say anything. At least his jeans were doing a decent job of soaking up the water. I reached for the hand towel and covered my lower half with it as best I could before struggling to my feet.
‘I’ll let you get yourself up,’ I said, sliding towards the door, ‘I’m just going to grab some dry clothes.’
I might have still been annoyed with him for gossiping behind my back and shrugging off our kiss, but there was no way I could let him walk back to the studio in soaked trousers. I’d most likely go out the next morning and find him halfway back and frozen to the spot. Having just cleared my conscience over Chloe, I couldn’t replace her with Finn’s frozen assets.
‘Here,’ I said, throwing him a bath towel, ‘take your jeans off under this and I’ll stick them in the dryer for a few minutes.’
He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
‘What?’ I snapped. ‘I don’t see why I should be only one who’s suffered total humiliation, do you?’
‘Turn around then,’ he grumbled.
I walked out and went to check on Nell. I had no desire to stay and watch him strip off.
He sat at the table in sullen silence and wrapped in the towel while I mopped and tidied around him, before bracing myself to go back into the cupboard and turn the water back on. As I ducked into the space, having propped the door open again, I could imagine how useful it could be.
There was room for all sorts to be tucked away out of sight and I felt determined to try and use it. After all, it wasn’t the cupboard that had been the problem all those years ago, was it? It was my spiteful cousin and, as long as she wasn’t around to lock me in, then perhaps I could finally conquer my fear.
Had Finn not been sitting in the kitchen, I would have let out a whoop of delight at my moment of enlightenment but he was, so I settled for a mental high five instead.
Back in the kitchen, I wrote a note reminding me not to tip anything down the sink and stuck it on the tiles before retrieving Finn’s jeans from the dryer.
‘Here you go,’ I said, handing them back.
‘Thanks,’ he muttered, still clearly hacked off.
I knew why I was in a bad mood with him, but had no idea why he was apparently fed up with me. If he was still miffed over what had happened with Chloe then he needed to get over it, because we had. And if he was regretting our kiss, then he needn’t be fretting over that either because as wonderful as it was, it was just a couple of minutes out of my whole life and I had no intention of telling anyone about it.
As he eased his legs into the trousers, I couldn’t help but notice a bruise was already blooming on the back of his leg. His unnecessary heroics had caused us both bodily harm.
‘I’ll be off then,’ he said, handing me the towel.
‘Before you go,’ I said, knowing that as we were both grumpy already then mentioning it couldn’t possibly make things any worse, ‘can I ask you something?’
He shrugged in response as he bent to pull on his rigger boots.
‘Why have you been talking about me behind my back?’
He took a moment before standing straight and when he did, there was a deep-set frown creasing his brow. It was the look I had now come to associate with him most, which was a shame because he looked far more attractive when he smiled, like he had the day he showed me the hares. I only had to close my eyes to remember the effect that had had on me.
‘Who said I’ve been talking about you behind your back?’
‘It was—’
‘No wait,’ he interrupted, ‘let me guess. It was, Zak, right?’
‘Yes,’ I testily said, ‘it was actually.’
‘And you believed him?’
I had no reason not to, especially as he’d sworn that he’d turned over a new leaf and had consequently given me no cause to doubt him. Not that I could tell Finn that, not after the promise I had made to let people work it out for themselves and, given the look on Finn’s face, he wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
‘It’s not really the fact that you’ve been talking that’s hacked me off,’ I carried on, ‘it’s more the fact that you’ve been talking about something that you don’t even know