crazy, messy family, acting out their own modern-day Norse saga of betrayal and blackmail.
Glancing down at his phone, he grimaced. Three missed calls from his half-sister Marta, four from his mother, six texts from his stepmother Anna, and twelve from his stepbrother Gunnar.
Stretching his neck and shoulders, he slipped his phone into the pocket of his hoodie. None of it would be urgent. It never was. But, like all drama queens, his family loved an audience.
For once they could wait. Right now he wanted to hit the gym and then crash out.
The lift doors opened and he flipped his hood up over his head, nodding at the receptionists as he walked past their desk and out into the dark night air.
He didn’t hear their polite murmurs of goodnight, but he heard the woman’s voice so clearly that it seemed to come from inside his head.
‘Ragnar.’
In the moment that followed he realised two things. One, he recognised the voice, and two, his heart was beating hard and fast like a hailstorm against his ribs.
As he turned he got an impression of slightness, coupled with tension, and then his eyes focused on the woman standing in front of him.
Her light brown hair was longer, her pale face more wary, but she looked just as she had twenty-odd months ago. And yet she seemed different in a way he couldn’t pin down. Younger, maybe? Or perhaps she just looked younger because most of the women in his circles routinely wore make-up, whereas she was bare-faced.
‘I was just passing. I’ve got an exhibition up the road…’ She waved vaguely towards the window. ‘I saw you coming out.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know if you remember me…?’
‘I remember.’
He cut across her, but only because hearing her voice was messing with his head. It was a voice he had never forgotten—a voice that had called out his name under very different circumstances in a hotel room less than a mile away from where they were standing.
He watched her pupils dilate, and knew that she was thinking the same thing.
For a second they stared at one another, the memory of the night they shared quivering between them, and then, leaning forward, he gave her a quick, neutral hug.
Or it was meant to be neutral, but as his cheek brushed against hers the warm, floral scent of her skin made his whole body hum like a power cable.
Stepping back, he gave her a small, taut smile and something pulsed between them, a flicker of corresponding heat that made his skin grow tight.
‘Of course I remember. It’s Lottie—Lottie Dawson.’
‘Yes, that’s my name.’
Seeing the accusation in her eyes, he felt his chest tighten, remembering the lies he’d told her. It wasn’t hard to remember. Growing up in the truth-shifting environment of his family had left him averse to lying, but that night had been an exception—a necessary and understandable exception. He’d met her through a dating app, but as the app’s creator and owner, anonymity had seemed like a sensible precaution.
But his lies hadn’t all been about concealing his identity. His family’s chaotic and theatrical affairs had left him wary of even the hint of a relationship, so when he’d woken to find himself planning the day ahead with Lottie he’d got up quietly and left—because planning a day with a woman was not on his agenda.
Ever.
His life was already complicated enough. He had parents and step-parents, and seven whole and half-and step siblings scattered around the world, and not one of them had made a relationship last for any length of time. Not only that, their frequent and overlapping affairs and break-ups, and the inevitable pain and misery they caused, seemed to be an unavoidable accompaniment to any kind of commitment.
He liked life to be straightforward. Simple. Honest. It was why he’d created ice/breakr in the first place. Why make dating so needlessly confusing? When by asking and answering one carefully curated question people could match their expectations and so avoid any unnecessary emotional trauma.
Or that was the theory.
Only clearly there been some kind of glitch—a ghost in the machine, maybe?
‘So it’s not Steinn, then?’
His eyes met hers. She was not classically beautiful, but she was intriguing. Both ordinary and extraordinary at once. Mousy hair, light brown eyes… And yet her face had a capacity for expression that was mesmerising.
And then there was her voice.
It wasn’t just the huskiness that made his skin tingle, but the way she lingered over the syllables of certain words, like a blues singer. Had he judged her simply on her voice, he might have assumed she had a lifestyle to match—too many late nights and a history of heartache, but their night together had revealed a lack of confidence and a clumsiness that suggested the opposite. Not that he’d asked or minded. In fact it had only made her feverish response to him even more arousing.
Feeling his body respond to the memory of her flowering desire, he blocked his thoughts and shrugged. ‘In a way it is. Steinn is Icelandic for Stone. It was just a play on words.’
Her eyes held his. ‘Oh, you mean like calling your dating app ice/breakr?’
So she knew about the app. ‘I wanted to try it out for myself. A dummy run, if you like.’
She flinched and he felt his shoulders tense.
‘I didn’t intend to deceive you.’
‘About that? Or about wanting to spend the day with me?’ She frowned. ‘Wouldn’t it have been fairer and more honest if you’d just said you didn’t want to spend any more time with me?’
Ragnar stared at her in silence, gritting his teeth against the sting of her words. Yes, it would. But that would have been a different kind of lie.
Lying didn’t come naturally to him—his whole family played fast and loose with the facts and even as a child he’d found it exhausting and stressful. But that night he’d acted out of character, starting from the moment he’d played games with his American father’s name and booked a table as Mr Steinn.
And then, the morning after, confronted by his body’s fierce reaction to hers, and that uncharacteristic and unsettling need he’d felt to prolong their time together, the lies had kept coming.
‘I didn’t—’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She swiped his answer away with a swift jerk of her hand. ‘That’s not why I’m here.’ She glanced past him into the street. ‘There’s a café open down the road…’
He knew it. It was one of those brightly lit artisan coffee shops with bearded baristas and clean wooden counters. Nothing like the shadowy, discreet bar where they’d met before.
His heartbeat stalled. He could still remember her walking in. It had been one of those sharply cold March evenings that reminded him of home, and there had been a crush of people at the bar, escaping the wind’s chill.
He’d been on the verge of leaving.
A combination of work and family histrionics had shrunk his private life to early-morning sessions with his trainer and the occasional dinner with an investor when, finally, it had dawned on him that his app had been launched for nearly three months.
On a whim, he’d decided to try it out.
But, watching the couples dotted about the bar, he had felt a familiar unease clutch at his stomach.
Out of habit, he’d got there early. It was a discipline he embraced—perhaps because since childhood any chance to assemble his thoughts in peace had always been such a rarity. But when Lottie had walked through the door rational thought had been swept away. Her cheeks had been flushed, and she’d appeared to be wearing nothing