LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Now you just sound sad,’ Jane informed her tartly. ‘There is always room in a girl’s life for sexy shoes. It makes me really mad when I think how you waste your legs.’ She sighed enviously. ‘Look at me—legs like a Welsh Corgi, but do I sit at home nights moping? No, I—’

      ‘All right, I get the message,’ Fleur protested. ‘I’ll make an effort.’

      ‘Have you got anything planned for tonight?’

      Fleur knew that admitting the only thing she had planned was a night in front of the TV would earn her a stern lecture on the need to get out there, so she got creative. ‘A drink with some friends from work.’ Nobody at work, where she had cultivated a reputation for being reserved, actually knew it was her birthday.

      ‘Well, that’s good. And how is our dog?’

      ‘Our dog is eating his way through my furniture. I don’t possess a chair without teeth marks. You’ve no idea how happy I am you decided I needed the company.’

      An overlong pause followed her teasing comment.

      ‘You know I’m only kidding…?’ Fleur frowned. It wasn’t like Jane not to come back with a sarcastic retort. ‘I love the mutt.’

      ‘It’s not like you’re not totally over him. You are, aren’t you? Over him, that is.’

      ‘I assume you’re talking about Adam?’ This much Fleur had managed to extract from her friend’s disjointed monologue. ‘I’m insulted you can ask, but, yes, I am very much over him.’

      ‘Paula’s pregnant,’ Jane blurted. ‘She and Adam are having a baby.’

      It was a guilty-sounding Jane who eventually broke the lengthening silence.

      ‘I’m sorry, Fleur, I didn’t know whether to tell you…’

      Fleur took a deep breath and pressed a hand to her churning stomach. A baby…!

      She inhaled deeply, recognising her reaction to the news her ex-fiancé and his new wife were having a baby as irrational. Recognition didn’t make the feeling go away; crazily it felt more of a betrayal than learning about his affair had.

      ‘No, I’m glad you did, Jane,’ she said, trying hard to sound as though she meant it.

      ‘I thought Adam might have mentioned it…?’

      ‘I haven’t spoken to him for months.’ Not since her ex-fiancé had married the woman she now knew he had started sleeping with while she’d been pregnant.

      A perfectly natural reaction, he had belligerently claimed for a man who had found himself forced against his will into fatherhood. The implication, false though it was, that she had deliberately trapped him with the pregnancy had hurt and angered Fleur incredibly deeply at the time. But then she had still harboured some daft idea that her ex wasn’t a total loser!

      God, how was I ever that stupid?

      ‘The slimy rat!’ Jane, never one to hold back, observed viciously. ‘That pair deserve one another.’

      ‘I suppose Adam’s allowed a life.’

      With a sigh she brushed her hair from her face anchoring it at the nape of her neck, and wondered, Am I jealous? Not of Adam and Paula. She had long ago recognised that her feelings for Adam had never amounted to love, not the lasting variety. But maybe of what they had…?

      What she would never have. It wasn’t men she didn’t trust, just her own judgement.

      ‘After what he did to you! The only life slimy rat is allowed is one filled with misery and suffering!’ Jane, not a big believer in turning the other cheek, bellowed down the other end of the line.

      Holding the receiver away from her ear, Fleur heard Jane add bitterly, ‘The man was in bed, your bed, with that woman when you were in hospital…sorry, Fleur,’ she added immediately, sounding contrite. ‘Me and my big mouth…I didn’t mean to open old wounds.’

      Fleur eased her bottom onto the edge of the small console table and fiddled with the top button of her pyjama jacket. ‘Don’t worry about it, Jane. I was going to find out some time,’ she said, thinking some wounds never did heal. And the wound in question wasn’t actually such an old one.

      Sometimes it felt like a lifetime ago and other times it felt like yesterday, but in reality it had been eighteen months since Fleur had been rushed into Casualty midway through what had been a difficult pregnancy.

      Jane, who had been there with her, had desperately tried to contact Adam for her while the grave-faced doctor had told Fleur that he was very sorry but there was no heartbeat.

      ‘I do worry. It’s my fault you split up…’

      ‘Because you caught them in bed?’ When she had not been able to locate Adam Jane had offered to go to the flat to fetch Fleur’s night things. She had found more than she had expected! ‘Don’t be stupid, Jane. How could it possibly be your fault?’ Fleur protested angrily.

      ‘They say personal tragedy can make people closer than ever…?’ From her voice Fleur could imagine the look of guilt on Jane’s face. ‘If I’d just—’

      Fleur cut her off. ‘If we’d been that close I doubt if you’d have found him in bed with someone else.’

      In retrospect it didn’t seem possible that she had missed the signs that Adam was having an affair. Nothing had clicked with her—not his unexplained absences, or the caller who had always rung off when Fleur had picked up the phone. Fleur had been concerned, but only about Adam’s increasing resentment of the restrictions the doctors had placed on her after the threatened miscarriage earlier on in her pregnancy.

      ‘He started an affair with Paula weeks after we moved into the flat.’ And it is not my fault, she told herself firmly. ‘You and I both know that the split-up was inevitable. If I hadn’t fallen pregnant I think it would have happened sooner,’ she admitted.

      Once she had discovered she was having a baby, Fleur had pushed her growing doubts about their relationship to one side. She’d had to make it work, for the baby’s sake. A child needed two parents.

      ‘I didn’t mean to, I really didn’t, not after what you’d just been through. I was going to wait until you were better, and then he turned up at the hospital with those stupid flowers, all concerned. Ugh! He looked so smug and smarmy and had the nerve to act as though nothing had happened, I just flipped. I couldn’t help myself. It was a red-mist moment.’

      ‘I’m glad you did flip.’ Of course, gratitude hadn’t been Fleur’s response at the time, but later she had come to appreciate she had actually had a lucky escape.

      She would never again let a man do to her what Adam had.

      Let one try, Fleur thought, her eyes narrowing as she contemplated what she would do to any man unwise enough to attempt to locate her heart. She was no longer the hopeless romantic; her defences were totally impregnable.

      He was gifted, rich, handsome and then some. If pressed to explain the secret of his success, Antonio Rochas explained there was no magic formula—he just didn’t accept less than excellence from himself.

      Only the previous week his face had graced the cover of no fewer than three internationally acclaimed financial journals. His reputation alone swung deals.

      His reputation cut no ice with one particular female.

      Antonio had been a father for a week.

      He wasn’t excelling at parenthood!

      If his colleagues wondered about the source of uncharacteristic moodiness displayed by their charismatic and normally even-tempered boss during the last week, they had not done so outloud.

      Huw Grant, a top-notch criminal lawyer and one of Antonio’s closest friends, was less restrained.

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