‘I don’t play nowadays, but that doesn’t mean I can’t play.’
‘So I’ve just witnessed. Misspent youth?’ He quirked an eyebrow.
‘You could say that.’
Her tone was casual. Perhaps too casual.
‘Sounds intriguing.’
‘It isn’t,’ she bit out, and he hated it that there was such a divide between them now. Especially when he knew he was the one who had created it, with that kiss the other night.
He should walk away. But not for the first time he stayed still instead. ‘I owe you an apology.’
She grimaced.
‘I should not have kissed you the other night. Perhaps I shouldn’t have even taken you there.’
It was as if a hurricane was raging around them, but in the eye of it there was simply stillness. A hush.
‘You didn’t force my hand,’ she said at length, gritting her teeth. ‘And at least I now know where we stand. What you really think of me.’
‘What I really think of you?’ He frowned, but she merely turned away.
Clearly Effie didn’t want to elaborate, and he tried to convince himself that he didn’t care. This was exactly what he’d spent the last few hours repeating to himself. It...she...wasn’t his business. When it came to Effie there wasn’t something clawing inside him, desperate to find its way out.
But, despite everything he’d thought during that exhilarating drive, nothing compared to this unexpected wallop of insatiable need. This urge to learn more about this surprisingly enigmatic woman, even as a part of him knew she would never tell him.
‘Effie, I shouldn’t have kissed you because of my reasons. Nothing to do with you. Not really.’
‘Is this the old it’s not me, it’s you?’ She turned on him instantly, her voice a little too bright, too high, too tight. ‘Only I’ve heard that a hundred times before.’
He wasn’t prepared for the jealousy which sliced through him.
‘Is that why you reacted the way you did? And why you don’t date? Because some idiot bloke—Nell’s father, maybe—once used that cliché and hurt you?’
‘You think this is about some guy?’ She shook her head incredulously. ‘That I would carry around something so banal and frankly inconsequential for thirteen years?’
‘Then what?’
She stared at him, and then suddenly she wasn’t seeing him any more—she was staring right through him.
‘What is it that I don’t understand about you, Effie?’ he asked softly. ‘You’re intelligent and driven and beautiful. You’re career-minded and you have Nell—I know that—but why are you so insistent on doing everything alone? On making sure no one ever gets close? You get more than your fair share of male attention but you shut every bit of it down before you can even think about giving it a chance.’
She flattened her lips together, clearly not about to answer him. He knew if he pushed her she would only shut down all the faster.
‘I’ll leave you to your game,’ he managed softly, turning around to leave. Pretending that, for all the difficult things he’d had to do in his life, walking away from Effie wasn’t one of the hardest.
Whether it was the hour, or the quiet, or the windowless nature of the games den which made it feel as if they were totally disconnected from the rest of the world, he couldn’t be sure. But he heard her as she carefully placed the pool cue down on the table.
‘Tak, wait.’
He turned and came back down a couple of steps. Effie was staring at the rich burgundy baize and it took Herculean strength for him not to speak. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to know something about a woman so badly. So desperately. But she had to open up to him voluntarily. If he pushed her then she was likely to shut down again.
For long moments the quiet swirled around them, like the soft artificial smoke rising on the stage in one of the shows he’d taken his mother to see during her visits.
Tak had a feeling they were the only times Mama had got to do something she liked for a change. Even now his father would never deign to give her an hour of his time for something he termed so terminally dull.
‘I’m sorry.’ Effie seemed to brace herself. ‘It’s more about my childhood than some stupid lad—it wasn’t exactly conventional. Anyway, it was wrong of me to take it out on you.’