So Now You're Back

by Heidi Rice

  Because Present Halle was too busy mentally kicking Past Halle’s arse for agreeing to Luke’s stupid stunt in the first place.

  Why hadn’t she walked away in the Café Hugo three weeks ago, when Luke had begun talking in tongues about love doctors and Vanity Fair articles? Would stopping Luke’s memoirs—correction, phantom memoirs—be worth getting stranded for two weeks with him in the Tennessee wilderness however luxurious the resort?

  As soon as she’d been back on the Eurostar, in the soulless comfort of first class, without Luke’s don’t-be-a-chicken smile daring her to lose her grip on reality, the rational, sensible answer to that question had seemed fairly obvious.

  Two weeks against phantom-memoir stoppage? Good deal? Um, no.

  What she should have done in Paris was tell Luke to take his love-surgeon-article bollocks and shove it right up his superbly toned backside.

  But in Café Hugo, the reckless, impulsive, insane streak, which Luke had mined so easily when she was sixteen, had come out of hiding for one last hurrah. And she’d taken him up on the dare.

  Once she was back in the UK, and Jamie had fired her an email with the subject line ‘Is Your Ex Delusional?’ she still could have denied all knowledge of the devil’s bargain she’d made with Luke and got Jamie to handle the fallout. But she hadn’t. She’d had him draw up a contract for Luke to sign.

  Et voilà. She was now having to abide by her side of that contract.

  So really the only person to blame for this monumental error of judgement was herself.

  Or rather that part of herself—the part she thought had died sixteen years ago while trudging round East London trying to find the father of her child—that refused to back down from a challenge.

  Back then, that part of herself had been valiant and stupidly optimistic and determined to prove Luke still loved her. Now that part of herself was valiant and fatalistic and determined to prove she was totally over him.

  But that still gave Present Halle an excellent reason to give Past Halle a really good kicking.

  A tap on the door frame helped halt Halle’s growing multiple personality disorder from getting any worse. She spotted Carrie, the design studio’s general manager and all-round admin superstar, standing on the threshold. Halle winced at the fluorescent pink-and-orange tie-dye minidress, which clashed spectacularly with the electric-blue highlights in Carrie’s hair.

  ‘Halle, were we expecting you? I didn’t have anything in my schedule,’ Carrie said, reminding Halle her general manager had a much saner approach to office admin than she did to wardrobe choices.

  ‘Slight change of plans. I’m going to be out of the country for two weeks as of tomorrow.’ In Nowheresville, Tennessee, no doubt whopping Past Halle’s arse for the duration. ‘So I thought I’d come in to do a quick run-through of the schedule while I’m away. You’ll have to take any client consultations that can’t be rearranged.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Carrie’s brows shot up. ‘You’re taking a holiday? For two whole weeks?’

  The shock on Carrie’s face suggested it had been longer than she’d thought since her last two-week break.

  ‘It’s not a holiday, exactly. It’s more of a personal thing,’ she said, sticking to the minimalist story she’d worked out in lieu of the book tour one, which Carrie would see through straight away as she had access to Halle’s schedule.

  Telling her staff the truth had been quickly discarded. Having to explain to them about Luke and his article would only complicate things. Plus, she didn’t want to risk any leaks. This trip was about getting closure for the shockingly bad life choices she’d made as a teenager. And not about giving the gossip mags a chance to editorialise said shockingly bad life choices for the benefit of their judgemental readers.

  ‘A personal thing?’ Carrie looked intrigued, then clapped her hands with glee. ‘You found a Mr Best? That’s terrific. My work is done.’

  Carrie knew about Luke? How the …?

  ‘No wonder you nixed all my blind date suggestions,’ Carrie continued with a mock pout. ‘You were busy trolling on your own. You could have told me.’

  Trolling? Blind date suggestions? Wait a minute. Carrie had said a Mr Best.

  Oh, thank fuck.

  This conversation had nothing to do with Luke and everything to do with her GM’s Cupid delusion. Carrie had met Alan the folk guitarist, aka Mr Right On, eighteen months ago and been on a mission to spread the love ever since. Halle was one of the few people at the studio who’d avoided getting stabbed in the arse by Carrie’s love dart.

  ‘There is no Mr Best,’ Halle said emphatically. Or not one anyone need know about. ‘And I’m not looking for one. I have a perfectly good vibrator I can date if I need to.’

  Not that she’d had many dates with her vibrator lately. In fact, when was the last time she’d gotten Bugs, her Rampant Rabbit, out of the bedside drawer? She did a quick calculation.

  Good Lord, had it actually been Christmas Eve? Six whole months?

  No wonder Luke’s tactile thumb had given her a hot flush. Well, at least it was good to know the anxiety of seeing him again hadn’t induced a stress menopause.

  She slotted ‘get Bugs out of mothballs’ onto her to-do list.

  ‘Vibrators can’t hug you like a man can,’ Carrie stated with a sanguine look. ‘Unless your vibrator’s a new model I haven’t heard of.’

  ‘Hugs are overrated, as is all the bullshit that goes with them when men supply them.’

  ‘Halle!’ Carrie looked scandalised. ‘Don’t be so cynical. Not all men are bastards.’

  ‘And not all men are like Mr Right On,’ Halle countered, cutting the edge out of her voice. Just because she’d learned there was no such thing as a free hug, Carrie didn’t need to know that. Yet. ‘Now, could we please stop talking about my love life?’

  ‘Dating a vibrator does not count as a love life,’ Carrie said emphatically, but she stepped into the cubicle and sat in the spare chair.

  Halle shot her a severe look.

  Carrie threw back her you’re-still-on-my-dating-hit-list look, before saying, ‘So where do you want to start? With the client consultation schedule or the fact that the Kane Corporation CEO has come up with yet another brilliant suggestion for the decoration on their sixtieth-anniversary cake?’

  ‘You’re joking? But we signed off on that design weeks ago. And isn’t the event this Saturday evening?’ In two days’ time.

  The studio took on only about eight hundred cakes a year now. All bespoke designs mostly for celebrity parties or huge corporate events and all handmade by the fabulous team she’d assembled. But even so, each cake had to have the unique Halle Best stamp on it. That’s what her clients were paying thousands of pounds per cake for. With her TV and publishing commitments, she no longer had the time to spend hours painstakingly moulding Mexican modelling paste or baking sponges or mixing crumb coating, so her job mostly involved fronting the studio’s PR initiatives, creating the basic designs, instructing the team and schmoozing the clients.

  Right from the start, the Kane Corporation’s cake had been a hard sell, and an even harder schmooze. Carlton Foster, the CEO, who had insisted on consulting with Halle personally, had been adamant about showcasing the company’s product range on the cake because the party would be getting lots of exposure on their social media platforms. Unfortunately, it was next to impossible to make a cake topped with syringes, surgical gloves, catheters and bedpans look edible, let alone appetising. After much negotiation, and some extracurricular schmoozing, Halle had managed to satisfy Foster’s marketing zeal while also hopefully preventing his guests’ gag reflexes from engaging by suggesting a five-tiered dark chocolate sponge iced with a raspberry and tangerine white chocolate ganache—black, red and orange being the colours of the Kane Corporation logo—decorated with a tasteful montage of 3D illustrations from the company’s iconic advertising campaigns of the past sixty years. Foster had signed off on the design two weeks ago. And the party was ha
ppening on Saturday at the Kensington Roof Gardens. The sponges would have been baked. The decorations would already be in production. They simply didn’t have time for any major rethinks. Or redesigns. But even so …

  ‘What’s the suggestion?’ Please don’t let it involve the return of the bedpans.

  Halle wanted to be as flexible as possible. When it came to big-occasion cakes, last-minute suggestions or panic attacks were the customers’ prerogative. Especially if they were paying ten thousand pounds for the privilege.

  ‘Foster is really keen for us to incorporate something to illustrate Kane’s latest charitable initiative in the Third World.’

  ‘OK.’ That didn’t sound too disastrous. One new tableau should be doable. If they could persuade one of the stylists to work overtime to get a head start on the new decoration and she could work out a design for it before she left tomorrow morning. ‘What’s the initiative?’

  Carrie smiled, sheepishly. ‘A programme to distribute free condoms in sub-Saharan Africa.’

  Halle’s smile faded as she slapped ‘kill Carlton Foster’ onto the top of her to-do list.

  Chapter 6

  What exactly is the point of online check-in?

  Luke stood in the queue for the bag-drop desk in Heathrow’s Terminal Two, which snaked halfway to Manchester, his boot tapping against the industrial flooring. As a person who’d been born with a serious case of wanderlust, he knew pointless queues were a necessary evil of air travel. But he’d had a six a.m. wake-up call, despite being up till two at his hotel to meet a deadline on a piece for Time magazine, to allow for the queue at security—which still loomed large, and no doubt even longer, in his future. So this sodding queue was above and beyond the call of duty.

  Halle strode through one of the terminal’s revolving doors, followed by a mini entourage that consisted of a woman talking on her smartphone and an older man pushing a trolley with far too many suitcases on it. Luke’s boot stopped in mid-tap, as did the dictation in his head of his letter of complaint to the moron who thought two measly bag-drop staff was enough.

  From the parade of double takes that followed Halle and her mini entourage through the terminal, it was clear several people recognised her. No one approached her, though. Not surprising, given those bugger-off vibes she was radiating with every crisp, purposeful stride.

  She looked immaculate, and invincible, her hair swept up in a style that left her face bare, but for the few teasing tendrils dangling down her neck. The intimidating light blue power suit and heels were probably some pricey designer brand, a matching set to the outfit she’d worn in Paris. The hum of attraction kicked off in his crotch, annoying him the same way it had when he’d swung round at her gasp in Café Hugo.

  Ruthlessly coiffured and expertly styled dominatrix types were not his thing. He preferred a woman who didn’t look as if she were about to conquer Poland. But that hadn’t stopped him having to stifle all sorts of inappropriate urges while sitting opposite her in Hugo’s, mostly involving plucking the pins out of her hairdo and watching the honey-blonde curls bounce off her shoulders.

  Funny to think how sunny and unassuming she’d been when they were kids. Young and open and ridiculously naive. Of course, she’d been sixteen going on twenty then, and an exceptionally bad judge of character. Or she wouldn’t have attempted to hand him her heart on a platter.

  Halle’s brows rose as she spotted him, but her gaze remained cool and impersonal.

  The composed assessment should have been a welcome relief from the radioactive glare she’d lasered at him three weeks ago over croissants and millefeuille. But it felt more like an anticlimax.

  He’d been expecting fireworks. Had prepared for them, ready to offer her a quick apology for what had happened sixteen years ago, thus knocking the hefty chip she still appeared to be carrying around off her shoulder.

  The blank look wrong-footed him.

  ‘Hi, Hal.’ The tension in his shoulders relaxed despite his disappointment. At least she’d shown up. ‘You made it.’

  ‘I made you a promise. And I keep my promises.’

  Right. ‘Good thing I saved you a place in the queue, then,’ he said, deflecting the deliberate dig with a certain amount of gratification.

  Maybe not fireworks, then, but definitely a sparkler or two. Sparklers he could work with.

  ‘Aren’t we in business class?’

  Her proprietary question lit a few sparklers of his own. ‘This is the business queue. The economy one stretches all the way to Madagascar. I guess they didn’t get the memo that business people don’t queue.’ Or celebrities, apparently.

  ‘Mel, could you go over to the first-class check-in and see if we can arrange an upgrade?’ she instructed the woman beside her.

  The perky assistant nodded and headed for the empty first-class desk. The old guy followed suit with Halle’s bags, leaving them alone—if you didn’t count the ten thousand people in the queue.

  ‘You sure you want to waste an extra five grand just to avoid a queue?’ he asked, even though he guessed she probably never travelled anything but first now.

  The thought lit another sparkler.

  ‘I was up last night until one trying to design a cake decoration inspired by free condoms that didn’t actually involve making little foil packets out of modelling paste. So yes, the five grand is well worth it. I need to sleep on this flight.’

  They did beds in business. The business class flights he’d paid for out of his own pocket so he could get his apology over and done with. But he refused to let her snotty attitude or the juvenile reaction in his groin triggered by the word ‘condoms’ get to him. ‘Sounds tasteful, what’s the cake for, a stag do?’

  ‘You’d think, but no,’ she said cryptically.

  The assistant returned looking pleased with herself. ‘I’ve got you an upgrade to first. Derek’s loading the bags.’

  ‘Wonderful, thanks, Mel.’ Halle turned back to him, her relief palpable for a second, before she covered it with a polite smile. ‘I guess I’ll see you in Atlanta.’

  He frowned after her as she marched off to the first-class check-in.

  OK, what was that about? Because the hairs on the back of his neck were going haywire, a sure sign he’d been played.

  He did what he always did when his journalistic radar was telling him a source wasn’t being entirely truthful. He examined the evidence.

  Halle had always been super frugal when they had been together. Pinching every penny—especially the ones they didn’t have. And while she had money now, probably more money than she knew what to do with, Lizzie frequently moaned about her mum’s penny-pinching ways. So splashing the cash still wasn’t her style. Why, then, had she bumped herself up to first, when she could sleep just as easily in business without paying five grand for the privilege?

  He watched Halle say goodbye to her crew and head towards the departure gates. She didn’t look back at him. His journalistic radar went into meltdown.

  Son of a bitch. In business she’d be next to him.

  Was that it? She was still trying to stonewall him?

  Bugger that. He swung his leather holdall over his shoulder and crossed to the first-class desk. He wasn’t into unnecessary expenditure, either, but she’d spent sixteen years not talking to him. Five grand didn’t seem like too much to pay to stop her buying him off for another ten hours.

  Here endeth the silent treatment.

  Ushered through the boarding gate, Halle clutched her carry-on luggage, stocked with anti-nausea medication, antacids and the Xanax—which she’d dosed up on in the car on her way to the airport.

  She was over Luke. She just wasn’t over him enough to spend nine hours and forty minutes in a plane freaking out while he sat beside her being composed and competent and annoyingly buff.

  The quest for closure could wait until she was good and ready to deal with it.

  And after the hours she’d put in last night finishing off the Kane redesign, the five grand
it had cost her for ten extra hours of karma was a totally justifiable expense.

  Especially as the Xanax didn’t appear to be working yet. Which had to explain why spotting Luke standing in the bag-drop queue in battered jeans and a leather jacket, with his hair dishevelled and his jaw covered in stubble, had made her body hum as if she’d been plugged into an electric socket.

  ‘May I take your bag, Ms Best?’ A flight attendant with immaculate make-up and a chignon that could withstand a nuclear holocaust beamed at her as she stepped aboard the plane.

  Halle tightened her grip on the bag. ‘No, thank you.’

  The attendant led her past the galley and the functional luxury of business class and up a spiral staircase into a section way too reminiscent of a vintage Star Trek set. Eerie blue-toned lighting illuminated a series of pods, each furnished with a reclining seat, a mirrored wall, a control panel of knobs that would confuse Lieutenant Uhura and enough leather to fit out an S&M boutique.

  Halle tucked her bag into her assigned pod and tried not to think of all the other much more useful and tangible things she could have done with the five grand her flight aboard the Starship Enterprise was costing. She was a celebrity. She worked superhard. She had a very healthy bank balance these days. She was entitled to splurge on herself occasionally.

  This was not because she’d panicked when she’d seen Luke. She could easily control any and all inappropriate reactions where he was concerned. Simply by remembering how much she despised him. This was because she deserved to pamper herself. And because the take-off alone could cause her acid reflux to go into overdrive—so why add to her stress with an audience?

  There were only two other people travelling in first class: a balding, middle-aged executive seated four pods up, who was tapping industriously on his laptop, and an elderly woman three pods across, who was lying back with an eye mask on and was doing a great impression of being already dead.