Page 18 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars
“Were you?” she asks.
“Was I what?”
“Trying to corrupt me? Were you just trying to get in my knickers? You were eighteen, after all. You were more experienced than me.”
“Er, no, I wasn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was a virgin until I got to Cairo. It happened to be the day after my nineteenth birthday.”
Her eyebrows rise. “You’re kidding me? You were the archetypal bad boy. You can’t tell me you didn’t sleep with a single girl at Greenfield.”
“There wasn’t time or opportunity. Atticus kept us busy. Lessons in the week were intense, and then there were extra-curricular sports and clubs. My weekends were filled with tramping and mountain climbing and kayaking and rugby. I spent nearly all my evenings with your family, watching National Treasure and Indiana Jones and Romancing the Stone, or lying with you under the table reading The Encyclopedia of Ancient Archaeology.”
Her lips curve up. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“You’re the only person I’ve ever known who reads encyclopedias from beginning to end. Apart from Ursula Andress in Dr. No.”
She gives a short laugh. Then she surveys me curiously. “So you really hadn’t had a girlfriend?”
“No. You were my first kiss.”
She gives me such a beautiful smile that it makes my heart ache. “And you were mine,” she says, her smile fading. “How sad.”
“It’s incredibly fucking sad. In another universe, and all that.”
She nods. Then her expression turns a mixture of mischievous and envious. “So who was your first? You said you were nineteen.”
“Yeah. One of the other volunteers on the Cairo dig was a girl called Mona. She was a couple of years older than me, and she’d been on several excavations already, so they put me with her so she could show me the ropes.”
“Ropes? Into S&M, was she?”
I grin at her spiky tone. She’s jealous. Aw. “She was very sweet with the boy who was completely clueless.”
“And since then? Has there been anyone serious?”
I think of a couple of the girls I’ve been with, and Sophia, who I was very fond of. It was a lot of fun at the time, and we shared a space together for a while out of a joint need for comfort and security. But she would be the first to admit we weren’t serious about each other.
“No, not really.” I tip my head to the side. “So who was your first? Did you wait until uni? Please tell me he wasn’t some Phys Ed student with a neck bigger than his head.”
She doesn’t laugh, though. She looks down at her hands and says, “I’d rather not talk about it, if that’s okay.”
“Of course. Sorry.” I think of her reluctance to come into the room, and I wonder who hurt her, and how badly.
She clears her throat. Then she brightens and says, “I’ve had an idea. I’m going to have a dinner party tonight.”
“Oh?”
“To celebrate your return, and to cheer you up because you’ve had a shit day. I’ll get Fraser and Joel to come, and Hallie and her partner, Ian, and Zoe. It’ll be fun.”
“Are you like Bridget Jones? Should I expect blue soup and marmalade for dessert?”
She giggles, which is such a lovely sound it makes me smile. “No, I can cook. I share an apartment with Zoe. She’ll help me out. Let me just make sure everyone’s free.” She pulls out her phone, and I watch her compose a text.
Halfway through, she stops and looks up at me. “Oh, I suppose I should ask you first if you want to come.”
I meet her eyes. “I shouldn’t.”
