The Chatsfield Short Romances 11-15

New Beginnings at The Chatsfield

Fiona Harper

Bollywood comes to The Chatsfield

Tara Pammi

Room 732: Bridesmaid with Benefits

Amy Andrews

The Sports Star at The Chatsfield

Melanie Milburne

The Real Adam Brightman

Roz Fayrer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

New Beginnings at The Chatsfield

Blurb

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

About the Author

Bollywood comes to The Chatsfield

Blurb

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Author Bio

Room 732: Bridesmaid with Benefits

Blurb

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

About the Author

The Sports Star at The Chatsfield

Blurb

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

About the Author

The Real Adam Brightman

Blurb

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

About the Author

Copyright

New Beginnings at The Chatsfield

Fiona Harper

Step behind the hotel room doors of The Chatsfield, London…

When bride-to-be Sophie’s groom goes AWOL, she decides to go to her dream honeymoon destination anyway. And The Chatsfield, London’s glamour and exquisite luxury is just what she needs to take her mind off her broken heart!

But she doesn’t expect that the biggest distraction of all will be meeting gorgeous Spaniard Cristian in the Chatsfield bar! Something about the shadows in his hypnotic gaze tells her he understands her pain more than most – perhaps together, they can help heal the hurts of the past and find a way to a new beginning?

Chapter One

I stare in the mirror and think, I should have been Mrs Gareth Hollander for one whole week now.

But I am not. And no blushing bride is staring back at me. This woman looks tired. Older than her thirty-two years.

There is a loud knock at the bathroom door. ‘Sophie? You almost ready?’

I nod and then remember I’m supposed to speak my answer. ‘Almost,’ the woman in the mirror says, continuing to hold my gaze, but her voice seems disconnected from the reflection. It echoes off the tiles. I’ve never been in a bathroom so luxurious, with its marble floor and walls, soft fluffy towels, big roll top bath big enough to house a rugby team. I should be feeling pampered, special. Instead the echoey space feels as cold and empty as a mausoleum.

The door creaks open and Mel sticks her head round it. ‘Looking good!’ she says, after giving me the once over. ‘Ready to go and hit the town?’

I turn and nod. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’ Which isn’t very ready at all, but I’m not going to tell her that. I can’t help feeling that as I turn and follow her into the hotel bedroom that the woman in the mirror is still standing there, staring after me with her hollow eyes.

Vikki is waiting for us in the living room of the suite. It was her and Mel’s idea to come to London, to stay at The Chatsfield. I don’t even know if I agreed. I was so numb after Gareth didn’t turn up for our wedding that I’d have jumped off the church spire if someone had told me to. My two bridesmaids came up with the plan of going on the honeymoon anyway, with the two of them to keep me company. They’d make sure I forgot all about my runaway groom, they’d told me.

I know most people want to go somewhere warm and tropical for a honeymoon, and that certainly appealed, but I’ve always wanted to stay at The Chatsfield. I’ve dreamed of it since I was a little girl. So when Gareth asked me where I wanted to go after we’d got married, I said here. To live like a princess for a fortnight.

I regret that now. This isn’t a dream come true, a memory I can cherish when I’m old, but a slowly unravelling nightmare. My fantasies of The Chatsfield will always be stained by this now.

‘The Criterion for dinner,’ Vikki says, grinning at me, ‘and how about coming back to the bar here afterwards? Then we can plan which club we’re going on to later. Not only is the barman a total hottie, but the cocktail menu is amazing. Mel and I tried some out on Thursday after you’d gone to bed early.’

Great. A nightmare that involves sparkly shoes. And cocktails. What more could a girl want?

Even so, I nod. I don’t care. I’m not celebrating anything. I don’t care if there’s champagne or not. And staying out until three in the morning in this glorious city hasn’t taken my mind off my aborted wedding one bit. I float from one expensive venue to the next, pulled along by the sheer willpower of my should-have-been bridesmaids, but all I can think about is why.

Why did Gareth not even turn up to the church? Why didn’t he tell me he was having doubts? Why did he leave me, stranded, to face all our friends and family on my own, with no answers to give them? I hate him for it. But I ache for him, too.

You can’t switch that kind of thing off, can you? Even if you want to so badly it makes your eyes swim and your head pound. Okay, Gareth wasn’t the man of my dreams that I’d pictured as a teenager, all brooding dark looks and passionate declarations. Who was? But I’d been able to envision my life with him. He’s a good man, if a little shut down emotionally. I’d been convinced it was all buried in there somewhere, and I thought I’d have a lifetime to excavate it.

Seems I was wrong. Now I can’t envision any future at all. When I try to look forward, all I can see is a pearly smudge, like fog. How can there be anything else when the man I was preparing to spend all of my tomorrows with has stolen them from me?

A voicemail. That’s all I have to go on. He hasn’t contacted me once in the last week. Maybe he never will. How does a person deal with that?

Last Saturday, the fifth of July, I’d been standing in the vestibule of the church, waiting. Gareth’s car had got held up in one of the country lanes, I’d reasoned to myself. Probably a tractor or a flock of sheep. I’d imagined us joking about it after the service, saying something about it being the bride’s job to be late, not the groom’s. Not very funny, I know, but we wouldn’t have cared. The joy of the day would have made it hilarious.

But then my mother, who’d been looking after my bag, had handed me my phone. It had been buzzing repeatedly in there, she’d said, but she hadn’t wanted to disturb me just minutes away from one of the most important milestones of my life. But when the minute hand on her watch had got to ten past, and the service had been due to start at two, she’d given in and handed it to me.

It had been Gareth. A garbled message saying that he needed time and space. That he was sorry, that it was nothing to do with me, but that he needed to be sure. I was so stupid that at first I thought he just needed a moment to compose himself, that he’d be along soon, but as the minutes had dragged on and the congregation had started to whisper and fidget, I’d slowly realised the truth.

He was wrong, though. It clearly was something to do with me. Otherwise he’d have been standing next to me at the altar.

‘Got the key to the city?’ Mel asks gleefully.

She’s talking about Gareth’s credit card. It’s been a running joke all week.

He got me a second card on his account a couple of months ago, for wedding expenses. I shrug and pull the smart black sliver of titanium out of my purse and hold it up. If he wasn’t going to turn up for the wedding, my bridesmaids reasoned, he might as well pay for the honeymoon. He can afford it, after all.

It had been fun at first, watching waitresses and shop workers’ eyes light up when they saw it, knowing that a serious spending spree was about to unfold. But that had been earlier in the week, when my devastation had hardened into anger, threatening to consume everything. Maybe that’s the reason I feel worse today, like a wrung-out dishcloth. That useful, necessary fire is waning, leaving me bruised and shivering.

When I place the credit card on the restaurant table later that evening, it doesn’t feel like revenge anymore, but defeat. Suddenly all I want to do is crawl back to The Chatsfield, climb into my bed and burrow myself under the goose down duvet and never ever come out. The hotel may never be my dream come true anymore, not with the memory of Gareth’s defection stamped all the way through it, but for now it is my refuge.

Chapter Two

We arrive back at the Chatsfield after what was probably a lovely dinner. Mel and Vikki giggle their way through the lobby, arm in arm like schoolgirls, dragging me in their wake. I stare longingly at the polished lift doors. My fingers itch to reach out and touch the call button.

But escaping to the suite won’t help. All it will do is prolong the hours I spend staring at the bedroom ceiling, alone and waiting for the dawn to come.

We pass the ballroom as we make our way towards the bar and Mel stops, listening beyond the doors. I can hear music. Not pop or classical, but something with a sharp and sultry tempo.

‘Sounds like quite a party,’ she says, then she and Vikki are giggling again. They both turn to me, a question in their eyes. My insides start to feel heavy.

I don’t know what’s wrong with my two best friends. They’ve been getting wilder and wilder all week. In their attempts to help me ‘snap out’ of whatever’s got me, they’re spinning faster and faster, trying to suck me up into their whirlwind.

I start to shake my head, but then the door opens and a couple wander into the lobby, giving a tantalising glimpse of the party for just a second. Before I know it, Mel grabs my hand and drags me inside. Vikki acts as rear guard, blocking my escape.

Even though it’s close to midnight, and it’s obvious there were originally more guests at this event, the faithful are still going strong. The band is playing an up-tempo salsa song and people are dancing. It’s not showy, like they’ve been to ballroom classes after watching Strictly and want to demonstrate their skills. The way they move is natural. Easy. As if they’ve been doing it their whole life and don’t really have to think about where their arms and legs are going.

I want to feel the way they feel, I think to myself. I want to feel as if reality is nothing but the thrum of the music in my breastbone, that nothing exists beyond the unthinking sway of my hips as my feet travel across the floor.

‘Oh!’ Vikki says, stopping short, her eyes fixed on something further into the room. ‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.’

Mel follows her gaze and also stops smiling. She reaches back and grabs hold of my hand.

I hadn’t really been paying much attention to my surroundings, too caught up in watching the easy elegance of the couples on the dance floor. Now I look around.

It must have been a very elegant party. There are beautiful crystal glasses on the tables, most now either empty or half full with flat champagne. Flowers in tall-stemmed vases stand guard over those that are left. Everything is cream and gold. Very elegant. Very romantic.

A thought starts to form in my head, something tickling round the edges of my consciousness. I frown and glance further around the room.

That’s when it hits me, the reason this whole thing seems vaguely familiar, like a half-remembered dream. My eyes finally come to rest on the remains of a large and elaborately decorated four-tiered cake in the corner. It is then I notice the sparkly confetti everywhere, the forgotten bridal favours left on the tables. Everything inside me turns cold. I feel as if I’m in a horror film, at the exact moment where the girl in the nightdress realises the monster is in the house, and the camera does that thing where it both zooms in on her and zooms out on the background at the same time.

‘Come on,’ Mel says, tugging at my captive hand. ‘This was a bad idea. Let’s just go.’

I can’t move. All I can do is stand and stare at the stupid cake. All I can think is that it’s nicer than the one that I chose, the one I don’t even know what happened to—did anyone eat it? Did it just get thrown away?—and I’m jealous. I’m actually jealous.

I’m so pathetic I start to laugh. Softly.

Vikki steps closer. ‘Come on, Soph…’

‘No.’

I pull my hand away from Mel’s. I don’t know how I know it’s there, but I turn and look at the bar on the far side of the room. I’ve been drinking all week. Because I’m supposed to be drowning my sorrows, because I’m supposed to be having fun in an attempt to stick two fingers up at my absent groom. Because I’m supposed to be toasting my own phoenix-like regeneration after a holiday with the girls.

I start walking towards it, the only thing in my focus the bartender conscientiously cleaning a glass with a sparkling white napkin. I’ve been drinking all week, but this is the first time I’ve really craved alcohol.

‘Go if you want to,’ I say loud enough for the two women staring at my back to hear, ‘but I’m staying.’

It’s time I stopped running and turned to face the monster.

Chapter Three

‘You don’t look as if you are having a very good time.’

I look up from my glass of Scotch to find a man sitting on the bar stool next to me. He is looking at me. Not in a sleazy way, but with guarded curiosity. I prepare to say that I’m fine, that I’m just a bit tired, but the words never leave my lips. I just haven’t got the energy to lie any more, and this man doesn’t know me. I don’t have to pretend that Gareth’s actions haven’t made me feel like a fragile piece of confetti trodden onto the bottom of somebody’s shoe.

He nods at the circus of movement and enjoyment on the dance floor and raises his eyebrows.

‘Probably because my life has gone down the toilet,’ I say matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t belong here, anyway. I crashed this wedding.’

His expression doesn’t change but I spot a glimmer of amusement in his eyes as I slam my tumbler back down on the bar and signal for the bartender to keep ‘em coming.

I look at my companion. He is older than I am but I can’t tell by how much. He has thick dark hair that might wave if it were allowed to grow longer, and there is a speckling of grey not only at the temples but in the cowlick on his forehead. He isn’t handsome. Not in the pretty, chiselled way Mel and Vikki like their men—his nose is too strong and his eyes too deep-set—but there is something about him. I’m surprised he’s bothered to stop and talk to me. There are much better pickings on the dance floor—including Mel and Vikki.

For a moment he doesn’t say anything, just absorbs my answer, then he also signals to the bartender, while pushing my empty tumbler away from me. ‘There’s only one thing for heartache,’ he says completely seriously.

I realise he has a slight accent. Mediterranean, maybe. Spanish?

He leans forward and gives instructions to the bartender, who places two large goblets in front of each of us and fills them with a dark, fragrant red wine. ‘Try it,’ he tells me and I hesitantly reach out and take hold of the glass, allow myself a tiny sip. It tastes amazing, of berries and plums and vanilla, and it feels like velvet on my tongue.

‘What is it?’ I ask, already yearning for more.

‘Malbec,’ he says, ‘2006 vintage. That was a wonderful year.’

‘You know about wine?’ I take another sip. It’s even better second time around. I can taste spices and rich fruit and a hundred other things I’m not sophisticated enough to identify.

He smiles and his serious eyes light up. My tummy warms. I tell myself it’s the wine.

‘It is my passion,’ he says. I think that only someone who looks and sounds like him can get away with saying something like that. On an English man it would sound either ridiculous or insincere. I like his honesty. I have forgotten men can be so honest.

Not that Gareth is a cad. He didn’t lie to me. It was the truth he hid that brought me here today, seeking a cure for my heartache in a bottle of exquisite Malbec. The truth that he didn’t love me enough to marry me. I have discovered that truth omitted can be every bit as damaging as all-out deception.

I turn and face the bar, stare without focusing at the smooth wooden surface. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘You’re right about the wine. I think it will do very nicely.’ I wait for him to leave.

But he doesn’t leave. I feel him there—warm, tangible—barely two feet away. He also doesn’t chatter. When I sneak a sideways look at him, he is staring at his wine very much the same way I have been.

He turns his head, finds me looking at him. I speak to cover up my very English awkwardness. ‘How did you know?’ I ask. ‘About the Malbec…?’

He blinks slowly, considering my question. ‘Because I work in the wine industry, like my family before me for three generations. Things like this get passed down from father to son. Not just the technical aspects of making a good wine, but it’s less…tangible…secrets.’

‘You make wine?’

He shakes his head. ‘My family used to. I work as a wine broker.’

I nod as if I know what that is. Suddenly, I feel very much the girl from a little country village in Sussex, even with Gareth’s exclusive credit card tucked in my clutch bag. ‘In Spain?’ I ask, trying to steer the conversation towards something I might know something about.

He shakes his head. ‘Argentina.’

So much for steering. I think I just hit a brick wall. He doesn’t seem to mind, though.

‘You didn’t want to stay home and grow grapes?’

He shrugs. ‘Times were tough when I was a teenager. My father had to sell the vineyard. I don’t think I would have stayed, even if I could have. I had itchy feet, and my job takes me all over the world.’

‘Even London,’ I say, smiling slightly. ‘Where there is a distinct lack of vineyards.’

He smiles back at me and I feel a little jolt down in my stomach. ‘Even London, occasionally. Although, this trip I am here for my brother’s wedding.’

Ah. Yes. The wedding. I’d kind of forgotten about that. I glance nervously towards the ballroom doors, regretting my bold outburst about crashing. I shift on my stool, reaching a leg towards the floor, preparing to leave.

‘No,’ he says softly. ‘Stay. Nobody minds. Finish your wine at least.’

I stare at the dark red liquid in the goblet, then I sit back firmly on my stool and take another sip. ‘Why London for the wedding?’

‘My new sister-in-law is English, and they’ve been living here for four years.’

I nod. That makes sense. But I hate the feeling of jealousy that creeps over me for the now-absent bride and groom. Envy that their day went as planned, and they probably hadn’t even entertained the idea it wouldn’t. Just as I hadn’t.

I don’t want to talk about his family. Work is safer. ‘So you travel a lot for your job?’ I ask, finally turning my head.

‘I am more often away from home than I am there.’

‘That sounds lonely,’ I say.

He nods. There is something in his eyes as he does it, something that makes me realise his answer to my question about the Malbec was a sidestep. Instinct tells me his knowledge about its restorative qualities is not professional, but personal. Just like that, I feel a bond forged between us. He understands, a voice whispers inside my head. He doesn’t judge and he understands.

I think it must show in my eyes because, for a moment, I see revelation in his too—this feeling of looking in a mirror. But this time, even though the reflection isn’t mine, it feels as if we are in synch. I look away, take refuge in my Malbec, but I can still feel him looking at me. He is not scared of this strange sense of connection the way I am.

‘And what is your job?’ he asks softly, and I can hear the warmth in his voice. ‘You know my life story now and I know nothing about you.’

He’s right. But I am sad that he’s asked. I was pleased to have this tiny holiday from being me—from being ‘Poor Sophie’. ‘I teach ballet,’ I say slightly hoarsely. ‘To children. I have my own dance school.’

‘Did you ever want to dance yourself?’

I look at him. I have the funniest feeling he can look deep inside me and see my heart—not only its current rawness, but its history, its dreams and desires. ‘Yes.’ This time it is barely more than a whisper. ‘I was good, but not good enough.’ It seems some dreams just aren’t made to come true. Something I have begun to understand more and more in the last seven days.

He seems to comprehend this, and doesn’t press for more. ‘So…apart from crashing my brother’s wedding, why are you here…at The Chatsfield?’

I’m surprised he doesn’t know, I feel that transparent before him. As tired as I am of lying, I can’t bring myself to tell him the whole truth. I tell him as much as I can while remaining insulated from it.

‘Oh, you know…’ I say with false brightness ‘…a trip with the girls. Shopping and silliness, really.’ That much is true, but my voice catches on the end of the sentence, calling me a liar anyway, and I know that he hears it, sees it.

For a long moment he doesn’t say anything. ‘Many people come to this magnificent hotel to run away,’ he replies simply.

I know it’s true. He does too. And I’m angry with him for it.

He takes in my short, staccato movements as I shift on my stool, drain the last of my wine and prepare to leave.

‘Would you like to dance?’ he asks, surprising me so much I laugh.

I look round the ballroom, at all the people who were actually invited, who actually know this man’s brother and his new wife, and I shake my head. ‘I shouldn’t be here.’

He gives me that long, studying look again. There is a calmness about him that both intrigues and infuriates me. ‘If it really bothers you, you can be my ‘plus one’. I could have brought someone if I had wished to, but I didn’t.’

I glance over at the dance floor. While we’ve been talking the music has changed, and the dance with it. Instead of the upbeat and sassy salsa, everything has slowed into an intense and mysterious tango. Again, it is nothing showy, nothing attention-seeking. Even a couple with silver hair glide round the dance floor, their cheeks lightly touching, the woman’s eyes closed.

I look back at him in panic. I can’t be out there with them. The emotion is tangible, flowing with the music like a second melody. I can’t risk it. What if everything I’ve been feeling since last Saturday starts spilling out of me and I slowly unravel? I’m not sure I know how to put myself back together again.

My voice comes out as if someone is strangling me. ‘I can’t.’

My host takes no notice as he leaves his stool. He just smiles so barely that the expression doesn’t leave his eyes, and then he offers me his hand.

Chapter Four

I hug myself. ‘I can’t. I don’t know how.’

His hand remains stretched out to me. ‘Can you walk?’

I nod.

He gives a little shrug. ‘Then that is all you need to know.’ When I don’t respond, he adds. ‘Tango is merely walking with a partner to the music.’

I glance over to the dance floor. Sure, what’s happening there doesn’t look like the version of the tango I’d seen at the ballroom studio when Gareth and I had gone for our trio of lessons in preparation for the wedding. The couples are close together, and while there are no roses between teeth or dramatic head or arm gestures, there are still patterns and small turns, little flicks and pauses that everyone seems to know by instinct. It looks a lot harder than walking to me.

He reaches out and his fingers slide across mine, then he grips my hand. He doesn’t pull, just leaves it there, like a question waiting for an answer. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, reading my mind again. ‘You are a dancer, you will pick it up. And there are no steps to learn. This kind of tango is improvised, and it is my job as the man to lead and yours as the woman to follow.’

Right there I have another good reason to chicken out. ‘I’m not in a very man-trusting kind of mood at the moment,’ I tell him. I trusted one man with the rest of my life and look what he did with it.

I see that almost hidden glimmer of amusement again, but behind it there is something in his expression that tells me, despite his soft words and calm manner, that my would-be partner is just as stubborn as I.

‘The lead is not a command, but an invitation. All you have to do is accept it, surrender to the music, and forget about everything else for a while.’

My ears prick up. That, at least, sounds appealing.

My hand is still in his, warm and encased. I realise I don’t want to let go.

I slide off the stool, watching my feet, then meet his gaze when I have my balance. There is no look of triumph in his eyes, as Gareth would have given me—he always was a bit too competitive for his own good. Instead this man just leads me away from the shadows at the edges of the room and to the fringes of the softly lit dance floor.

My heart begins to pound inside my ribcage as he pulls me close. I’m not sure if it’s nervousness at not knowing the dance or because it feels strange, and maybe just a little thrilling, to be in the arms of a man who isn’t Gareth.

Like the other couples on the floor, our upper bodies are close. His right hand is firm on back, resting at the bottom of my left shoulder blade, and my left arm rests snugly on top of his, my hand on his shoulder. He clasps my other hand and I find my forehead rests naturally against his cheek. He smells wonderful, of sharp citrus and clean cotton.

‘What’s your name?’ I whisper. If we’re going to be this close, I really ought to know his name.

‘Cristian,’ he replies simply.

‘I’m Sophie,’ I say, even though he doesn’t ask.

We begin to move. I have no idea what I’m doing, but somehow I don’t trip us both up. We keep going like that for a while. We’re so close it’s hard to look down at my feet. And he’s right: while I’m busy concentrating on not causing a five-couple pile-up, I haven’t room to think of anything else. It’s delicious. I wonder if I can take him home and hide him in my wardrobe, get him out so I can tango down my landing when things get too much.

‘Sophie?’ he says huskily.

I hesitate, putting us off-balance momentarily. ‘What? Am I doing it wrong?’

‘No…’ he says, and I can hear the humour in his voice. ‘But you are not yet doing it completely right.’

‘Give a girl a chance,’ I mutter under my breath. ‘I’ve only been learning for five minutes.’

This time his laugh is audible. ‘I like it when you speak that way,’ he says into my ear. ‘It shows you have natural fire. Much better than the wet dishrag I met at the bar. And tango is all about emotion—about passion.’

I want to bristle at the dishrag comment, but I can’t really argue with the truth. We carry on dancing in silence for another minute. Somehow I know he’s going to carry on with what he had started to say, that I just need to be patient.

We reach a point where he turns me around him. It’s very clever. I don’t even know it’s coming, but somehow, the way he places his feet, the way he blocks his leg with mine, make the next step clear. He does it again. But this time the movement is larger, more sweeping, and then at the end we both seem to grow taller, hover on the balls of our feet. The moment stretches way longer than feels comfortable, and I move before he does. He tuts softly in my ear.

‘Do not be afraid of these moments,’ he tells me. ‘They are necessary, time to feel the music, work out what it is telling you to do next. You cannot rush them. They reflect how it is in life… There are moments of great complexity and busyness, great drama and emotion. We need the pause after such times, and it is the same with tango.’

I nod, even though I’m not quite sure what he means. The skin of his cheek feels both rough and smooth against my forehead. I feel just the hint of stubble at his jaw. I used to get annoyed at Gareth when he didn’t shave, telling him I didn’t need sandpapering when we were that close, but somehow I like the feel of it right now.

I concentrate on not wrenching the lead away from him, even when the moments of stillness stretch on forever. I concentrate on trying to work out what’s coming next. Now we’ve been dancing a while, my feet are recognising the patterns. I want to be more than a lump that he’s dragging round the floor. For some reason it’s important I am a good partner.

‘You are thinking too much,’ he mumbles as he turns me once again, and then he steps across and blocks my raised foot with his own, uses his weight to send me in an unexpected direction. Suddenly, I feel as lost and off-balance as I did when we first started. I look down to try and work where his feet are going.

‘Ciera los ojos,’ he says. I don’t understand the words but the tone is a command.

‘I don’t underst—’

‘Close your eyes,’ he repeats, just as plainly. I know this is not a request. Nor is it an invitation. I keep my eyes wide open and glare at him. He stares back at me. Neither of us back down. I feel a flash of anger, although I don’t know where it has come from or why. It changes the way I move, and Cristian somehow knows this and changes his steps accordingly. Suddenly, this is more than arms and legs and torsos moving in unison. It becomes something primal. Something I am more than a little bit scared of.

I turn my head away, refusing to look at him, but my act of contrariness becomes part of the dance too. Or is it a conversation our bodies are having while our mouths are closed? I really can’t tell.

‘We call it entregar,’ he says. ‘It means to surrender. It is what a good follower in tango must do.’ His voice grows softer. ‘You almost have it, Sophie… Close your eyes.’

This time I do it. Not because I have been told to. Not in a fit of pique. But because I want to. I have seen the couples around me, even the silver-haired pair, lost in a place where the outside world doesn’t exist any more. I want that too. I want it so badly it’s like an ache deep inside me.

As we carry on I see what he means. Without my eyes I have no choice but to listen to what his body is telling mine. My whole frame becomes hungry to hear from him. He uses his weight, his legs, even the fingertips resting so, so lightly on my back. I feel the way he wants me to move and I just go with it. And he’s right—I’m not a lifeless puppet being directed. I am part of it and it makes me feel alive in a way I just can’t describe.

The feelings I’ve been stuffing down all week, those I’ve been too scared to let out come spilling out. There are moments of anger and moments of sadness. Times when I want to howl and times when I want to punch and scratch, yet the dance contains it all. Each emotion follows the next, working its way out from deep inside me, through my torso, my arms, my legs, even through my fingertips, and there they are exorcised. Set free, like doves that fly off never to return. I feel that Cristian knows me now. Knows all my secrets, for he has felt them reverberate through me and into him as we have moved as one body.

We dance on and on, from song to song. I can’t let go. I don’t want to. I feel as if I was meant to do this, to learn this dance, and that I was meant to do it with him. Something hot and warm slices through me, a wish that we’d met in a different time or a different place. It’s both surprising and terrifying.

Finally we come to a stop. I realise the music is dying away. We stand there not moving. I can tell his eyes are closed too, but I don’t know how. A strange energy pulses around us. With a reluctant sigh, he pulls away. I feel cold air rush in where his body just was and I open my eyes.

The way he’s looking at me makes me want to cry. It’s the way I always imagined Gareth would look when he turned to watch me walking down the aisle.

‘You are a quick learner,’ he tells me, and I can hear a slight tremor in his voice.

‘Thank you.’ I want to walk back into his hold again, lay my head on his cheek and just keep on dancing, but the band are packing up. Apart from a handful of people picking up their belongings from the tables at the edges, that the room is empty. Even Mel and Vikki are gone.

He’s still holding my right hand. A hum starts in the air between us. I realise that I want to kiss him. Not only that, but I think he wants to kiss me. I almost close my eyes and sway towards him. Instead, I snatch my hand from his and clasp it to my body, protecting myself.

‘I need to go,’ I mumble. I look towards the door. ‘My friends…’

‘Sophie?’

I turn my head away. I can’t stand that look in his eyes. ‘Don’t.’

He speaks anyway. ‘I would like to see you again.’

I nod. I know he does. I want it too.

I also know that it would be the stupidest thing in the world. No way am I ready to even notice another man yet, let alone date one. Inside me something starts to weep.

I weaken and look at him. All my pain and confusion must be written on my face, because his eyes grow bleak and then he tilts his head, as if he understands.

‘Dinner,’ he says, ‘is all I am asking for.’

I nod. And then I shake my head. I’m so confused.

He takes my hand, our one remaining point of contact, and raises it to his lips. They feel soft and firm as he kisses the back of my hand. He closes his eyes momentarily as he does so and it makes me want to run my fingers through his hair.

And then we are severed. He steps back.

‘I will wait for you in the lobby at eight o’clock tomorrow evening,’ he says and I feel my breath hitch. ‘It is up to you whether you choose to meet me or not.’ And then he turns and walks away, leaving me alone on the empty dance floor as a hotel employee flicks the overhead lights on one by one.

Chapter Five

‘Good luck!’ Vikki says with a giggle.

‘Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!’ Mel adds.

They both wave me goodbye as the lift doors slice closed, cutting us off from each other. I breathe out and lean against the back of the lift as it begins to descend, but then I panic. I launch myself at the old-fashioned panel of round push-buttons and press a number, any number, as long as it’s lower than the floor I’ve just come from and higher than the one for the hotel lobby.

When the doors ding open a few seconds later I spill out of the confined space, almost knocking into an elderly couple. ‘Sorry!’ I yell, as they walk into the lift, tutting.

I stumble along the corridor, feeling safer when the lift doors are out of sight. And then I stop. I look down at my smart but not too sexy shift dress, at my black suede kitten heels.

What am I doing? Am I insane?

Maybe, I think, nodding to myself.

I’m considering going on date a mere eight days after being jilted very publicly and painfully at the altar. Clearly something is not as it should be with my mental health.

Of course, Mel and Vikki think it’s wonderful. I discovered when I got back up to the suite last night that they’d deliberately left me alone down there with Cristian, and were quite disappointed when I turned up at the door a little after one, alone.

‘You should do it!’ Mel had said, grinning.

‘Do him you mean,’ Vikki chimed in.

I’d ignored them and gone to my room and got ready for bed, ignoring their schoolgirl whisperings beyond the bedroom door. That hadn’t been the end of it, though. They’d continued in the morning, and all the way through a shopping trip to Selfridges. Hence the dress and shoes. They’d wanted me to go with something more…obvious. I’d refused. But I had bought something. Everything in my suitcase reminds me of Gareth.

‘A rebound fling will be good for you,’ Mel had said in one of her calmer moments. ‘And what better revenge on Grimy Gareth than sleeping with another man on what should have been your honeymoon!’

I turn and trudge wearily back to the lifts, press the up button and lean my head against the cool brushed metal of the door surround while I wait for it to arrive. Although my two wayward bridesmaids have said they’ll make themselves scarce for the evening, they won’t have left the suite yet. I’ll just tell them I can’t do it, that we’ll do something else this evening. I’ll need to give Gareth’s credit a card a thorough workout to make them drop the subject, though.

The lift arrives. It’s empty, thankfully. I stand in the middle, not touching anything as it starts to travel upwards and I close my eyes.

I picture him in the lobby. Waiting.

I know what that’s like, to be suspended between hope and disappointment. I know how it feels to wade through seconds thick as treacle. I know the moment when the tiny flicker of brightness inside reaches its expiry date and coughs out.

I reach out and punch another button. The one marked ‘G’.

I shake my head and call myself a fool.

As stupid as this is, I can’t leave him there. Another indicator that maybe Gareth and I weren’t as compatible as I’d thought.

And while I’m not going to pin Cristian down to the dinner table and have hot steamy sex with him in front of a restaurant full of shocked customers, thinking of Gareth makes me realise that having dinner with a nice man who actually wants to spend time in my company isn’t such a horrible idea after all. Maybe it’ll be good for me.

The decision comes to rest inside me. For the first time in more than a week—apart from those timeless moments on the dance floor last night—I felt a sense of peace.

The lift doors whoosh open mere moments later. He’s there, standing near the bottom of the stairs, slightly turned away from me. As the doors slide closed again behind me, cutting off my escape route, he turns and smiles.

I feel something warm and jittery inside. The memory of the music from last night washes over me, so clear I can almost believe it’s playing from secret speakers in a pot plant nearby. I remember how warm and solid he felt against me, how I let go of everything and just trusted him. How I hadn’t been either sad or afraid. Would it be wrong to dance with him now…just dance our way out of the lobby and down the road, through the parks of London and out of the city, in a tango that would never end?

Clearly, the insanity thing is getting worse.

I smile back at him. A tiny nerve in the corner of my cheek spoils the effect.

He doesn’t seem to notice, though, and his smile grows wider, brighter. I realise he is much more handsome than I first gave him credit for.

‘You came,’ he says.

‘I did,’ I reply, and leave it at that. I can’t even explain my presence here to myself.

He holds out his hand and I look at it, a silky feeling of déjà vu creeping over me. I don’t hesitate this time, though. I don’t argue and try to escape. Instead I slide my fingers past his until we are joined, and then we walk out of the revolving door into the soft golden light of a London summer’s evening.

Chapter Six

We eat dinner in a little Italian restaurant tucked down a side street in Kensington. The decor is dated, the space a little cramped, but the staff are welcoming and knowledgeable and my linguine gambari is amazing.

I look across the table at my companion and realise he is a rare sort of man. Cristian is not like Gareth. He is not interested in impressing me with the price tag of a luxurious meal; he merely wants me to enjoy the good food and even better wine. We talk easily. I find myself smiling, laughing even. It feels strange—alien—but good.

‘So,’ I say as I try and scoop up the last of my spicy tomato sauce with my remaining prawn, ‘where are you off to next after London? France? Italy? Australia?’

He puts his fork down and looks at me. ‘I am going home.’

I nod. Somehow I understand this is significant. Not the fact that he’s going back to Argentina, but that this trip is different. ‘When?’ I ask, then busy myself with arranging my cutlery on my empty plate.

‘Tomorrow.’

I look up quickly, see the regret in his eyes. I wonder if he experienced the same stab of cold I did at his reply.

‘I’ve been raising the finance to buy back the vineyard my family once owned. I’m going back to Mendoza to finalise the deal.’

I leave my knife and fork alone, look up and smile softly at him. ‘That’s marvellous. I mean, I know that I don’t know you…not really…but somehow I can tell you’re going to make amazing wines.’

I see the smile in his eyes. I want to smile back, grin so wide it feels as if my mouth can’t stretch enough to accommodate it, but I don’t. I look at the half empty wine bottle on the table between us. ‘What’s the name of your vineyard?’

‘Why?’

I shrug. ‘Because I want to look out for it. Maybe I’ll find a bottle of your wine one day and I will think of you.’ My words have made me sad, even though I know that is all the future connection I could ever hope to have with this man.

‘Then I hope you will enjoy it.’ His voice is as rich and warm as the Shiraz we’ve just drunk. I can feel him looking steadily at me. ‘But it will be a long time, and it will take a lot of dedication and hard work before that moment arrives.’

My face stays tilted down, but my eyes look up. ‘You won’t be coming back to London again?’

‘I will come to visit Tomas and Felicity at some point in the future, but I will not be in London as frequently as before, no.’

He smiles again, but this time it is tinged with sadness. Neither of us say anything for a while and then he breathes in sharply, as if being woken from a dream, and looks into my eyes. ‘I wish I could stay longer.’

His words tug at something deep inside me.

‘I do too,’ I reply, even though I know how insane this is.

He reaches out across the table and laces his fingers between mine. We both stare at our intertwined hands. It feels as if we’ve just made an important statement. I want to cry, but at the same time warmth rushes through me, making me feel giddy.

Cristian looks at the large clock on the far wall of the restaurant, above the bar, and then back at me. ‘We have tonight.’

I nod. We do. A perfect bubble of time.

We begin to talk again. It is as if we were back on the dance floor. Our conversation was going along one way, but we have paused, taken a turn, and now it heads off in a new, brighter direction. We discuss music and film, food and wine, politics and religion. Finally, a surly waitress slaps a dessert menu down on the table and coughs.

We are the last people left in the restaurant. Cristian and I look at each other, as if sharing a secret, then we smile and shake our heads. It’s only as he pulls away to reach for his wallet that I notice we’ve been holding hands the whole time.

Oh, Lord, I think, as we break eye contact so he can pay the bill. What am I doing? I really don’t know. All I know is that I’ve been feeling so empty, so sucked dry by life, that now this oasis moment is here I can’t stop drinking of it.

We leave the restaurant. It’s late. People are spilling out of the pubs and heading to the clubs. All week I’ve found the city nights warm and dusty, but now the light breeze tickles the hairs on my arms and the bright lights make the humid evening seem full of possibilities.

We walk without talking, making our way slowly through the bodies lining the streets. We haven’t touched again since we let go of each other at the restaurant, but I still feel as if we’re connected.

I forget. Just forget.

I forget the trauma that has brought me here, the events that have led me to this night, to this man. I just enjoy the strength of his silent presence as he walks next to me through the crowds. He was my first proper dance partner, and I still have that sense that we’re a unit of two amongst all the other bodies, communicating wordlessly, always in synch. I let out a deep and lengthy sigh. It feels as if I’d been holding it in ever since I stepped into my wedding dress last week.

My phone buzzes in my bag and I absent-mindedly take it out, a slight smile curving my lips. But when I see who the message is from I stop smiling. In fact, I stop altogether.

Cristian has walked on a few steps, not noticing. Someone bumps into the back of me. Suddenly all the heat and claustrophobia and noise of the city at night comes rushing back in.

We need to talk. G x

I close my eyes, hoping the mirage of a text will have disappeared again when I open them, but it doesn’t.

Now? Seriously? After all this time with nothing?

This is when Gareth finally decides to man up enough to contact me, when I have found one moment—one brief moment—to forget what he did to me? And with a text too! Not even a phone call! Really, he ought to be outside my hotel room on his knees, begging me for forgiveness.

And that careless little kiss at the end of the message…

I feel as if I could burst into flames on the spot, as if I could turn and punch one of these faceless people jostling round me, just because they have the nerve to be here when he is not.

‘Sophie? Are you okay?’

Cristian’s voice is warm and full of concern, pulling me back from the brink. I shake myself and look up. He rests his hand lightly on my shoulder. His eyes are questioning. They dart momentarily towards my phone and then back to my face. I breathe in and tuck it quickly back in my bag.

I want to believe this man cares, I realise, but I really don’t know him. And I’ve already proved that I’m too trusting, that I don’t scratch far enough below the surface in men to see what’s really there.

‘I’m tired,’ I say, and I’m telling the truth. ‘I think it’s time we went back to the hotel.’

Chapter Seven

We walk in silence. I don’t look at Cristian. I’m too scared to. On the dance floor I agreed to trust him completely, and I fear he can now tell I have reneged on the deal. My brain tells me I’ve done the sensible thing, while my heart yells ‘Traitor!’.

But when we’re safely inside the revolving door of The Chatsfield, preparing to go our different ways, I realise he has been my one bright moment in the week from hell. Maybe I’m weak, but I don’t want to let go of that yet. I don’t want to go back to the darkness that pulls itself over me like a blanket, thick and suffocating.

He stops in the middle of the lobby and I take a breath, turn to him.

‘Would you like to come up for a drink…a nightcap?’

I know my voice wobbles and he hears it too, gives me a questioning look. ‘A nightcap?’ he asks, a slight frown creasing his features.

I nod. ‘You know…brandy or something. I’m sure there’s something like that in the suite…’

We look at each other. I know what he’s thinking. He’s wondering if I mean just a drink. So am I. But this doesn’t feel like one of those tingly moments, hot and heady, the sort where a girl gets carried away. I just feel…desperate. I look at him, begging him to understand. He must know how this feels. I’ve seen it in his eyes. He knows the loneliness, knows that someone would do anything to escape it, just for a moment.

He steps forward, reaches up to touch my cheek so gently. ‘Yes, Sophie. I will come for a nightcap. I will keep you company, if that is what you want.’

I hold back a sniff and nod vigorously. How does this man, whom I’ve known for less than twenty-four hours, who is so different from me and my safe Sussex village lifestyle, read me better than Gareth did after six years? It must be a dream, something I’ve conjured up in my sleep from too much wishful thinking. I’ll wake in a moment, drenched in sweat, heart pounding, distant sirens wailing through the quiet London streets.

He reaches down for my hand and we head for the lifts. I feel the warmth of his fingers between mine as we travel up to my floor and I let out a sigh. I’m safe. For the moment.

When we get to the suite it is empty, just as Mel and Vikki said it would be. They must be really serious about this wild, sexy fling idea. I almost laugh but then I realise that I’m actually bringing a man, a stranger—although he doesn’t feel that way—back to my hotel room. Reality lurches again. This can’t be real, can it? Cristian can’t be real.

But his body feels warm behind mine as I fumble with the key card in the lock more than once. His hands are solid and real as he gently takes it from me and then the little green light flashes and we are walking into the suite. I’m quite relieved it’s got a living room, I discover, that we’re not just walking in and seeing a great big empty bed taunting us.

I go to the little bar across the room without looking back at him over my shoulder. I find a bottle of something amber-coloured and reach for it and two large tumblers. With shaky fingers I pour a little too much into each glass and then I turn and walk over to him, hand it to him. For some reason I feel the need to smile at him brightly, but it feels papery and thin on my features. He gives me a What are you doing? look.

I can’t tell him, because I don’t know. I just know I don’t know how to do this. Whatever it is.

If this were a book or a film, I’d have that fling. Right now on the expensive Persian rug beneath our feet. The perfect rude gesture to Gareth for his cowardice, for his bloody awful timing. For that stupid little ‘x’ at the end of his text.

If this were a story, I’d wake up tomorrow morning and feel liberated and free, as if everything Gareth has done to me has been washed away, and I’d step out into my bright, shining future. Only, as I stare at the man standing a few feet away, his eyes dark and full of unspoken emotion, I realise that real life is far more complicated than that.

I breathe out. My chest deflates and suddenly I feel very tired.

I walk over to Cristian. I take the glass from his hand and put it on the coffee table, and then I place my hands on his chest, I look into his eyes and then I lay my head on his shoulder. For a moment he is deathly still, but then his arms fold round me, he breathes out a word in Spanish that I don’t understand and I feel his face on my neck as he pulls me closer.

It’s as if we’re dancing again, but this time there are no lights, no music, not even any movement. Just this wonderful stillness that soothes something deep down inside of me. Slowly I begin to relax, feeling the slight roughness of his suit jacket against the skin of my face, the seams and folds of a pocket under the fingers of my right hand, the smell of him—warm and sharp and hypnotising. I lose all track of time, all awareness of anything but these immediate sensations. I could be anywhere. It could be any time of day. I don’t care, because I am holding onto him and he is holding onto me and that is all that matters.

For the first time in ages, I feel as if I am properly breathing. I do it again and again, relishing the feel of cool, fresh air in my lungs. How long have I been holding all this tension? For a week?

No, longer, I realise. Much longer.

Cristian’s hands move on my back, bringing me sharply back to the present. At once I am aware of the carpet beneath my feet, the ornate Art Deco clock ticking on the mantelpiece, the hum of the air-conditioning unit. I peel my face away from his shoulder and look at him.

‘Sophie—’ he begins to say, but I cut him off by reaching up and brushing my lips against his. There is a moment or two, pulse beats, while everything is still again, but then his arms squeeze around me and his lips find mine.

The kiss that follows is exquisite. It is soft, yet teasing. Passionate, yet gentle. I feel as if I am something utterly precious in his hands, something never to be let go of. For a woman whose other half wimped out on the ‘to have and to hold’ part of our marriage contract, it is seductive. Maybe even a little addictive. I don’t want it to stop. Ever.

But it does, and when we pull away from each other and open our eyes, Cristian is looking a little shaken for the first time in our acquaintance. For some reason I find this funny and I start to smile.

‘I did not mean to do that,’ he says in a husky voice.

‘Neither did I,’ I reply, ‘but I refuse to regret it.’

His lips twitch and his eyes warm. ‘Nor I.’

I shake my head and then lay my forehead against his. ‘What are we doing?’ I say on a sigh. ‘This is crazy.’

I feel him inhale, hold it and breathe out again. ‘I know.’

‘You’re going home to tomorrow…’ I hear the hint of despair in my voice. I look up to see if the shutters have come down, the way they did in Gareth’s eyes when I dared to be too honest emotionally, but what I find there isn’t awkwardness, a vague look of fear, but matching longing, matching frustration.

‘This is stupid,’ I say, shaking my head, attempting to back away. ‘We don’t even know each other.’

Cristian holds me firmly, stopping my retreat. He waits until I meet his gaze again. ‘Don’t we?’

My heart starts hiccupping inside my chest.

I close my eyes. I want so badly for all of this to be true, for this to be the key that releases me from the prison I’ve been trapped in. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I really could just take Cristian into my bed and make everything else disappear? I know it would be amazing.

I also know all we can have is this one night.

But will that make it better, or worse? Suddenly I am second-guessing myself again, poisoning the atmosphere of promise clinging around us with my doubts. I step back and this time he doesn’t stop me. I start walking and realise I am heading for the bathroom. I wave a hand. ‘I just need to…you know…’

And then I bolt, running through the bedroom until I am back in my porcelain mausoleum, the door shut firmly behind me.

Chapter Eight

I stare in the mirror. I don’t recognise the woman staring back at me. She isn’t grey and weighed down. She’s flushed and her breath is coming in short pants. She looks alive. I know I can’t walk back into the other room and grab this chance with both hands, but she looks as if she could. She looks like a woman who knows how to take a leap of faith.

I try to smile at her, to ask her what she’s going to do, but the image shifts and flickers. She’s still there, but now there is someone else there too, like a ghostly shadow.

It’s the woman with the hollow eyes. Her face gets clearer the more I look, swallowing up the other me, absorbing her. I want to shout out to call her back, but I know my voice will carry to the living room.

Now Hollow Eyes is all that is left. She looks back at me sadly. Knowingly.

I brace my hands on the sink and drop my head. I can’t bear to look at her any more. Her work is done, anyway. She’s woken me up from this temporary insanity. Truth has come rushing back into my evening like a cold draught.

I could sleep with Cristian tonight, but it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make me free. The ghosts are still here to haunt me. My friend in the mirror is proof of that. Tomorrow I would feel cheap and dirty. Instead of remembering this wonderful short time together, I would want to pretend it had never happened.

And Cristian is not a faceless man fit only for a meaningless fling. He’s right—I do know him. In a way I can’t articulate and don’t understand. How can I use him like that after all he’s given me? It would make me no better than Gareth.

I turn and rest my bottom on the sink, stare at the tiles on the wall. They blur and swim into a sea of white.

I don’t want to forget Cristian. No matter how great the pleasure could be in this moment, I don’t want to rob myself of those future memories. I want to treasure the moments—my first tango, the way he looked at me…as if I was special, as if I was worth something. I need these things to hang onto if I’m ever going to banish that sad grey creature who looks back at me in the mirror.

I take in a breath, stand up and walk towards the door.

Chapter Nine

When I re-enter the living room, Cristian is about to walk out the door into the hall. ‘No!’ I shout and he turns. He looks at me, but he doesn’t let go of the door handle. I walk over to him. Tears begin to stream down my face.

I know I brought him up here under false pretences. I know I have no right to ask him to stay. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say hoarsely as I come close.

He turns to look at me. ‘For what?’

I give a little shrug. ‘Because I don’t think I can…you know…’

He shakes his head. His eyes glitter in the soft light and I see his jaw tense. ‘You think I leave because of that?’

His accent is thicker, stronger. He is angry.

‘I…’ I shake my head. I can’t deny it. It’s exactly what I thought. Exactly what I still think.

He pulls himself up taller. At once I am taken back to the evening before, to not just the grace, but the power and control with which he danced. ‘I was leaving because you are not ready for this, Sophie. Not any of it. Not even the little we have shared.’

The tears, which must have stopped briefly, halted by shock, start up again. I nod and my lips crumple. I look at the floor.

He swears in Spanish and then I feel his arms around me again. I just cry on his jacket, making a big soggy mess of it, but I’m too far past caring to stop.

When the tears finally run dry, he leads me back into the room, sits me down on the sofa. ‘You are grieving,’ he says.

I look up, swiping my eyes. ‘No I’m not,’ I say firmly. ‘It’s nothing like that. Nobody died it was just…’

I trail off, look at the clock on the mantelpiece.

‘Oh.’

It’s exactly like that. Okay, no actual person died. There hasn’t been a funeral. But my hopes and dreams? The future I’d planned for myself? It’s all gone. Nothing is left but an empty space. And that’s what death is, isn’t it? The hole left behind when something you love isn’t there any more, something you can never get back.

He sits down on the other end of the sofa. I can see understanding and sympathy in his eyes. And knowledge.

‘You know what this is like, don’t you? You’ve done this too?’

He nods.

Hope flares inside me. Cristian seems so grounded, so solid. Not the wavering mess I feel I might dissolve into at any moment. I realise that maybe it won’t always feel this way, that one day I might reach that state too.

‘What happened?’ I ask.

He blinks slowly. ‘I was engaged to be married a long time ago, but the wedding never happened.’

I butt in, far too eager. ‘She ran out on you?’ I know I shouldn’t sound so excited, but something inside me wants confirmation of this feeling that we’re a matching pair.

He shakes his head. ‘She died. A stupid accident that made no sense…still makes no sense.’

I look at him. Those hints of sadness I’d only been half aware of become clearer now. He wears them like scars. But where mine are raw and weeping, his are faint and silvery. Not erased. They will never be erased, I suspect. But they have become bearable.

‘I’m sorry.’ This time I say it for the right reason. I see gratitude in his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to be crass earlier…with the running out thing…’ I know I’m babbling, but I can’t seem to stop. I feel as if I’ve been holding it all in for so long and Cristian isn’t scared by this side of me, not the way Mel and Vikki are. ‘But that’s what happened to me.’

I stare up at the plasterwork on the ceiling, look round my opulent suite. Not the one-bedroomed one Gareth had booked—Mel had seen to that the moment we’d checked in—but close enough. ‘This…’ I say, and my voice breaks, underlining nicely just how not ‘over it’ I am ‘…was supposed to be my honeymoon. I should have got married eight days ago.’

I see in Cristian’s eyes that he knows where I’m going, but I say it anyway. I don’t know why, but I need to.

‘He left me standing at the altar. No explanation.’

Everyone else has been looking at me with pity since it happened, but not Cristian. For a moment his eyes flare with a hint of the anger I saw at the door to the suite, but then I see both admiration and acknowledgment. ‘And so you ran away,’ he says softly, with no judgement.

I stand up and laugh. I don’t know why. This last twenty-four hours has been surreal enough as it is and I seem to have lost the ability to surprise myself any longer. I fling my arms wide. ‘Does it look as if I’m running away? I came on my own honeymoon, for heaven’s sake!’

Cristian just looks at me.

‘Oh, shut up,’ I say and pace away in the other direction. I go to stare out of the window. Even though it’s late the city is still alive, busy like an ant hill, but populated with taxi cabs and red buses instead of insects.

He comes to stand behind me then he runs his hand down the outside of my arm. I shiver. ‘I should go,’ he says.

I nod, still looking at the trail of red tail lights winding down the road. ‘I don’t want you to.’

He leans forward and kisses the top of my shoulder. ‘Neither do I.’

I turn and look at him. Our faces are close. I feel breathless. ‘Is it just me?’ I ask, searching his face for his answer before it comes. ‘Am I the only one feeling this?’

It’s highly probable that’s the case. I have come slightly unhinged, after all.

He looks down at me, his face sad. I feel certain he is going to say that it’s all in my head, that he’s sorry he let me think otherwise, but then he nods. ‘No. It’s not just you.’

Terror and joy wind themselves round my throat like creepers. Joy that maybe I’m not as crazy as I thought, but fear of what this might mean. He’s right. I’m nowhere near ready.

‘Our timing stinks,’ I say, and he lets out a low, dry chuckle. I like the sound of his laugh.

And then he kisses me again. This time it’s not just a tangle of sensations, wonderful as they were. This time he is communicating, just as he did when we danced together. I don’t know the exact translation, but my heart sighs in agreement. I mumble against his lips. ‘I don’t want this night to end.’

He pulls back and I open my eyes. ‘Then we won’t let it,’ he says. ‘We will squeeze every last second out of it.’ And then he grabs my hand and leads me to the door.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

He smiles at me. ‘Nowhere. Everywhere. It doesn’t matter.’

I smile back as the suite door slams behind me. No, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care where I go, as long as I am with him.

Chapter Ten

From where we stand on the roof terrace of The Chatsfield the whole city lies before us, washed clean from the grime and heat of the previous day by the silvery blue light creeping across the sky. Cristian and I have walked, we have talked. We have kissed and just held each other, but now the night is almost over, the seconds draining away along with the safety of the darkened sky and I feel the old sense of heaviness returning. I start to panic.

He knows this and comes to stand behind me, folds his arms around me and places his cheek next to mine. My breathing begins to slow.

I close my eyes against the invading dawn, hoping to delay it just that little bit longer. Why now? Why did I have to meet him now, not in two years’ time…? Or why not seven years ago, before I’d even met Gareth? Fate might have blessed us by letting us find each other, but her cruel sense of humour means this will always be a ‘what if?’, a bittersweet memory that both soothes and taunts.

‘It’s so unfair…’ I whisper softly.

Cristian just holds me tighter. ‘It is not fair or unfair,’ he says. ‘It is life.’

I turn and face him, grab his shoulders just a little desperately. ‘Can’t you stay?’ While I wait for him to answer I start trying to work out when Gareth will realise I’m draining his bank account and if there will be time to buy a plane ticket to Argentina before then.

He looks down at me, those dark brown eyes so expressive, even while hardly any of the emotion shows on the surface. I used to think Gareth had hidden depths, that his emotional constipation was masking who I believed him to be, but staring at this man, I know this is what strong and silent looks like. His heart beats; it is not made of concrete.

‘Even if I could, I would not change anything,’ Cristian says.

I shake my head.

‘Grief has its own time scale,’ he adds. ‘You cannot rush it or wish it away. I know this.’

I know it too, but I want to pretend I don’t. My voice rasps when I respond. ‘Will I ever see you again?’

For a long time he doesn’t open his mouth, but then he says, ‘That, Sophie, will be up to you.’

Something inside me shoots up like a firework, even as I frown. ‘What do you mean?’

He takes my face in his hands, drops a swift, soft kiss on my lips. ‘What I mean is that you need space and time, and that I am going to give them to you.’

Space and time. Just what Gareth had asked of me. I’m not at all amused by the irony, especially as I realise Cristian is much more generous than I am. I wanted to take Gareth’s time and space and shove them up his—

‘Sophie?’

I focus back on Cristian. I can feel the warmth of the rising sun touching my shoulders now and I shake it away.

‘Ciera los ojos,’ he says and I do as I am told, closing my lids and eradicating everything but the feel of him, the faint scent of his aftershave. His right hand moves to just below my shoulder blade, his left intertwines with mine, but we don’t dance, we just stand there, feeling the warmth of the dawn grow brighter and hotter.

‘I will be back in London one year from today,’ he whispers in my ear.

I start to open my eyes to look at him, but the little noise that he makes tells me I need to be patient, that it isn’t time to break the spell.

A year? That seems like an awfully long time. ‘Will you?’ My voice is so faint I’m not sure he even hears me.

He nods and I feel his stubble against my cheek. ‘I will be here, in this very spot, waiting for you.’

Tears spring from under my closed lashes.

‘If you want to meet me here, it will be up to you.’

I almost laugh. ‘Of course I’ll—’

He cuts me off without either moving or saying anything. I just feel the change in him like a drop in temperature. ‘You cannot say that yet. Not until you have been through the depths and come out the other side. Until then, it is impossible to know what you want.’

‘What time?’ I whisper.

‘Sunset. And then we can continue our night together as if it did not stop.’

He kisses me one last time, and it reminds me of the Malbec he gave to me the first time we met—rich and velvety, full of promise—and then he steps away. Somehow I know I’m not supposed to open my eyes.

I hear his footsteps fade across the terrace and disappear.

Part of me wants to collapse into a heap and take up where I left off a day and a half ago, immersed in my own misery, barely surviving, but a newer part refuses to be that weak. The new part turns and faces the sun, tilts her head back to feel its warmth on the face he just touched and kissed. She smiles.

I don’t know if I’ll tell Mel and Vikki about this. I don’t know if they’ll ever believe me. Better to let them think I had my fling. And I know they won’t believe that Cristian will be here in twelve months. Despite all her giddiness about men, Mel, in particular, is very sceptical. She’d probably say it was sweet talk to stop me following him and making a fuss.

And I suppose, after my aborted wedding last week, I should probably think the same.

I try to picture things that way, to just brush this off as a lucky escape, but I can’t. All I can see is an image of Cristian standing here on a warm and breezy summer’s evening. As hard as I try, I just don’t see myself here, humiliated and alone a second time, waiting for a man who never comes.

But more than that… I look further, wider, and I realise my future is no longer a thick grey fog, stretching out before me forever. This bright morning sun that is warming my cheeks, making the lights dance inside my eyelids, has burnt it away.

I stand like that for ages, feeling the sun climb higher until it bathes me completely, and when I finally open my eyes again, I know exactly what I must do.

I need to talk to Gareth. As much as I don’t want to, I need to open this wound and clean it out, try to understand and move on. He owes me this. Forget the credit card, this is the one debt he really needs to pay.

And then I must not be afraid to mourn. I must be brave enough to follow grief’s lead until she has danced her way through me.

I blink back the low sun and head for the door back into the hotel, a smile on my face and a determined sway in my step. Once inside, I take the lift down to the hotel reception, knowing that the very first thing I need to do is reserve a room—for exactly one year from today.

***

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Tara Pammi

Step behind the hotel room doors of The Chatsfield, London…

It’s an unusual family business, but being a chauffeur is the only thing that keeps Tanya Singh sane after a truly tough year. That is, until she meets her new client, famous Bollywood superstar John Patel and her teenage fantasy turns out to be even more gorgeous in real life!

But he’s also the most arrogant man she’s ever met and soon a clash of words and gazes raises the tension to fever pitch! Spending hours alone with John is sweet torture. But can this Bollywood icon unlock her every desire and make her love again?

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