Even After All

Part Nine

A/N Thank you once again to Kaisha for a brilliant cover, hope you all like! 

 Chapter Nine

Dinner and champagne had done little to lift either his bad mood or his hangover, but Patrick was very good company and he was slowly easing the pain of the previous day. Dylan didn’t want to move from the beautiful restaurant with the amazing view at the Shard to go to the boat party, but Patrick was like a child at the thought of glamour, frivolity and freebies. So Dylan, as usual had bitten the bullet and followed his lead. The upper deck was heaving, full of young and very beautiful people dancing, the influential and often not quite so beautiful circulated at the fringe and it reminded him just how seedy and predatory life could be.

                “There are a couple of lower decks,” Patrick had offered sensing Dylan’s lethargy and disinterest at the place and situation. “Might be a little quieter.”

Dylan groaned, “you’re not going to let me get out of here before the early hours, so get on with it, get me a drink.”

Laughing Patrick led him into the lower bar.

                “Mojito or Margarita?” Patrick asked, and Dylan glanced at the bar for a moment, rathering beer to anything else on offer.

                “I’ll take a Bud,” he replied as he glanced at the barmaid...then froze. For a split second.

If he doubted who he was seeing in front of him, then her flush of embarrassment confirmed that despite the red hair, the brown eyes - he had no idea how she managed to look so different, but there was no hiding from the fact that moonlighting as a barmaid in this hospitality bar was Matilda, his high achieving, business analyst ex-wife. Serving cocktails...

Patrick was oblivious to the tension as she opened the bottle of beer for him, her companion behind the bar was making his friend a Sex on the Beach, which was making Patrick giggle like a fourteen year old boy instead of the almost forty year old he was. When Matilda’s eyes finally lifted to his, met the stare he knew she could feel on her, he gave his head a little shake, it was both of shock and a conspiracy that he wouldn’t out her, not here, not now.

Instead of pushing things, he backed away to lean against a window sill, the view of light-lit London behind him, but the only thing he was concentrating on was the woman who was struggling to function in his gaze.

As he watched her, sipping on his beer, he was aware of Patrick chatting to two young ladies across the room, but he wasn’t interested before, but now? He shook his head. Matilda. Why was she doing this? Helping someone out? Was this a business venture? Suddenly he needed to know.

The man who was behind the bar was protective of her, he could see that in his gestures, the way he spoke to her, so Dylan waited patiently, he was good at that. Finally the man disappeared somewhere, he didn’t know nor care where, instead he strode across to the bar.

                “Another beer please, and an explanation as to what the HELL you are doing here.”

Mattie had been on tenterhooks since he’d walked into the bar, as he’d approached, finally, she felt relief; the distance across the room was no real barrier, if anything she felt more exposed, more vulnerable as he stared at her. But now that he was in actually front of her, she felt sick, and then he opened his mouth and her anger took over.

                “Dylan Wallace, you are NOTHING to me. You hear me?” She snapped open a beer and slid it in front of him, “so get over yourself.”