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ripped out of their sudsy pigeonhole.
    She’d watched them make it from scratch. Pasta. Carefully
mixed, rolled, strung, cooked. And the leftover sauce from the night’s
bolognese. The owner-chef passed through and plated up for both of them, a
modest bowl for Georgia and an enormous mound for Zander. With a barrage of
hasty Italian between.
    ‘Are you pregnant?’ she joked, settling her heat-wrinkled
fingers around one of the forks she’d washed herself.
    He chuckled. ‘I’m carb-loading.’
    ‘Which is what for the uninitiated?’ She curled a dozen strands
of beautifully shaped pasta around her fork.
    ‘The day before a big run you load your body up on
carbohydrates and water to ensure it’s full of energy.’
    ‘Energy you burn off running fifty kilometres?’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Where will you run tomorrow?’
    He hesitated answering. She didn’t let her sigh show. ‘You
don’t like to talk about it much.’
    ‘I’m unaccustomed to anyone asking. It’s usually just my
thing.’
    That rankled just a tiny bit. ‘I’m not going to invite myself
along again if that’s what you’re worried about.’
    ‘I know,’ he replied as she slid a fully loaded fork into her
mouth.
    Oh, my God... She liked spaghetti.
She’d even been excited enough once or twice to make her own lumpy Napolitano
sauce in her slow cooker. But this... this ! The
combination of home-cooked bolognese and minutes-old, fresh pasta on top of the
bone weariness, hollow stomach and flat-footed agony of having stood doing
dishes for hours...
    ‘This is amazing, Zander!’
    ‘One of my favourite bolt holes.’
    She glanced up at him. His choice of words struck her. ‘Where
do you bolt from?’
    How could a shrug be so tense? ‘Life. Work. Everything.’
    She could understand that, if the man bursting out of his
office was a regular occurrence.
    ‘We could both do worse than running our workplaces the way
Chef ran this kitchen,’ she said softly.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Firm. High expectations. But fair. And everyone here was
working with him, not despite him.’
    Zander looked around the near-empty kitchen. The two assistants
had already removed any hint of evidence that their meal had ever existed. The
way they were demolishing their pasta, it very soon wouldn’t.
    ‘What makes you think it’s not like that already?’ he
asked.
    ‘Something one of your staff said when I was in your office.’
She’d been there a few times over the weeks finalising the list with Casey, so
that was suitably broad. He wouldn’t know who amongst his team it was. ‘They
said I was a lamb to the slaughter.’
    He blinked at her, then recommenced eating his meal. But his
brows remained low.
    ‘Not saying I agree with them. You’ve been nothing but nice to
me.’ If one had a liberal definition of nice . ‘But,
you know, clearly they thought you were going to make things hard for me.’
    He thought about that some more. ‘It’s what they would
expect.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because it’s what they know.’
    Sadness washed across his expression and then vanished. ‘Why do
you make things hard for them?’
    ‘Because I’m their boss. The network delivers the good news and
I deliver and implement the bad. It’s what I get paid for.’
    ‘That’s a miserable kind of job. Why do you do it?’
    He laughed. ‘You’ve seen where I live.’ One of London’s better
suburbs.
    ‘And you’ve seen where I live. So what? That’s not who we
are.’
    His eyes grew assessing. ‘Really? Your apartment exterior is
modest and plain, but well kept. Someone cares for that building. I’d hazard a
guess that the inside would be the same. Everything in its place, nothing
unessential. Isn’t that exactly as you are?’
    She stared at her near-empty bowl. ‘Is that how I strike you?
Orderly and dull?’
    ‘You strike me as someone who’s stuck in a rut. Maybe who has
been for some time.’
    She lifted her chin. ‘Ruts come in all shapes and