Chapter 79

“More wine?”

Dianne blinked. She’d been a thousand miles away.

She breathed deeply and fixed a smile on her face. “Go on, then. We might as well order our food too.” They’d been in the restaurant for an hour and still there was no sign of her dad. Neither did he answer his phone.

“Are you sure?”

She gazed back at the menu open on her lap. She didn’t want to look at Taylor or the sympathy radiating from him.

He was only an hour late. For her dad, that was nothing. As a kid, she’d often spent whole days waiting for him to arrive.

Definitely. The minute we order is the minute he’ll arrive,’ she said brightly. ‘You wait, he’ll be here any second.’

Of course he will,’ Taylor agreed, with eyes that said he thought the total opposite.

She snatched up her glass and downed the last of the red liquid. Forget bouquets of blackcurrant and cinnamon and whatever else it was reputed to have, the only attribute she cared for was its anaesthetic quality.

She was an adult now, she reminded herself, and