His kiss was soft and gentle, at first, then firmer. Jo could feel her body melt under his touch. This kiss was as exquisite as she had imagined it would be and she told herself it was okay to just let go of her reserves and enjoy the sensations pulsing through her body. She had just started to lean into it when Ewan pulled back.

‘I’ve been wanting to do that all day,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For everything.’

Jo prepared herself for another kiss. Closed her eyes and thought of how much she craved it. How much she craved him. But, instead, he tipped an imaginary hat in her direction.

‘Sleep well,’ he said, before he turned and walked on towards his own suite.

Stunned, Jo felt completely disorientated as she closed her door and climbed into bed, pretty sure it would be another restless night.

27

Up

Jo woke with her phone still in her hand. She squinted at her phone and saw it was gone two. After Ewan had left her, with her lips feeling bruised and her head feeling fuzzy, she had briefly considered sending him a message. She wondered if she should invite him to come back and kiss her again, perhaps. Or ask him to explain what had just happened. Where did it leave them? Would breakfast be horribly awkward in the morning?

She was momentarily relieved to find that she hadn’t sent him a message. But, she realised with a start, she didn’t need to wait until the morning for things to be awkward. They already were. His kiss had been so unexpected, and while he clearly had snogging prowess, she simply didn’t understand why he had walked away from her just as she had started to respond to him.

She had done her very best to keep things professional all day. She had truly believed that she had and that he respected her as a fellow writer. They had achieved so much in the last few hours and now? Now, it was messy.

Her head was jumbled and a little hazy from the wine she’d had to drink and she was just tired of trying to work out why people behaved the way they did.

She didn’t even have the energy to call or message her friends. She stared at her phone and looked at their names, thought of how they all had it together, when again she seemed to have got mixed up in a weird situation.

Her eyes were drawn to the lengthy message Lorcan had sent her just before she had gone to the bar. She wished she felt she could call him because he would know what to say. His life was in a similar state of flux, but then would he only tell her ‘I told you so’ when she confessed that Ewan had kissed her?