by Jessica Hart
‘Let’s go,’ he said softly.
He put an arm around her waist as they walked back to his car, and Freya was relieved to discover that her insides were fluttering with a mixture of anticipation and excitement. At last!
And this time it was really going to happen. She could feel it in the charged silence and the feel of his hand through her thin dress. She, Freya King, was going home with Dan Freer. She was in the right place, at the right time, with the right man, in the right mood.
When Dan kissed her in the car, she responded eagerly. Surprised but pleased by her sudden ardour, he was just slipping his hand beneath her dress when a shrill, bleeping sound filled the car.
Freya could have wept with frustration. Dan groped for his pager with a muffled curse, but as soon as he saw the message he was on the phone to the newsroom. Freya, trying unsuccessfully to straighten her dress, was amazed and more than a little unnerved to see him snap in an instant from passionate lover into hard-nosed reporter.
‘Yep…yep…yep…’ he kept saying. ‘When’s the first flight out? When?’ He looked at his watch. ‘I might just make it. Have a ticket waiting at the check-in desk.’
He snapped the phone shut and put the car into gear. ‘Freya, honey, I’m going to have to go.’
‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
They set off with a squeal of tyres. ‘There’s been an explosion in a diamond mine in Zambia,’ he said, gunning the car towards the traffic lights. They screeched through a red light and skidded round a corner. ‘It’s going to be a big story. I’ve got to get out there tonight.’
Mentally, he was already there, thought Freya.
‘Listen, do you mind if I drop you at Victoria?’ he said, checking the time again. ‘It’s not that far from here, and you could get a taxi from there. I hate to do this to you,’ he added contritely, ‘but if I don’t catch that plane…’
What could she say? ‘Of course I don’t mind.’ Freya was appalled to discover that her disappointment was easily matched by a secret, shameful relief. ‘Look, drop me here,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Are you sure?’ Dan was already stopping the car, leaning across to open the door for her before she had a chance to change her mind. ‘You’re sweet to be so understanding,’ he said gratefully, and kissed her, but quickly. He obviously couldn’t wait to get going. ‘I’ll call you, OK?’
Freya found herself out on the pavement. She bent to say goodbye through the window, but Dan was checking the mirror for traffic and pulling away. The car sped down the dark street, took the corner fast and disappeared.
She let the hand she had lifted in farewell fall forlornly to her side. Was she fated never to have sex again? she wondered with a sigh.
Oh, well.
Freya looked around her, wondering where she was. It was a quiet residential street with—naturally—not a taxi in sight. She would head towards Victoria—if she knew which direction that was.
Great, thought Freya. Now she was lost.
It was only then that she realised something far worse. She had got out of Dan’s car in such a hurry that she had forgotten her bag, which was no doubt halfway on its way to Heathrow by then. She had no money, no keys, and no sense of direction.
‘Look on the bright side,’ she said out loud. ‘Things can only get better.’
Right on cue, thunder grumbled warningly overhead and it started to rain, huge, heavy splats around her on the pavement.
‘Excellent,’ said Freya with a sigh.
There was nothing to do but to try and flag down a taxi and try and persuade the driver to take her home. All she had to do was find the Embankment.
Which turned out to be easier said than done. Dan had been zipping through the back streets at such a speed that Freya was completely disorientated. It was dark, and she was drenched. It had been so hot earlier that she was wearing only her sleeveless dress, and she was soon shivering with cold and hobbling as her shoes protested at being used for anything as menial as walking.
‘Oh, this is just great!’ she muttered bitterly.
She couldn’t believe that it was possible to walk so far in London without coming across a busy road, and as everyone else in the world seemed to have somewhere to shelter from the downpour, there wasn’t even anyone to ask.
By the time she finally sighted a pub, Freya felt as if she had been walking for days.
‘We’re closed!’ shouted the landlord as she pushed open the door and practically fell into the bar.
To her shame, Freya burst into tears, but it turned out to be the best thing she could have done. Soon she had a glass of brandy in one hand, and a mobile phone in the other. Gulping the brandy for warmth, she put it down on the bar and dialled Max’s number, but she was still shivering so much that she had to start again three times before she got it right.
When Max answered, it was all she could do not to burst into tears all over again. He sounded so safe, so familiar, so competent.
Horribly conscious of the wobble in her voice, Freya explained what had happened. ‘I just wanted to check that you’d be there to let me in,’ she finished miserably, ‘and if you wouldn’t mind lending me the money for a taxi.’
She waited for an explosion of irritation, but all Max said was, ‘Where are you?’
Freya had to ask the landlord, relaying the name of the pub and the street.
‘Stay there,’ said Max. ‘I’ll come and get you.’
‘Oh, but there’s no ne—’ she began feebly, but he had rung off.
He found her about twenty minutes later. Swaying on her bar stool from a combination of tiredness and the second brandy which the landlord had given her in defiance of all the licensing laws, Freya didn’t realise he was there until her new friend looked up from polishing glasses and nodded at the door behind her.
‘Is this your boyfriend now, love?’
Freya turned on her stool and saw Max, and the world shifted strangely around her. She felt suddenly hollow, as if her stomach had disappeared and all her other senses were vibrating in compensation for its loss. She was abruptly aware of her hair now drying in wild disarray around her face, of the red dress clinging clammily to her flesh, of the fiery taste of brandy in her mouth.
And of Max. Freya stared at him as if he were a stranger. He was wearing a pair of faded cords and an old jacket. In one hand he held his car keys, and his straight brows were drawn together, making his austere face look even sterner than usual. There was a hard, oddly anxious expression in the keen eyes, but as they found hers across the bar the tension seemed to go out of him.
He walked towards her with the easy, deliberate tread that she realised for the first time was so typical of him, and she wanted more than anything to fall off her bar stool and throw herself into his arms. If he’d been her boyfriend, as the landlord assumed, she could have done, but he wasn’t, and instead Freya sat trapped in a straitjacket of sudden shyness as he came towards her.
It was Max who thanked the landlord, offered to pay for her brandies, and helped her off her stool. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home.’
His car was waiting just outside. It didn’t have plush leather seats like Dan’s or a throbbing engine. It was just an ordinary, unpretentious car. Practical, like Max. Freya remembered walking with Dan to his car, and how desire had stirred at the feel of his arm around her.
Max wasn’t even touching her, but she was burning inside, her heart booming and thudding in the silence. It must be the brandy, she told herself desperately. She couldn’t look at Max walking beside her where Dan had walked, but she was agonisingly aware of him in a way she hadn’t been with Dan. She couldn’t stop thinking about the feel of his hands, the warmth of his mouth, and she shivered involuntarily.
‘You’re cold.’ Max took off his jacket and draped it round her shoulders, and it was all Freya could do not to cry out at the graze of his fingers.
She waited as he unlocked the car, pulled the jacket around her, and fee
ling the warmth of his body against her bare arms.
‘Get in,’ said Max.
He leant forwards to start the engine. The beam of the headlights fell across the slick wet surface of the street, and their reflection threw his face into relief, highlighting the austere line of his cheek and the grim set of his mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Freya miserably.
‘It’s not you that needs to apologise.’ Max’s voice was curt as he pulled away from the kerb, and she couldn’t help comparing his calm competence with Dan’s squealing tyres.
‘You’re angry,’ she said.
He glanced at her, huddled in the seat with his jacket clutched around her. ‘Not with you,’ he said roughly. ‘With Dan Freer, yes. I can’t believe he could just leave you like that.’
‘He didn’t know I’d left my bag in his car,’ Freya offered timidly.
‘That’s not the point.’ Max’s jaw was rigid as he stopped at a red light. ‘He should have made sure you got home safely.’
‘It wasn’t his fault. He had to catch a plane.’
‘Oh, yes, I know, the big story he had to get!’ Max’s tone was savage. ‘What difference would it make if he got there half a day later? All that matters to him is his “big story”, so he can turn a tragedy into prime-time viewing.’
Freya was silent. The torrential rain had eased to a light mizzle, and the windscreen wipers swept backwards and forwards across her vision with a slow ker-thwack, ker-thwack, in time with her heart.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Max awkwardly after a minute. ‘I didn’t mean to take it out on you. It’s not your fault he’s selfish and inconsiderate.’
‘He’s not really selfish.’ Freya felt that she ought to be defending Dan. ‘He thinks his job is important.’
‘Some things are more important that jobs.’ He glanced at her and then away. ‘I know, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about him to you like this. You’ve had a worse evening than I have. I don’t suppose you wanted it to end like this either, abandoned in the middle of the night by the man you love.’
It was on the tip of Freya’s tongue to tell Max that she wasn’t in love with Dan, but how could she when she had already made such a fuss about it? Was it only that afternoon that she had hinted to him that she and Dan were thinking of getting married? It seemed so silly now, but she couldn’t take it back without making herself look even more ridiculous than she had done already.
So she managed a careless shrug as she turned her face away and looked out of her window. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘It’s the kind of thing you get used to when you’re involved with a journalist. I guess I’m just learning that the hard way.’
There was a tiny pause. Max changed down and glanced again at the bedraggled figure beside him. ‘I guess you are,’ he said in a flat voice.
CHAPTER SIX
ONCE home, Max took charge. Freya didn’t have Dan’s mobile phone number with her, but somehow he managed to track him down at Heathrow and had him paged in the departure lounge. By the time she emerged, pink and glowing from a blissfully hot bath, Max had Dan on the phone and had obviously been bawling him out.
‘He wants to talk to you,’ he said to Freya tersely as he handed over the receiver. ‘Make sure he grovels to you,’ he added, making no effort to lower his voice.
‘Freya, honey, I am so sorry.’ Dan sounded genuinely contrite. ‘Your Max has just torn me into little pieces. I haven’t felt this small since I was in junior high.’
‘Honestly, it doesn’t matter,’ said Freya.
‘It does matter,’ shouted Max, stomping around in the background.
‘Did you find my bag?’ she asked quickly.
‘I gave it to the girl at the check-in desk to look after,’ said Dan. ‘I was running so late, I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve given Max the details, though, and he said he’d take you out to pick it up tomorrow. He sure is protective of you, isn’t he?’
‘He’s like a brother,’ said Freya a little uncomfortably, glancing over her shoulder to see with some relief that Max had vanished into the living room. ‘He thinks of me like his little sister.’
Why was that suddenly such a depressing thought?
‘Listen, Freya, they’ve just called my flight,’ Dan said. ‘I’ll call you. I’ll need to let you know my new contact details in Usutu, in any case.’
‘But…aren’t you coming back?’
‘No. I talked about it with the network, and it makes sense to go straight to Mbanazere after Zambia. They’re going to send on all my stuff. I won’t be back in London for a while.’
‘Oh.’
‘Hey, you’ll come out and see me, won’t you?’
‘Sure.’ Freya was too tired to make the effort to sound thrilled. ‘You’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to you soon.’
Max was standing by the table, frowning down at a page of figures in his hand, but he looked up when Freya appeared and dropped it back onto the pile. ‘I hope he’s going to take you out for a slap-up dinner when he gets back to make up for tonight,’ he said in a hard voice.
‘He’s not coming back.’
Suddenly Freya felt close to tears again. She wasn’t sure what it was. Tiredness, relief and disappointment, perhaps, mixed with the after-effects of two large brandies and this new, churning, far from sisterly awareness of Max himself.
Max saw her attempt at a smile go awry, and his face changed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said more gently, putting his arms round her.
Struggling against the tears, Freya let herself lean against him as he hugged her. The lean strength of his body was amazingly comforting yet disturbing at the same time. His warm, masculine scent was uncannily familiar, and the longing to relax, to put her arms around his waist and turn her face into his throat was so intense that she stiffened and pulled away from him abruptly.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, not meeting his eyes. ‘I seem to be making a habit of crying on your shoulder.’
‘It’s nice to know that it’s good for something.’ There was an odd edge to Max’s voice, but he seemed relieved to be able to put a distance between them as well. ‘But you’re probably right,’ he went on, sitting back down at his papers. ‘You know what happened last time I tried to comfort you, and we don’t want that to happen again, do we?’
Freya thought about how it had felt to be held by him just now, how easy it would have been to touch her lips to his throat, to his jaw, to tug his shirt from his trousers and run her hands over his warm, sleek back. How easy it would have been for Max to loosen her robe and let it slither from her bare shoulders, to draw her down with him and make love to her the way he had done before.
He could have done it had he wanted to, but he hadn’t.
‘No,’ she agreed dully, ‘we don’t want that.’
Max drove Freya out to Heathrow the next morning to collect her bag. Of course, by then the airline staff had changed shifts, and although they did manage to track the bag down eventually, by the time they had been shunted around between check-in desks and the lost luggage office, and then back to the airline, it was lunchtime. And then they got stuck in inexplicably heavy Sunday traffic on the way back, inching their way along the M4 and past the Chiswick roundabout.
‘Thank you for taking me,’ said Freya awkwardly when they finally made it back to the flat. Max hadn’t said anything, but she knew that he was irritated by the endless delays. He had seemed brusque and withdrawn all morning, and their conversation had been stilted before they lapsed into a constrained silence.
In spite of the severe talking-to she had given herself when she went to bed, Freya felt desperately self-conscious with him. She was not going to develop a silly crush on Max, she had decided. She had told Dan that he was like a brother to her, and that was all he was. An occasionally kind but more usually irritating brother.
Who had once made love to her.
That had been an aberration, Freya insisted to herself, exasperated by the mental int
erruption to her train of thought. Just like tonight had been an aberration. She was feeling upset and vulnerable, and Max had just happened to be there. If Pel had rescued her from that pub, she would probably have started fantasising about kissing him. It was hard to know which of the two of them would have been more horrified at the prospect, Freya thought bleakly.
Well, Max needn’t worry. She wasn’t about to make a fool of herself all over again, especially not knowing how unwelcome her attentions would be. We don’t want that to happen again, do we? Wasn’t that what Max had said? From now on, Freya resolved, she would be polite but distant, and he would realise that she didn’t want it to happen again either. He had more important things to think about now, and she had wasted enough of his time this weekend.
Seeing the papers still spread over the table where she had left him working the night before, Freya was conscious of a new stab of guilt. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said remorsefully. ‘I’ve wasted your entire morning.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Max shrugged it off, just as he had shrugged off her attempts to thank him earlier.
‘But you’ve got so much to do!’
‘It’s not as bad as it looks. I just need to finish checking some figures and rewrite our pitch for funding.’
‘Can I help?’ Freya asked hesitantly. ‘It would be quicker to check figures with two, and it’s the least I can do after making you drive backwards and forwards across London for me.’
It was Max’s turn to hesitate. ‘Well…all right. Thanks.’
Freya made some coffee and put together a sketchy lunch so that they could eat at the round table as they worked. ‘What exactly is it that you’re doing in Mbanazere?’ she asked, her mouth full of cheese, as Max shuffled through some files.
‘We’re trying to set up a project linking isolated villages with the main highways leading to Usutu,’ he said, his eyes on the papers. ‘The roads that were built in the seventies have been much too expensive to maintain, and they’re all in a terrible state. We work with communities, identifying the grade of road they need to develop their economies, and planning them so that they can be made and repaired using local resources.’