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like to eat here?’

      Her hopes were dashed. ‘We’ll go to The Blue Room,’ Troy said militantly. ‘I’ve booked. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.’

      ‘No, I’ll meet you there,’ Gerry said hastily. Troy was the worst driver she knew.

      

      Coincidences, Gerry reflected gloomily, were scary; you had no defence against them because they sneaked up from behind and hit you over the head. Bryn Falconer was sitting at the next table.

      ‘And then,’ Troy said, her voice throbbing as it rose from an intense whisper to something ominously close to a screech, ‘he said I’ve let myself go and turned into a cabbage! He was the one who insisted on having kids and insisted I stop work and stay at home with them.’

      Fortunately the waiter had taken in the situation and was already heading towards them with a carafe of iced water, a coffee pot and a heaped basket of focaccia bread.

      Very fervently Gerry wished that Bryn Falconer had not decided to lunch at this particular restaurant. She was sure she could feel his eyes on her. ‘Troy, you idiot, you’ve been drinking,’ she said softly. ‘And don’t tell me you didn’t drink much—it only takes a mouthful in your case.’

      ‘I had to, Gerry Mrs Landless—my babysitter—had her thirtieth wedding anniversary party last night. Damon wouldn’t go so she saved me a glass of champagne.’

      ‘You could have told her that alcohol goes straight to your head. Never mind—have some coffee and bread and you’ll soon be fine, and at least you had the sense to come by taxi.’

      Her friend’s lovely face crumpled. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she said bitterly, ‘I’m making a total idiot of myself, and there’s bound to be sh-someone who’ll go racing off to tell Damon.’

      Five years previously Gerry had mentally prophesied disaster when her friend, a model with at least six more years of highly profitable work ahead of her, had thrown it all away to marry her merchant banker. Now she said briskly, ‘So, who cares? It’s not the end of the world.’

      ‘I wish I was like you,’ Troy said earnestly and still too loudly. ‘You have men falling in love with you all the time, and you just smile that fabulous smile and drift on by, breaking hearts without a second thought.’

      Acutely aware that Bryn Falconer was sitting close enough to hear those shrill, heartfelt and entirely untrue words, Gerry protested, ‘You make me sound like some sort of femme fatale, and I’m not.’

      ‘Yes, you are,’ Troy argued, fanning her flushed face with her napkin. ‘Everyone expects femmes fatale to be evil, selfish women, but why should they be? You’re so nice and you never poach, but nobody touches your heart, do they? You don’t even notice when men fall at your feet. Damon calls you “the unassailable Gerry”.’

      Gerry glanced up. Bryn Falconer wasn’t even pretending not to listen, and when he caught her eyes he lifted his brows in a cool, mockingly level regard that sent frustration boiling through her.

      Hastily Gerry looked back at Troy’s tragic face. Tamping down an unwise and critical assessment of Damon’s character, she said firmly, ‘He doesn’t know me very well. Have some coffee.’

      But although Troy obediently sipped, she couldn’t leave the subject alone. ‘Have you ever been in love, Gerry? I mean really in love, the sort of abject, dogged, I-love-you-just-because-you’re-you sort of love?’

      Gerry hoped that her shrug hid her burning skin. ‘I don’t believe in that sort of love,’ she said calmly. ‘I think you have to admire and respect someone before you can fall in love with them. Anything else is lust.’

      It was the wrong thing to say, and she knew it as soon as the words left her mouth. Bryn Falconer’s presence must have scrambled her brain, she decided disgustedly.

      Troy dissolved into tears and groped in her bag for her handkerchief. ‘I know,’ she wept into it. ‘Damon wanted me and now it’s gone. He’s breaking my heart.’

      Gerry leaned over the table and took her friend’s hand. ‘Do you want to go?’ she asked quietly.

      ‘Yes.’

      Avid, fascinated stares raked Gerry’s back as they walked across to the desk. She’d have liked to ignore Bryn Falconer, but when they approached his table he looked up at her with sardonic green eyes. At least he didn’t get to his feet, which would have made them even more conspicuous.

      Handsome meant nothing, she thought irrelevantly, when a man had such presence!

      ‘Geraldine,’ he said, and for some reason her heart stopped, because that single word on his lips was like a claiming, a primitive incantation of ownership.

      Keeping her eyes cool and guarded, she sent him a brief smile. ‘Hello, Bryn,’ she said, and walked on past.

      Fortunately Gerry’s custom was valuable, so she and the desk clerk came to an amicable arrangement about the bill for the uneaten food. After settling it, she said, ‘I’ll drive you home.’

      ‘I don’t want to go home.’ Troy spoke in a flat, exhausted voice that meant reality was kicking in.

      ‘How long’s Mrs Landless able to stay with the children?’

      ‘Until four.’ Troy clutched Gerry’s arm. ‘Can I come with you? Gerry, I really need to talk.’

      So sorry for Troy she could have happily dumped a chained and gagged Damon into the ocean and watched him gurgle out of sight, Gerry resigned herself to an exhausting afternoon. ‘Of course you can.’

      Once home, she filled them both up on toast and pea and ham soup from the fridge—comfort food, because she had the feeling they were going to need it.

      And three exhausting hours later she morosely ate a persimmon as Troy—by then fully in command of herself—drove off in a taxi.

      Not that exhausting was the right word; gruelling described the afternoon more accurately. Although Troy was bitterly unhappy she still clung to her marriage, trying to convince herself that because she loved her husband so desperately, he had to love her in return.

      The old, old illusion, Gerry thought sadly and sardonically, and got to her feet, drawing some consolation from her surroundings. She adored her house, revelled in the garden, and enjoyed Cara’s company as well as her contribution to the mortgage payments.

      But restlessness stretched its claws inside her. Gloomily she surveyed the tropical rhododendrons through her window, their waxy coral flowers defying the grey sky and cold wind. A disastrous lunch, a shattered friend, and the prospect of heavier rain later in the evening didn’t mean her holiday was doomed. She wasn’t superstitious.

      But she wished that Bryn Falconer had chosen to eat lunch anywhere else in New Zealand.

      Uncomfortable, jumpy—the way she felt when the music in a horror film indicated that something particularly revolting was about to happen—Gerry set up the ironing board. Jittery nerves wouldn’t stand up to the boring, prosaic monotony of ironing.

      She was putting her clothes away in her room when she heard the front door open and Cara’s voice, bright and lively with an undercurrent of excitement, ring around the hall. The masculine rumble that answered it belonged to Bryn Falconer.

      All I need, Gerry thought with prickly resignation.

      She decided to stay in her room, but a knock on her door demanded her attention.

      ‘Gerry,’ Cara said, flushed, her eyes gleaming, ‘come and talk to Bryn. He wants to ask you something.’

      Goaded, Gerry answered, ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’

      Fate, she decided, snatching a look at the mirror and despising the colour heating her sweeping cheekbones, really had it in for her today.

      However,

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