Chapter 26

26

L uke had been nursing a pint for at least twenty minutes at The Kings Arms and was worrying about the pub's closing time. He was starting to believe Sol would never show up when she finally arrived.

She wore a long, oversized hoodie and baggy sweatpants. Her chestnut hair was gathered in a low knot at the nape of her neck, and her normally fresh-faced and natural complexion looked stripped from any hint of even concealer. Luke wasn't sure if that was her home attire or if she'd decided to wear the roomiest clothes and most modest look possible, not wanting to call attention to the fact that she was an attractive woman. She was trying for the opposite of sexy even though he wasn't sure if she could pull that one off.

She grabbed the chair in front of Luke at the small round wooden table where he was seated. She moved the chair a bit farther away from the table—and from him—before sitting.

"Before you say anything," she started, her tone not only icy but slightly angered, "my friend Laia knows where I am right now. She lives close by and has been instructed to call the police if I don't text her in ten minutes."

"I'm sorry I frightened you. I just wanted to explain what's going on. I felt awful after this afternoon." For the first time, Luke fully grasped how much of a terrible idea that late-night visit had been. He should have approached her in a public space and in plain daylight since she wasn't picking up his calls.

"You showed up at my place at night. How do you know where I live?" she asked. His apology had done nothing to soften her tone. She was furious.

"Let me start at the beginning. My name is Luke Contadino, and I'm a private investigator." He paused, giving her the chance to ask questions or direct more verbal attacks his way.

"I'm gonna need more than that not to file a restraining order," she said.

Luke was about to tell Sol that the UK's criminal system only allowed for restraining orders to be issued in conjunction with a criminal proceeding but decided not to. Sol had lost all sympathy for him, and it wasn't the time or place to be a know-it-all.

"The agency where I work is investigating The Privateers stolen script case. Meshflixx hired us." Again, he paused, giving her a chance to say something. But she didn't. "Sara Daniels, the creator of the show, says the script was inside her bag and was stolen at Josie's studio during a class she took there on February 23. We've been surveilling everyone who was at the studio that night to see if they could be implicated."

"Was I at the studio that night?" Sol asked.

If someone asked Luke what he'd been doing on any given day more than a couple of nights before, he would have also been unsure.

"You were," he told her.

She was still zealously gripping her mobile phone, but he thought she seemed a bit less tense and not thinking solely about how to press the panic-button function on it.

"You've said you've been surveilling everyone who was at the studio that night. What the hell does that mean?" she asked.

"I or one of my colleagues have followed you and other Josie regulars for a few hours here and there during the last couple of weeks or so," Luke said as matter-of-factly as possible.

"So you've been stalking us or spying on us or something?" Her fingers were once again positioned on the side and volume buttons of her iPhone, ready to sound the alarm.

"It's not that. We needed to make sure you weren't involved. We've basically followed you to restaurants or to class at Josie's. That's why I was also a student there for a while."

"A terrible student," Sol said. "You may not have realized, but your lack of dexterity to follow a basic side-leg routine slowed everyone down."

"I'm sorry about that," Luke said, trying not to sound too flippant. But the woman had gone from fearing for her life to complaining about him being a drag in a Pilates class.

"So you followed me to my house?" she asked, starting to understand.

"A couple of times, yes. I also followed you once or twice from your house. Surveillance is one of the aspects of my profession I dislike the most. But sometimes it's necessary."

"It wasn't in this case. I've done nothing," she said, her eyes flashing. "I don't even believe the script was stolen at Josie's."

"I know that, but I didn't before we started checking into you." He tried sounding reasonable. "This afternoon, I was following someone else and they left the shop when you approached me. That's why I left in such a hurry. I was working until an hour ago. I came to your place as soon as I was done." He wanted her to know that he hadn't lied when he told her he couldn't meet that night because of work.

"How long were you going to keep this from me?" she asked. There was less anger in her tone, but the iciness was still intact.

"I know it's bad. I know how it looks. I tried telling you in Barcelona. The night we kissed, I was going to attempt again before leaving your apartment, but you basically threw me out."

"Don't blame this on me!"

"I'm not. I'm sorry," he said. "I asked you all sorts of things about the case, but you just assumed I was an amateur."

Sol said nothing. Her look was fixed somewhere between her phone and the wood patterns of the table. And Luke took the opportunity to be completely honest.

"The thing is, I was intrigued at first, by you. I didn't see it coming. And then I was terrified. I am terrified."

"Terrified about what?"

She was the one who'd been terrified by him that night, and he still regretted his misguided judgment. He'd been impatient to tell her what had happened, to finally come clean. But he should have thought about her perception first.

"Terrified about you finding out the truth and never wanting to have anything to do with me again," he admitted. "Is it weird that I've been somewhat watching you for weeks?"

"Yes," she said, and Luke could see that she was still processing everything he'd told her and wondering about what hadn't been said. "A little bit. Some things make sense now though. There was no way someone like you would have been remotely interested in someone like me after a couple of Pilates classes and after bumping into them at a bar."

"Someone like you?" he asked, not understanding.

"A woman over forty," she said, looking him straight in the eyes for the first time and finally relaxing in her chair.

"You know your age actually turns me on, right?" he said with a smirk.

"Okay, don't do that," she told him.

"Don't do what?"

"Don't flirt with me," she said, her eyes still fixed on his. The iciness of her tone still not giving way.

"Too soon?" he asked, but she didn't answer.

He could see her thinking, and he thought he knew what she'd say next.

"I'm so fucking silly!" she said. "Barcelona… it was all a sham."

"It was by chance," he insisted. "The encounter at the bar was by chance. They… My managers sent me there when you left because they found it suspicious, even though I kept repeating there was nothing weird about it. The night I ran into you, I had just landed. It was as much of a surprise to find you there for me as it probably was for you, believe me."

"Was it really?" she asked. "You knew who I was. You knew I was in the city. I had no clue who you were. Not sure if I do now."

"Everything I've told you is true. My parents are Italian immigrants, I have two older sisters, I only speak Italian at home—and with you—and The Hobbit was my favorite book growing up. What I didn't tell you is that in my late secondary school years, I switched from fantasy to mystery and really got into Patricia Highsmith's novels."

"But you lied to me in Barcelona," she reasoned. "You lured me… You—you seduced me. For what exactly, I don't know. I didn't steal Sara's script. I didn't even know she was going to be in class that night or that she was carrying sensitive material in her purse. And I sure didn't leak it to Voyeur. I may be jobless and possibly broke, but I still have integrity. And mainly I just hate their guts. They treated me beastly when I freelanced there, and they're one of the main reasons why journalists have such a bad reputation."

"Nothing I did in Barcelona was to get you to trust in me and gain access to some secret information," he said. "I was genuinely… I am genuinely interested in you, attracted to you. I felt bad in Barcelona because I wanted to keep seeing you, but I needed to explain myself and I didn't know how."

"You should just have left me alone," she said, her eyes avoiding him again.

He was about to remind her that she technically asked him out first, but he decided not to. He wouldn't put it past her to try and kill him with one of those frozen stares. And she had all the reasons to be cross.

"Do you need to text your friend?" he asked her, delicately. He would prefer the night to not end with him at the local police station.

"Not sure what to tell her," Sol said. The iciness had given way to frustration.

"What about, ‘Bloke's not a psycho. Just a private detective. He seems genuinely sorry. I think I should give him a second chance'?"

"I have to go." She stood up to leave.

"Can I text you?" he asked.

"I'll think about it," she said.

Luke was about to offer to walk her home, but Sol didn't give him the option. She nodded to the bartender and left the bar.

When she got home and locked her front door, Sol texted Laia.

Sol Novo: I'm home. All is good

Laia: Girl, what a scare!

Laia: Let me call you

Laia didn't give her the chance to send her a thank-you text and tell her good night, and even if Sol wasn't in the mood for a conversation, she saw her friend's call and instantly replied.

"It's late," Sol told Laia. She knew her friend tended to go to sleep invariably late, but she didn't like being the reason behind it.

"Not really," Laia said. "What happened?"

Sol had previously told Laia about her bumping into a Pilates colleague in Barcelona, how the two of them had sort of hit it off only for him to split at the most inexplicable time. So she only needed to catch her friend up on that afternoon's awkward encounter at Fortnum's and on Luke's confession after his surprise visit.

"I don't really know what to say," Laia told her after Sol had finished gathering her thoughts.

"I'm confused, angry, and disappointed. But I really don't know how I feel about the whole deception, to be honest," Sol admitted.

"I don't like that he lied to you. But he was working," Laia said. It was on-brand for one of her most career-oriented friends to see things from the perspective of someone else while they were doing their job. "And I don't think there was ill intent on his part. But he should have come clean before."

"I know," said Sol. "I guess, in his defense, he hinted at his real profession a couple of times. And I kept calling him an amateur sleuth and not getting it."

"Of course!" Laia protested. "How were you supposed to know? I wasn't even aware that his was a real profession and not a made-up-for-fiction one."

"I still feel a bit stupid about the whole thing though." Sol's na?veté was what had most annoyed her from the whole situation. How couldn't she have realized Luke's profession? She should have.

"Don't," said Laia firmly. "This is not on you. He is the one who lied and showed up at your place late at night."

"Okay." It was impossible not to listen to Laia when she was so unequivocal.

"Sol, I know you like him…"

"Oh, I don't," Sol said and, the moment she did, she realized she wasn't being honest.

"Good, because I don't like him," said Laia. Her friend probably hadn't bought Sol's lie about her not liking Luke, but Laia was going with it anyway because it suited her position.

"So I guess I shouldn't even consider giving him another chance, right?" Sol managed to ask and immediately regretted it. She wasn't sure she wanted to show so much vulnerability right then, not even to one of her best friends. "Forget I said anything."

"Let's talk about this over dinner and wine and when we're both not about to fall asleep," Laia said.

"I told you it's late."

"It's not that. Paula just finally went to sleep twenty minutes ago, and I still need to go over tomorrow's script one last time."

"Thanks for listening," said Sol.

They said good night and hung up, and Sol was left with her own mixed feelings. From the moment she'd started spending time with Luke, she sensed there was something off about him, about his interest in her.

She had decided to ignore that intuition. Only the undeniable fact that she was facing a looming midlife crisis could explain that carelessness and disregard for her own instincts.

Why can't an inordinately attractive and interesting man like Luke be into me? she'd thought and let herself go with the flow. But the reality was that she was a spoiled and possibly ruined trust-fund baby with meager work prospects and a sagging face that was showing her age even if she deluded herself into believing in another—more intriguing and glamorous—version of herself.

Sol reproached herself a little bit. Her rational, conservative self had been warning her from the very beginning, while her unconcerned, hedonistic self—the one she didn't know she so strongly possessed—took over.

Never again. She was going to forget that whole affair. Tomorrow would be another day, and she'd never been one to brood.