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       PROLOGUE

      ANOTHER wedding celebration. Star scowled as she studied the elegant invitation before throwing it onto her desk.

      She was very tempted to make some excuse not to go—but if she did her friend Sally was bound to pounce on her absence as a sure indication that she, Star, was afraid that the old-fashioned superstition that Sally had practised on the occasion of her own wedding might have some potency to it after all.

      Which was all nonsense of course. Just because the other two women who had caught Sally’s bridal bouquet along with her had within six months of Sally’s own wedding become brides themselves, it did not mean that she, Star, was going to fall into the same trap. No way. Not ever.

      She scowled again, even more horribly this time. The fact that Poppy, the other bridesmaid at Sally’s wedding, had got married had not come as all that much of a surprise to Star, but the announcement that Sally’s stepmother had also married—just a small, private wedding—and was now holding a celebration party with her new husband for all his friends and relations in America... Uneasily, Star stared out of her study window. It so happened that business was taking her across to the States so she could, in fact, make it to the party, and if she didn’t go...

      If she didn’t go Sally would tease her unmercifully about being afraid that there was something in that stupid, old-fashioned tradition that whoever caught the bride’s bouquet would be the next to marry.

      But weddings were not her thing at all—she had only gone to Sally’s because Sally was her oldest and closest friend. After all, she had attended far too many of her father’s to have any faith any longer in the durability of the supposedly lifelong vows that people exchanged in the heat of their emotional and physical desire for one another, their compelling need to believe that those feelings would last for ever.

      No, weddings, or parties to celebrate them, were quite definitely not her scene, and marriage even less so.

      But, that being the case, what had she to fear in going to Claire’s party? Wasn’t she, her will, her determination, stronger than any foolish superstition? Of course she was, and, just to prove it, throwing open her window, Star took a deep breath and said firmly and loudly, ‘I am not going to fall in love. I am not going to get married. Not now. Not ever. So there.

      ‘Now,’ she muttered as she closed the window, ignoring the startled and slightly nervous glance of the elderly lady walking across the lawn in front of the apartment block, ‘do your worst, because, I promise you, it won’t make any difference to me and it certainly won’t change my mind. Nothing could. Nothing and no one.’

       CHAPTER ONE

      STAR surveyed the crowd of happy well-wishers surrounding the recently married couple with cynical contempt.

      How many of those exclaiming enthusiastically about the happiness that lay ahead of Claire and Brad now that they were married could truthfully put their hands on their hearts and swear that their marriages, their permanent relationships, had truly enriched their lives, had truly made them happy?

      If they’d known what she was thinking they would no doubt have questioned the ability of someone who had never been married and who was so vehemently and vocally opposed to any kind of emotional commitment to pronounce on the state of marriage at all, much less to criticise it, but Star believed that she had access to far more experience of what marriage actually was than most of them would be able to boast.

      ‘Star. Claire said you were going to be here.’ Silently Star suffered the enthusiastic hug of her oldest friend.

      Sally’s voice voice muffled slightly by the thick, smooth, shiny sweep of Star’s dark red hair as she continued to hug her whilst telling her, ‘I’m so pleased about Ma and Brad, I just wish she wasn’t going to be living so far away. It was a wonderful idea of Brad’s family, wasn’t it, to organise this post-wedding gettogether and to invite us all over to share it?

      ‘Has

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