She put her hand over her heart where it hurt the most and gave a gentle rub there.
Oh, no.
She was in such trouble.
He returned a minute later, balancing a couple of plates of food in one hand and grasping the handles of two mugs of coffee in the other.
‘Here, let me help you,’ Elena said, rising to take the plates from him so he could put the mugs down on the table without spilling the hot liquid everywhere.
She was horrified to find her hands were shaking and sat down quickly, placing them in her lap before he noticed.
When she looked up to say thanks for the drink he’d put in front of her she saw he was frowning, as if something was bothering him.
‘Did we spend a lot of time together at university?’ he asked.
The memory of her and Caleb sharing a bottle of wine in his room after a study session flitted across her vision, stealing her breath away. It had been on that night that everything had changed between them.
That fateful night, in a drunken haze, when she’d admitted her true feelings for him and he’d dragged her into his arms and kissed her, making her insides melt and her blood fizz with excitement.
Forcing herself to unclench her now sweaty hands, she gave him as composed a smile as she could muster.
‘Yes, we were pretty close back then. We were doing the same course so we had a lot in common. Our tutor put us together as partners on a project at the beginning of the first term and found we worked well together.’
The memory of her broken promise to Caleb that she’d return to university after the Christmas holidays a free woman after breaking up with Jimmy, ready to commit her newly unchained heart to him, pressed heavily on her.
Picking up her drink to give her restless hands something to do, she took a tentative sip of the hot liquid.
‘So why haven’t we seen each other for so long?’ Caleb asked, the look in his eyes so searching she choked on her drink.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked with amusement in his voice as he reached over to pat her gently on the back.
‘I’m fine,’ she gasped, taking the opportunity to wipe her eyes with the napkin that had come with the sandwich so she didn’t need to look at him while she answered.
‘I guess life just got in the way. We’ve both been so focused on our careers.’
When she finally looked up at him again he nodded slowly. ‘Tell me more about our time together at university,’ he said, giving her the impression that he needed to hear about it to help him understand something.
So she did. She told him about the way they’d met on the first day of term and how grumpy he’d been with her when their tutor had paired them up.
‘I was so annoyed with you I gave you a real dressing-down at the end of that lesson. I think I said something about how just because I was a woman it didn’t mean I couldn’t beat your arrogant arse at engineering.’ She smiled at the memory, remembering how it had taken a lot of guts to say that to him, and how proud she was of herself afterwards that she hadn’t let him just walk all over her.
He’d been taken aback by her defensiveness at first, but once he realised she meant every word he’d challenged her to a quiz on engineering terms.
‘And I won,’ she told him, smiling at his raised eyebrow. ‘But you were a good loser. You just gave me this respectful kind of nod and then offered to take me to the nearest pub to toast my win. We ended up staying there all night and by the end of it we were firm friends.’
He snorted with laughter, clearly amused by this, though the expression on his face told her he was impressed by what she was telling him.
‘We spent a lot of time together after that,’ she continued, warming to her theme now, ‘and talked about a lot of personal stuff too, especially the things we found tough growing up. Like you being brought up in a single-parent household and being bullied at school, and me living with parents that constantly rowed or sniped at each other. I think we felt a certain kind of affinity with each other after that.’
He continued to look at her with a frown pinching his brow now, but didn’t comment. Clearly he had no memory of any of that.
‘We liked the same kind of movies too—sci-fi and fantasy,’ she said, to fill the silence that had fallen between them.
He nodded in agreement, a relieved sort of smile playing about his mouth as if this made total sense to him.
‘Most of our other friends weren’t interested in them so we often went to the cinema together to see them and stay up late dissecting them afterwards.’ She smiled, trying to hide how sad those memories made her feel now. ‘Good times.’
‘It sounds like we had fun together,’ he murmured, his eyes never leaving hers.
She gazed back at him, remembering how happy they’d both been then, how full of vigour and positivity and excitement for the future—a future she’d hoped would have him in it in some way—and felt her spirits plummet. Would he have been a happier, less angry man today if they’d stayed together then?
‘We did,’ she said quietly, swallowing past the lump in her throat.
He opened his mouth to ask her something else but, before he could get the words out, his mobile began to ring, mercifully diverting his attention away from her rapidly heating face.
‘That was Benita,’ he said once he’d concluded the call and put his mobile down on the table. ‘She managed to get hold of Carter. He’s agreed to meet for dinner tonight and, as we anticipated, he’s bringing his wife with him.’
He raised both eyebrows. ‘Looks like we’re on, girlfriend.’
She covered a resurgence of nerves with a smile. ‘Great.’
Once they’d polished off their food, at Elena’s request they spent the walk back to his apartment going over any relevant points about Araya Industries that might come up in conversation with the Americans, making sure she was fully briefed—or at least as much as a girlfriend working in the same industry might be.
It was fascinating to hear how he’d chosen to run his business, but Elena experienced a twinge of guilt at being trusted with detailed strategies and projections when Caleb had been so keen not to allow her anywhere near his business operation only the day before.
This was all to help him though, she reminded herself firmly. She wasn’t going to take advantage of it at any point.
‘So tell me about your business,’ he said once they’d covered all the salient points about his.
His question caught her off guard and she stumbled a little, feeling him grab her elbow to right her, and gave him a strained smile.
‘Er...well, I run a company in England called Zipabout. We make single-person electric vehicles to be used for short trips around towns and cities.’
He raised his eyebrows with interest. ‘And what sort of battery are you using to power them?’
She thought about telling him the truth, somehow bringing the conversation round to the fact she was hoping his company would be the one to supply it, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. It would be totally inappropriate to mention it when he didn’t remember the row they’d already had about it.
With a sinking heart she said, ‘We’re looking into that at the moment. I have a few leads.’
Darn, darn, darn! And it could have been such a good opportunity to find out whether he’d be interested in supplying his battery to her without the angst and anger from their past getting in the way. But it was too much of a morally ambiguous