Free Beautiful Losers: A Novel of Suspense by Eve Seymour

you understand. Look, I have to go … What? The usual routine, I guess … Yes, now I really have to go. It’s not a good time. See you on Monday. Cheers.”
    Chris walked back into the kitchen. I issued a breezy smile. “Andy,” he said.
    â€œWhat did he want?”
    â€œChecking up on dates for parent-teacher evenings. He seems to have lost his sheet.”
    â€œFunny, I thought he’d have it all recorded on his laptop.”
    â€œYou know Andy.”
    I thought Chris’s accompanying smile was lame. I didn’t buy it.
    Later, while Chris sat at the kitchen table marking essays, I opened a crisp white sauvignon and drank while I cooked. The cottage was as quiet as air. I welcomed it.
    On impulse, pushing a saucepan away from the gas, I went over to Chris and slid my arms around his neck. He carried on marking, his handwriting reminding me of my father’s, stylish but impossible to read. My mouth nibbled the top of his ear.
    â€œI have to get these done,” he said pointedly.
    â€œNot now.” I laughed, tousling his hair.
    â€œDon’t.” He pulled away. Something deep inside froze. A memory of rejection, long buried, threatened to push through into the present. I smothered it. He touched my arm. “Sorry, Kim, the heat is making me crabby.”
    I drew up a chair and forced a sympathetic smile to prove that I wasn’t really hurt or alarmed. “Are you okay?” It sounded ridiculous— of course he wasn’t. Neither was I, if I were honest.
    He rubbed his eyes and fixed on the papers in front of him.
    A rush of irritation coursed through me. Whoever was playing with my life was having a destructive impact on both of us. “What if I tried to get a job closer to home?”
    Chris started. “Doing what?” We both knew that Bristol, almost a hundred and twenty miles away, was about the nearest I could get for my particular line of work. He put his pen down. “Is this because of what’s happened, or because that’s what you really want?”
    My stomach creased with disappointment. I’d wanted him to be ecstatic. I longed for him to be too delighted to challenge it. Shit, I thought, is this my way of asking him to commit, the thing that most women seemed to need from the man in their lives? I backtracked quicker than a politician exposed in a fierce debate. “It was only an idea. I haven’t thought it through. Silly of me.”
    He leant over and crooked a knuckle under my chin. His eyes were level with mine. Blood and heat surged through my temple. The rest of me was cold.
    â€œI don’t want you to rush into changing everything for the wrong reason,” he said.
    â€œI understand.”
    He nodded. His eyes seemed more grey than blue.
    â€œI expect he’ll eventually lose interest and go away.” I didn’t believe a word of what I said. Whoever it was had latched on. I was rapidly becoming the centre of his universe. Even if he stepped things up and I involved the police and they had a word with him, it wouldn’t alter his behaviour.
    The knuckle tightened. A tense expression entered Chris’s face, but it was gone so quickly I thought I’d imagined it.
    â€œThink about any decision carefully, yeah?”
    I inclined towards him, my heart dancing in my chest, and lightly kissed his mouth. “I will.”

twelve
    And I did. All the way in the car early the next morning, I thought of nothing else. I told myself that Chris was protective of me. He didn’t want me to make any decisions based on a knee-jerk reaction. I’d grown up under the guardianship of men, so this type of response was normal to me. In a more sober frame of mind, I was also taken aback by my off-the-wall suggestion. It wasn’t like me to be impulsive.
    I arrived back in Cheltenham shortly before eight in the morning. Home there was a second-floor apartment in Lansdown, a short hop from