‘Your sister?’ I purse my lips in anticipation. ‘Huh.’

‘Baby sister,’ Matt clarifies, as though this is important.

‘Any actual girlfriend here tonight I should know about?’

‘Not a one.’

‘Or back at home? At her apartment? Getting legless with the rest of Broad Street?’

‘No. No. And no.’ He grins, having now cottoned on to my game. ‘There’s no girlfriend or significant other. Period.’

‘Ri-gh-t.’ I digest this rather glorious information. ‘And you don’t hold grudges, it seems.’

‘Life’s too short for that nonsense.’

I bite my lip coyly. ‘Then in that case… how would you like me to show you round Birmingham?’

Matt throws back his head and laughs loudly. ‘That would be great.’

‘Excellent. Err, I might need your number again.’

‘I can’t believe you deleted it. That’s harsh.’

‘I’m sorry, I was—’

‘I’m kidding.’ He gives me a flirty nudge, which sends a tingling sensation right through my body. ‘Got your phone handy?’

I pull out my phone and we exchange numbers.

‘Right then,’ says Matt. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you. Hopefully go better than last time.’

I flush with embarrassment. I can’t blame him for wondering if I’ll actually follow through this time. Even though he’s joking, I feel the need to reassure him. ‘I’ll be in touch after the weekend. I mean it this time.’

He fixes me with his spellbinding gaze once more. ‘I look forward to hearing from you, Alex.’

My stomach responds by melting into a little puddle. Matt walks off and returns to his companions. He says something in response to their questioning looks, then his sister looks across and gives me a friendly smile, which I tentatively return.

‘Oh my goodness, what just happened?’ Sasha suddenly rushes across to me. ‘I’ve been waiting over there because I didn’t want to interrupt and risk ruining things for you.’

I give her a mischievous smile. ‘The basic run-down: that’s his sister, he’s still single and we’re going on a date.’

‘A-ma-zing.’ Sasha bounces on her toes and claps her hands excitedly. ‘Let’s get one more drink and you can tell me everything.’

Chapter 19

By the time Monday rolls round, I’m shattered and almost dragging myself to work. I’ve used Sasha’s visit as an experiment, and now have results, which are that I really need some rest at the weekends. The up-side, though, is that I coped much better than I expected. I can feel reasonably confident about having a life again, as long as I don’t go at it like I do in the office. And that’s fine. I can settle for ‘work hard, play moderately’.

Sasha and I certainly made the most of our time together. As a follow-on from Friday night, we spent Saturday morning wandering round the impressive interior of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, with its ornamental ironwork, eye-catching high ceilings and colourful mosaicked floors. We then made a pit stop at the museum’s Edwardian Tearooms for a scrumptious afternoon tea, before going shopping at the Bullring – which included an inordinate amount of time spent in Selfridges. The evening was spent on the couch in front of an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller. On Sunday, we checked out the stylish new library at Centenary Square, before taking a trip to Cadbury World (an obvious choice for the mature adults that we are). Then I saw Sasha onto her six o’clock train back to Glasgow.