by Jessica Hart
‘Did you win anything?’
‘No,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s reduced the odds against you winning, hasn’t it?’
‘I’ll buy some on the way home,’ Freya promised humbly.
Pel was right, she decided later. It was extraordinary how many opportunities there were when you started to look. You could probably make a whole career out of winning competitions and playing the lottery. For the first time she began buying lottery tickets, and became obsessive about scratch cards. Someone had to win, she reasoned. Why not her? It was time her luck changed.
When Dan strolled into the office the very next day, it really seemed as if it had. ‘Hey,’ he said, perching on the edge of her desk, and Freya’s mouth dried at the closeness of his thigh to her hand. She picked up a pen to keep it occupied.
‘I’m afraid Jeremy’s in a meeting,’ she said. After that supper when she had been so hungover she didn’t feel she should take it for granted that he would want to see her. She hadn’t been exactly scintillating company.
But no, it appeared that she was the one Dan had come to see. ‘Are you doing anything Friday night?’ he asked her, the warm brown eyes resting lazily on her face.
‘Nothing special,’ said Freya, ruthlessly sacrificing a date with Pel and Marco.
No more shilly-shallying around, wasn’t that what she had decided? She was going to go for it, and this time she wasn’t going to spoil things by being tired or stand-offish or making excuses to slope home early.
‘I think it’s time I celebrated my new job properly,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll be in Cococabana at nine o’clock. Say you’ll come?’
Cococabana was the latest of the fashionable bars that were opening up in the area. It would be heaving on a Friday night, and they would be lucky to hear each other speak, let alone find anywhere to sit. Still, he had asked her out for a second time, and that was what mattered, Freya told herself. Now it was up to her to let him know that she was definitely interested.
The only thing she could think of to do was to bat her eyelashes and smile in what she hoped was a seductive way. She felt a bit of a fool, but it seemed to work, because the brown eyes kindled and his answering smile deepened with interest.
See? Freya thought smugly. It was easy when you knew how.
‘It’s a date,’ she said.
Lucy was delighted when Freya rang to report. ‘You can’t wear that red dress again,’ she said, instantly throwing herself into the practicalities. ‘It’ll be too obvious—and you’re not to wear trousers, like you usually do! I’ll lend you a short skirt to show off your legs. There’s no sense in hiding your best asset,’ she added pragmatically.
‘I thought my personality was supposed to be my best asset?’ Freya put in slyly, but Lucy was in no mood for any nonsense.
‘Don’t be difficult, Freya,’ she said briskly. ‘This is important. Now, with any luck, Friday will be The Night, so you’d better be prepared. Don’t forget to shave under your arms—oh, and you’d better have a pedicure. You never know what he’s into.’
She made Freya write down every step of the grooming process she was to go through. Head ringing with instructions about buffing and waxing and polishing, Freya was beginning to feel like a rather dubious second-hand car due to be tarted up in the hope of catching a prospective purchaser’s eye.
‘I haven’t got time for all of this,’ she protested, adding exfoliation to her scribbled list. ‘The weekend will be over before I’m ready.’
‘Stop grumbling,’ said Lucy. ‘You’ll be glad I made you go to a bit of effort when Dan throws you across the bed and murmurs, “My God, but you’re beautiful!”, won’t you?’
Freya tried hard to imagine the scene, but after Max had made such a song and dance about staggering beneath her weight after the party, it didn’t seem likely that Dan would be throwing her anywhere.
‘You want to look voluptuous and glowing,’ Lucy went on. ‘Personality is all very well, but Dan’s not likely to be that keen on you turning up in Usutu if you’ve flaked grey skin all over his black satin sheets and he’s grazed himself on your stubble, is he?’
‘God, no.’ Freya blanched at the thought. Dan would be used to svelte, silken women with degrees in sexual gymnastics. If she wanted to slip between those sheets—and she sincerely hoped the black satin was a figment of Lucy’s imagination—she would have to get her act together.
‘I’ll get a buffer on my way to the gym,’ she promised.
Dan had only asked her out for a drink, it was true—but, as Lucy said, it was best to be prepared.
CHAPTER FOUR
ON FRIDAY evening, Freya rushed home from work to put the finishing touches to her preparations. She was exhausted after a week spent feverishly toning her body at the gym, not to mention the fact that it took her twice as long to get ready every morning now that she had to brush herself before she got into the shower, scour with an abrasive mitt that made her yelp, and then moisturise as instructed by Lucy with a mixture of body cream and oil.
And that was before she even started on her face and her hair. Freya had to set her alarm for an hour earlier than normal just to get through it all.
She lay on the sofa, carefully painting her nails and reading an article in Cosmopolitan about sexual techniques guaranteed to ensure orgasm, all of which were apparently scientifically proven. How? Freya wondered, trying to memorise the step-by-step instructions. She didn’t want Dan to think that she was inexperienced, but hoped he’d be willing to pass on some of the more athletically challenging positions, at least on their first night. In spite of her sessions in the gym, she wasn’t sure she was supple enough yet.
Unbidden, her mind flickered back to that one night with Max, and she lowered the magazine, her green gaze unfocused. She hadn’t needed Cosmopolitan then. His sure brown hands and his hard body and the startling warmth of his mouth had been enough. The breath caught in Freya’s throat just remembering the heart-stopping excitement, the inexplicable intensity of her own response.
She closed her eyes against the surge of memory, so vivid Max might have walked out of the door six minutes rather than six years ago. Why had it been so exciting? Had it just been the sheer unexpectedness of their encounter?
Would it have been the same if he had stayed? Freya had often wondered what it would have been like if they had learnt to know each other’s bodies, if they had fallen in love instead of deciding that they would both much rather forget that it had ever happened.
Would it be the same now? Would the feel of his mouth against her skin, the touch of his hands, produce the same jolting thrill, the same hunger, the same—
‘I see you’re having a busy evening.’
Freya’s eyes flew open at the sound of the cool, ironic voice above her, and she jerked upright, sending the magazine sliding to the floor and smudging her nail polish as she made a grab for it.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she accused him, to cover the frantic beating of her heart in her throat and that awful surge of confusion.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve been the unwitting cause of such a tragedy,’ said Max sarcastically as she nursed the finger with the affected nail.
‘Now I’ve got to start all over again. I’m going out in less than an hour.’
His expression hardened. ‘With your journalist?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’
‘That explains all the preening and primping that’s been going on all week,’ he commented nastily.
Freya was surprised that he had noticed. Their paths had hardly crossed during the week. Max generally left for work while she was still fussing with her hair, and when he did come home late it was always to spend the evening writing up reports.
She put up her chin. ‘I want to look my best for Dan,’ she said.
Max snorted as he bent to pick up the magazine from the floor beside the sofa. Too late, Freya realised that it had fallen open at the very article she had been reading, and she saw him glance fro
m the magazine to her.
‘Picking up a few tips?’ he asked with one of his sardonic looks.
Face burning, she snatched it out of his hands. ‘Hardly,’ she said stiffly. ‘Dan’s not the kind of guy who needs any advice on that particular front.’
‘Is that why you were lying there with that dreamy smile on your face?’
Freya swallowed, mortified to remember just what she had been thinking about as she lay with her eyes closed. ‘What do you think?’ she countered, sending up a little prayer of thanks for the fact that while Max could be uncannily perceptive at times, he wasn’t in fact telepathic.
His mouth pulled down at the corners but he didn’t answer directly. Instead his cold eyes raked the coffee table between them, which was littered with nail polishes, cotton wool buds, tissues and emery boards. ‘I hope you’re going to clear this mess away before you go,’ he said unpleasantly.
‘Of course. Would you like me to file it alphabetically, or by date of purchase?’
‘I don’t care where you put it as long as it’s not in here,’ he said, scowling at her flippancy. Obviously it was OK for him to be sarcastic, but not anyone else!
‘It took me an hour to tidy this room yesterday. And please don’t put it in the kitchen either! I found three lipsticks and a tube of something I’d rather not know what it was for there the other day. Why can’t you put anything away?’ he demanded.
‘Because I don’t have your obsession with control,’ retorted Freya. ‘There’s something deeply Freudian about your desire to put everything into boxes and shut it away, you know.’
Max’s lips tightened. ‘There’s nothing obsessive about liking a degree of order,’ he snapped. ‘You can’t get anything done without organisation.’
‘There are some things in life that you can’t organise,’ Freya pointed out, shaking back her hair. ‘That’s why people like you never have any fun. You’re so busy organising things that you can’t just enjoy yourselves.’
‘I fail to see what’s fun about living knee-deep in clutter,’ said Max tightly. ‘And I’m perfectly capable of having fun, thank you.’
‘What, working at home on a Friday night?’
‘I’m not working tonight, as it happens. I’m going out.’
Freya froze in the act of gathering her polishes together. ‘Oh?’ she said, oddly disconcerted. ‘Who with?’
‘With a friend,’ he said uninformatively. ‘Not that it’s any of your business. She’s coming here for a drink first,’ he added, with one of his stringent looks, ‘which is why I’d prefer it if the place wasn’t littered with all your stuff.’
She? Disgruntled in a way she couldn’t even explain to herself, Freya got to her feet. ‘Don’t panic, there won’t be sign of me,’ she said huffily. ‘I’ll make sure this is a perfectly sterile environment before your friend arrives.’
There was a tiny pause. ‘Will you be back later?’ Max asked reluctantly.
He obviously wanted to make sure that she was going to be safely out of way in case he wanted to bring his friend back.
Not that she cared, of course. With any luck she would be embarking on a memorable affair with Dan by then. ‘Probably not.’ She shrugged carelessly, very girl-about-town as she headed for her bedroom. ‘It depends what Dan wants to do.’
Freya’s eyes glittered greenly as she put on her make-up in the bathroom. She was glad now that Lucy had insisted on lending her a short black skirt for her to wear with her peacock-blue top. Freya knew the colour suited her, and although the three-quarter length sleeves were demure, the wide neck meant that it tended to slip over one shoulder in what she hoped Dan would think was a tantalising way. Hooking in a pair of glittering earrings, she wriggled her feet into the high-heeled shoes that had brought her luck last time and checked her reflection.
She still couldn’t get used to being a blonde. Freya wasn’t sure she had the personality to carry off more than mouse, but there was no doubt that her hair looked a lot more glamorous this way. Perhaps it wasn’t the sleek, shining curtain she had always craved, but it didn’t look too bad tumbling to her shoulders, she decided, and shook it back from her face as she pulled in her stomach, squaring her shoulders and sucking in her cheeks.
If nothing else, she would have the satisfaction of walking past Max knowing that she looked good, she thought with satisfaction. She imagined stalking past the sofa where he and his little friend would be sitting, and tossing them a casual farewell as they blinked at her, dazzled by her style. Freya narrowed her eyes, trying to picture what his girlfriend would be like.
The serious, sensible type, she decided. Intelligent, probably, but dowdy with it. Not unlike the way she used to be, in fact, Freya thought, remembering how Lucy used to moan about the fact that her wardrobe consisted entirely of trousers. Without the intelligence, of course.
She was different now. She was the kind of girl who went out with Dan Freer and carried condoms in her bag. She was cool.
Feeling pleased with herself, Freya picked up her bag, gave her hair a final flick and headed out to impress Max and his girlfriend. The feeling lasted as long as it took to reach the living room.
Max was there, all right, with a girl, and they were sitting together on a sofa, but that was the only similarity between Freya’s fantasy and the reality. The girl next to Max wasn’t at all dowdy, and she didn’t look the type to be easily impressed by the likes of Freya either.
There was a pause as they regarded each other. The other girl was a few years older, it was true—in her early thirties, Freya guessed—but she was intimidatingly self-possessed, with a suggestion of the exotic about her fine bone structure. Her bronze-coloured hair was twisted casually back, and she was dressed in faintly ethnic layers that would have looked shabby on anyone else but on her looked cool and stylish.
Freya’s heart sank as she assessed her. She knew the type. Cool, committed, right-on. The kind of girl who would roll her own cigarettes and despise cosmetics. She was very slender, and looked clever and intense. In fact, if Max had set out to find someone as different as it was possible to be from Freya herself, he couldn’t have chosen better.
Freya found the thought unaccountably depressing. She wished she wasn’t wearing such a short skirt. All at once it felt unbelievably tarty, and made her look galumphing next to the other girl’s understated elegance, but it was too late to retreat now. She would have to carry it off.
‘Hello,’ she said in a brittle voice.
‘Hi.’ The other girl gave her a friendly smile as Max looked up from pouring out two glasses of wine. He took in Freya’s outfit in one comprehensive look.
‘Oh, there you are,’ he said, boot-faced, and turned reluctantly to make the introductions. ‘This is the friend of Lucy’s I was telling you about.’
Freya was outraged. A ‘friend of Lucy’s’—was that all she was? Couldn’t he have described her in warmer terms: ‘this is one of the devil’s spawn’ perhaps, or ‘this is a sub-human creature, dredged up from some primeval scum, who I personally wouldn’t touch with the proverbial barge-pole’?
‘Freya, this is Kate,’ Max added stiffly.
Kate, eh? Freya might have known. Kate was the ultimate right-on name.
‘Freya? What a lovely name!’ said Kate with a warm smile that threw Freya completely. She hadn’t counted on her being a friendly Kate. ‘Were you named after the Norse goddess?’
‘Not directly,’ said Freya. ‘It’s my aunt’s name. She’s old, but not that old.’
‘Freya’s just on her way out,’ said Max meaningfully.
He so clearly didn’t want her to stay that Freya’s lips tightened, and sheer perversity made her plump down on the sofa opposite Kate. ‘Oh, there’s no hurry,’ she said.
A muscle twitched dangerously in Max’s jaw. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ he asked in a way that made it crystal-clear that he expected her to say no.
‘Lovely, thank you.’ She gave him a brilliant smile, resistin
g the urge to tug down the hem of her skirt and meeting his glare blandly as he got up to find another glass.
Freya’s eyes followed him. His shoulders were set stiffly, and he was obviously cross. He had changed into a deep blue shirt for Kate, she noticed. The colour suited him, although otherwise he looked as conventional as ever.
What did a girl like Kate see in him? Freya wondered sulkily. There was nothing special about him. Ordinary face, ordinary brown hair, ordinary everything. The only extraordinary thing about him was how buttoned-up he was.
He hadn’t been buttoned-up when he made love to her.
The thought slid insidiously into Freya’s mind and she pushed it hastily away, blushing slightly at the memory of her earlier fantasies. Really, you’d think she could find someone more exciting to fantasise about! Someone like Dan, for instance.
With an unconscious sigh, she turned her attention back to Kate, who was watching her with interest. ‘So, how do you know Max?’ she asked, intending to sound airily patronising but in fact sounding faintly accusing. Some might even say jealous.
‘We work together.’
‘Oh?’ Max’s secretary, perhaps. ‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a civil engineer,’ said Kate.
Right. A civil engineer. Nothing too intimidating, then. Nothing to make Freya feel completely stupid.
Kate laughed at Freya’s expression. ‘I know, it’s a bit of a conversation-stopper, isn’t it? I met Max when I worked on an irrigation project in Tanzania with him. I’m based in London now, in the head office, and I love it. It’s great working with Max. He’s so inspiring…but you must know that as well as I do,’ she finished apologetically.
Inspiring? Max? Freya looked at him as he came back with a glass, his mouth set in a grim line.
‘I can think of lots of words to describe Max,’ she said tartly, ‘but I can’t say inspiring is one of them!’
‘You’ve never worked with him, then?’
