The Reunion Lie

The admiration and envy that she’d been basking in were utterly shallow, of course, not to mention completely baseless, but it had felt so good to stand there as an equal for a change. To feel her rapidly dwindling self-esteem soar and everything else she’d been worrying about lately melt away. And to have them jealous of her for once. Particularly gratifying was the sucking-on-a-lemon look on the face of Samantha Newark, the newly installed Countess of Shipley and Zoe’s number one tormentor, who might have swapped mousey frizzy hair and pie-crust collared blouses for a sleek blonde up-do and a designer wardrobe at some point in the last fifteen years, but was still, apparently, intent on being her bête noire.

So while inventing a boyfriend had been rash and mad and faintly pathetic, it had succeeded where her professional prowess had failed and Zoe had to admit that she couldn’t entirely regret it.

She did, however, regret deciding to bring him to life, because for that there had been no excuse. She’d been doing marvellously, adeptly treading a fine line between awesomeness and implausibility and just about keeping on top of all the lies she was telling.

So what had happened? What had tipped her over the edge? When Samantha had scoffed at her and said he sounded far too good to be true, why hadn’t she just shrugged nonchalantly and smiled enigmatically and left her to think what she liked? Why had she let it goad her into actually producing said boyfriend?

Had she got carried away by a false sense of security? Had she started to believe her own story? Or had it been wishful thinking that someone as fantastic as her fake boyfriend would actually turn up for real?

Whatever it had been, it had been a mistake, that much was certain. Because even as the words ‘Oh, and here he is!’ were spilling out of her mouth, a little voice inside her head had been yelling at her to stop, and the heady feeling of triumph had rapidly turned into alarm then panic and desperation and complete and utter disbelief that having come so far she was about to ruin everything.

Which she couldn’t let happen, so what choice had she then had but to find a suitable candidate?

When she’d first spotted him she’d had no idea whether he was suitable. She hadn’t even really clocked what he looked like; being a head taller than everyone else he was simply the first person she’d noticed. But then she’d registered the dark hair and the handsome face and, deciding he at least fulfilled the ‘gorgeous’ element of her fake boyfriend’s qualities, she’d wasted no time in going after him.

The idea of kissing him, though, hadn’t really come to her until she was standing in front of him, suddenly feeling warm and tingly all over. She’d somehow found herself staring at his mouth and she’d been filled with a quite desperate urge to know what it would feel like on hers.

Conveniently telling herself that, firstly, if he really had been her boyfriend kissing him would be a totally natural thing to do and that, secondly, even though he wasn’t it would validate the fiction she’d created, Zoe had embraced the role, pressed herself against him and planted her mouth on his.

For the briefest of moments she’d got the impression that he’d wanted to kiss her back, but then he’d pushed her away. Which hadn’t been the most auspicious of starts but perhaps one she would have anticipated had she not completely lost her marbles, because frankly if the roles had been reversed she’d have done the same thing.

However, right now hindsight and retrospective regret were pointless; having staked her claim on him, she could hardly go and find someone else. And with the evening teetering on the edge of a nail-biting climax she didn’t want to leave.

So all she could do now was appeal to his better nature and put her case forward as best she could, and hope he’d take pity on her and agree to help her out.

* * *

‘Well?’ said Dan, thinking that whoever she was and whatever was going through her cunning little mind she’d had quite long enough to come up with a plausible story.

‘My name’s Zoe Montgomery,’ she said, looking up at him and giving him a blinding smile that wasn’t exactly a surprise seeing as she’d probably just made God knew how much money, ‘but as for what I’m doing, well, that’s something I’ve been asking myself quite a lot over the last half an hour.’

What did come as a surprise, though, he thought, narrowing his eyes and fixing her with a stare designed to discomfort and disconcert, was the way her smile seemed to slice through his suspicion and strike him right in the chest. It was undoubtedly down to the shock of the past five minutes still making a mess of his brain, but nevertheless it did prove that he needed to keep his wits about him, because right now he wasn’t in the mood for smiles. Of any kind. ‘Enlighten me,’ he said abruptly.

At his tone her smile faded, much to his relief, and her eyes clouded over for a second. ‘I’m not sure I can.’

‘Well, try.’

‘Look, you have every right to be furious,’ she said with an apologetic shrug. ‘I shouldn’t have accosted you like that. I’m sorry.’

Dan gritted his teeth and ignored the sensuous way her dress shifted over her body with the movement. ‘If that picture ends up in the paper, you will be.’

She frowned. ‘What?’

‘The kiss,’ he said flatly, ruthlessly stamping down the heat that threatened to shoot through him at the memory of how hot and soft she’d felt as she’d pressed herself up against him. ‘The set-up.’

Her jaw dropped and what looked like genuine surprise flashed across her face. ‘How could you possibly know about that? I only thought of it myself a minute or two ago.’

‘Experience.’

Her eyebrows shot up. ‘This has happened to you before?’

‘Once.’ And that was quite enough, he thought, snapping that train of thought off before it could take root and bring back all the feelings of foolishness, disillusionment and betrayal he’d experienced following his most recent ex-girlfriend’s duplicity. ‘And you might as well know now you won’t get a penny. My lawyers will slap an injunction on you and your photographer friend so fast your head will spin.’

‘What photographer friend?’

He glanced round in search of her camera-wielding pap sidekick, but whoever it was had clearly fled because from what he could see none of the people who surrounded them was showing the slightest bit of interest in either of them or the kiss that she’d just planted on him.

But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there.

‘Innocence doesn’t suit someone who looks like a sexy fallen angel,’ he said grimly, shifting his gaze back to her and watching her closely.

Her eyes darkened and her cheeks went pink while her lips parted to let out a little gasp. ‘You think I look like a sexy fallen angel?’ she echoed, her voice sounding a bit breathy.

With all that tumbling blonde hair, eyes the colour of liquid dark chocolate and those killer curves Dan actually thought she looked like every fantasy he’d ever had. To his consternation he could all too easily picture her lying sprawled on his bed, her hair fanning out over his pillows as he loomed over her, watching her writhe beneath him and listening to her pant and plead and beg him to do filthy things to her.

At the vividness of the image his head swam and the entire reason for this conversation nearly shot clean from his mind. Nearly, but not quite. ‘With the morals of a phone-hacking tabloid journalist,’ he added sharply, because it suddenly seemed important to remember that bit.

She recoiled and took a hasty step back. ‘Crikey, that’s a bit much, isn’t it?’ she murmured, staring at him in astonishment. ‘It was only a quick kiss.’

Yeah, right, he thought, rather rattled by the discovery that the self-control he’d always taken for granted wasn’t quite as rock solid as he’d assumed. ‘And tell?’

‘What?’ She leaned in a little and regarded him closely, the astonishment making way for concern. ‘Look, are you sure you’re all right?’

No, he wasn’t sure he was all right at all. He wasn’t sure he’d been all right for months. Years, probably. But then maybe that was what happened when you’d been betrayed not once, but twice, by women you once trusted. Maybe it was perfectly natural to develop a cynicism that ran bone deep and a wariness that coloured practically every decision you ever made when it came to the opposite sex.

Dan shoved his hands through his hair and drew in a deep measured breath in an effort to regain some sort of grip on his control, because now he was coming down from the embarrassingly melodramatic way he’d reacted to the kiss she’d given him it was slowly beginning to occur to him that he might have got this wrong.

For one thing the woman who’d attacked him was looking at him with such an unusual combination of sincerity, concern and bewilderment, and, now he thought about it, an underlying hint of panic, that she’d have to be a better actress than he’d ever come across to portray such a convincing range of emotion. Her lack of guile seemed pretty genuine too, although given his track record perhaps he wasn’t the best person to pass judgement on that particular trait.

For another thing, if all she’d wanted was a picture of the kiss, having got what she was after wouldn’t she now be making every effort to leave and go off in search of a buyer?

So maybe there was another reason she’d approached him, he thought, belatedly applying the logic he would have applied a while ago had she not stolen his brain. Maybe she made a habit of kissing random men. Maybe she’d taken one look at him and for some reason had been unable to stop herself. Maybe she was just mad...

Another flash caught his attention and he jerked his head away from the woman in front of him and scanned the room until his gaze fell on a guy holding a camera and taking a series of group shots of the women on the far side of the pub.

And then as he realised that the photos weren’t of him, they weren’t of her, and the guy with the camera wasn’t a paparazzo, and that he had got it wrong, he inwardly groaned. God, maybe he was the one who’d gone mad.

‘Forget it,’ he muttered, briefly wondering whether at some point in the not too distant future he oughtn’t address his attitude towards women because surely not all of them could be out for everything they could get.

‘Not a chance,’ she said with a little snort. ‘Who are you?’

‘Dan Forrester,’ he replied and automatically braced himself for the spark of recognition that usually came with his name.

But this time it didn’t come. In fact, she was staring at him utterly blankly and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ she said, now looking a bit embarrassed, ‘but is that supposed to mean something?’

‘Doesn’t it?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not. But then I don’t take much of an interest in anything other than work, so if you haven’t appeared in Significance then it’s entirely possible you’ve slipped beneath my radar.’ She shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

‘Significance?’

‘It’s a magazine about statistics and data interpretation. Riveting if you’re into that sort of thing, boring as hell if you’re not.’

‘And you are?’

She nodded. ‘For my sins. I’m a statistician. But getting back to the point, I think you might have misinterpreted my kiss.’

No surprise there. Quite a shock though when her gaze dropped to his mouth and lingered for a second, and he found himself a split second away from grabbing her and kissing her in a way that left no room for misinterpretation.

Dan swallowed back the impulse, shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans in case they got ideas and reminded himself to concentrate. ‘So why did you throw yourself at me?’ he asked, rather more interested in her answer than he thought he ought to be.

She snapped her gaze back up to meet his and gave herself a quick shake. ‘Oh. Well. It was all part of my plan.’

‘What plan?’

‘The one I came up with five minutes ago.’

‘That was quick.’

She sighed. ‘Way too quick as it turns out. It’s my very makeshift, badly thought out, and with hindsight a total mistake plan.’

‘But one that somehow involves me?’

‘I was rather hoping so.’

‘How?’

Her eyes clouded over again and the panic he thought he’d glimpsed earlier flared in their depths. ‘I’ve got myself into a bit of a fix and I need your help.’

Her voice suddenly held a faint tremble and her body tensed and Dan went still, every instinct he possessed telling him to get away from her right now because, while he might have been wrong in his assessment of her motives earlier, he didn’t do damsels in distress—however attracted to them he was—and he didn’t do help, and nothing good would come of changing his mind about any of that now.

But although his brain was waving great warning signs alerting him to the possible dangers of sticking around, something was keeping his mouth from forming a parting shot and something was keeping his feet from moving. To his alarm he was rooted to the spot, strangely transfixed and unusually bothered by the desperation she was emanating, and he was mystified as to why. Surely he couldn’t actually be interested in hearing her out, could he?

‘What kind of a fix?’ he muttered since he could hardly carry on standing there in silence.

‘See that bunch of women over there?’ She smiled over his shoulder at them and gave a little wave.

He winced as one of them shrieked with laughter. ‘They’re impossible to miss.’

‘I know.’

‘What’s the occasion?’

‘School reunion.’

‘Fun?’ He couldn’t think of anything worse, but then he’d hated his school years.

She shuddered. ‘Absolutely horrendous.’

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘I thought it would be cathartic.’

‘And is it?’

‘No.’

‘Then why not just leave?’

‘Another excellent question.’ She sighed and bit her lip and his gaze dipped to watch, his mouth going dry as he involuntarily imagined nibbling on that lip himself. ‘You’d think that would have been the sensible thing to do, wouldn’t you? The logical thing... But tonight my common sense and logic seem to have deserted me.’

Dan cleared his throat and thought that the same could be applied to him. ‘How unfortunate,’ he said and told himself that it might be a good idea to try and stay cool and aloof if he was ever going to extricate himself from the mess he seemed intent on submerging himself in.

‘It is. Very. It’s never happened to me before.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t normally go around kissing strange men, you know.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ And oddly enough he was. ‘So why did you?’

She tilted her head and regarded him contemplatively, as if mentally debating whether and how to continue. ‘Have you ever been to a school reunion hoping to impress everyone with the success you’ve achieved?’ she asked eventually.

‘No.’ Hell would freeze over first. And besides, if anyone was interested they could read about it in the papers like everyone else seemed to want to.

‘Well, I was.’ She sighed. ‘But it turns out that none of them could care less about any of that. All that any of them can bang on about is their husbands and children.’

At the resignation and disdain in her voice Dan couldn’t help feeling a stab of sympathy despite his intention to remain detached, because he knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of that kind of conversation. ‘Now that does sound bad.’

‘It’s awful. I have neither and there’s only so much chat about school league tables and the importance of baby violin classes I can stomach, which is, I’ve discovered, not a lot.’

‘I’m not surprised. How on earth does a baby get to grips with a violin?’

‘I didn’t dare ask.’ She closed her eyes briefly, pinched the bridge of her nose and gave her head a shake of what looked like hopelessness. ‘And they’re the most appalling snobs.’

‘Really?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve never seen such one-upmanship and as for the name-dropping, well, if that were an Olympic sport there’d be golds all round.’

‘Then why do you want to impress them?’

‘It’s a long and tedious story,’ she said, before pulling her shoulders back and lifting her chin. ‘Let’s just say that I wasn’t exactly the most popular girl at school and I ended up with the bruises to prove it.’

As the implications of that sank in Dan’s jaw automatically tightened and his hands curled into fists because he knew about that too. His sister, Celia, had been bullied, and even though, unlike this woman, she’d eventually managed to deal with it, it was still a cause for regret that he’d been too busy dealing with the way he’d felt about their parents’ divorce to realise what had been going on.

‘I wanted retribution,’ she added.

‘I see,’ he said, wishing not for the first time that he could string up every bully who’d ever existed and flog them to within an inch of their lives. ‘So you were aiming for the living-well-being-the-best-revenge kind of thing?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Then what’s the fix?’

She blushed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other and then took a deep breath. ‘It didn’t have the impact I was hoping for.’ She stopped. Winced a little, he thought.

‘And?’ he prompted.

‘And so I invented a boyfriend.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘What?’

She went red. ‘Please don’t make me say it again.’

‘OK, but why?’

‘Because I figured that that’s the only thing they deem impressive.’ She sighed. ‘It’s totally pathetic, I realise, but I seem to be sixteen all over again and, well, you know...’ She tailed off and shrugged.

‘Don’t you have a real one?’

She flashed him a look of exasperation. ‘If I did I wouldn’t have had to invent one, would I?’

‘I suppose not.’ Although why she didn’t when she looked like that and felt like that he had no idea.

‘And I certainly wouldn’t have been kissing you.’

Which would have been a shame, he thought, briefly distracted by the memory of her mouth moving against his. ‘Did it work?’

‘Like a dream. Or should I say a nightmare? Things have got a bit out of hand.’

‘How?’

She shook her head as if utterly unable to comprehend what was going on. ‘All I did was mention that I had a boyfriend, but I guess I should have realised they’d descend on that piece of information like a pack of starving hyenas. They started bombarding me with all these questions about what he did and where he was from, and things just kind of snowballed. They even started asking if he was The One.’ She grimaced. ‘I mean, seriously? Don’t they know how statistically unlikely it is that you’ll ever find The One?’

‘Presumably not.’

‘The chances have been calculated at around one in two-hundred-and-fifty-eight thousand, which I think you’ll agree are not great odds.’

At her indignation, Dan felt his mouth twitch with the beginnings of a grin. ‘They certainly don’t sound that good.’

‘They’re atrocious, and the odds that there’s only one One are even less. But anyway, I was in the middle of extolling my fictitious boyfriend’s virtues, of which there are a great many, naturally—’

‘Naturally.’

‘When someone said a bit too sceptically for my liking that he sounded too good to be true and it wound me up. So I thought I’d collar the next vaguely presentable man who walked in and ask him to help. Then you showed up, and I thought you’ll do.’

‘Charming,’ said Dan dryly, wondering whether he ought to be offended or impressed by her candour.

She shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

Settling on the latter, he said, ‘At least you’re honest.’ Which made a refreshing change when it came to the opposite sex.

‘Hardly,’ she said, giving him a wry smile. ‘I’ve just spent every one of the last ten minutes lying my head off. I don’t normally, but this evening I seem to have gone a bit off the rails. Hence the kiss,’ she added, and then a look of horror crossed her face and her gaze dropped to his left hand as a thought evidently crossed her mind. ‘God, you’re not married or anything, are you?’

‘No.’ Much to his mother’s continual and extremely vocal disappointment.

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Not at the moment,’ he said, just about managing to hold back the shudder that wanted to run through him at the thought.

She gave him a bright smile and let out a long breath. ‘Oh, that is a relief.’

‘Isn’t it?’ And not just for her. ‘Although if I’d had either I’m not sure they’d have been all that impressed at what just happened.’

‘No,’ she conceded. ‘But then you could always have told them I started it.’

He tilted his head and shot her a sceptical look. ‘Would you settle for that?’

She stared at him in surprise. ‘Why not? It’s the truth, isn’t it?’

‘When does that ever matter?’

‘You sound cynical.’

‘Just being realistic.’

‘Maybe you should get some new friends.’

‘Maybe I should.’

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘if I trusted you, of course I’d believe you.’

She made it sound so simple. ‘Then you’re unlike virtually every woman I’ve ever met.’

Her smile faded. ‘I expect I am,’ she said with a resigned sigh.

‘Which is not necessarily a bad thing.’

‘If you say so,’ she muttered, sounding so thoroughly unconvinced and down that he had an unexpected urge to haul her back into his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right.

Failing to understand what was going on with that, Dan parked it and pulled himself together. ‘What would you have done if I had had a wife or girlfriend?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, thinking about it for a moment. ‘Slapped you to make it look like an argument and stormed out probably.’

He winced. ‘Ouch.’

‘Quite. So it’s lucky for both of us you don’t, isn’t it?’ She took a step towards him and looked up at him beseechingly, and as her scent wound through him his head briefly swam. ‘So what do you think?’ she asked softly. ‘Will you help me out and play the part of my besotted boyfriend for a bit or do I need to slink out and hope I don’t see any of that lot ever again?’

THREE

Absolutely no way was the answer that was hovering on the tip of Dan’s tongue as he looked down at Zoe and steeled himself to ignore the shimmering hope in her eyes. She might not be the kiss-and-tell girl he’d initially suspected her of being—and the story she’d subsequently spun him was too convoluted to be anything but the truth—but going along with her ridiculous proposition was still out of the question.

Even if he had possessed a chivalrous streak—which he most certainly didn’t—ever since he’d shot to the top of that bloody eligible bachelor list five years ago he’d had the press nosing around his private life, commenting on his relationships and speculating about whether he had any intention of settling down. And following the hideously detailed story Jasmine had sold six months ago, he now hit the headlines pretty much every time he even spoke to a woman, and he had no desire to fan the embers with yet more fodder for gossip.

God only knew how far this particular little farce had gone, but should it get out that he was romantically involved—falsely or not—there’d be repercussions he could barely bear thinking about.

And not just from the press.

Ever since he’d turned thirty his mother had never passed up an opportunity to mention how she wasn’t getting any younger and how she’d like to be able to enjoy her grandchildren while she still could, and, although he hadn’t reached his breaking point yet, the memories she stirred up every time she mentioned it were getting harder and harder to suppress and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand it.

If she got to hear of a relationship then his life would become truly intolerable, so if he had any sense whatsoever he’d be saying goodbye and good luck and sticking to his original plan of buying a pint and taking himself off to a relatively quiet corner of the pub. Even more wisely he’d be heading out of the pub altogether, finding a venue that didn’t contain lunatic women with hyperactive imaginations and texting Pete to inform him of the change of plan.