The Reunion Lie

He narrowed his eyes and looked at her a little more closely. ‘Do we know each other?’

She shook her head, and the way the movement sent silky blonde hair swirling around her shoulders would have had him imagining his fingers winding through it had he not been ignoring that side of things in favour of finding out what this was all about.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, not really. At least not in the strictest sense of the word.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’

‘It is all a bit bemusing, I’ll grant you,’ she said. ‘But the thing is I’ve got myself into a bit of a fix and I need your help.’

‘What kind of a fix?’

She blushed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. ‘I seem to have—ah—sort of invented a boyfriend.’

‘Sort of?’

She sighed. ‘OK, not sort of. I did invent a boyfriend.’

Dear Reader

Some people say that your schooldays, with few responsibilities, hordes of friends and long, long holidays, are the happiest of your life. Others add that, whether you loved them or hated them, they can shape you for years.

Who hasn’t idly browsed through Facebook to see what’s become of the class bully or the prettiest, most popular girl in the year? And who hasn’t wished they could sail into a reunion looking a million dollars, brimming with confidence and showing everyone what a fabulous success of their life they’ve made?

That’s perennially single Zoe Montgomery’s plan when, against her better instincts, she decides to attend her fifteen-year school reunion. Her schooldays definitely weren’t the happiest of her life, and much to her dismay they’ve subsequently had quite an impact, so she’s out to get closure. But, as can happen with the best-laid plans, things rapidly go awry—and before she knows it she’s not only invented a fabulous fake boyfriend, she’s brought him to life. When gorgeous advertising exec and latest tabloid hottie Dan Forrester and a very active grapevine become involved things start to get really complicated!

The school reunion that I went to, which provided the initial spark for this story, wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Zoe’s, but I can’t help wishing it had been! I had a blast writing Dan and Zoe’s story—I hope you enjoy it.

Lucy x

The Reunion Lie

Lucy King

LUCY KING spent her formative years lost in the world of Mills & Boon® romance when she really ought to have been paying attention to her teachers. Up against sparkling heroines, gorgeous heroes and the magic of falling in love, trigonometry and absolute ablatives didn’t stand a chance.

But as she couldn’t live in a dream world for ever she eventually acquired a degree in languages and an eclectic collection of jobs. A stroll to the River Thames one Saturday morning led her to her very own hero. The minute she laid eyes on the hunky rower getting out of a boat, clad only in Lycra and carrying a three-metre oar as if it was a toothpick, she knew she’d met the man she was going to marry. Luckily the rower thought the same.

She will always be grateful to whatever it was that made her stop dithering and actually sit down to type Chapter One, because dreaming up her own sparkling heroines and gorgeous heroes is pretty much her idea of the perfect job.

Originally a Londoner, Lucy now lives in Spain, where she spends much of the time reading, failing to finish cryptic crosswords, and trying to convince herself that lying on the beach really is the best way to work.

Visit her at www.lucykingbooks.com

This and other titles by Lucy King are available in eBook format—check out www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the class of 1990

(none of whom are anything like the girls in this story!)

and our fun and fabulous school reunion.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

ONE

In all her thirty-two years, Zoe Montgomery had never once entertained a truly violent thought, but if one more person asked her whether she had a husband and children and then tutted in sympathy when she said she had neither she was going to have to hit something hard. Possibly the gin.

Did it matter that she’d been running her own mystery shopping agency for the past five years and was responsible for a two-million-pound turnover? No, it did not. Did anyone care that she’d started off refurbishing a tiny studio flat in an insalubrious part of London, sold it for double what she’d paid and had subsequently leapt up the property ladder to the spacious Hoxton maisonette she lived in now? Of course they didn’t. And what about the doctorate she’d toiled over for five long but happy years? Did that have them gasping in awe? Not a bit of it.

All that mattered to the forty or so depressingly tunnel-visioned women gathered in the bar for their fifteen-year school reunion was that she was still single and childless.

Zoe gritted her teeth and knocked back a mouthful of lukewarm Chablis as the conversation about house prices, catchment areas and Tuscany rattled around the little group she’d been dragged into.

How she could ever have imagined her contemporaries would have changed was beyond her. Back in their boarding-school days, despite the best private girls’ education the country had to offer and despite a handful of intellects far more formidable than her own, all most of them had ever wanted to achieve in life was marriage to an aristocrat, an estate and a socking great bank balance, and judging by the number of double-barrelled surnames, titles and diamonds being shown off tonight that had been accomplished with dazzling success.

Zoe sighed in despair. All that money spent. All that potential untapped. All that dedication and ambition so badly mis-channelled. What a waste.

As this evening was turning out to be.

She’d been here for fifteen minutes, but it had taken her only five to realise that there was little to no chance of achieving any of the things she’d hoped to achieve by coming.

When the email inviting her to the reunion had popped up in her in-box a month ago her first instinct had been to ignore it. While she appreciated the fantastic academic education she’d had and the sacrifices her parents had made for her to have it, she’d never got on all that well with these girls. She hadn’t had anything in common with most of them, and some of them—one in particular—had made her life pretty miserable for the best part of seven years. So without a moment’s hesitation she’d replied that she was busy, deleted the email and firmly put it from her mind.

She’d gone back to doing what she did best—work—and buried herself in a whole load of statistical analysis for one of her and her sister’s biggest clients, and had been so absorbed by the numbers and the implications they might have that that should have been that.

But to her intense frustration that hadn’t been that because despite its consignment to the bin the invitation seemed to have opened up a Pandora’s box of adolescent angst, hormonal chaos, and brutal and painfully clear memories, and, as a result, over the past couple of weeks she’d found herself dwelling on her school days with annoying regularity.

It didn’t matter how hard she tried to shore up her defences and push it all back, or how much she tried to concentrate on something else. Her memory hammered away, and beneath such relentless pressure the sky-high barriers she’d erected to protect her from those hideous years crumbled, leaving it to trip down lanes she’d blocked off long ago, picking at emotional scabs and prodding at the wounds beneath as it did so.

And once that had happened no amount of statistical analysis could stop her remembering the pain and suffering she’d endured.

The bullying had started off trivially enough. Books she’d needed for lessons had strangely disappeared, phone messages and letters hadn’t been passed on and there’d been rumours that hinted at lesbian tendencies and had all twelve girls in her dormitory huddling into a group at the far end of the room, eyeing her with suspicion and whispering.

Then there’d been the snide remarks to her face, the ones that targeted her family, mocking her and her sister’s need for scholarships and lamenting the fact that they didn’t live in a draughty old pile in the middle of nowhere, didn’t holiday in Barbados and Verbier, and had never been anywhere near Ascot, Glyndebourne or Henley.

At first Zoe had gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it, telling herself it would stop soon enough if she just knuckled down and got on with things. That they’d soon get bored and move on to easier prey.

But they hadn’t got bored and it hadn’t stopped, and her indifference had actually made things worse, escalating what had up to that point been bullying of the mental and emotional kind to the physical.

Sitting in front of her computer, her spreadsheet blurring in front of her eyes as the memories kept coming, Zoe had sworn she could still feel the tiny bruises from the sneaky pinches and the sharp pain from the surreptitious kicks she’d received on an almost daily basis. She’d thought she could still hear the snip of the scissors as one afternoon, while she’d been working head down at her desk concentrating so hard she’d been oblivious to anything else, they’d cut through the long shiny ponytail she’d had since she was six.

Mostly, though, she kept reliving the awful night following the one and only time she’d dared to retaliate, when she’d been pinned down and had had ouzo poured down her throat. She’d been found by the caretaker stumbling around the grounds at midnight, singing—badly—at the top of her voice, and taken straight to the headmistress, and as a result had been suspended a month before her A levels.

It had not been a good time, and even though she’d got over it all years ago the last thing she needed was an evening spent with fifty-odd reminders of what had definitely not been the happiest days of her life.

But then at some point during the last week or so, her previously rock-solid conviction that she was right not to attend the reunion had begun to wobble. The more she’d dwelled on what had happened, the more she’d begun to regret the fact that she’d done so little to stop it. OK, so it wasn’t as if she were going home to her parents every evening and had been able to confide in them, but with hindsight she could have told someone.

Why she hadn’t had started to bother her. What it said about her she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. And as if the tendrils of doubt, self-recrimination and denial that were winding through her weren’t enough, she’d begun to be hassled by an image of her sixteen-year-old self, standing there with her hands on her hips and pointing out that now would be the perfect opportunity to redress a balance that should have never been allowed to become so skewed in the first place.

Go and show them, the little voice inside her head had demanded with increasing insistence. Go and show them how well you’ve done, that despite their best efforts to batter your confidence and destroy your self-belief they couldn’t. Go and show them they didn’t win.

She’d tried to resist because she’d risen above what had happened long ago, she really had, and besides, she loathed conflict, hated having to make conversation and avoided social occasions like the plague and the combination of all three might well finish her off. But that little voice wouldn’t shut up, and in the end she’d come to the conclusion that she owed it to her teenage self at the very least to try and make amends because, quite apart from anything else, if she didn’t she wouldn’t have a moment’s peace.

So she’d emailed the girl organising the reunion to tell her she’d changed her mind, and that was why, fizzing with adrenalin, buzzing with fighting spirit and brimming with a confidence she rarely felt when confronted with the idea of people, she’d wriggled into a little black dress and heels and then trekked across the city to the gastro-pub in Chelsea on this late September Thursday night instead of spending the evening at home snuggling up to her laptop in her pyjamas as usual.

But if she’d known things weren’t going to work out as she’d anticipated, if she’d known she was going to wind up drinking disgustingly warm wine while having to endure a whole load of ‘do you remember when’s and being made to feel inadequate, as if somehow she’d failed simply because she hadn’t procreated, then she wouldn’t have bothered.

Zoe drained what was left of the wine in her glass and set her jaw. She knew she hadn’t failed. She’d achieved way more than many other women of her age and she was proud of the success she’d made of her life.

And so what if she wasn’t married and didn’t have children? And who cared if she had abysmal luck on the boyfriend front? She had a career she adored, supportive and loving parents and a great sister. While she wasn’t averse to the odd date or two and possibly a relationship at some stage, she didn’t need a man to complete her life, and she certainly wasn’t sure she wanted the chaos and mess and general disruption that children caused.

No, she was perfectly content with the way things were and therefore she had no need to feel insignificant. No need to feel inferior or inadequate. No need to let herself be affected by the opinions of a bunch of women who shouldn’t—no, didn’t—matter.

And yet...

As the conversation drifted on around her, once again casually dismissing her achievements as of no consequence and instead turning to the stellar accomplishments of husbands and children, Zoe felt what was left of the adrenalin and confidence drain away, leaving a kind of desperate despair she hadn’t experienced for fifteen years.

All she’d wanted to do tonight was exact retribution for everything she’d had to go through. All she’d wanted to do was impress the girls who’d tried so hard to stamp her out, stun them with her success and make them jealous of her for a change, but she hadn’t even been able to do that. The only kind of success anyone here would be impressed by was the marital kind, and that she didn’t have.

Retribution, it seemed, was no more within reach than it had been fifteen years ago. There was no redressing of any balance and there were no looks of envy being cast her way, and just like that she sank into deep despondency.

These women hadn’t changed, and nor, it appeared, had she, because despite managing to convince herself otherwise, despite all her professional achievements and industry accolades and the self-assurance she’d gained through them, she still cared what a bunch of over-privileged and underachieving housewives thought of her. They still had the ability to demolish her self-esteem, which was pretty shaky at the best of times, with nothing more than the curl of a lip and the arch of an eyebrow, and they could still make a mockery of her confidence.

That she wasn’t as over her school experiences as she’d so blithely assumed was a pretty devastating discovery and Zoe felt her chest tighten with something that felt a lot like panic as the questions began to ricochet around her head.

Why hadn’t she changed? Why did it still matter what they thought? Would she ever not? Above all, was there anything she could do to fight back?

The talk turned to biological clocks, career women and what their lives must be lacking by being single—accompanied by several pointed looks in her direction. And whether it was a great tangle of fifteen-year-old emotion that was churning around inside her or the confusion or the panic at the thought that she wasn’t nearly as in control as she’d envisaged she didn’t know, but adrenalin was suddenly pounding through her once again. The blood was rushing in her ears and her heart was thundering, and unable to stop, unable even to think about what she was doing, she found herself raising her eyebrows and saying in a cool voice that didn’t sound anything like hers, ‘Who said anything about being single?’

TWO

If he’d known his usually fairly quiet and staid local pub was going to be taken over by a gaggle of expensively turned out but very loud and loquacious women Dan would have suggested somewhere else to meet Pete because the sickly combination of scents that filled the air was making his stomach churn, the noise level was making his head throb and none of it was conducive to a catch-up over a few drinks and a bite to eat with a friend he hadn’t seen for months.

As it was, however, Pete had texted him to say he was running late and had then gone incommunicado, so unfortunately he didn’t have any choice but to arm himself with a pint, find a table on the other side of the pub and if possible block out the racket and the toxicity of the air until Pete arrived and they could make their escape.

With that aim in mind, Dan shrugged off his jacket and pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and then, bracing himself, began to make his way to the far and marginally less crowded end of the bar.

He was so focused on his destination, so intent on ignoring the women and the noise that he didn’t notice one of their party clap eyes on him and suddenly smile. Nor did he see her put down her drink, extricate herself from the melee and make a beeline for him.

In fact he didn’t notice anything about her at all until she was standing right in front of him, stopping him in his tracks and flashing him a dazzling smile, and then it was pretty impossible not to notice her.

Dan didn’t have a chance to mutter an ‘excuse me’ and step to one side. He didn’t have time to wonder why she was standing so close nor why her smile was so bright. He didn’t even have a chance to check her out properly.

All he got was a fleeting impression of blonde hair, dark eyes and an overall sense of attractiveness before she flung her arms round his neck, plastered herself against him and gave him the kind of kiss that he’d have considered more appropriate if they were naked and in private.

But he couldn’t think because on impact shock reeled through him, blowing his mind and obliterating almost every neuron he possessed. For a second it rendered him immobile too, but then his body dimly registered the fact that the woman arching herself against him was soft and warm and pliant, the hand on the back of his neck was singeing his skin like a brand and the mouth moving over his was hot and lush, and the whole bizarrely passionate package sent every one of his senses into overdrive.

For one crazy split second he wanted to whip his arms round her and pull her closer. He wanted to cave in to his instincts and the desire that was beginning to spark through him and open his mouth on hers so that they could kiss properly and he could find out what she tasted like.

With his surroundings disintegrating, his brain dissolving and his hands automatically moving to her waist, Dan was on the point of doing just that when something flashed in his peripheral vision. It seared through the haze in his head, lodged in his brain with the force of a blow dart, and he froze. The heat racing through him vanished as if doused with a bucket of iced water and desire evaporated, leaving him numb and stunned.

And then as the implications of that flash hit him his brain cranked into gear and the stunned shock spiralled into appalled disbelief. What on earth was he doing? What was he thinking? Hadn’t he learned anything from seeing the details of his last relationship splashed all over the front page of one of the country’s smuttier tabloids?

With his blood chilling at the thought of just how reckless he’d almost been, Dan jerked back and pushed her away, barely able to believe he’d so nearly fallen for what had to be a ruse because who went round randomly hurling themselves at perfect strangers without some kind of ulterior motive?

He stared down at the woman standing in front of him, flicking a quick glance over her and feeling his stomach tighten at the sight of the body that had so recently been clamped against him, clad in a tight black dress that plunged at the front and stopped an inch above her knees. Below the hem her stockinged legs tapered down into the sexiest pair of black high heels he’d ever seen and he suddenly had a brutally clear vision of those heels sliding up and down his calves as he pressed her into his mattress and reacquainted himself with her body.

Which was not going to happen, he told himself darkly, snapping his gaze back up to hers and deploying the single-minded focus he was supposedly famed for. The way she looked was irrelevant. The way she’d felt pressed against him was irrelevant. What had just happened, on the other hand, wasn’t, and he had to remember that.

‘Who the hell are you,’ he said grimly, ‘and what do you think you’re doing?’

* * *

Well, wasn’t that the question of the century? thought Zoe, staring up at the man she’d spied, selected and then accosted, still buzzing from the feel of him as she’d thrown her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to his. Truthfully she no longer recognised herself and she no longer had a clue what she was doing, which was rather disconcerting for someone who usually applied logic, reason and consideration to every aspect of her life.

While she could just about make excuses for fabricating a boyfriend for the purposes of getting even, embellishing the poor man’s qualities until he’d sounded unbelievable even to her own ears had gone way beyond the boundaries of a good idea. And as for deciding to bring him to life, well, that had been downright insanity.

She briefly considered blaming the way that what had started out as a simple little lie had spun so ludicrously out of control on the gimlet she’d drunk, but that wouldn’t be fair. Not when she’d only had one and she could usually get through three before feeling a bit on the wobbly side.

No. The truth of it was that the minute she’d mentioned her fictitious yet fabulous boyfriend she’d noticed the abrupt shift in attitude towards her, and as the attention had swung back to her she’d been swamped by a deluge of delight and triumph and above all relief that finally something had worked.

As her former classmates had naturally sought more information about this gorgeous/devoted/brilliant-yet-sensitive man, they’d asked increasingly tricky-to-dodge questions but she’d been so intoxicated by the gasps of envy and admiration at her answers and by the feeling of being accepted for once that she hadn’t thought twice about the inadvisedly elaborate lies that she’d started to spin.

She hadn’t worried she was getting in too deep, that she’d be tripped up. Why would she when she’d borrowed the story of her sister’s whirlwind romance with her ex-husband? Their relationship might have ended in the divorce to end all divorces, but it had started out romantically enough, and Lily had shared details. At length.

The lies had tripped off Zoe’s tongue with surprising ease, so much so that she’d found herself elevating him to practically fiancé status and hinting that he was on the point of proposing. This development had had her worrying that everything was getting a bit out of control, but her audience were so beside themselves at the news that she casually dismissed her concerns.