Innocent 'til Proven Otherwise. Amy Andrews

guy pushed off the bar and headed towards them. ‘Oh, no,’ Ali groaned, having another swig of cocktail. ‘He’s coming over.’

      Kat laughed. ‘Okay now,’ she said hurriedly, reinforcing the ground rules. ‘Tonight is about hooking up. About moving on. It’s not about falling in love or happily-ever-afters. It’s about you getting back up on the horse. About getting out there again.’

      Ali sighed. ‘I hated being out there.’ And she had. She’d never been more content than when she’d been part of a couple. ‘I loved being off the horse.’

      ‘And how’d that work out for you?’

      Kat saw her friend’s face fall and was instantly contrite. She squeezed Ali’s hand and dropped her voice lower.

      ‘I’m sorry, babe, but you have to get past this. Terrible Tom is—’ Kat checked her watch ‘—right at this moment, saying I do to the woman slash child he cheated with while he was engaged to you and you were pregnant with his baby. The very same Tom who broke up with you the day you miscarried, when you were lying in a hospital bed bleeding and sobbing, telling you he never wanted it anyway.’

      Ali played with the frosty stem of her glass, barricading her heart from the emotional tumult threatening to consume it. She had to admit, as the guy moved closer, Kat made a very good argument.

      ‘So I’d say you’re well past due for a little moving-on sex. It’s time, Ali. Tom cut you off at the knees. But it’s been a year—stop letting him win.’

       Stop letting him win.

      Kat’s advice, brutal as ever, ricocheted around her head. Did she really want to spend the night bumping bits with a stranger? No. But she really didn’t want to spend the night thinking about Tom doing it with his brand-new wife either.

      ‘Okay,’ she sighed. ‘Okay.’

      Kat grinned and nudged her with her shoulder. ‘Just try, Ali, okay? That’s all I ask. And do not, I repeat, do not, diagnose some obscure medical problem the second he sits down.’

      ‘Okay, okay. I’ll try. I promise.’

      Just try. Just try. It chanted in Ali’s brain as Mr Nice plonked down on the bar stool beside her.

      ‘Hello, ladies, how are we doing tonight?’

      Kat squeezed Ali’s hand and plastered a bright smile on her face. ‘Fabulous,’ she beamed. ‘Even better now you’re here.’

      ‘And what are two gorgeous women such as yourselves doing sitting all alone at a bar?’

      Ali shuddered at the easy patter. The guy was obviously well versed in pick-up lines. She braced herself for the inevitable where-have-you-been-all-my-life and studiously ignored his deviated septum and associated nasally inflection.

       Just try.

      And she did. For five minutes it was all going well. He’d even bought them another daiquiri each. And then he asked the fateful question.

      ‘So, Ali, what do you do?’

      Ali spoke before even thinking the answer through. ‘I’m a brain surgeon.’ She felt Kat tense beside her as Mr Nice threw back his head and laughed. ‘No, really, I am a brain surgeon.’

      Or at least she had been until recently.

      ‘You know, a neurosurgeon?’ she clarified for the grinning man, irritated by his obvious disbelief.

      Mr Nice’s smile wavered and then fell and she sensed rather than saw Kat’s shoulders droop.

      ‘Oh, right, really?’ he said, checking his watch and downing his drink in one swallow. ‘Well, um … nice meeting you ladies but I gotta … uh, rush.’

      Ali watched Mr Nice retreat as if she’d just confessed to having Ebola. Kat gave her an exasperated look. ‘What?’ She spread her hands. ‘I never mentioned his obvious sinus problems, not once.’

      Kat raised an eyebrow. ‘Neurosurgeon?’

      ‘I am a neurosurgeon. Why does no one believe me when I say that?’

      Kat sighed. ‘Because it’s a cliché, babe.’

      ‘Being a neurosurgeon is a cliché?’

      Good to know that a decade of study and killer shifts had been reduced to a cliché. Well, wasn’t that par for the course for the way her life had been running lately?

      Not that it mattered because she was never going back. Ever.

      ‘No, babe. The line’s a cliché.’ Kat looked at her friend and sighed again. ‘Ali, you gotta know that intimidates men.’

      Ali rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t have time in my life for cavemen, Kitty Kat.’

      ‘Tonight you do, babe. Tonight you do.’

      Ali shook her head. ‘Oh, I don’t know Kat … I’ve never been very good at this.’

      Kat grinned. ‘Well, lucky for you, I am. Now trust me on this, let’s just stick with your current occupation, okay? Remember, the coffee shop?’

      Ali hesitated pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. How could she forget?

      ‘You promised you’d try,’ Kat implored.

      ‘Okay, fine.’

      Max Sherrington reluctantly followed his best friend, Pete, into the bar. God knew he’d rather not be drowning his sorrows in a public place. He had a nice bottle of aged Scotch at home a client had given him that he’d been saving specifically for this day.

      The day of the yellow legal envelope.

      There was nothing like twenty-year-old whisky to soothe the tension in a man’s shoulders and dull the ache in his chest.

      But Pete had insisted. And Max knew that when Pete insisted he rarely took no for an answer. He also knew his friend only had his best interests at heart. Pete had been worried about Max and his antisocial behaviour for the last eighteen months.

      Max figured, on this day especially, he could give Pete a little of his time.

      He had no doubt his friend, a chick magnet if ever there was one, would pick up within the hour and then he would be free to go home to an empty house and a full bottle.

      ‘Right, I’ll get the first round,’ Pete said, his eyes swivelling the length and breadth of the bar, his gaze coming to rest on a blonde in a red dress whose legs went all the way up to her armpits.

      And look at that—she had a friend.

      He smiled and tapped Max on the chest. ‘I think I see the answer to all your problems.’

      Max followed Pete’s gaze and almost groaned out loud. ‘Why on earth would I want a Tori clone? I thought I was here to exorcise my wife.’

      ‘Ex-wife, bud. Ex,’ Pete pointed out.

      Ex. That was right. The papers today made it official. He really was going to have to start thinking of her in the past tense.

      ‘Ex,’ he said grimly.

      Pete slapped him on the back. ‘Relax, the blonde’s mine. The cute friend is yours.’

      Max looked at the other woman. She had a nice face, large eyes, a little snub nose and a bow mouth. Compared to the artfully made-up blonde, she was quite understated. No make-up save some glossy stuff on her lips, no jewellery, no fuss.

      But then there was the hair. A riot of short corkscrew curls, the kind that you couldn’t get at the hairdresser, sprung from her head. They spiralled like spun sugar and reminded him of butterscotch. An errant one flopped down to brush her eyelashes, which she absently blew away as she swished a straw in her glass.

      It was difficult not to notice she also