thinking? So what? Designers no longer making suits? The cobblers of Spain all out of shoes? Lucinda mad at you?”

      Before he could stop it, Angus felt a tightening around his left eye.

      Fitz let go a long, high whistle between his teeth. “So, it’s the lovely Lucinda who has you hunched melancholically over your scotch. Interesting. What did you do?”

      “I didn’t do anything.”

      Fitz snorted. “So what didn’t you do? I know you didn’t miss her birthday, what with the charming gift-a-palooza thing you have going between you. So what?” Fitz slammed a hand against his chest. “Was there another…event? Dare I say, Christmas party?”

      A muscle flickered in Angus’s jaw, while every other muscle in his body clenched. Hard. His glass paused before it hit his lips. When the liquid finally spilled down his throat, he relished the burn. “Nothing happened at that damn Christmas party, as I’ve told you a thousand times.”

      Yet, every time that night came up, something slippery and uncontrolled uncoiled within him.

      “I could say the suspense is killing me, but the truth is I’m actually beginning to bore of—”

      “Lucinda’s gone and got herself a new man and they are going away together this weekend.”

      Fitz stilled, then burst into laughter. “That’s it? That’s why you look like your doctor just gave you bad news? Because Lucinda has a boyfriend?”

      Angus shook his head. He had no better answer.

      “Come on, mate. She’s bright, bold and knows more dirty jokes than any man I know. It’s more of a mystery why she hasn’t been snapped up already.”

      Angus gripped more tightly to his glass.

      He’d thought about this—about why he was reacting the way he was. It wasn’t the fact that she was seeing someone. Or even that she hadn’t told him about it till now. He felt as if his tendons had frozen solid because she had never come close to introducing any man in her life to her son.

      Well, his subconscious perked up and responded, apart from you.

      That was different, he shot back.

      The day he’d met Sonny he’d felt as if he’d been hit with a lightning bolt: this was his opportunity to be, for another kid, the kind of man he’d desperately needed in his own life at the same age. A man to encourage his curiosity, to welcome his boisterous side, teach him how to stand up for himself in the playground and to appreciate his mother.

      When the day came that Lucinda introduced Sonny to a man in her life, the kid would be smart enough to understand what that meant. And, once that door was opened for Sonny, it could never fully be closed again.

      It was his duty to make sure she realised how formative such a moment would be. To make sure, before she did anything she couldn’t take back, that she was sure.

      “The real question is,” Fitz intoned, “why hasn’t she nabbed herself a long-term fella? All she’d have to do is snap her fingers. The woman is smoking hot. Hair like a dark-chocolate waterfall. Skin like Italian marble. Those big, brown cow eyes that can see right into the depths of your deeply charred soul.”

      “You might want to tone it down.”

      “What? The smoking hot thing?” Fitz was clearly on a roll. “I’m not trying it on. It’s an empirical fact. You must be aware that your assistant is as good as it gets. Say it out loud so I know you are a human man: Lucinda Starling is a glorious, gumptious, gorgeous specimen of womanhood.”

      Angus took a long, slow sip of his drink, only to find he could no longer taste it.

      Fitz tapped a finger against his lips. “No? Too busy drinking? Well, I’ll say it—for a woman like that, every weekend ought to be a dirty weekend.”

      Angus turned to Fitz. Everything in him clenched, as if readying to take a swing.

      By the glint in Fitz’s eye, he knew it. Hell, he’d have welcomed it. As if it would prove a point. A point Angus had no intention of helping him make.

      “Enough,” Angus managed through gritted teeth. “You’re talking about someone’s mother.”

      At that, Fitz burst out laughing. He laughed until he had to grip the bar so as not to fall off his stool. “Man, you kill me. I gifted you so many other ways to defend her and that’s