Free Pitch Imperfect by Elise Alden Page B

forest absorbed his anger. Since when had he been interested in casual sex? That was his brother’s modus operandi. It was time to put Anjuli Carver out of his mind for good. If she phoned to make an appointment he would recommend an architect he knew in Edinburgh, and that would be the end of it.
    * * *
    The cuts on Anjuli’s hand still hurt like hell. She grimaced as Ash ripped off the old plaster and pulled a new one from the pub’s first-aid kit. The empty platform at the back of the Heaverlock Arms’ great room taunted her. She saw herself back up there with Rob.
    “Put one of those over my mouth,” Anjuli said miserably.
    “Haven’t got one big enough, Babes.” Ash sprayed the cut with antiseptic. “When I said ‘apology attack plan’ I guess all you heard was the attack part, huh.”
    Anjuli groaned.
    Ash grinned and handed her a bar cloth. “Don’t feel so bad. The village got a free spectacle and I got a free shift.”
    “I aim to please.”
    Ash went to serve a punter, then made a face as she watched Anjuli “tidy” the bar. “Next time let’s bet on a girlie weekend in Edinburgh.”
    “What’s wrong with rearranging your glassware in an aesthetically pleasing display? And lemon swirls are much prettier than coarsely cut wedges.”
    “Yeah, and you waste half the lemon in the process. Remind me never to go into business with you,” Ash said, then pointed at the stack of newspapers on the floor and gestured at the wall rack. “Stop lowering my margins and do something useful before the punters come in. I’ll be in the back office.” She took a few steps, turned abruptly, then rushed back and tried to pull
The Borders Chronicle
from the pile. Anjuli picked it up before she could. “Don’t look.”
    Anjuli looked. Jaw dropping, she read the front page headlines, mouthing them in a disbelieving whisper. “Former Fiancés Engage in Battle over Wind Farm by Sarah bloody Brunel.”
    The accompanying photo took up most of the front page and showed her, frizzy-haired and red-faced, squaring up to Rob. The article was a word-for-word account of their exchange and—oh God, it painted her character in a palette of rude. Anjuli looked around the pub and stifled a groan. She
had
insulted Rob and therefore she had only herself to blame if some nasty reporter was on hand to write about it. But did she have to do it with such relish?
    “What happened to Ethel Portree?” Anjuli asked. “And who the hell is Sarah Brunel?”
    “Ethel got the chop, and Sarah was the woman sitting with Rob after your performance.”
    Oh. The slender blonde who wouldn’t leave so she could apologise.
    “Best thing to do is ignore it,” Ash counselled.
    Didn’t she know it, and as the night wore on it became easier. A Scotland-Ireland rugby friendly would be on at seven and already she was sweating, running around from one end of the bar to the other. “I wish people would stop asking me about my past life,” she complained to Ash. “It makes me feel like I died and was reincarnated, and nobody told me about it. If anybody asks me to sing again I’ll tell them to organise a séance so I can channel the diva.”
    Ash scanned the bustling pub. “I don’t think they will. Jeffrey Martin thinks you ruined your voice on drugs, Penny Jameson says you’re on voice-deepening hormones for a sex change and Muriel Freeman thinks you’ve developed acute stage fright. They all say you’ve lost that star quality.”
    “Oh? What else do ‘they’ say?”
    Ash considered her for a moment, then sighed. “You might as well hear it from me. It’s all around the village that Sarah Brunel is hot for Rob. She’s not just content to sleep with anything in a kilt anymore, the slutty lass.”
    “Slutty?”
    “That’s the word about town.”
    Anjuli heaved a sigh. Despite her anger at the reporter, and the tightening in her chest at her familiarity with Rob, she had more than enough experience at being unfairly labelled.