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All our authors are special, and we hope you continue to enjoy each month’s new selection of Harlequin Romance novels. This month, we’re delighted to feature a novel with extra fizz! Jessica Hart has a vibrant writing style and loves to create colorful characters. In The Honeymoon Prize she brings to life a thoroughly modern heroine with a lively outlook on life…and men! It’s fun, flirty and feel-good!

We hope you enjoy this book by Jessica Hart—and look out for future sparkling stories in Harlequin Romance. If you’d like to share your thoughts and comments with us, do please write to:

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Happy reading!

The Editors

Jessica Hart had a haphazard career before she began writing to finance a degree in history. Her experience ranged from waitress, theater production assistant and outback cook to newsdesk secretary, expedition PA and English teacher. And she has worked in countries as different as France and Indonesia, Australia and Cameroon. She now lives in the north of England, where her hobbies are limited to eating and drinking and traveling when she can, preferably to places where she’ll find good food or desert or tropical rain.

If you’d like to find out more about Jessica Hart, you can visit her Web site www.jessicahart.co.uk

Books by Jessica Hart

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3638—BABY AT BUSHMAN’S CREEK*

3646—WEDDING AT WAVERLEY CREEK*

3654—A BRIDE FOR BARRA CREEK*

3688—ASSIGNMENT: BABY

3701—INHERITED: TWINS!

The Honeymoon Prize
Jessica Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘I’M GOING to have an affair.’

Pel had been running on the treadmill next to hers at an enviable pace, and with an extremely irritating lack of effort, but Freya was delighted to see that he missed his step at that. ‘You’re going to do what?’ he demanded as he recovered.

Freya grinned, pleased at the impact of her deliberately casual announcement. ‘You heard.’

‘Who with?’

‘Dan Freer,’ she said as nonchalantly as she could between gasps for breath. She was new to the gym and had yet to master the art of using any of the machines without puffing and panting and generally teetering on the verge of collapse.

‘No!’ Pel stared at her, flatteringly impressed. ‘Not Dan Freer, as in ace reporter and owner of the coolest leather jacket on television?’

‘That’s the one.’

He whistled soundlessly. ‘Well! When did all this happen?’

‘It hasn’t yet,’ Freya had to confess. ‘But it’s going to! I’ve decided that you and Lucy are right. It’s time to change my life, and seducing Dan Freer is the first step.’

‘What brought this on?’ asked Pel curiously, and Freya adjusted her speed to a walk so that she could talk properly.

Of course, she knew she was supposed to be pushing herself to the limit, but it was a question of priorities, and she had to balance convincing Pel to support her new mission in life against the trim, taut, toned body she had been promised by the instructor who had set her the torture otherwise known as a fitness programme.

‘It’s my birthday next week,’ she told Pel, who was obsessive about keeping fit, and had barely broken into a sweat after running for twenty minutes. ‘I’m going to be twenty-seven. Only three more years and I’ll be thirty!’ she added melodramatically. ‘What’s going to happen to me after that?’

‘You’ll be thirty-one?’ suggested Pel. ‘Just a wild guess, of course!’

Freya stuck out her tongue. ‘You know what I mean. It’ll be downhill all the way into middle age and before I know where I am I’ll be wearing a felt hat and keeping cats. I want to live a little before then! I’m stuck in a rut,’ she complained. ‘I never go anywhere. I never do anything. I never meet any men.’

‘You do meet men. Lucy and I are always trailing eligible types under your nose.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like Dominic. I know he’s an estate agent, but he couldn’t help that. He was clean and solvent, and he really liked you.’

She stared at him. ‘How many estate agents called Dominic do you know, Pel? The one I met wasn’t the slightest bit interested in me!’

‘Yes, he was, but you never gave him any encouragement.’ Pel shook his head knowingly. ‘Your trouble is, you don’t read the signals right.’

‘So you and Lucy keep telling me,’ said Freya crossly. It was an old argument. ‘Anyway, he wasn’t my type. I know I said I was going to wait for Ben Affleck, but there’s no saying when he’ll be free, and in the meantime I want someone more exciting than an estate agent from Chigwell. I’m tired of being a good girl. I want to live dangerously for a change, and I’ve decided that Dan would be perfect for me.’

Pel looked a little dubious. ‘You don’t think he’s just the teensiest bit out of your league?’

‘Well, thank you for that vote of confidence!’

‘You were the one who told me he’d been on the cover of People,’ Pel pointed out. ‘He sounds seriously cool.’

‘And I’m not, I suppose?’

Pel looked at his friend. She was labouring on the treadmill, puffing with exertion, her face bright red and her fringe sticking sweatily to her forehead. ‘I hate to be the one to break this to you, pet,’ he said affectionately, ‘but you are never going to be cool!’

Freya sighed. She hadn’t needed Pel to tell her that. ‘I know.’

‘It’s not that you’re not a pretty girl,’ he went on hastily. ‘In fact, you could be very pretty if you made a bit of an effort.’

‘I am making an effort,’ she objected. ‘I’m at the gym, aren’t I?’

‘In body, but not in spirit,’ said Pel austerely. ‘Look at you now, moving at the pace of a lethargic slug! If you really want to change your life, you’re going to have to lift your game.’

Grumbling under her breath, Freya increased the speed on the treadmill by a fraction. Pel watched her with beady blue eyes until she grudgingly upped it another three levels.

‘The point is, you’re too nice,’ he went on, having sniffed his disapproval at her lack of enthusiasm but settled for the compromise. ‘We all adore you, and we know that you’re not nearly as tough as you seem beneath that spiky exterior of yours. I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.’

‘But the only way to be sure that I won’t get hurt is to sit at home, which is what I’ve been doing for most of the last five years,’ Freya objected. ‘I’m sick of it! I’ve realised that the perfect man isn’t going to come and knock on my door, so I’ve got to go out and find him for myself. And you know what? The day after I made that decision, Dan walked into the office. It’s like it was meant to be!’

The treadmill was blurring beneath her feet now, and she clutched at the bar to stop herself being borne backwards and tossed ignominiously at the feet of the fitness instructors who were prowling around the gym, looking effortlessly lithe and faintly contemptuous.

‘Oh, Pel, he’s so gorgeous,’ she puffed. ‘He’s got these deep brown eyes, and when he smiles at you, you just melt into a little puddle on the floor. And you should hear his voice. It’s a real American drawl, so deep and so slow it sort of reverberates up and down your spine…’ She shuddered lasciviously at the mere thought of Dan’s voice.

‘He sounds divine,’ said Pel with a touch of envy.

‘Oh, he is. But he’s not just incredibly sexy and unbelievably cool. He’s intelligent and funny and exciting. Dan doesn’t flog into the office on the tube every day. He’s off dodging bullets in some war zone or working undercover on a story that really matters.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘He makes every other man I meet look so boring.’

‘Hey, thanks!’

‘You know you don’t count.’ Freya would have waved dismissively if she had dared to let go of the bar. ‘The thing is, Dan’s really nice, too. When he rings to talk to the foreign news editor, he always asks how I am and what I’m up to. He’s not like…the other journalists…’

She was so short of breath that her words kept coming out in fits and starts. ‘They only ever…want to whinge…about their expenses…but Dan’s…really…interested…in what you’re…saying…Pel, can we stop now?’ she pleaded, gasping. ‘I can’t talk on here!’

Usually Pel would insist on her completing her programme, and would stand over her like a bullying sergeant major until she did, but she was banking on the fact that he would want to hear everything about her plan to seduce Dan Freer.

Sure enough, twenty minutes later found them cosily ensconsed in the gym bar, fresh from a shower and wrapped in a glow of self-satisfaction on Pel’s part, and relief on Freya’s.

‘So, what does Lucy think?’ Pel asked, handing Freya a gin and tonic.

‘She’s all in favour in principle, but she’s very worried about Dan’s surname. She says I can’t possibly call myself Freya Freer!’ Freya rolled her eyes. ‘I told her I wasn’t interested in marriage, but I might as well have spared my breath. You know what she’s like! Ever since she married Steve last year, her mission in life is to frogmarch everyone else up the aisle.’

‘She’s got a point,’ said Pel. ‘Freya Freer does sound ridiculous. It’s impossible to say, for a start. Try it—Freya Freer, Freya Freer…See? It makes you sound as if you’ve got a lisp.’

Exasperated, Freya banged her glass down on the bar. ‘Look, there’s no question of marriage. It’s not about commitment and mortgages and kids. It’s about a no-holds barred, whistle-blowing, rootin’-tootin’ affair with bells on, OK? I want sex, not love,’ she insisted, and Pel pursed his lips.

‘You say that, but you’re not really the type.’

‘I am now. My hormones are on the rampage!’

‘That’s all very well, but there’s not going to be a lot of bells ringing and stars bursting going on with you in London and him in the Balkans! Why not pick on someone closer to home?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Freya triumphantly. ‘He’s coming back to London. Next week! I had a long chat with him today when my boss was in the editorial meeting. You know he works for one of those US cable news networks whose name I can never remember?’

Pel looked puzzled. ‘I thought he was one of your reporters?’

‘No, he just does occasional pieces for the Examiner. The American networks have got so much more money than us. They often charter a plane and fly reporters and equipment into trouble spots which newspapers just can’t get to, and if that happens, and Dan’s going in anyway, he’ll write an article for us at the same time. We’re a British newspaper, and he works for a US twenty-four-hour news channel, so it’s not as if there’s a conflict of interest.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, flicking her light brown hair back over her shoulders, eager to get back to her story, ‘Dan told me today that he’s hoping to get a promotion. He’s been what they call a “fireman”. That means he gets sent in whenever you have a disaster or a war or a riot, stuff like that. He covers the story while it’s breaking, and then flies out again, so although he’s been based in London he’s hardly ever here. He thinks he’s going to get a permanent post in their London office and—get this!—it turns out that he lives just round the corner from me at the moment!’

Pel raised his brows, impressed in spite of himself. ‘I have to admit it’s sounding promising,’ he admitted. ‘Lots of opportunities to bump into him at the local supermarket, that kind of thing?’

‘Exactly! But it gets better!’ Freya took a self-congratulatory sip of her gin. ‘So there we were, chatting away, and Dan tells me that he’s flying back to London next Thursday, and I just happen to mention that it’s my birthday on Thursday.’

‘Did he ask how old you’re going to be?’

‘His manners are much too good for that,’ she said loftily. ‘No, he asked what I was doing to celebrate and then he said—this is the best bit— “You seem like the kind of girl who’d celebrate in style”!’

Pel laughed. ‘You didn’t tell him that we’re going to the pub and will no doubt end up with an Indian takeaway, then?’

‘No, I didn’t. I said I was having a real cocktail party that weekend. I told him everyone was going to dress up and we were going to have dry martinis, shaken not stirred, and all that kind of thing, and Dan said that sounded great. So,’ Freya went on, working up to a climax that was breathless in every sense, ‘I asked if he’d like to come, and he said he would!’

‘What?’

‘I know, isn’t it brilliant?’ She beamed at him. ‘And I said I was inviting lots of people from the Examiner.’

‘Frey-a!’

‘I had to, otherwise it would have been obvious that I was only interested in him, and he wouldn’t have come.’

‘And now that he is coming, you’re going to have to lay on a cocktail party for a load of people you hardly know!’ Pel shook his head disapprovingly.

‘I do know them,’ said Freya, faintly defensive. ‘I work with them. I thought I’d invite everybody, not just the other newsroom secretaries, like me, but all the subs and the reporters and the photographers. They’re always up for a party and free drinks!’

‘But, Freya, you can’t afford it.’ Pel had switched into major motherly mode. ‘You’re massively in debt, you got chucked out of your last flat because you couldn’t pay the rent and you’re in some crappy job with no prospects that pays you really badly for the privilege of working in an interesting place. Everyone else has got their lives and careers sorted out, but you seem to be happy to drift on struggling to make ends meet from month to month without any thought to the future.’

Freya sighed. ‘Honestly, Pel, you’re worse than my father,’ she complained.

‘Your father’s a very sensible man,’ said Pel sternly. ‘Have you any idea of how much cocktail parties cost, Freya? It’s not like bring a bottle and sit on the floor. If you’re going to do it, you’ll have to do it with style.’

‘I know, and that’s why I need you to help me,’ she said coaxingly. ‘Think about it, Pel. It could be really excellent! It’s a chance for Dan to see me being glamorous, not just the girl who answers the phone on the newsdesk. I’ll put my hair up and wear a little black dress, and when he comes in, I’ll be surrounded by sophisticated friends.’

Her green eyes narrowed as she visualised the scene. ‘I’ll be sparkling and witty, making everyone laugh, or—’ She broke off, considering the matter. ‘Or would it be better for me to be looking cool and mysterious? What do you think? I don’t want to put Dan off by playing too hard to get, after all.’

‘Frankly, pet, I can’t see you carrying off cool and mysterious,’ said Pel, sucked into her fantasy despite himself, as Freya had known he would be.

‘No,’ she agreed with a sigh. She had always longed for that sultry, faintly sulky look, but it was hopeless when you were a galumphing great thing with wide, innocent green eyes and hair that obstinately refused to do what it was told.

‘I’ll have to go for being the life and soul of the party instead,’ she decided. She sucked on her lemon for a bit, thinking about it. ‘Yes, fun would work. I don’t suppose Dan’s had a lot of that where he’s been recently.’

She warmed to the theme. ‘He’ll come in, see me there, drinking cocktails in my little black dress, having a great time and surrounded by all these other incredibly glamorous friends…It’s bound to make him look at me differently, isn’t it?’

‘I hate to spoil this fantasy of yours,’ said Pel, ‘but where exactly are you going to find all these glamorous friends before next weekend?’

Freya waved this aside. ‘You’ll all have to pretend,’ she said. ‘It’s just a question of standing around in a dinner jacket or a black dress and not smiling too much. It’ll be fun!’ She laid her hand on his arm. ‘But it won’t work without you. You will help, won’t you?’

Pel made an attempt to keep up his show of disapproval at her extravagance, but in the end he succumbed. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I need a bartender. You know about things like martinis—and Marco could give you a hand. He looks like the kind of guy who knows one end of a cocktail shaker from another!’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Pel with a resigned sigh that imperfectly concealed the fact that it was exactly the kind of situation he revelled in. ‘At least I’ll get a chance to eyeball the famous Dan Freer. Now, we’re going to need to find proper cocktail glasses,’ he warned. ‘You can’t just have a martini in any old glass. And you’ll need proper canapés,’ he went on, warming to his task. ‘A bowl of corn chips just won’t do!’

Freya dug into her bag for a pen and wrote ‘glasses’ and ‘nibbles’ on the back of an envelope. ‘What else?’

‘You’ll have to decide on a venue. What’s this new place you’re living in like?’

‘Perfect for a party,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘It’s a loft in a converted warehouse, with a big open-plan living area. All steel and polished floorboards—a bit minimal for my taste, but the view across the city is wonderful.’

‘It sounds fab,’ said Pel enviously. ‘How on earth can you afford a place like that?’

‘I can’t. I’m not paying rent. I’m just house-sitting until the owner comes back.’

Pel whistled soundlessly. ‘How did you swing that?’

‘Lucy arranged it.’ There was the faintest trace of reserve in Freya’s voice. ‘The apartment belongs to her brother.’

‘Joe? I thought he was still a student?’

‘Not Joe. Her older brother, Max.’

Freya was sure that she sounded perfectly normal, but Pel’s eyes had immediately brightened with speculative interest. ‘Oh?’ he said, in the way only Pel could, with at least sixteen syllables and due warning that he would insist on knowing every last tiny detail, no matter how trivial, before he would let the matter drop.

‘He’s a civil engineer.’ Freya picked up her drink, would-be casual. ‘He runs some kind of aid organisation and is always running off to Africa and places like that, building roads and irrigation systems. You know the kind of thing.’

Pel gave a kind of shrug to indicate that he didn’t really, but didn’t particularly want to know any more.

‘He’s in Africa now, as a matter of fact,’ she went on. ‘Lucy heard that he was going away just when they put up the rent on my old flat and I couldn’t find anywhere else to live. She suggested to Max that I look after the apartment for him while he was overseas.’

It sounded reasonable enough, Freya thought. It was reasonable, come to that. There was no reason for her to feel defensive and vaguely self-conscious whenever Max’s name came up.

‘How long is he away for?’ asked Pel.

‘At least four months. It’s worked out really well,’ she hurried on before Pel could start tutting about short-term solutions. ‘It’s saved Max having to find a short-term tenant or leave the place empty, and it’s given me time to look around for somewhere else. The apartment’s perfect for me, too. It couldn’t be more convenient for work. I can cycle there in five minutes. So you see, the party isn’t really an extravagance,’ she said, hoping to divert Pel from the subject of Max. ‘I’ll only be spending the money I would otherwise have had to fork out on travel costs.’

Her ploy didn’t work. For once Pel failed to rise to the bait of correcting her ropey economics. ‘I’d forgotten Lucy had another brother,’ he was saying. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met Max. Was he at her wedding?’

‘I think so,’ said Freya, who had spent the entire wedding trying to avoid him, not an easy task when he was the bride’s brother and she was chief bridesmaid.

‘Hmm…’ Pel searched his memory. ‘What does he look like?’

Picking up her glass, Freya pretended to sip her gin as an uncomfortably vivid image of Max settled in her mind. Max, with his quiet face and his cool mouth and the sardonic amusement glimmering in his unnervingly pale grey eyes.

‘Oh, you know…’

‘No,’ said Pel pointedly.

‘He’s very ordinary,’ she said, proud of her careless shrug. ‘A bit dull, really. Not the kind of man you’d notice at a party. He’s one of those save-the-world-before-breakfast types who thinks building a few roads in a developing country gives him the moral high ground on every other issue.’

Pel sat back in his chair and smiled knowingly. ‘Ah, it’s like that, is it?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Freya stiffly.

‘You and Max had a thing together, didn’t you?’

‘What on earth makes you think that?’ she asked with an unsuccessful laugh.

‘Intuition,’ said Pel smugly. ‘Plus the fact that your face goes all funny when you talk about him.’

Involuntarily, Freya’s hands went to her cheeks. ‘It does not!’

‘Yes, it does.’ Narrowing his eyes, Pel pretended to peer mystically into the bottom of his glass. ‘I’m getting the sense that you made a bit of a fool of yourself over this Max,’ he said portentously.

Freya eyed him sourly. Pel was just a little too clever for his own good, sometimes. ‘Very funny,’ she said, un-amused.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ He leant conspiratorially towards her. ‘Come on, Freya, ’fess up!’

She hesitated, moving her glass around on the bar until she had a pattern of interlocking rings. Pel would never let it go now that he had the whiff of a secret. ‘You must promise not to tell anyone else,’ she said at last.

‘Cross my heart and hope to die!’

‘It was at Lucy’s twenty-first,’ she began reluctantly. ‘It was a great party, but I’d had a terrible row with my first real boyfriend that afternoon, and I was in a bad way. I didn’t want to spoil Lucy’s day, though, so I pretended that Alan was on emergency call and couldn’t make it. It was awful.’

Freya shuddered at the memory and took a slug of gin. ‘I had to pretend to be having a fantastic time when all I wanted to do was go home and cry. I really thought Alan was the love of my life, and I couldn’t think about life without him.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Pel. ‘You had too much to drink?’

She sighed. ‘If you know so much, why am I telling you this?’

‘Because I want to know where the mysterious Max fits in. Go on!’

‘Well, Max was there, of course. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years. He’d just come back from Africa, and he looked really different.’

Freya paused, her mind going back six years. Max had looked taller and more solid than she’d remembered, and older than his twenty-seven years. After a couple of years in the African sun, his grey eyes had been startlingly, even shockingly light in his brown face. Freya could still remember the tiny jerk of her heart when she had recognised him across the room.

‘He wasn’t enjoying himself either, but then he was never a party animal,’ she remembered. ‘I could see him watching me occasionally with that disapproving expression of his—that was exactly the same as I remembered—but he didn’t say a word to me until I got to the point when I didn’t think I could bear it for a second more. He came over and just said that I’d had enough to drink, and that he was taking me home.’

‘Mmm…the masterful type?’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said Freya, grimacing into her glass at the memory. ‘I tried to tell him I didn’t want to go, but he just ignored me, and the next thing I knew I was being frog-marched out to his car.’

Pel was leaning forward, agog. ‘Did he make a pass at you?’

‘Worse,’ said Freya tersely.

‘Worse?’ Pel’s eyes were out on stalks. ‘My God, what did he do?’

‘It wasn’t what he did. It was what I did.’ Her cheeks were burning and she pressed her hands to her face. ‘I tried to flirt with him.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. Max is completely unflirtable.’

It was obvious that Pel was disappointed. He had been expecting something more dramatic. ‘Was that it?’

‘No, then I started to cry.’ Freya took a long pull of gin, trying not to cringe at the memory. ‘I told him all about Alan and how much I loved him and how my life was in ruins. It was pathetic!’

‘Tears? Oh, dear.’ Pel’s mouth turned down at the corners in sympathy. ‘What did Max do?’

‘He just let me snivel while he drove me home.’ She could see Max now, standing on her doorstep, holding out his hand for her key, which she had meekly handed over. ‘When we got there, he made me drink a vat of water until I’d sobered up. He sat on the sofa next to me and told me about living in Africa while I drank glass after glass.

‘It was the first I’d heard about Mbanazere,’ she went on, a distant expression in her green eyes. ‘I remember Max telling me about staying in a hotel by the Indian Ocean and eating crab mayonnaise sandwiches under the palm trees. He made it sound so…so magical, I suppose, that I got caught up in the whole thing, like a dream. It’s the only way I can explain it.’

‘Explain what?’

Freya fiddled with her glass. ‘It was really strange, but as he talked I suddenly began to find him irresistible. One minute I was rambling on about being dumped by Alan and the next I could hardly keep my hands off Max. It was bizarre! I mean, I’d never found him remotely attractive before, but it was like being possessed. I honestly couldn’t do anything about it.’

She squirmed, remembering how she had tried to slide seductively along the sofa, only to spoil the effect by toppling against him. The way Max had frozen as she whispered huskily in his ear. That heart-stopping pause before his arms had come round her and pulled her down onto the cushions.

‘I must have been completely blootered,’ she said, shifting uncomfortably on her stool.

But not so blootered that she couldn’t remember everything that had happened then in extraordinary detail.

‘Everyone has embarrassing moments like that,’ Pel tried to console her, seeing her scarlet cheeks. ‘I remember when—well, never mind. The thing is, it could have been a lot worse. It’s not as if you—’

He broke off as he noticed Freya’s expression. ‘Ah,’ he said in belated realisation. ‘You did?’

She nodded.

There was a pause. Pel cleared his throat. ‘So what happened? Afterwards, I mean,’ he added hastily.

‘Nothing.’ Freya concentrated on twisting the glass between her fingers. ‘Max couldn’t wait to leave. Said it had been a mistake, and that it would be better if we both pretended that it had never happened. Which was fine by me.

‘I mean, it was a relief,’ she went on, very conscious that she sounded as if she were still trying to convince herself. ‘I’d been lying there, wondering how I was going to face him in the morning. He was Lucy’s brother. It was practically incest.’

Pel snorted. ‘Rubbish!’

‘That’s what it felt like,’ she insisted. ‘It wasn’t even as I’d ever liked him that much. He was certainly never the stuff of my adolescent fantasies. He’s not bad-looking, but there’s nothing special about him either, and he was always too serious and stuffy to have any fun. He used to look down his nose at Lucy and me, and make the kind of cutting remarks that you never quite knew how to take.’

Freya brooded into her glass, thinking about Max and his uncanny ability to make her feel stupid. ‘Anyway, I was perfectly happy to pretend that it had never happened. Max obviously wished it hadn’t, and so did I.’

‘Really?’

Her eyes slid away from Pel’s. ‘Well…’

‘Ooh, Freya, it was fantastic, wasn’t it?’

‘Pel!’

‘You can’t fool me.’ Pel was enjoying himself hugely. He loved gossip, especially if he was the only one in the know. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

‘No! Yes! Oh, I don’t know,’ she admitted on a sigh. ‘It was like we were two entirely different people in a completely different world.’

‘Sounds like the ultimate fantasy,’ commented Pel.

‘Well, it’s not mine, and I’m quite sure it wasn’t Max’s,’ said Freya tartly. ‘As far as I’m concerned it was just an embarrassing incident, which I’d really rather forget. It’s six years ago now, and Max and I have hardly exchanged a word since. When I saw him at Lucy’s wedding last year, he behaved as if he hadn’t seen me since Lucy and I were doing our A-levels.’

She couldn’t quite keep an edge of chagrin from her voice. It might be a huge relief to think that Max had no memory of that embarrassing night, but no girl wanted to know that she could be quite so comprehensively forgotten, especially when she herself had had so much trouble putting the whole incident from her mind.

‘He’d obviously forgotten the whole business,’ she said.

‘You haven’t,’ Pel pointed out.

‘Only because I’m living in his apartment with all his things. I hadn’t thought of him for years before Lucy suggested that I move in there,’ she added, not entirely truthfully.

‘It must be a bit awkward, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it is, but I was desperate for somewhere to live where I wouldn’t haemorrhage money on rent, and it wasn’t as if I had to actually see Max or anything. He flew out the week before I moved in and left the keys with Lucy. And she was so thrilled with her idea that I couldn’t tell her why I didn’t feel comfortable taking such a huge favour from Max.’

Pel sat up, suddenly alert. ‘You mean Lucy doesn’t know that you and Max…?’

‘I couldn’t tell her,’ Freya admitted, running her finger around the rim of her glass. ‘It was too difficult. She was my best friend.’

‘I thought I was your best friend!’ said Pel, ruffling up immediately.

‘Yes, yes, you are,’ she soothed him, ‘but in a different way. Besides, I didn’t know you then. And Max is Lucy’s brother. She’s always grumbling about him, but I know that deep down she adores him, and she’d hate to think that there might be a problem between us.

‘It was my fault, too, and you know what it’s like if you don’t confess immediately. The longer I didn’t say anything, the harder it got to bring the subject up, and in the end it just seemed easier to keep quiet.

‘You’re the only person I’ve ever told,’ Freya went on, fixing Pel with a steely look, ‘and if you mention it to anyone—even Marco—I will take you back to the gym and attach a certain part of your anatomy to the heaviest weights I can find so that you spend the rest of your life talking in a very, very high voice. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly,’ he pretended to squeak. ‘Your secret is safe with me!’

‘It had better be! Now, can we please drop the subject and go back to my party? Max is just a blip in my past. I’m much more interested in the divine Dan Freer and how he’s going to change my life, so let’s get another drink and draw up a guest list.’

CHAPTER TWO

DECIDING to seduce Dan Freer was all very well in theory, Freya reflected as she sipped a cocktail and tried to look as if she was enjoying her own party, but in practice it didn’t seem quite so easy as she had blithely claimed to Pel.

She had done what she could. Her hair had been cut and coloured, transforming her into a blonde whose reflection made her start every time she looked in a mirror. Egged on by Lucy, she had bought a daring new dress and a fabulous pair of shoes. She looked as good as she was ever going to, Freya decided.

She had thrown her efforts into organising the party, which was well into its swing, judging by the hubbub and the number of empty bottles congregating in the kitchen, and she hadn’t given enough thought to what she was actually going to do once Dan actually appeared.

Freya’s planning had always got a bit vague at that point. Somehow the two of them would gravitate together, and when the other guests started drifting politely away at eight, as Pel had said they would, Dan would insist on taking her out to dinner at some intimate little restaurant where they could be alone, and after that…well, that would be up to him. That was as much as Freya had decided. She couldn’t be expected to organise everything herself.

Not that there was much sign of Dan gravitating towards her so far. She hadn’t counted on the way he had been instantly annexed by a bevy of the prettiest girls from office, who had him corralled against the back of a sofa and were busy running fingers through their hair and laughing like hyenas whenever Dan opened his mouth.

She should have been able to count on losing her nerve, though, thought Freya, resigned.

She took another slug of her martini and glanced at Lucy, who was standing beside her. ‘What do you think?’

Lucy didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question. ‘He’s perfect,’ she said.

Together, they gazed across the room at Dan. Unlike the rest of the men, he had ignored the black tie specified on Freya’s careful invitations, and had come in his trademark battered leather jacket, but instead of looking underdressed he was easily the coolest guy at the party, surrounded by his coterie of blondes. The famous smile gleamed, showing perfect white teeth. He exuded a kind of dissolute charm that raised him above mere good looks. He was dark and debonair and deliciously handsome, but there was something faintly, irresistibly, dangerous about him, too.

‘He’s exactly what you need,’ Lucy told her. ‘Your very own sex god.’

‘He is quite attractive, isn’t he?’

‘And the award for understatement of the year goes to…Freya King! God, Freya, where’s your sense of proportion? That man is “quite attractive” in the way the Pope is quite Catholic! If you’d said he was drop-dead gorgeous I would have thought you were being restrained.’

Lucy fished the olive out of her martini and waved it at her friend. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you,’ she said. ‘You may be incredibly picky, but you’ve got taste!’

‘I’m glad you approve,’ said Freya humbly.

‘I certainly do. Dan is to die for! If I wasn’t married to Steve, I’d be elbowing you out of the way—which, by the way, is what you should be doing to those girls,’ she added pointedly. ‘What are you doing standing here with us? You go get him, girl!’

‘Do you really think I can?’ Freya looked doubtfully back at Dan. He really was extraordinarily good-looking. Why should a man like him notice her? He probably spent his whole life batting away gorgeous women who threw themselves at his feet. She would only get squashed in the pile.

‘Of course you can!’ Lucy was taking no nonsense. ‘Look at you! You look fantastic! That dress is fabulous, and if those high heels don’t turn him on, he’s not the red-blooded male I take him for. By the time you’ve dazzled him with your sparkling wit and personality, I guarantee you’ll have him on his knees!’

She gave Freya a little push. ‘Off you go!’

Freya dug in her heels like a child. ‘I’ll…er…I’ll just fix my lipstick first,’ she muttered, reluctant to admit to Lucy how nervous she felt after all her boasts about how determined she was to change her life.

‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you. Dan will only want to kiss it all off,’ said Lucy, but Freya was already escaping to the bathroom.

It was all right for Lucy and Pel. They had a confidence that Freya had never acquired. They knew how to flirt, how to read the signals they claimed were so glaringly obvious, but which Freya herself always seemed to miss entirely. And as Pel unfailingly pointed out, they had both had a great time before settling into happy relationships, while any prospective lovers that swam into Freya’s orbit invariably ended up going out with one of her friends.

‘You just don’t try,’ they would sigh.

Well, now she was going to try, Freya reminded herself in the bathroom mirror. Lucy was right. She was missing out on life, but now all that was going to change. She was tired of being just good friends, the one you could always rely on to be in on a Friday night if you had nothing else to do. Wouldn’t she rather be having a wild, passionate affair with an incredibly sexy man than slobbing out on the sofa in front of E.R.?

Of course she would, Freya told her reflection sternly, appalled at that telltale moment of hesitation.

Right, then. There was an incredibly sexy man leaning against her sofa—well, Max’s sofa—in the next room, and according to Lucy and Pel all she had to do was walk over and get him. Freya didn’t believe that seducing a man like Dan Freer could be quite that easy, but the fact remained that he was the first man in a long time to get the old hormones stirring, so she might as well have a go.

Tugging her dress into place, she regarded her reflection dubiously. The bright red made her feel a bit like a post box, and it was much shorter than she usually wore, but there was no doubt that the heels drew attention to her legs, which were her best feature, and away from the tightness around her hips, which definitely weren’t.

‘You look pretty damn hot.’ She tried to psyche herself up. ‘Now, go get him!’

The noise hit her as she went back into the big living room that stretched the entire width of the apartment. An extraordinary number of people had turned up. Freya had worried about how they were all going to get on, but the most bizarre combination of people seemed to be getting on like a house on fire.

She didn’t know what Pel and Marco were putting in the cocktails, but it was lethal, whatever it was. She had lost count of how many she had had herself to bolster her confidence and it was getting quite tricky to balance on her heels.

Freya’s vision of an elegant gathering that would disperse come eight o’clock as she had said on the invitations had never been realised. It was almost eleven already, and there was clearly no chance of impressing Dan with her sophistication now. She had put on a Glenn Miller CD to set the mood when everyone arrived, but long before Dan turned up someone had replaced it with something a bit more upbeat, and several people who obviously didn’t know that cocktail parties were about standing around and making polite chit-chat were actually dancing at the other end of the room.

Wondering how much longer the drink would hold out, Freya looked around for Pel, only to start guiltily as she encountered Lucy’s disapproving gaze. Scowling awfully, her friend jerked her head in Dan’s direction and mouthed, ‘Get over there!’

There seemed nothing for it but to do as she was told. Helping herself to another martini, Freya tossed it back in one, straightened her spine and set off, woman on a mission.

God, he was gorgeous, she thought involuntarily, as she headed towards the group by the sofa. Those brown bedroom eyes, the warm curving mouth, that hunky body, the sharp intelligence and the devastating charm…Freya faltered, realising all at once how absurd she had been to even think about attracting the notice of a man like Dan.

She was about to turn away when Dan spotted her and beckoned, reeling her in effortlessly with his smile. ‘Hey, great party!’ he greeted her, moving back with flattering alacrity to let Freya into the group.

‘Yes, great,’ the girls echoed, their welcome considerably less enthusiastic.

‘Thanks. I’m glad you could make it,’ she said stiffly, miserably conscious of how polite she sounded. Her mother would be proud of her.

‘Not as glad as I am.’ The warm brown eyes roved in lazy appreciation up Freya’s legs. ‘I hardly recognised you when I saw you tonight.’

‘Oh?’ She smiled a little nervously.

Way to go, Freya. Not much chance of dazzling him with your wit and personality at this rate!

‘When I said I was looking forward to seeing you, I didn’t realise quite how much of you I’d be seeing!’ Dan had one of those slow, American drawls that always made Freya think he was about to tip his hat and start calling her ma’am. ‘Great legs,’ he said admiringly.

‘Oh, these old things? I’ve had them for ages.’

Dan laughed. ‘You shouldn’t keep them hidden away. You always look so demure sitting at the newsdesk,’ he went on, lowering his voice and gazing deep into her eyes. The effect was rather like sinking into a vat of melted chocolate. ‘I had you down as a good girl, but you sure don’t look like a good girl tonight. You look…naughty.’

Crikey, thought Freya, as his smile broadened suggestively. How was one supposed to respond to a comment like that? Clearly bursting into laughter would be out of order. Should she smirk? Try to simper? Or smoulder?

Unsure how to do any of them, she compromised by attempting all three at once, although judging by the looks on her guests’ faces, it came out as a leer instead.

As if in response to some unspoken dismissal from Dan, the simpering girls were turning disconsolately away. Not wanting to look as if she were monopolising him, Freya made to back away too, but Dan caught hold of her hand.

‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had a chance to talk to you all evening.’

Freya swallowed hard and tried to look as if holding hands with the likes of Dan Freer was all in a day’s work for her. Another evening, another gorgeous guy unable to keep his hands off her, that was the attitude.

Did the Julia Robertses of this world get bored by this kind of thing? Freya wondered wildly. Did they ever wish they were the girl making laborious small-talk with an accountant instead of having every woman’s fantasy draped possessively around her?

Dan’s fingers were warm around hers. What was she supposed to do now? Squeezing his hand might seem a bit too forward, but if she just left hers sitting there like a wet fish, he might think that she wasn’t interested. God, there was so much to think about. Wouldn’t it be easier in the long run just to stick to the sofa and fantasies about George Clooney?

‘Let’s dance,’ he murmured.

‘Er…all right.’

Freya didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed when Dan ignored the lively beat and pulled her against him in readiness for a good old-fashioned smooch. ‘This is my lucky day,’ he told her, smiling.

‘Really?’ Freya managed to croak, distracted by the feel of his hand playing up and down her spine. It was bad enough concentrating on staying upright on her heels as it was, without having to make conversation as well.

‘I think so,’ said Dan smugly. ‘A new job and a new you all in one day. It feels pretty lucky to me.’

Freya wasn’t sure how to respond to that. ‘New job?’ she echoed, opting to ignore his comment about the ‘new you’.

‘You, Freya, are snuggling up to News Live Network’s new Africa correspondent!’

‘Africa?’

‘A whole continent all to myself!’ he said complacently, unable to keep the grin from his voice.

‘Won’t you have to share it with one or two Africans as well?’ she said without thinking.

There was a tiny pause, while, too late, Freya heard the tartness in her voice.

Bad, Freya, very bad, she thought gloomily. According to Lucy, who was an expert on relationships, men didn’t like criticism or snippy comments or the faintest suggestion that you thought they were anything less than a hundred per cent perfect.

‘I thought you were going for a job here in London,’ she added hastily.

Dan, who had stiffened imperceptibly, relaxed. ‘I thought so, too, but then this job came up unexpectedly. I’ve always wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and I’ll be able to cover stories all over Africa.’

‘It sounds great,’ said Freya dutifully. ‘Where are you going to live?’

‘Usutu. The capital of Mbanazere,’ he added when she didn’t answer immediately.

Memory stirred queerly inside her. Usutu was where Max had been based before Lucy’s wedding. He had told her about the Arab forts and the markets and the smell of cloves and coconuts.

‘I know,’ she said.

‘Of course you do. I keep forgetting you’re the foreign newsdesk secretary.’ Dan obviously felt that he had erred in some way. ‘Well, anyway, it’s a good base for East Africa, and it’s easy to get to the southern and central countries as well. And of course it’s an incredibly volatile region. They’ve been trying to build up tourism, but it’s more likely to be the next flashpoint. That’s what I’m banking on, anyway. I should be filing lots of stories.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Freya, wondering how the people of Mbanazere would feel about having their lives disrupted in order to provide good disaster stories to keep Dan on television.

Dan didn’t seem to find anything amiss in her answer. He was talking on, telling her about the political situation and the difficulties of reporting, which she only listened to with half an ear. She knew how reporters liked to make out that their assignments were more dangerous than they actually were.

‘It sounds like you’re raring to go,’ she said when she judged it time to contribute to the conversation, trying not to sound too resentful. She could have spared herself the expense of a party if she had known that Dan would barely have time to knock back a martini before buggering off to Africa. What was the point in planning a wild affair with someone who wasn’t going to be around?

Freya sighed to herself. This was typical of her. All that effort bringing herself to point where she was actually prepared to do something about the fact that she found a man attractive, and he promptly left the country. It served her right for picking on someone who was obviously right out of her league.

‘The funny thing is that right this minute I’m not anxious to go,’ said Dan, his mouth against her ear, his breath warm on her throat, and in spite of herself she shivered.

‘When are you leaving?’

‘Not for another month,’ he murmured. ‘And a lot can happen in a month, can’t it, Freya?’

It was true, thought Freya. Maybe she didn’t have to abandon her plan as a lost cause before it began after all. Here Dan was, his arms around her, murmuring suggestively in her ear. How much more encouragement did she need?

It wasn’t as if she wanted a long-term relationship. No, excitement was what she wanted, the headiness of a wild, passionate affair, not the nitty-gritty of compromising over squeezing toothpaste and whose turn it was to stack the dishwasher.

If she was being honest, a month on the emotional roller-coaster of getting involved with a man like Dan would be more than enough for her. She could wave him off to Africa and go back to her sofa with her honour, not to mention her libido, satisfied, and whenever Pel and Lucy started going on about getting a life, she would be able to remind them that she had had a fling with no less than Dan Freer.

So, get on with it, Freya told herself. Dan was making all the right moves, and with his tongue practically in her ear there was never going to be a better time to indicate that she was ready to have that fling.

Putting her arms around his neck, she smiled at him in what she hoped was a seductive way. ‘It can,’ she agreed, ‘if you want it to happen.’

‘I’m beginning to think that I do,’ said Dan. ‘You know, you’re quite a surprise.’

‘A nice surprise, I hope?’ Freya winced at the corniness of her response, but Dan didn’t seem to mind.

‘Very nice, and very intriguing. In fact, so intriguing that I think I’m going to have to do some undercover investigation to find the real Freya King. Could be an exclusive…’

It was actually happening. She, Freya King, was flirting with Dan Freer!

Over Dan’s shoulder, Freya could see Lucy grinning broadly and sticking her thumbs up, but still she couldn’t quite believe it. She could feel Dan’s hand pressing against her spine, pulling her into the hardness of his body; she could smell his aftershave, hear his voice, deep and warm, as his lips drifted from her earlobe down her throat. She should be thrilled, but all she could feel was vaguely detached.

It was all too pat. Dan might have been reading a script. Any minute now he’d be suggesting they go and find somewhere they could be alone.

‘Let’s go,’ whispered Dan. ‘Let’s find somewhere we can be on our own.’

Relax, Freya told herself sternly. This was it. She was on the verge of a passionate affair with an incredibly attractive man. It would be wild and exciting, and when it was over, she would be able to say that she had lived dangerously. Thirty years from now, when her hair was grey and she didn’t need to worry about her weight any more, she would be able to hint darkly at a broken heart and—

God, what was she doing fantasising about being fifty when Dan’s hands were on her bottom and his mouth was hot on her skin?

‘It’s my party. I can’t just walk out on everyone,’ she demurred, wishing she could stop feeling as if she were acting a part—and not very well, at that.

‘Perhaps they’ll all go home soon.’

Privately, Freya thought it was unlikely, knowing her friends, but it seemed safe to say that she hoped so. She made herself relax into Dan, and was rewarded by an un-curling warmth in her stomach as he began kissing his way along her jaw.

At last! This was what it was supposed to feel like. Just go with the flow. Tightening her arms around his neck, she turned her face towards Dan’s, but just as their lips were about to meet, someone tugged insistently at her sleeve.

‘Freya!’

‘Not now, Lucy,’ she muttered out of the side of her mouth.

‘It’s important.’

Reluctantly, Freya disengaged herself from Dan, who was looking understandably irritable at the interruption. ‘Somebody better be dead,’ she scowled. ‘What is it?’

‘I think the party might be over,’ said Lucy with a grimace, and turned towards the door.

Following her gaze, Freya saw a man in khaki trousers and a creased shirt with a battered bag at his feet. He had a stern, shuttered face, with thick flyaway brows that right then were drawn together in an intimidating frown. He looked very tired.

And very cross.

Freya’s heart did a sickening somersault as his peculiarly penetrating eyes found hers through the crowd, and she leapt away from Dan as if she had been jabbed with a cattle prod.

‘Max,’ she said in a hollow voice.

Hanging onto the kitchen door frame, Freya squinted through her hair at the man who was standing by the kettle. ‘It is you,’ she said in a voice of deep foreboding. ‘I thought it was all just a horrible dream.’

‘Good morning, Freya,’ said Max. ‘It’s lovely to see you, too.’

Freya groped her way over to the table and collapsed into a chair. ‘I think I’m going to die,’ she said simply.

‘Here.’ He put a glass of water and some paracetamol on the table beside her. ‘I’ll make you some tea.’

She screwed up her face as she took the tablets, and then, exhausted by the effort, pillowed her head in her arms so that her newly blonde hair spilled over the table. It felt as if a hammer was being swung around inside her skull.

‘I see you still haven’t learnt to drink in moderation,’ said Max, leaning against the kitchen counter and regarding her with disapproval.

‘I usually do,’ muttered Freya without lifting her poor head. It was true. Ever since the night of Lucy’s twenty-first, she had been careful not to risk another humiliation, but she was in no fit state to introduce that particular subject of conversation. ‘I was nervous last night,’ she said instead. ‘I think I must have drunk more than I realised.’

‘What were you nervous about?’

Very, very carefully, Freya lifted her head to rest her forehead in her palms. There was no way she could explain Dan to Max. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. The noise of the kettle boiling made her wince. ‘It was just something silly,’ she went on feebly, ‘and obviously it wasn’t what I should have been nervous about, which was you turning up without warning! Why didn’t you let me know you were coming home?’

‘It all happened so quickly I didn’t have chance before I left,’ said Max. ‘I rang when I eventually got to Heathrow, but there was no answer, so I assumed you were out. I didn’t know that the only reason no one answered was because nobody could hear the phone ringing over all the noise that was going on here.

‘I’d been travelling for three days by then, and all I wanted was to sleep, so I thought I would just let myself in and leave you a note. I wasn’t best pleased to arrive and find the apartment heaving with strangers and my neighbours all ringing the council to complain about noise pollution,’ he finished sardonically.

‘I can’t remember very much about last night,’ Freya had to confess. ‘I mean, I remember you arriving, of course.’ She could still feel the way her heart had lurched at the sight of him. ‘I remember Lucy arguing, too, and something about sheets…did I make up a bed for you?’ she asked, puzzled in spite of herself.

‘You tried,’ said Max. ‘I have to say that you weren’t much help, what with stumbling on your heels and dropping pillowcases and falling onto the duvet.

‘I’m perfectly capable of making my own bed,’ he added dryly, ‘but you seemed to have gone into hostess overdrive to make up for your evident horror at seeing me. I’d have been quite happy if you’d handed over a towel and pointed me in the right direction, but no! You insisted on coming into the room with me, although you appeared to find the whole business a lot more embarrassing than I did. You kept tugging down your skirt and apologising for the mess.’

‘Oh, God, I’m sorry…’

‘Yes, just like that. I thought you were never going to go.’ Max’s face was quite straight, but Freya was almost sure she detected a gleam of amusement in his pale grey eyes. ‘At one point I wondered whether you were going to insist on putting me to bed and tucking me in,’ he said.

It was all beginning to come back now. Freya clutched at her head as she remembered how horribly embarrassed she had been by the awkwardness of the situation. It was the first time she and Max had been alone together since the night of Lucy’s twenty-first and, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, he had come home to find his immaculate apartment a tip, and the only place for him to sleep was the spare bedroom which she had been using as a wardrobe, and was consequently knee-deep in discarded clothes.

Her nerves, already frayed by the whole business with Dan, had gone to pieces entirely, and she had blundered around, talking too much and obviously making a complete idiot of herself. Freya cringed behind her hair. Please, please, please let her not have done anything really embarrassing, like making another pass at Max! She had a disturbing picture of him unbuttoning his shirt. Had that been last night or six years ago?

‘I hope I didn’t go that far?’ she said nervously.

‘Not quite,’ said Max, ‘but I was reduced to taking my shirt off to get rid of you.’

‘I can see that would have done the trick,’ said Freya, acid edging her voice, but to her annoyance Max’s look of amusement only deepened.

‘Eventually. You just stood there staring at me, with your eyes like saucers, and for a few moments there I thought I might have to strip completely before you got the point, but the penny dropped then and you started to blush and then you bolted.’

Excellent, thought Freya glumly. A sure way to impress him with her sophistication and poise.

She was annoyed to see a smile tugging at the corner of Max’s mouth. ‘If I hadn’t been so tired, your expression would have been funny,’ he said. ‘Talk about covered with confusion!’

‘Glad I’ve provided you with some amusement,’ she said a trifle sullenly.

‘I wasn’t so amused when I got up in the middle of the night to get some water and found you crashed out on the sofa with all lights blazing and the dregs of a martini in a glass that had fallen out of your hand. It was like a scene from a Channel Four docu-drama! I tried to wake you up, but you just kept mumbling something about missing the bus.’

Freya swallowed. Oddly enough, she remembered that bit. ‘I was dreaming about our old biology teacher, Mr Nuttall. He was shouting at me because I was late.’

‘That was me doing the shouting,’ said Max. ‘Not that it got me anywhere. In the end I had to carry you bodily. I’m afraid you just got dumped on the bed, but I wasn’t feeling that strong myself.’

Oh, right. Make her feel fat as well as stupid!

She could dimly remember surfacing at one point to pull her dress off, though, so presumably he hadn’t actually investigated what her mother insisted on calling ‘your lovely womanly figure’.

‘I took your shoes off, but I drew the line at undressing you,’ said Max dryly.

And now he could read her mind. That was all she needed.

‘You needn’t worry,’ he said, misinterpreting her expression. ‘I’m not into necrophilia! But by that stage I was beginning to wish that I’d sent you home with Lucy.’

The kettle had boiled while he’d been talking, and he made a pot of tea while Freya took the opportunity to drop her head back into her folded arms. So far, the morning which had started off so spectacularly badly with possibly the worst hangover of her life wasn’t getting any better. If only she could rewind time, preferably back to the point before she had even heard of a martini, shaken or stirred.

Max poured tea into a mug, added several spoonfuls of sugar, and stirred it before setting it down beside Freya on the table. Turning her head fractionally, she opened one eye to see the mug looming disproportionately large at the odd angle.

‘Go on, drink it,’ said Max. ‘It’ll do you good.’

Lifting her head very cautiously, she took a tentative sip, only to screw up her face. ‘It’s got sugar in it!’

‘Drink it anyway.’

Freya didn’t have the energy to withstand him. The pounding in her head subsided as she drank her tea, staring blankly ahead of her. It was only when she got to the end, and had to admit that she felt a little better that she realised that Max was tidying up the debris of her attempts to make canapés—was it only last night? It felt like a lifetime ago when she had been young and vigorous.

‘I’ll do that,’ she said lamely.

Max glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘I can’t wait until you’re capable of standing up,’ he said. ‘I’m just clearing a space to make some breakfast, anyway. I’m starving.’

‘Breakfast!’ Freya’s stomach heaved at the very thought, and the shadow of a grin flickered across his face.

‘I didn’t spend all last night guzzling cocktails,’ he pointed out. ‘I haven’t eaten since somewhere over the Sahara.’

Freya watched in some dismay as he opened the fridge. His expression told her all she needed to know about what he thought about the contents, but he unearthed some bacon, curling at the edges, and a box of eggs that she had bought as part of healthy eating programme that had never quite materialised. She just hoped that they were still in date. She wouldn’t be very popular if she gave him salmonella on top of everything else.

Max put the frying pan on to heat and began stacking dirty plates and bowls in the dishwasher, careless of the fact that every chink and clatter was like a drill in Freya’s head.

‘What were you and Lucy arguing about last night?’ she asked to distract herself.

‘Lucy was arguing,’ he corrected her. ‘She was objecting loudly and at length to the fact that I selfishly wasn’t prepared to leave the moment I’d arrived and trek across London with her and Steve to spend the night with them.’

He glanced sardonically over his shoulder at Freya. ‘I gather the idea was for me to leave the apartment to you and that journalist who had his tongue down your throat when I arrived. I’m sorry if I spoilt your plans, but I’d been travelling for three days, my flights were delayed all the way along the line, and quite frankly your love life wasn’t high on my priority list right then.’

‘How did you know Dan was a journalist?’ said Freya blankly, latching on to the only thing that she understood.

‘He had the gall to introduce himself while you and Lucy were flapping around trying to get everyone to leave.’ Max loaded the dishwasher with soap and shut it with a bang that made Freya wince. ‘He had no compunction about eavesdropping our conversation, and the next thing I knew he was telling me that he worked for some television company I’ve never heard of and demanding that I tell him everything I could about the coup so he could rush off and file a story on it.’

Freya frowned as she tried to follow this. ‘What coup?’ she asked.

‘God, you really don’t remember anything about last night, do you?’ Max shook his head.

There was a sizzle as he laid two rashers of bacon in the frying pan. ‘For someone who works on a foreign newsdesk you’re remarkably badly informed,’ he said astringently. ‘There’s been unrest in the region for weeks now. I’d have thought you would be expecting me back at any time.’

‘I’ve had other things on my mind recently,’ she said, unwilling to admit that she had no idea which region he was talking about.

‘What, like prats in leather jackets?’

Freya looked at him coldly. ‘What exactly happened?’

‘I’ve been trying to set up a project out there. I’d hoped I’d be able to get more done before the situation blew, but as it was I only just got back to Usutu in time.’

‘Usutu?’ Startled, Freya jerked upright, spilling her tea.

‘The capital of Mbanazere,’ said Max impatiently. ‘Surely you know that?’

‘Of course I do. It’s just…’ She trailed off, one hand to her aching head, unable to explain the weird sense of déjà vu.

It was as if her life had come full circle. Here was Max, back from the same country, with the same tanned skin, the same light eyes, the same competent hands. And here she was, with the same ability to humiliate herself in front of him. Six years, and nothing had changed.

‘I didn’t realise that was where you had been,’ she finished lamely. ‘It’s quite a coincidence, really. I was talking about Usutu only last night.’

‘To your friend with the hide of a rhinoceros, no doubt,’ said Max, a crisp edge to his voice. ‘For someone who’s being posted out there as correspondent, he doesn’t know much about the country. He was pestering me with inane questions about the situation there while people were leaving, and you were still pressing martinis on the rest of us.

‘Not that there was much I could tell him,’ he went on. ‘I was up country when the coup happened. The first I heard about it was when I went in to town to talk to the provincial governor, and everyone was shouting and waving their arms around. There were soldiers patrolling the streets, and I was ordered onto a plane forthwith. The RAF airlifted a whole lot of us and…well, here I am.’

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