Ashley POV

I walked out of the room at six in the evening. His parents were supposed to arrive at half past eight, which technically meant I only had about ten minutes left, but Mom was already glaring at me intently as I came into the dining room.

“It's about time you behaved yourself,” she told me, with a teasing glint in her eye. “With the way you were holding onto him earlier, I thought you were copying a monkey.”

She was sitting alone at the head of the table with a glass of red wine in one hand and her mobile phone in the other. The blaring rock music...