LITMIR.BIZ

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BUT NOT LEAST, contestant number three, here’s your question: As a gold-medal-winning ParaGames swimmer...’ he paused for whoops from the enthusiastic audience ‘...I obviously spend a lot of time in the water. If you were a sea creature, what would you be and why?’

      Amber suppressed an eye-roll. Seriously, this show couldn’t be any cheesier if it tried. She had thought when she’d arrived that the flashing lights and tinsel-bedecked set were tacky enough, but this guy’s titillating questions were taking the cringe factor to a new level. She just had to play along, she reminded herself, and get this over with. A charity gig was a charity gig, and when you worked in the media, even as a lowly newspaper columnist, you sometimes found yourself doing something completely embarrassing in aid of a kids’ charity. Like appearing on a celebrity version of the country’s best-loved dating show.

      Luckily, with the answers she’d prepared, there was no way that this ‘eligible bachelor’ was going to pick her, even if the whole thing hadn’t been scripted by the producers, so it was just a case of answering this last question, posing for a quick photo, and getting back to her laptop and her deadline. She still hadn’t finished her latest column. Well, she hadn’t actually started it yet—she had a mailbox full of ‘Dear Amber’ letters, and still had to choose the most interesting to feature on the magazine’s website.

      She took a deep breath and tried to remember the answer to the bachelor’s final question that she’d written and memorised when she’d been emailed in advance.

      ‘A killer whale,’ she said, sotto voce. No doubt the man on the other side of the screen, not to mention the producers, had been hoping for something a little sexier. Something about mermaids and their shells and their penchant for handsome princes, or firefly jellyfishes lighting up the ocean. She’d considered several contenders for her answer, each designed to ensure that she would be the last contestant that this eligible bachelor would be interested in. ParaGames swimmer. That definitely rang a bell—Mauro someone. Welsh surname. She spent an hour every morning in her local pool, and had watched hours of footage of the international sports and para championships held in London a few summers ago. He’d won a clutch of medals, featured in a fly-on-the-wall documentary about his training regime and then been the face of various food and sportswear brands in the years since.

      The voice too—she definitely remembered that: an unusual combination of Welsh and Italian accents that was unmistakable. Her brain flashed a pair of built arms, wide shoulders with droplets of water catching the light from a hundred flashbulbs.

      She realised that the studio had fallen into silence around them, waiting for her explanation for her decidedly unromantic response. ‘A killer whale,’ she repeated, ‘because they’re intelligent, the women stick together and they can be ruthless predators when it’s called for.’

      For half a moment the silence in the studio stuck, but readers of her column knew what to expect from her. She called the shots as she saw them, and more often than not she saw the whole ‘romance’ scene as one big game that was rigged against fifty per cent of the players.

      A deep, rich laugh from the other side of the screen stopped her train of thought, and she practically felt the noise flow through her, smooth and dark as the chocolate she kept permanently stocked in her kitchen. And in her desk. And in her bedside drawer just in case. Another flash of something from her memory. Hair slicked back and wet, a charming smile turned on a flustered television presenter. A shiver ran through her spine as she remembered the charm and the charisma that had exuded from this man, even down the camera from an echoing swimming venue. Good job she had sabotaged herself in this game. She had more than a sneaking suspicion that this man was going to be trouble for whichever unfortunate contestant got picked. She was best off out of it.

      She sat cooking under the heat of the studio lights and looked longingly at the heaps of snow dotted around the studio. Sweat threatened to prickle at her brow and break through the industrial strength anti-shine powder she’d been caked with. Not that the polystyrene decorations would have helped much—but then there wasn’t a lot of genuine snow around in September.

      Due to ‘scheduling reasons’, they were filming this Christmas special in the autumn, and she had to admit that the fake festivities were messing with her mind. Christmas carol fatigue was an annual complaint, but she’d never suffered from it this early before.

      Whichever contestant was ‘picked’ to go on this date would be summoned back in December for the live programme, when the footage they were shooting now, and the highlights of the date, would be shown.

      As she waited for Julia to announce which ‘lucky lady’ had been chosen, she tried to think of the advice she’d given the woman in her last Dear Amber article, but the crash of the audience breaking into applause intruded into her thoughts.

      The presenter announced, with a shake to her voice, ‘And so it seems that our lucky contestant is Amber, a journalist from London!’

      Amber wobbled on her stool as her jaw fell open. Oh, please, no. How could he have picked her? She’d said ‘ruthless predator’! She’d not made a single sexual innuendo, no matter how leading his questions, not even the one about which swimming stroke was her favourite—it had taken her an age to think of a response that didn’t conjure images of breasts, butterfly kisses or caresses of a strong, muscled back. She knew for a fact that the producers had told him to choose one of the other women. Had he never seen this show before? He should be picking the person with the biggest hair—the one that the producers had pushed towards the most suggestive answers. She’d batted away their attempts to give her a makeover. She knew what she was working with, and a fake tan and big hair weren’t going to change it. She glanced towards Ayisha, the show’s producer, and from the look on her face it seemed that she was as shocked as Amber. It seemed that Mauro had just gone off-script.

      She watched the two other women walk past the screen, and the groans of regret as Mauro met the women that he could be taking with him for their week in Sicily. Oh, God, a whole week with him. It had never even crossed her mind that he could pick her, and now she was signed up for a week-long holiday with a man that her brain had—goodness knew why—been stashing mental images of in a state of undress.

      And then the music was rising to a crescendo and Ayisha was energetically motioning for her to get up. She took to her feet and straightened her spine, desperately trying to remember what they’d been told to do if they were picked. It had hardly seemed worth listening when she’d known that her prickly answers would keep Mauro well away. Keeping men at arm’s distance was more than a habit these days: it was a reflex, as easy to her as breathing. Normally one flash of her ‘don’t even think about it’ look was enough to have them backing away and leaving her alone, just as she liked it.

      Perhaps that was the problem, she thought. He couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see just how desperate she was not to meet any sort of bachelor, eligible or otherwise. She stood on the spot where Ayisha had been gesturing and waited for the big reveal, her inner monologue not giving her a minute’s rest in its utter contempt for putting herself in this situation.

      The screen rolled back, with a wobble and a creak, and then she saw him, and realised she had been right. It was him, the athlete her brain had clocked and ogled, and then apparently saved half-naked images of in some deviant part of her mind, just in case it came in useful one day. His dark hair, not slicked back this time, but rebelling from a side parting, showed a hint of red—a dash of chilli hidden in the chocolate—and the shoulders dominated the rest of his body, making his waist look narrow, although she remembered abs that would make a lesser woman dribble. His wheelchair was small and space-age-looking, and the least interesting thing about this mountain of a man. An open shirt collar showed a triangle of tanned skin below his neck—and for just a moment Amber remembered that bronzed torso, thrust out of the pool by powerful forearms.

      She shook her head. This should not be happening. He should not have picked the woman who had chosen her brain, when asked what her favourite part of her own body was. But the presenter of the show had grabbed her hand and was dragging her across to meet Mauro.

      ‘Mauro, meet your date—Amber Harris. Amber, how do you feel to have been

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