Proof By Contradiction (The Carrick Brothers #1)

Three days in Manchester and Ewan Carrick has already decided he’s leaving.

The economics degree was his mother’s idea. The damp halls, the grey skies, the moquette the colour of a confession nobody wanted to make: all confirmation that Lewisham was better.

He’ll finish the term. He’ll go home. Then Dr Laurence Haldrey walks into a lecture theatre, uncaps a marker, and Ewan’s exit strategy falls apart.

Laurence is thirty-one, Oxford-trained, and held together by rolled sleeves and self-control. He does not touch students. He does not bend rules.

He does not look twice at the student in the back row who solves his problem sets too fast and refuses to raise his hand. Except he does look. And Ewan looks back.

Office hours become Tuesday afternoons with the door closed. Then a borrowed key. Then a green door in Chorlton.

Then a thing that could cost Laurence his career and break every lie Ewan tells himself.