Truly, Madly, Deeply

by Romantic Novelist's Association

  ‘Neither am I,’ he says, and we both start laughing again.

  He opens his mouth to say something, but both our phones go off simultaneously. An email from Celebrity Doubles, our agency. Caroline at the office is livid about the situation and will be tearing strips off the shopping centre security team shortly. In the meantime she says Pam and the others can carry on without us and we can go home if we want. Full pay. I discover I’m almost sad the day has to end.

  ‘Are you okay to get home?’ Harry asks me.

  I nod towards the bus stop. ‘I’m a local girl,’ I say. ‘Only fifteen minutes away on the two-five-seven.’

  He insists on coming with me to see I get there safely, even though he lives in completely the opposite direction. I’m still dressed as Kate, he reasons, and he wouldn’t want there to be a repeat performance of the shopping centre mob. I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay with my trench coat and my baseball cap, but I don’t put him off.

  If this was Gareth, I’d think he had some ulterior motive, that he’d find an excuse to get inside my flat –like pretending he needed to use the loo or something –and then I’d never be able to shove him out again, but Harry walks me to my gate, smiles at me then stays on the pavement side while I take a couple of steps down the path.

  ‘This is me,’ I say brightly, even though I already told him the address and my key is in my hand.

  ‘See you at the Young Royals thing in a couple of days,’ he says and lifts his hand, half in salute, half in farewell gesture. He takes a step backwards. The perfect gentleman, damn him.

  ‘Harry!’ I call out and he stops. I shake my head. ‘I can’t keep calling you that. It’s stupid.’ I take a breath. ‘I’m Sophie. Sophie Gale.’

  He walks back towards me, even comes inside the gate. ‘Tom,’ he says smiling.

  I twist the knot in the belt of my raincoat. ‘Thanks for today,’ I say and I feel my cheeks heat. I’m blushing. How very Kate. ‘I don’t think I’d have made it out alive without you.’

  He shrugs one shoulder and smiles. I step forward and kiss him on the cheek.

  I pull back, just a little, and he doesn’t move.

  And then his arms slide around me and he kisses me properly. So properly my baseball cap falls off and lands on the path, and my hair unknots itself and tumbles down my back.

  Not too much of a perfect gentleman, thank goodness!

  Two old ladies walking past do a double-take and stop.

  ‘Isn’t that…? And isn’t she…? Well, I never!’

  I just smile against Tom’s lips and kiss him back.

  Maybe, just maybe, there’s something in this prince thing after all. It just turns out I had my heart set on the wrong one.

  The Fundamental Things

  Heidi Rice

  Heidi Rice

  USA Today bestselling author HEIDI RICE lives in London and is married with two teenage sons –which gives her way too much of an insight into the male psyche.

  She was working as a film journalist when she joined the RNA’s fabulous New Writers Scheme in 2006. She got published through it the following year and is currently writing sexy contemporary romance for Mills & Boon’s new Modern Tempted and Cosmo Red Hot Reads series. She loves her job because it involves sitting down at her computer and getting swept up in a world of high emotion, sensual excitement, funny feisty women, sexy tortured men and glamourous locations where laundry doesn’t exist. Then she turns off her computer and does chores –usually involving laundry.

  You can find her at www.heidi-rice.com or on Twitter @HeidiRomRice, where she likes to natter about romance, books and hot movie stars (not necessarily in that order).

  The Fundamental Things

  Unbelievable. Of all the lifts, in all the office blocks, in the whole of London, the biggest mistake of my life has to walk into mine.

  Elizabeth Ryan sent up a silent prayer for invisibility as she inched behind two suited executives. Her back bumped against the mirrored wall in the executive elevator at Stokes and Company’s brand new twenty-eighth storey tower in Canary Wharf. Unfortunately, someone up there wasn’t listening, because she failed to disappear.

  Lorenzo Kelly.

  The name whispered across her consciousness as heat crawled up her neck and flared across her scalp.

  Twenty-two years since she’d last seen him and yet recognition had blasted her in the sternum as soon as he’d edged into the crowded lift. Which was surprising, because that fitted steel-grey designer suit was one heck of a departure from the wrecked jeans and third-hand leather jacket he’d lived in at Hillbrook Secondary.

  Thank God he was absorbed in the lift monitor and hadn’t looked her way. One glance at those heavy-lidded bedroom eyes a moment ago had been more than enough to make her heart swell up and stop beating for several crucial seconds. Funny how even after more than two decades, and what looked like a major GQ make-over, those slightly slanted emerald green eyes still made him look as if he’d just got out of bed –or was about to lure her back into one.

  The lift glided to a halt on the mezzanine level. And her two-executive shield, as well as most of the rest of the lift’s inhabitants, shot out, making a beeline for the Starbucks™ queue. Her shoulders tightened and she stared straight ahead tuning out the chatter about a press launch from the three young women who’d deliberately positioned themselves next to Ren.

  She risked another glance. He seemed taller and more muscular. She didn’t remember his physique being quite this over-powering. But from what she could see from this angle, little else about him was different. He still had the dramatically high cheekbones. Although now expensively styled and with a wisp of grey at the temples, his thick dark hair still had those curls that skimmed his collar and made her fingers itch to caress them. And even in his expertly tailored suit, he had maintained that laid-back-to-the-point-of-insolence stance that said loud and clear he didn’t give a toss about anyone or anything.

  Oddly enough, it had been that stance rather than his spectacular looks that had lured her to him back then, giving him the dangerous attraction of forbidden treasure.

  She let out a shaky breath. Ren Kelly had given her treasure, however unintentionally, that was one thing at least she hadn’t been wrong about. The sucker punch had been her idiotic belief that a tender, tortured soul existed beneath Ren’s bad boy exterior.

  The lift bell pinged, zapping Liz back to the present as the trio of PR women exited on eighth. All three checked Ren out as they passed.

  Liz’s stomach tightened as he sent them an impersonal smile and hooked his hand into the pocket of his trousers. One of them blushed prettily in response.

  Liz scowled. Watch out, girls. Wolf in Gucci clothing.

  The man might look dreamy but she knew he was every woman’s worse nightmare. Her gaze dipped to the bottom edge of his jacket, which rode up over his backside, revealing the same tight orbs she had once spent entire lunch hours admiring framed in battered denim.

  Resentment flared. Was there no justice in the world? While her boobs now required a bra underwired with tungsten to stop them heading south, and her face took at least thirty minutes to apply every morning, maturity had only enhanced Ren Kelly’s megawatt sex appeal. Surely for a man as shallow and self-absorbed as he was, there had to be some sort of deal with Beelzebub going on for him to still be this gorgeous?

  She shifted further into the corner, as the lift stopped on the eleventh floor and let out a freckle-faced office boy –the last person left sharing the lift with them.

  She counted to five but no one else entered before the lift doors slid closed, sealing them into the metal box alone together.

  Bugger.

  The lift rose, and the weightlessness in her belly was suddenly accompanied by an odd flare of heat, relaxing the muscles of her abdomen. The heat spread up her chest and reignited her scalp.

  Terrific, thirty-eight years old and my body chooses this precise moment to have its first hot flush.

&nbs
p; She slung the strap of her laptop bag over her shoulder, crossed her arms over her boiling chest and studiously ignored the man in front of her –who, thankfully, had yet to look her way.

  Only five more floors to go until she could make a dignified exit at Human Resources and reassign the biggest mistake of her life to his rightful place in her past.

  The overhead light flickered and a sudden jolt had them both gripping the railing. Ren straightened first. The lift stuttered to a halt, the panel light fluttering ominously between twelve and fourteen –there was no thirteenth floor, even though they appeared to have stopped there.

  ‘You OK?’ His gaze wandered over her, as if checking for injuries. And her heart beat into her throat, the harsh fluorescent lighting picking up the flecks of gold in his irises, which Josh had inherited.

  ‘Fine.’ Her stomach muscles tangled into knots as her knuckles tightened on the rail. She tried to recall the breathing technique she’d learned at the ante-natal classes before Josh was born. As her son was now twenty-one and she’d ended up having every drug known to man by the time he was actually delivered, it was a fairly vain hope.

  Relax. Don’t panic, maybe he won’t recognise you.

  After all, she’d changed completely since that long ago afternoon in the clinic waiting room, the last time she’d seen him. She had cheekbones these days. Her once long, dyed black hair was now its natural chestnut trimmed into a sleek bob. The thick Goth eyeliner and nose ring had been replaced by make-up in subtle autumn hues, which enhanced her pale skin rather than making her resemble a close relative of the Addams Family.

  A shudder ran down her spine at the memory of how much effort she’d put into looking atrocious at sixteen. No wonder Ren –the unnaturally beautiful lost boy whom every girl in Form 10B had flirted with mercilessly –had only asked her out on a bet.

  His gaze returned to the lift panel. And her breath eased out past gritted teeth. But the gush of relief was tempered with a tiny flicker of regret, which she ruthlessly quashed.

  Don’t be a ninny. It’s good that he doesn’t recognise you. It shows how far you’ve come from that sartorial disaster zone.

  A loud metallic clanking sound filled the lift, which inched upwards and then stopped again with a juddering bump.

  ‘Jesus, what the hell was that?’ Ren murmured.

  ‘It’s only teething problems, they’ve had a few in the last couple of weeks.’ Liz squeezed the sensible words out past the ticking bomb lodged in her throat. ‘It’ll move again in a moment.’ Or I shall throttle every single member of the premises support team with my bare hands.

  He stabbed the emergency call button and shouted into the intercom: ‘Hey, anyone out there? We’re stuck in here.’

  A crackling sound came over the line followed by a disembodied and remarkably relaxed voice: ‘Sorry, folks, give us a couple of minutes and we’ll have you rolling again.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ren replied, as he took his finger off the button. Propping his butt against the wall, he dropped his briefcase and raked his fingers through his hair.

  Liz stared at the panel above his head. Anywhere but at those disturbingly familiar green eyes. She sent up a silent prayer, this one as fervent as the one she’d once made while standing by her newborn son’s crib in the neo-natal care unit of UCL hospital. Although, this time, instead of praying for Josh’s father to magically appear, now she prayed for him to disappear as quickly as was humanly possible.

  ‘So, Lizzie, when did you cut your hair?’

  She raised her head, the blush spreading like a mushroom cloud. ‘You recognised me.’

  The quirk of his lips sent a dimple into his cheek. Her pulse-rate accelerated. As a boy, he’d used that dimple on women like a lethal weapon. Age and maturity hadn’t dimmed its power.

  ‘Like I could forget you,’ he said, the tone sardonic. ‘You’re the only woman I’ve ever kissed who kneed me in the balls.’

  A dart of shame pierced her consternation, at the memory of him tumbling off the bed with his hands cupping his groin, tears of pain squeezing out of his eyes.

  ‘As I recall we did a lot more than kiss.’ Her spine stiffened as she refused to remember how much more, and instead concentrated on the furious argument they’d had before she’d sent him rolling onto the floor. Yes she’d hurt him, but he’d deserved it at the time. ‘And I didn’t get that much leverage. You made far too much of a fuss about it.’

  ‘I remember very well how much more we did.’ The low tone sounded oddly seductive. ‘But even my ex-wife only ever kicked me in the balls metaphorically speaking,’ he continued. ‘And when it comes to leverage, believe me,’ he shuddered theatrically, ‘you got enough.’

  She saw the quirk of self-deprecating humour on those sensual lips and wanted to kick him in the balls all over again. Seriously? Wasn’t he even going to mention why she’d kicked him? Or was he just being coy?

  ‘All credit to your ex-wife,’ she replied, dismissing the hollow knowledge in the pit of her stomach that he had been married and divorced in the last twenty-two years, and probably had other children. ‘The woman must have had the forbearance of a saint.’

  He grinned, the flash of white teeth in his tanned face disconcerting. ‘She certainly thought so.’ His head tilted to one side as his gaze drifted up to her hairline. She resisted the urge to smooth her hand over her bob or acknowledge her thundering heartbeat.

  ‘It suits you.’ He nodded. ‘The hairstyle. I can see more of your face.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said caustically, not quite able to keep the bitterness at bay. Wasn’t he even going to mention Josh, or ask after him?

  She’d thought the worst thing that could happen would be that he might recognise her. She had been wrong.

  ‘You look good, too,’ she added. ‘Although it does make me wonder what state the painting in your attic must be in these days?’

  Instead of looking offended by the barb, he laughed. ‘There’s no painting. Yet. But Dorian was definitely onto something. If I could swap a magic painting, however grotesque, for having to sweat my nuts off in the gym four times a week, I’d do it in a heartbeat.’

  A satisfied laugh escaped her lips at the gratifying thought that even he had to work hard to look good these days.

  She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘You should ask them what’s going on. I have a meeting and we’ve been stuck in here for five minutes now?’ she added. She wanted to make it clear she wasn’t enjoying their trip down memory lane.

  He hitched his shoulder, then buzzed the intercom again. After a brief talk with the services team, an engineer came on the line. ‘I’m sorry, sir. We’re having to override the trip switch, there’s been a short in the…’

  ‘Save me the tech jargon, pal,’ Ren interrupted. ‘All we’re interested in is how much longer we’re likely to be in here?’

  ‘Definitely not more than ten minutes,’ the engineer replied. ‘Twenty tops.’

  ‘What?’ Liz yelped. No fricking way was she going to be able to survive another twenty minutes of small talk without having the enormous elephant crammed into the lift with them rear up on its two hind legs and crush her to death. Or worse, tumble out of her mouth. And if that happened she’d never forgive herself.

  She’d made a promise to herself on Josh’s first birthday that she wouldn’t contact Lorenzo Kelly again –finally letting go of the immature hope that he’d never received the letters she’d sent. His disappearance had spoken volumes right from the start, but she’d refused to see it for over a year. And the result had been lots of pointless tears and sleepless nights when she should have been devoting herself to her son.

  Once she’d let go of that delusion, everything had got easier. Slowly but surely, she’d gone from being a heartsick teenage drama queen expecting Ren to return and sweep away all her problems –while leaving her mum to do most of the childcare –to being a single mother ready to face up to her responsibilities. Not to say that it had been easy, because that h
ad been one hell of a steep learning curve, but she’d survived and eventually prospered.

  But she didn’t think she could stand here for another twenty minutes and have this man continue to pretend Josh didn’t exist right to her face without reverting to a bit of teenage drama, and quite possibly murdering him.

  Taking the three steps to Ren’s side, she elbowed him aside and stabbed the intercom button herself. ‘Listen, buster, I have a meeting. A very important meeting.’ Not to mention a man’s life in my hands, which I cannot be held responsible for if you don’t get a move on. ‘So you need to stop mucking about and get me out of here.’

  The young engineer coughed guiltily. ‘Do you want us to tell them you’ll be late, Miss?’

  ‘Are you a complete moron…?’ She stopped, tried to drag her temper back from the brink as Ren’s dark brows launched up his forehead at her outburst. ‘No, I don’t want you to rearrange the meeting…’ She struggled for calm but her whole body was starting to shake. He was standing so close, she could smell him. The far too familiar scent of laundry soap and man –no longer masked by the aroma of Golden Virginia tobacco –brought back all sorts of heady memories. She’d thought the scent of his roll-ups was incredibly sexy at sixteen. Unfortunately, the clean scent of him was much sexier now.

  Stop right there. You’re not attracted to him, you’re just a little stressed.

  Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips as she turned away from the beautiful mouth that had once kissed her with such longing, and now belonged to a stranger.

  Make that a lot stressed.

  ‘I simply need to get out of here…’ She finished, feeling hideously exposed.

  ‘Are you all right, Miss?’ came the engineer’s concerned voice.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Give or take the odd nervous breakdown.

  But then Ren’s warm palm covered the fingers that she hadn’t realised had begun to tremble on the intercom button.