by Lucy King
Who were they anyway? She didn’t even like them. She’d spent pretty much all her teenage years secretly and perversely in awe of them, trying to do her damnedest to fit in, when actually they weren’t worth fitting in with. In fact, as was so often the case with bullies, they were the ones who were lacking, the ones to be pitied, not her.
Resisting the urge to kick herself for not coming to this devastating conclusion fifteen years ago when it really could have made a difference, Zoe pulled herself together and cleared her head so she could focus and take control of a relationship that had been far too one-sided for far too long, and then put an end to it.
‘Why would I know?’ she asked calmly, feeling oddly liberated as the panic and nausea fell away.
‘Well, you were the fiancée.’
‘And seeing as how the whole thing was a set-up in the first place why would I even care?’
‘A set-up?’ echoed Samantha, sounding taken aback.
‘That’s right.’
‘You mean the proposal?’
‘I mean the whole lot of it.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Having Samantha on the back foot for once caused an unstoppable sense of empowerment to rise up inside her. ‘There was no boyfriend, no grappa and no ski-resort naughtiness,’ she said almost giddily. ‘I made it all up.’
There was a moment’s stunned silence as this clearly startling revelation sank in. ‘But what about Dan?’
‘I met him about half an hour before you did and asked him to help me out.’
Samantha might have been momentarily thrown but it didn’t take her long to recover. ‘Hah, I knew it,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I knew you’d never manage to tie a man like him down.’
‘I doubt anyone will,’ said Zoe, determinedly ignoring the barb and thinking instead about the way he’d tensed when she’d mentioned they’d been going out for six months.
‘You were always so independent...and such a control-freak.’ Samantha made both sound like the worst character traits on the planet and Zoe couldn’t help bristling all over again because as far as she was concerned there was absolutely nothing wrong with being responsible for yourself or wanting to be in control of you life.
‘I still am,’ she said.
‘You never were very good at holding onto men, were you?’
‘No, well, you made sure of that, didn’t you, Samantha?’ The night of their leaving dance, in fact, when Zoe had finally plucked up the courage to invite a boy from the village where her parents lived that she’d had a crush on for ages. She’d been so excited she hadn’t properly thought through the possible ramifications. If she had she might have been prepared for Samantha to sidle over and mock her date in front of him and she might have been prepared for her to then snog him in the middle of the dance floor an hour later, but then again she might not.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Samantha with a sneer. ‘You’re not still smarting about that, are you?’
‘No more than you are that Dan didn’t respond to any of your flirting last night.’
There was a pause while Samantha took the shot and rallied. ‘Did you know he’s one of the most eligible bachelors in London?’
‘I didn’t, but I can quite see why.’
‘He’s at number two on Tatler’s Little Black Book list.’
‘Only at number two?’ she exclaimed in mock horror. ‘Who’s at number one?’
‘Royalty.’
‘Naturally.’
‘So what would he see in you?’
‘Well, quite,’ she agreed, although actually he had seen something in her, hadn’t he? Something that had made him kiss her as if his life depended on it, something that had set his heart thumping and his hands trembling and his body hardening where it mattered, and something she really should have taken into account before fleeing last night, because for all she knew the ‘but’ she’d sensed coming might not have been the brush-off she’d assumed but a ‘but I’m a bit tied up at the moment so how about I take your number and give you a call?’. Damn, she needed to address the issues she had with self-esteem...
‘Bit sad, though, to invent a boyfriend, don’t you think?’
‘Completely pathetic,’ she said, dragging her concentration away from Dan’s physical attributes and her abandonment of logic and applying it to the conversation. ‘And way below me.’
‘So why do it?’
‘Heaven knows,’ she said, because she might be willing to offload the truth about last night but there was such a thing as going too far, and confessing to many and highly personal insecurities to this woman definitely ventured into that territory.
‘Trying to impress us, were you?’ said Samantha mockingly.
‘Very probably. And you were, weren’t you? Impressed, I mean.’
Samantha sniffed. ‘Hardly.’
‘Anyway, it really doesn’t matter any more,’ said Zoe, setting her jaw and pulling her shoulders back because if ever there was a time for a steely backbone this was it. ‘For a while last night I totally lost my mind but that’s fine because now I’m back in possession of it, and you know something, Samantha, you might have made my life pretty damn miserable for the best part of seven years, but not any longer. I’ve had enough. I truly don’t care what you think about me. I haven’t seen you in fifteen years, and I doubt I will again in the next fifteen. You do not matter to me. Your opinion of me does not matter to me. Nothing you say or do has any effect on me any more. It’s over.’
And with that she hung up, relief pouring through her and her teenage self whooping and cheering in the background.
* * *
The pride and delight Zoe felt at finally standing up to the silly cow and telling her to get lost lasted about an hour.
She’d hung up, and done a happy dance in her chair, wishing that Lily were here to celebrate her new-found freedom instead of being halfway up a mountain checking out a corporate bonding package on behalf of a new client, and out of contact. Positively zinging with euphoria and adrenalin, she’d spotted the numerical anomaly almost instantly and had handled a couple of client emails she would otherwise have left for her more client-friendly sister.
But then she’d found herself going over the phone call in her head, and she kept coming back to what Samantha had said about not being able to hold onto a man. Whether she’d intended to or not, Samantha had hit on one of Zoe’s weakest spots—and not just because it had brought back memories of her crush at eighteen.
As much as it pained her to admit it Samantha had a point. She was hopeless at holding onto a man. Three months was her longest relationship, and for a woman of thirty-two that wasn’t exactly anything to write home about.
Her last attempt had ended a month ago when Mike had dumped her and a six-week relationship had bitten the dust. Why she still bothered to try and have one of the bloody things when she was so useless at them was anyone’s guess, but some pathetically optimistic part of her constantly hoped that this one would be different. That this man would be strong enough to put up with her idiosyncrasies and insecurities, and interesting and attractive enough for her to put up with his.
Well, Mike certainly hadn’t been any of that, not that he’d stuck around long enough for either of them to find out for sure.
Utterly fed up with her run of bad luck Zoe had tossed in the online dating towel and had tried her damnedest to forget the whole humiliating experience of their break-up, but Mike’s parting shot had lodged in her brain and infuriatingly refused to budge.
Moments before throwing his hands in the air and declaring that he was giving up, he’d accused her of being a workaholic number-cruncher who was boring and unimaginative and less fun than a burst appendix, and naturally enough, when she’d thought things had been going rather well for a change, it had stung.
> Even worse, when she’d told her sister what he’d said Lily had tentatively suggested that maybe, just maybe, Mike had had a very small point and that perhaps she should think about getting a life beyond the company, and that had stung even more.
Lily had even remarked that Zoe might like to find a hobby, which at the time had made Zoe snort with derision because, really? A hobby? Where would she find the time for a hobby? Besides, statistical analysis was her hobby, which was handy seeing as how their business involved such a lot of it.
Consoling herself with the thought that Mike had had a very small point indeed and hadn’t been particularly good with it, and reminding herself that as the company already had one zany and creative but numerically challenged co-owner in Lily her own skill-set and dedication were vital, Zoe had calmly brushed the criticism aside with a couldn’t-care-less shrug and had decided to move on.
But to her frustration moving on had proved easier said than done, and over the last few weeks she’d found herself dwelling on what Mike and Lily had said, analysing her life from angles she’d never previously considered, and had wound up wondering whether her ex and her sister might not actually be right.
She did channel pretty much every waking hour she had into the business, and, while in the beginning it had been necessary for survival, the company was so well established now and so successful she probably didn’t need to keep her foot on the accelerator all the time.
And as constantly working had become such a habit maybe she had become even more of a hermit than usual. The handful of times Mike had tried to drag her out to dinner or a party she’d acquiesced with such bad grace and then slunk around in the background in an effort to avoid anyone who looked as if they might want to chat that with the benefit of hindsight she couldn’t entirely blame him for giving up on her.
So maybe her inability to hold down a man was her fault, she thought now, picking up her mug and grimacing at the mouthful of horribly cold coffee she ended up with and the sticky skin that clung to her lips. Maybe what had happened at school had squashed her self-esteem and self-confidence so much that she did go into every relationship thinking it was doomed from the start. She certainly didn’t bother to fight for them much.
Oh, she could try and console herself with a whole bunch of statistics about the odds of divorce and that her highly valued reason and logic held no truck with anything as unquantifiable as love, but hadn’t she perhaps been kidding herself all these years? Wasn’t it more likely to be that she couldn’t let her guard down with men in case they discovered the mess she was beneath the cool and confident professional exterior?
And if that was the case, she thought, pushing away from her desk and getting up to go and make a fresh cup of coffee, and her disaster of a love-life had been a sort of indirect result of the bullying, then seeing as how she’d just put that to bed so to speak wouldn’t that mean she could now do something to remedy the situation? Because now she was free to build up her self-esteem and confidence and become the person she thought she could be on a personal as well as professional level.
She’d been told she needed to get a life. Well, maybe it was about time she did, because she was now thinking that she must be incredibly hard work to go out with and it was no wonder no man had stuck around for long.
Maybe it was time to drop her guard, she thought, her heart thumping a little bit faster. Maybe she should let loose and see what happened. And even if a relationship didn’t land in her lap right away, maybe she could just have some fun for a change. She was thirty-two for heaven’s sake. Surely she ought to have had some seriously good sex by now, either within or without a relationship.
Zoe sat back down at her desk before her knees gave way at the thought of mind-bending earth-shattering sex.
Ideally with Dan, she thought suddenly, heat racing through her veins. He looked like he knew how to have fun. He’d kissed her with more than just perfunctory passion, and she’d felt the evidence that he was attracted to her. Lord knew she was attracted to him. She might not know a huge amount about it but if the heat that they could generate just from kissing was anything to go by, then the sex would be out of this world.
He’d be good for her self-esteem too. Quite apart from obviously wanting her, when he’d told her she was brainy and beautiful her spirits had soared. If she were a betting woman, which she wasn’t given how the odds were so often stacked against the average punter, then she’d bet that Dan would help to build up her confidence beautifully. Indirectly he might even help her to find the real her that she could feel was buried beneath a whole heap of self-doubt, vulnerability and fear.
So maybe, thought Zoe, looking up the contact details of DBF Associates online and feeling adrenalin begin to surge through her, just maybe, if she asked, Dan might be up for having some fun with her.
SIX
It was now or never.
Zoe hovered at the door of the hotel ballroom she’d been lurking around for the past ten minutes, watching Dan and the party of people he was with—his staff, presumably—diverge to the bar, her heart beating like a drum and her blood pounding through her veins.
Now she was actually here she wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea. It had seemed like one when she’d come up with the plan earlier this afternoon and plucked up enough guts to dress herself up and make her way to the central London hotel where some advertising award ceremony was being held and where she’d been told that Dan would be.
Right up until the taxi had deposited her at the front door she’d managed to maintain a sense of calm and just about hold onto her equilibrium, but the minute she’d laid eyes on him all that had vanished and now a dangerous cocktail of nerves, desire and recklessness was swilling around inside her making her feel edgy and wild.
If she’d thought he’d looked good last night it wasn’t a patch on the devastation he was wreaking on her senses with the black-dinner-jacket-white-shirt combo he was wearing tonight.
Gorgeous didn’t even begin to cover it. The suit fitted him so perfectly it must have been made for him. The snowy whiteness of his shirt made his hair and eyes look even darker, and now he was tugging his bow tie undone and undoing the top button of his shirt, which gave him a kind of rakish, dishevelled air that made her heart beat even faster.
But it wasn’t just the way he looked. There was an edge about him too this evening that she could sense even from way over here. He looked as smoulderingly dangerous as she felt, and remarkably tense for someone who’d just won a highly acclaimed award.
For a moment her confidence in her plan to accost him here, which she’d thought fairly foolproof at the time, faltered. Dan’s unexpected edginess—and her own—gave the evening a potential unpredictability that she hadn’t prepared for and the whole evening could backfire.
Plus she was belatedly realising that Dan was here in a professional capacity, among his colleagues, his peers and his competitors, and it was entirely possible that the last thing he’d want would be her bounding up to him telling him she wanted him.
So maybe she should leave and drop in on Monday morning instead, she thought, nibbling on her lip while her resolve to go through with this wavered. Maybe she’d been a complete and utter idiot to turn up here like this. Dan was busy. She was going through a period of serious mental instability. This would never work. She must have been mad to even think it might.
She took a step back and the tight band around her chest eased. It looked as if it was going to be never. Which was fine. Dan probably wouldn’t want to hook up with her anyway.
Zoe was about to take another step back, turn on her heel and leave the way she came in when she stopped.
Hang on, she thought. No. This plan had been the right one. There were reasons she’d come up with it. And she might not remember them all right now but she was pretty sure they were good ones too. So she wasn’t going to wi
mp out. Again. She was going to find her metaphorical balls and relocate the thrill that his edginess had caused to ripple through her, because this was an opportunity she really shouldn’t ignore.
So it wasn’t going to be never, thought Zoe, lifting her chin and pulling her shoulders back. It was going to be now.
* * *
Dan gritted his teeth and thought that if anyone else congratulated him on his ‘engagement’ he might very well lose what was now only a tenuous grip on his temper.
He’d thought he’d done more than enough to stem the tide of speculation. He’d fended off his sister and set his mother straight in what had to have been one of the most emotionally stressful conversations of his life. He’d contacted the newspaper and issued a denial. He’d instructed his secretary and receptionist to put any journalist who might call or pitch up right, and he’d asked one of his staff to handle the social media side of things too.
But the message didn’t seem to have spread fast enough and he was sick of having to explain the whole misunderstanding.
He was also sick of the way that it meant that he was constantly reminded of it, of Zoe, and the effect she was still having on him. Even though he hadn’t laid eyes on her in nearly twenty-four hours—and hopefully wouldn’t ever again because last night he’d totally forgotten how practically every bloody thing he did at the moment ended up in the press and it couldn’t be allowed to happen again—he couldn’t get her out of his head, and this level of distraction, of fixation, was getting beyond a joke.
Of all the nights to be feeling so edgy and out of sorts this shouldn’t have been it. It wasn’t every day his company won a major award for one of their campaigns, and it wasn’t every day that his staff had a chance to truly let their hair down as a team.
After dinner and the actual ceremony they’d been the first to migrate to the bar and had taken up a position that was probably going to see them through until morning. Dan had stuck a credit card behind the bar and then the real hair-letting-down had begun, with everyone apart from him knocking back the booze as if it were about to run out, high on adrenalin and delight.