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he tucked a curl of
her long fringe behind her ear. “Megan, I’m sorry.”
    He dropped his
hand, but his gaze was still heating through her, and his touch
still lingered in her blood, and her heart spluttered in the
confusion. “You are?”
    She’d never
really expected an apology. Her body swayed closer to him, a
natural tug she’d always had trouble resisting. Her gaze drifted
over the hollows carved into his bristled jaw. She bit down on her
lip as a wave of desire swept over her and pooled low in her
abdomen.
    Could she
forgive?
    Could they
rewind time and start again?
    Jack nodded.
“I need to remember how close my neighbours are. I shouldn’t have
turned our house into a temporary studio without checking with you
first.” He leaned in as well, another inch and his lips would be
grazing her forehead. “I’m sorry for the disruption, especially
when you’d just gotten home after a trip. It won’t happen
again.”
    Her spine
snapped straight and she jerked out of his grazing perimeter. Trust
Jack to apologise for all the wrong things. She should have known
better. She did! She already knew his sense of honour was all kinds
of screwed up.
    “It’s not our
house,” she muttered. “What happens in 21a is entirely your
affair.”
    “So long as
it’s not a brothel,” he said, followed by a rumbling laugh.
    “So long as
it’s legal,” she corrected with a huff, her fingers twining tightly
around her wineglass. “I certainly don’t intend to check with you
before I do exactly as I please.”
    Kate returned
with his cider and Megan made a pretence of moving closer to the
plate of fries to widen the gap between them. But her eyes sought
him out and he still had that intense gaze on her and a
contemplative expression that warned he saw straight through her.
Good luck with that. Maybe she could ask him later to enlighten
her, because she had no idea what was going on inside her. She
dropped her gaze and nibbled on a French fry until Jack fell into
his old routine of riling Kate.
    “What’s the
latest on the Castle Darrock hoodlums? A real journalist would have
hacked the national property register years ago to get a name, at
the very least.”
    “Oh, I’ve got
a name.”
    Megan’s eyes
shot to her. “Did you finally enlist Harry to your cause?”
    “Harry’s
stuffier than last year’s Christmas stockings,” Kate snorted.
“Crimes are being committed under his nose and he’s too worried
about protocol to take a deeper look.”
    “Now that
you’ve convicted and judged the poor bastards,” Jack enquired, “do
you have any evidence?”
    Kate wrinkled
her nose at him.
    “What’s the
name?” Megan wanted to know. She’d never be as passionate as Kate
about Darrock, but living with her friend’s suspicions for two
years had rubbed off on her own curiosity. “How did you find out
who lives there?”
    Kate sipped
deeply on her wine before smirking at Jack. “Real journalists put
in the hard time to get what they want, they don’t cut corners that
could land them in prison.” She turned to Megan. “His name is
Alexander. He lives alone and he’s just employed a new housekeeper.
I bumped into her at the Post Office this morning.”
    “Alexander
who?”
    “She was very
close-lipped.” Kate slid another smirk Jack’s way. “It a testament
to my journalistic skills that she slipped up and gave me his first
name. I swear she was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement and
if that doesn’t stink...” She threw her hands up and shook her
head, as if the notoriety of Castle Darrock’s inhabitants was as
clear as day to any old fool.
    Megan glanced
at Jack. Their eyes met and laughter erupted. She was the first one
to sober up and remember they didn’t do the shared-humour thing
anymore.
    For the next
hour or so, Kate kept the conversation going by catching Jack up
with the last four months of Corkscrew Bay gossip. Jack kept their
glasses filled and Megan drank and listened, occasionally