How to Get Over Your Ex

‘I train.’ He frowned.

Lord. Blood from a stone! ‘For...?’

‘For events.’

She took a stab. ‘Showjumping? Clay shooting? Oh!’ She drained the last of her wine. ‘Ice dancing.’

A reluctant smile crept onto his face. ‘Endurance running. I compete in marathons.’

‘Truly?’

He chuckled. ‘Yes.’

‘What sort of distances?’

‘Forty or fifty kilometres. It depends.’

‘A weekend?’ Her half-shriek drew glances from around the noisy bar.

His lips twisted. ‘A day.’

A day! ‘Well, that explains the body—’

Horror sucked the words back in, but not fast enough. Oh, God! She quietly pushed her nearly empty glass far away from her.

‘I have to keep my fitness up, so I run every morning and I do long runs or hikes every weekend.’

‘Every weekend?’

‘Pretty much.’

Wow. ‘Just running. For hours on end?’

‘Or hard hiking. That’s why it’s called endurance.’

‘Sounds lonely.’ But also kind of...zen. Kind of what she did when she wandered deep into the dark heart of forests.

‘I don’t mind the solitude,’ he murmured.

‘Is that why you do it?’

His answer was fast. As if he’d defended himself on that point often. ‘I do it for the challenge. Because I can. And I do my best thinking out there.’

Fifty kilometres. That was a lot of thinking time.

‘Just...wow. I’m impressed.’

‘Don’t get too excited. In competition we can do that in under four hours.’

Georgia shook her head. ‘Put marathon running on the list.’

He looked up sharply. ‘You want to run a marathon?’

‘God, no. I have two left feet. But I’ve never seen one. I can just watch you. Help you train.’

Intense discomfort flooded his face.

Once again she’d managed to misread a man. This wasn’t a friendship. They weren’t bonding. This was a business arrangement with the sole purpose of tracking her activity. Why on earth would he want her around during his private time? He probably had a raft of friends actually of his choosing to hang out with—and many of them women.

‘I...uh...’

She’d stuffed up big enough to actually make a man stammer. World class.

‘You know what?’ she breezed, not feeling the slightest bit breezy. ‘I’ve changed my mind. Me watching you run would make terrible radio. Scratch that off the list.’ Was she a convincing liar? They’d find out. His pen was still frozen over the page and so there was nothing to scratch out, so she said the only other thing that came into her head.

‘Another drink?’

* * *

The list grew as long as the evening. They hit the Internet for ideas of cool things for her to do in London. Pretty soon they had learn-to-dance classes, movie premieres, and a royal polo match.

‘Aquasphering!’ she said, a little bit too loud. ‘Whatever that is.’

‘Really? That’s your kind of thing?’

‘None of it is my thing—isn’t that the point? Pushing myself out of my comfort zone.’ Wa-a-ay out of it.

‘Can we afford a seat on a commercial spaceflight?’ she blurted, tapping the tablet’s glossy screen. ‘That would be exciting.’

He smiled. ‘No. We can’t. And we don’t really have the time for it to become more mainstream.’

‘Pff. You suck.’

Zander stared at her. Assessing. ‘I think I need to get some food into you.’

‘I told you I didn’t do this for the soup.’

‘I was thinking of something a little more solid than soup.’

Judgement stung, low and sharp. She sat up straighter. ‘I’m not drunk.’

‘No, you’re not. But you will be if you keep going like this.’

‘Maybe the new me drinks more often.’

He gathered up their papers and his tablet and returned them to his briefcase. ‘Really? This is how you want to start the Year of Georgia? By getting hammered?’

She stared at him. Thought about that. ‘Have we started?’