by Jessica Hart
‘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 e
ating 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 invita
tions, 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.
