Off the Record, page 3
They’d probably spent hundreds of hours in some version of this setup. On the grass slope behind their school. Overlooking the London skyline on Hampstead Heath. On her narrow bed at university, his long legs dangling over the edge. Just two weeks ago at his flat, on the floor in front of the TV, their plan to watch an edgy political documentary devolving into a heartfelt debate about who should win a particularly ridiculous reality program.
“I’m just not the relationship type. Remember that guy I was seeing—Marcus?”
“The snowboarder.” Ebon knew exactly who she meant, and could recall in detail the photos she’d posted of their romantic week in the Swiss Alps.
“He was practically perfect. Great job in the City, from a nice family in Suffolk, smart, funny, charming, the full package. But as soon as he started hinting about the future, I got cold feet. He asked me to move in and I said we should split up instead.”
“Maybe that was just him,” Ebon countered, but Sophie shook her head.
“He made me realize it was me, and had been me all along. I’m not interested in committing to someone, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be. It just feels so…limiting.”
Ebon nodded, though he didn’t agree. This wasn’t the first time Sophie had mentioned her distaste for marriage, but she’d never been so definite. He knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t have arrived at this decision lightly—or that he had any chance of talking her out of it.
She leaned forward and gave his thigh a quick squeeze. “You know I fancy the hell out of you. If you weren’t so important to me, I’d bonk your brains out and say screw the consequences. As it is, I rather like having you around.”
“Thanks,” he said dryly.
She rolled her eyes. “As if you’re not in a hurry to catch up to your brothers. You’ve been sulking nearly non-stop since Oren got engaged and Asher paired off.”
“Only because I don’t want to be on the hook to buy two wedding suits in the next year.” He pushed up off his elbows, discomfited that she’d caught on to the wistful loneliness he’d been nursing since Asher had run off to Somalia to chase after the woman he loved—and his equally loved-up oldest brother, Oren, had sanctioned the trip.
She wasn’t wrong. Watching his brothers fall in love in quick succession had given his largely ignored love life unexpected urgency. He supposed he’d never really taken it seriously, not with Sophie on the distant horizon, the fairy-tale happy ending he hadn’t quite let go of.
He had to cut that cord, once and for all. She could’ve had him right now, could’ve had every piece and part of him.
Instead, she’d drawn a firm line. He was her lifelong friend, not her lover, and her lovers would never be lifelong.
She couldn’t make the message any clearer. Time he finally heard it.
“I’m shattered,” he announced, cutting off whatever other unwelcome insights into his reluctant singlehood Sophie had been about to share.
To his relief, Sophie stood up and began packing up her laptop, evidently also ready for this long, strange evening to end.
“You’re on the eight o’clock to Euston, right?”
He nodded. “Another early start to another busy day.”
“Truth never sleeps.” She shouldered her laptop bag, draped her coat over her arm, and picked up her purse. “I’ve got a breakfast meeting, so I’ll go straight to the station. See you on the train?”
“I’ll save you a seat.”
He followed her across the room and opened the door. She flashed him one of those bright, spirit-lifting smiles he’d been addicted to for years.
“’Night, Ebon.”
“See you tomorrow.”
She took off down the hall and he closed the door, unsure whether to feel embarrassed or disappointed or simply resigned. Happy to retain her friendship? Grateful for the cheeky grope under her dress?
“Forget it,” he muttered as he took a seat in front of his laptop, and he meant everything. Forget tonight. Forget any someday chance with Sophie.
Forget the stupid, impossible fantasy he’d been clinging to for way too long.
Chapter Three
“There you are. I’ve been wandering up and down this train for ages. No idea how I missed you.”
Sophie cringed inwardly as Ebon slid into the opposite seat without waiting for an invitation. He slung his rucksack on the plastic table separating them and pulled out his laptop.
No getting away from him now.
“Sorry, I couldn’t find you so I grabbed this table while I could.” In truth, she hadn’t even looked for him. She’d taken the first empty seat she’d spotted, then buried her head in her laptop so she’d have an excuse not to flag him down if he walked past.
“Productive breakfast meeting?”
“What?” Belatedly, she remembered the excuse she’d given to get out of sharing a taxi to the station that morning. “Oh, yes. Sort of.”
Ebon murmured distracted approval, already engaged in whatever filled the screen in front of him. She let her own gaze drift unseeingly to the half-finished article she’d been working on, her thoughts flung all the way back to last night.
As soon as she’d closed the door to her hotel room, she’d dropped everything on the floor, flopped back on the bed, shoved her hand into her tights, and brought herself to a swift, jerking climax, finally quieting the hammering need that had driven her so dangerously close to making an enormous mistake.
And what a spectacular fuck-up sleeping with him would’ve been. Although she’d deliberately failed to mention that he was the only man with whom a long-term relationship seemed appealing rather than horrifying, she wasn’t lying when she said she wasn’t the committing kind. She wasn’t sure whether it was self-sabotage, or poor judgment, or simply a genetic legacy of emotional chaos inherited from her mother, but ever since her first kiss with David Lowenthal in the car park outside his bar mitzvah was interrupted by his irate aunt Leora, every vaguely romantic encounter she’d had ended in disaster.
She couldn’t risk her friendship with Ebon, no matter how desperately she yearned for more from him. They’d been down that road once before, and nothing good had come of it. One night of admittedly unparalleled sex followed by weeks and weeks of awkwardness, uncertainty, and distance that made her realize just how essential he was in her life.
Even though she’d stopped him last night, she still felt some of that distance now.
She stole a glance at him over the edge of her laptop. He frowned in concentration, forehead creased over his black-rimmed glasses.
She hoped he wasn’t angry with her, nearly asked him out loud, but bit her tongue just in time. He had every right. She’d given him a big green light, then switched to red so abruptly he’d had to slam on the brakes.
She wished she could tell him it wasn’t personal, but that would be a lie, and one she doubted would soothe the sting of what she was sure he saw as her rejection. Would he really believe she was capable of no-strings, no-emotions sex with every other man in the world except him? Put like that, it sounded preposterous even to her, and she knew it was the truth.
Sophie smothered a sigh as she forced her vision into focus, the mostly empty white page on her screen quietly demanding her attention. Ebon would need time, just like she’d needed space this morning. Best give it to him, and then do her absolute damnedest never to paint them into a corner like this again.
They typed in miserable silence for a while, her hasty, guilty glances in his direction occasionally meeting a matching one from his side. But instead of admitting they were both feeling crap about the night before, they tucked their gazes behind their screens, escaping into work to avoid real life.
By the time the train stopped at the first station in the London commuter belt, Sophie had written two articles, drafted a think piece, outlined another three ideas, and answered all the non-urgent e-mails that had been piling up in her inbox for weeks. Completely out of distractions, and with no sign of thaw in the icy silence between her and Ebon, she heaved a bone-deep sigh and pulled up the comparison website she’d bookmarked. Time for her annual hunt for the best gas and electricity tariffs.
She’d barely begun the tedious process of scrolling through energy suppliers when a male and female couple in their early twenties stopped beside the table.
“Do you mind moving across so we can sit together?” the woman asked in a tone that was more insistent than inquiring.
Sophie took in her indignantly crossed arms, impatiently snapped gum, and a daring expression that practically begged for a fight.
“Sure,” Sophie said smoothly, gathering up her laptop and shifting to the seat beside Ebon.
She was still adjusting her laptop screen when the woman turned squarely to the man Sophie presumed was her boyfriend and stuck a sharp-looking fingernail in his face.
“And another thing, if one more of these so-called lads’ rugby nights ends in a strip club, I swear to God I’ll—”
“It wasn’t a strip club,” the boyfriend muttered.
“Oh really? Then how is it Lisa saw you stumbling out of one in Soho just last week?”
The boyfriend scoffed. “Lisa doesn’t know what she’s on about. She wouldn’t know a strip club if she fell over one.”
“Lisa’s my friend, and she ruddy well knows the difference between the quiet pub you said you were going to and a well-known strip joint.”
Sophie tried to tune out their argument and concentrate on reducing her gas bill. This was exactly the kind of scenario she and Ebon would normally laugh about together, but he hadn’t so much as flicked a glance her way when she’d moved over.
This supplier offered the first month free for new customers, but that one—
“If your mother wasn’t always—”
“Excuse me, you leave my mother out of this, or—”
The volume of the argument on the other side of the table began to attract the interest of other people on the train. Sophie gritted her teeth and was counting the stops left before Euston when her phone pinged with a message.
Gratefully she swept it up, her heart beating a little harder when she saw it was from Ebon.
I blame her mother. Interfering know-it-all.
She bit her lip to stop her grin from spreading ear to ear. A furtive glance showed Ebon was stony-faced, his expression completely impassive as he watched the screen of his phone.
This is 100% Lisa’s fault, she replied. Why’s she getting involved? Seems awfully coincidental that she passed the strip club at the exact moment he was leaving.
Probably jealous. Trying to steal that stunning specimen of masculine perfection.
Sophie covered her mouth, just managing to turn a blurting laugh into a fake cough. Said specimen had his hand between his legs, giving his balls a vigorous scratch.
The woman looked at her sharply, then quickly returned her attention to her verbal assault on her boyfriend.
Maybe you’re right. Relationships are overrated.
Her breath caught as she read Ebon’s text. He wouldn’t pretend last night hadn’t happened, but she was pretty sure this was his way of telling her it was okay, that he understood.
Hate to say I told you so, she typed back, trying to shove her emotions into alignment with the flippant retort. Her head knew full well that the only way to keep Ebon close was to keep her hands to herself, and if that meant watching her best friend fall in love with another woman, so be it. Her unhelpfully wistful heart needed to fall into line.
The couple opposite fell into tense silence, the boyfriend’s gaze fixed on the window, the woman staring daggers in Sophie’s general direction.
If looks could kill, this lady would’ve topped me two stations ago, she texted, steering the subject back to the place where they’d recovered their friendly accord.
Don’t make eye contact. She’ll turn you to stone.
I’d feel safer in statue form at this point.
Only ten minutes to Euston. I’ll take you out to lunch if you survive that long, he wrote, and then added, Unless you’ve got something to rush off to.
She had plenty to rush off to once this train stopped in London. Her editor was waiting for her in the office, ready to debrief about the conference and get the schedule of follow-up stories set for the next few days. A quick glance at her laptop showed her freshly emptied inbox already piling up again. Whenever she finished with work, she had an exhaustive list of overdue personal admin items to cross off—dry cleaning to pick up, long-ignored post to sort through, not to mention her cupboards had reached a scorched-earth level of barrenness.
Nothing that can’t wait. Sushi?
It’s a date.
She replied with a sashimi emoji, then killed the screen and tucked her phone back into her purse, hiding her delighted smile behind her laptop.
She wouldn’t let herself have all of him, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t enjoy whatever pieces she could get.
Chapter Four
Ebon climbed flight after flight of narrow, rickety stairs, scanning the numbers on the doors as he went. The buzzer hadn’t responded to his forceful presses, so he’d taken a chance, discovered the front entrance wasn’t locked, and proceeded inside.
He didn’t know whether the inhabitants of flat 5C would warmly receive him—or if they were in at all—but he loved an opportunity for a little doorstep reporting. Nothing yielded results like the element of surprise combined with his unique brand of charm.
He guessed the council-built block was mostly comprised of privately let flats, judging by the poor state of repair in the stairwell and the absence of any council-branded notices. He should know—he’d spent his childhood bouncing from one such block to another in Tottenham.
Never successful in their bids for council housing, his Ukrainian parents were at the mercy of a succession of private landlords who had no qualms about letting a family of five freeze through a winter with a broken boiler, wipe down damp-ridden walls three times a day, or evict them altogether to take advantage of rising London house prices and put the property up for sale.
Thankfully their housing situation had improved in line with his father’s career progression, and the summer before Ebon started sixth form, they’d left Tottenham for the leafy streets of Golders Green. He still had vivid memories of dripping ceilings, needle-strewn playgrounds, and the ever-present fear of eviction, though, and an old discomfort slithered up his spine as he reached the top floor.
He found flat 5C at the end of the top-floor hallway, past one door with a strong cannabis smell leaking around the edges and another with what looked like a months-old Christmas wreath hanging lopsidedly. He checked his notes one last time—Miroslava Stehlik, from Slovakia, until recently a full-time maid in the home of a prominent MP—and then knocked on the door.
He heard the faint murmur of female voices inside, and then the door opened a crack to reveal an extraordinarily pretty young woman with wide-set eyes and an elfin nose. She squinted at him suspiciously.
“Miss Stehlik, I’m Ebon Brody from the Phoenix.” He held up his press badge. “I wondered if you could spare a few minutes to talk to me about your former employer.”
Her squint became a frown. “Why?”
“I’m leading an investigation into allegations of…actually, do you mind if I come in? I’d like to be discreet, for your sake.”
She took the badge from his hand and studied it before passing it back. “The Phoenix. Not the Star and Herald?”
Sophie’s paper. His newshound’s instinct prickled with alarm. “No. Why do you ask?”
“I’m confused,” she told him, her English thickly accented. “You are working together?”
“I’m not working with anyone. Why? Who else has been to see you?”
Miroslava opened the door wider and stepped aside, giving him a clear view through the tiny flat into the living room.
Where Sophie Caplan perched on the edge of the couch.
“Bollocks,” he muttered under his breath, his heart plummeting into the pit of his stomach so it felt like the Lusitania sat on the floor of his gut.
Sophie met his gaze across the room, her expression giving nothing away. Miroslava looked warily between the two of them as Sophie slowly rose from her seat on the couch.
“You know her?” she asked.
“Yes,” he confirmed grimly. “I know her.”
Ebon tried desperately to make sense of the situation, but his brain instead unhelpfully repeated, shit, shit, shit. He was utterly without the capacity to begin to tackle the myriad questions hammering inside his skull, like why was Sophie here? How had she found Miroslava? Was she chasing the same story he was? And what the hell would he do about it if so?
Actually, that last question he could answer. No matter how much he wanted Sophie—which, pathetically, was even more now she’d been clear their future romantic potential was zero—nothing came between him and a scoop.
Especially not a brilliant, alluring, maddeningly unattainable woman.
Just over a week had passed since their aborted tryst in the hotel and, despite her clear insistence to the contrary, he’d thought of little else beyond where, how, and in what order he wanted to touch her. No amount of guilty, furtive self-relief had diluted her dominance in his thoughts so he’d buried himself in work, spending long hours in the chaste confines of his office.
The upside was he’d made more progress on this story in a few days than he had in weeks.
The downside was he still thought about Sophie every spare minute he had—and she’d evidently taken up position right in the middle of the one area of his life that had until now been safely Sophie-free.
“Ebon.” She greeted him smoothly, with a smile that would’ve looked relaxed and unbothered to the casual onlooker, but which he knew to be absolutely fake. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
