So Now You're Back

How had he managed to engineer things so easily to his own advantage?

Once she’d finally been forced to accept the necessity of meeting him, in person, to ‘discuss’ his book deal, she’d been absolutely adamant that she would not be discussing anything in Paris. Quite apart from the symbolism of her having to come to him, she hadn’t wanted to meet him on his home turf, in an alien city, where she didn’t speak the language. But after the limited communications he’d been prepared to make with Jamie, she’d been faced with the stark choice of either getting into a protracted email negotiation with the man himself or caving in quickly so she could get this farce over with before she developed a new ulcer.

In other words, she’d had no choice at all.

That the success of this visit was by no means assured, despite her being forced to give far too much ground already, made the wad of anger and anxiety wedged in her throat only that much harder to swallow.

Nudging and jostling her way through the sea of arrogantly self-possessed Parisians and foolhardy tourists blocking her exit, she finally found what she assumed was the taxi rank. Although it was hard to tell. Unlike the orderly queue you would find at any main-line London station, here there just seemed to be an extension of the melee inside, with people pushing and shoving as the sound of horns and car engines filled the air in a seething mass of harassed, pissed-off humanity.

Ignoring the rank, she picked her way across the cobblestoned street in the kitten heels her stylist, Rene, had suggested pairing with a caramel-coloured power suit, after a panicked consultation the night before. As she’d worn the two-thousand-pound designer suit while negotiating her last TV contract, it supplied the dual karma of making her feel both in control and lucky. But Rene had bolstered her confidence still further by pointing out the combo of pencil skirt, loosely tailored jacket and silk blouse made a fashion statement of kick-ass insouciance.

You are a lean, mean kick-ass machine. Not the girl he abandoned.

Repeating the mantra went some way to quelling the rioting lava as she reached the main boulevard. She squeezed her eyes shut and thrust out her hand, hoping none of the vehicles barrelling past lopped off her arm. A squeal of skidding rubber had her prising open an eyelid, to find a cab stopped inches from her toes.

‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ she addressed the wiry man in the driver’s seat.

The cabbie gave a curt nod. ‘Bon matin,’ he corrected.

Pulling her iPhone out of her coat pocket, she tapped the calendar app, even though she’d memorised the location during the two-hour train journey from London, and read aloud. ‘Le Café Hugo, á la Place des Vosges, s’il vous plait?’

The driver grunted, nodded, then flicked his head in a surly gesture, which she took to be the Gallic cabbie’s equivalent of ‘Hop in, luv.’

As they bounced down the street, then swerved into the snarl of rush-hour traffic, she rehearsed the speech she’d been working on since yesterday.

She might be famous for her warm, witty, friendly ad-libs to camera on The Best of Everything, but she had decided that adhering strictly to the script on this occasion was absolutely imperative.

There was going to be nothing warm, or witty, or friendly about this meeting. She would be businesslike and direct and completely devoid of emotion. She would present Luke with exactly how much she was prepared to offer to make this problem go away, and that would be the end of it. Because she’d come to the conclusion that’s exactly what this so-called book deal was really all about.

A barefaced attempt to hold her to ransom.

She’d asked her literary agent to make some discreet enquiries with his contacts in New York and it transpired there had been no deal signed as yet—just as Jamie had suspected.

Halle had forced herself not to overreact about this final betrayal. She was a wealthy woman. Why on earth should she be surprised that an opportunist like Luke would eventually seize the chance to hose her for some cash? As long as Lizzie never found out about her father’s mercenary scheme, and the book deal went away, it hardly mattered how she achieved that.

If she had to pay to get Luke Best out of her life forever, she’d do it. She’d already built in a ten per cent increase in the sum she’d discussed with her financial adviser if Luke insisted on negotiating, and Jamie had drawn up the relevant contracts, which she had in her briefcase ready for Luke’s signature. As soon as the rat signed on the dotted line, she would be free to make a dignified exit, after making it absolutely clear this meeting marked the end of any and all business between them.

She was a smidgen outside her comfort zone on this. But Luke didn’t need to know that. As long as she kept her head and didn’t let her anxiety at seeing him again show. And if she could manage to keep her nerves in check while instructing an audience of over a thousand people how to make choux pastry during a live cookery show at London’s Olympia, she could bloody well manage it in front of the man who had lobbed her heart into a blender a lifetime ago.

‘Vingt-cinq euros, madame.’

Halle passed a fistful of notes through the grille, pleased when her fingers barely trembled, and waved off the change before stepping out of the cab. She shielded her eyes against the watery sunlight and absorbed the majesty of the palatial garden square that had emerged like an oasis from the rabbit warren of narrow cobblestoned streets they’d bulleted through to get here from the Gare du Nord. As the cab drove away, her gaze landed on the Café Hugo across the road, and the line of tables nestled under the arches of the grand sixteenth-century facade.

She scanned the bunches of customers huddled at the tables away from the spitting rain but saw no sign of the man she had come to meet. She let out a sharp sigh as it occurred to her she might not even recognise him after sixteen years. After all, she never would have expected him to choose somewhere so highbrow and sophisticated for this meeting. The Luke she’d known had been much more at home at the greasy spoon round the corner from their flat—or the local pub—than an elegant pavement café in Paris.

She dismissed the observation. Obviously, she had never known that Luke, either, or he wouldn’t have managed to sneak the fact past her that he didn’t give a shit about her, and she certainly had no intention of getting to know the new Luke now. Once this short, sharp shock was over with, she would never have to set eyes on him again. So what did it matter if Luke had become a sophisticated man of the world who could tell the difference between a pint of Stella and a glass of Pouilly-Fuissé?

She crossed the street, skirted the outdoor tables and headed towards the glass doors at the café’s entrance, employing the breathing technique she used while they were taping the show, seconds before the green camera light clicked on. The only thing she hoped about the new Luke was that he’d improved his timekeeping—because if he was as fashionably late as he’d once been, the volcano in her stomach was liable to blow.

She entered the darkened café interior, to be greeted by the comforting scent of roasting coffee, sautéed garlic and fresh baking. High-backed leather booths and stained-glass panels coupled with the low lighting from the handblown chandeliers made the bustling inside of the restaurant seem more intimate but no less elegant than the outside.

Her stomach did another uncomfortable flip-flop.

Terrific, intimacy, just the ambience I want for this meeting.

The maître d’ stood by a lectern talking to a tall man wearing a long dark blue mac with his back to her.

The spike of recognition at the man’s hipshot pose sprinted up her spine just before he looked round and a pair of painfully familiar sky-blue eyes located her standing behind him like a muppet.

‘Luke!’ The name popped out on a shocked whisper.

How can he have gotten better looking? The sneaky bastard.

She studied the high angles of his cheekbones, the heavy-lidded eyes, which always looked as if he’d just climbed out of bed, the flat place on the bridge of his nose where he’d broken it in a fight and the deadly dimple in his chin, which had made her the envy of every girl in class 10C when they’d started dating. Then did a quick survey of long legs encased in black jeans, and the navy blue cotton polo neck hugging a chest that looked much broader than she remembered it, too.

Why didn’t you give in to your curiosity yesterday and Google him?

If only she had, she would have been much better prepared for her first eyeful of this new, annoyingly even more buff Luke.

‘Haley,’ he said, murmuring the name she’d had as a girl. The name that had always felt boring and unoriginal until she’d heard him say it. The name she’d changed a year after he’d left.

‘It’s Halle. I don’t answer to that name any more.’

Any more than I intend to answer to you, she thought defiantly, even if hearing that name again on his lips had given her an uncomfortable jolt.

‘You mind if I call you Hal?’ he replied, the once familiar nickname giving her another unpleasant jolt. ‘Halle sounds kind of intimidating,’ he said as his gaze drifted up to her hair with a leisurely sense of entitlement.

If that’s your intimidated look, I’m not buying it.

She bit down on her frustration.

‘Call me whatever you like,’ she countered with deliberate nonchalance, knowing when she was being played. If he thought he could get a rise out of her that easily, he’d miscalculated.

Unpleasant jolts be damned.

‘Hal it is, then. I’m glad we got that settled.’ He swept his hair off his brow. She stared resentfully at the thick, casually styled waves of tawny sun-streaked bronze, long enough now to touch the collar of his mac.

Couldn’t he have lost some of that hair? Surely male-pattern baldness is the least he deserves after the shoddy way he treated me?

He planted one hand in his back pocket, as she frowned at his non-receding hairline, and cocked his head to one side. The infuriatingly leisurely gaze dropped down to her kitten heels.

All the muscles in her face and jaw had clenched—in direct counterpoint to his relaxed body language—by the time his eyes finally met hers again.

‘You haven’t changed.’ The rusty tone, rich with appreciation, shimmered over the skin of her nape and made tension scream across her collarbone.

Back off, buster, that’s one familiarity too far.

She adjusted the strap of her briefcase to loosen her shoulder blades before she dislocated something.

‘If that’s supposed to be flattering, it’s not.’ She laid on as much snark as she could manage while struggling to draw an even breath. ‘This happens to be new season Carolina Herrera, not a supermarket own brand.’

His wide lips curved on one side, the half-smile equal parts confidence and rueful amusement—suggesting her attempt at a slap-down had missed its target by a few thousand miles. But then again, she hadn’t expected a direct hit so soon. Luke’s ego had always been robust. Given how good he looked, she’d hazard a guess it was virtually indestructible now.

‘I don’t have a fucking clue who Carolina Herrera is,’ he said, the casual use of the F-word a prosaic reminder of how she’d once found his genial swearing so sexy.

God, what a clueless muppet I once was.

‘But whoever she is,’ he added, ‘she looks great on you.’

He took a step forward, coming perilously close to her personal space and forcing her to tilt her head back to meet his gaze.

I do not believe it. Has he actually gotten taller, too?

While he was definitely more muscular than he’d been at twenty-one, how could he have also gained an extra inch in height? At five foot four, she had always felt petite standing next to him, but she certainly didn’t remember having to look this far up to see his face.

Sod the kitten heels. I should have worn stilts. It’s going to be next to impossible to kick ass as a midget.

He rattled something off in fluent French to the maître d’, who laughed and then grabbed a couple of menus, before directing them into the restaurant.

‘Jean-François has saved us the best booth,’ Luke said.

‘Fine.’ She refused to worry about what he’d said to put that knowing smile on Jean-François’s lips. She had enough crap to process already. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ she added pointedly as she followed the maître d’.

But as she stepped in front of Luke, his palm touched her lower back and sensation rippled across the upper slope of her bum. She stiffened and jerked round.

He held up the offending hand, then tucked it back into his pocket, but the crinkle of humour around his eyes made his easy surrender a decidedly pyrrhic victory.

Swallowing the renewed spike of temper, and the latest unpleasant jolt, she picked up the pace, her kitten heels clicking decisively on the marble tiles. Directed to a booth at the back of the restaurant, she shrugged off her coat and slid onto the well-worn leather seat.

Luke took the seat opposite, nudging her knee as he folded his long legs under the table. She shifted back. Not because she was scared of touching him, but because she did not want him to crowd her.

Lifting her briefcase onto the table, she opened the locks as Luke addressed the maître d’ in fluid French.

‘Un espresso, un café crème et une sélection de patisseries. Et puis, dire au garçon qu’il devrait nous laisser seul.’

Leaving their menus on the table, Jean-François nodded to Luke, said ‘Bon appetite, madame,’ to her, then flashed that knowing smile again and left.

‘What did you say to him?’ she asked, fervently wishing she hadn’t managed to daydream through five whole years of French in school.

‘I ordered an espresso for me, a coffee with cream for you and a selection of pastries for the both of us,’ he replied drily. ‘I assume you still like your coffee milky—and you’ll love the pastries here, they’re a speciality of the place, they have an amazing pastry chef.’

‘I ate on the train,’ she lied, just as drily, aggravated that he remembered how she liked her coffee—and suspicious of the pastry order. Was that why he’d suggested this place? Did he think he could charm her into offering him more money? ‘And even with my rudimentary French, I know what café crème is,’ she continued. ‘I meant what you said to him after that.’

He rested his forearms on the table, the smug almost-smile finally flatlining.

‘I told him to tell the waiter to leave us alone so we could have some privacy for this conversation.’ He stretched out his legs, bumping her knee again. She shifted back further, then wished she hadn’t when the half-smile returned.

‘Relax, Hal, I’m not planning to kidnap you. Yet.’

She pushed out a scoffing laugh. Determined to appear as cool and confident as he did, even if her ulcer burst. ‘We won’t need too much privacy. This is going to be a very short conversation.’

One dark brow arched. ‘I doubt that.’

‘Think again.’ She plucked the contract out of her briefcase and slapped it on the table, the way she’d rehearsed several times the night before. He didn’t even flinch, let alone jump the way she’d hoped. She crushed the prickle of disappointment.

‘I’m prepared to offer a generous sum to make this book go away,’ she launched into her spiel. ‘Even though we both know you haven’t actually signed a deal yet.’ Her spirits lifted at the crease on his forehead as he studied the wad of papers. ‘Lizzie says you’re a successful journalist, though.’ She put the emphasis on ‘says’ so he would think she doubted Lizzie’s conviction, then paused to let the implication also sink in that she had in no way followed his career trajectory. ‘She also seems to think you’re a competent enough writer to write a book of this nature. And my literary agent concurs that you ought to be able to command an advance given the subject matter. But as I’m not well-known in the US—’ yet ‘—because my show’s only been syndicated to public service broadcasters over there, she doubts a New York publisher will offer more than a low four-figure advance. Accounting for that, and the dollar exchange rate at the moment, I’m prepared to offer you twenty thousand in pounds sterling, in a lump sum payment, once you sign this contract.’ She tapped her nail on the contract for added effect. ‘A contract that, once signed, will rescind all your rights now and in the future to write a book that features, alludes to or in any way references me, our past association or either one of my two children in it. Whether in name or via the use of recognisable characterisation and/or pseudonyms.’

She had to rush the last bit of the speech because she was running out of breath. But, otherwise, the swell of pride was almost as huge as the rush of relief. She’d done it. She’d stuck to the script without wavering or prevaricating and without stumbling, once.

She couldn’t assess his reaction because his expression had gone completely blank as he stared at the paperwork, but she congratulated herself again when he brought his hand down to rest on top.

The silence stretched uncomfortably as he thumped his thumb on the pile of papers but didn’t pick up the contract to examine it more closely.

The waiter arrived to place their coffees and the pastries in front of them. The buttery scent of freshly baked filou accompanied the artistry of feather-light croissants and eclairs, delicate tarts decorated with exotic fruits and some miniature chocolate and cherry entremets.

‘Feel free to read it,’ she prompted, to cover the sound of her empty stomach rumbling.

For a split second she thought she saw something brittle flash across his face, but she dismissed the thought when he said lazily, ‘What makes you think the book’s about you?’

She opened her mouth to tell him she wasn’t an imbecile. But shut it again when she realised how neatly he had almost outmanoeuvred her. She would sound vain and self-important if she reiterated the point, even though they both knew she had to be the subject of the book. Because what else did he have to sell but intimate details of their life together? But she didn’t plan to get caught out that easily.

Luke as a boy had always had a scathing and vocal dislike of what he called ‘pop culture crap’ and a huge chip on his shoulder about people with money whom he decreed didn’t deserve it—which made her suspect he was likely to be less than impressed by her success as a celebrity chef. With hindsight, she also now realised that Luke’s prickly superiority as a teenager had probably come from the indignity of growing up on a run-down council estate in a ‘problem family’ while having to rely on benefit cheques, the local food bank and charity-shop clothing to survive. But she didn’t plan to give him another opportunity to lecture her on the subject of her ‘privileged upbringing’ just because her dad had once gone to grammar school.

‘I don’t care what your book’s about as long as myself and Lizzie and Aldo aren’t in it,’ she said, directing the conversation back where it needed to be. ‘In any shape or form. My private life is not for public consumption and neither is theirs.’

He plopped two sugars into his espresso. ‘So what you’re saying is, you want to be able to decide what I put into my book.’

‘Yes.’

He stirred the espresso with maddening patience.

‘And I’m prepared to pay a very generous sum for the privilege,’ she added.

He took a leisurely sip of his coffee, the dainty cup impossibly tiny cradled in his hand. ‘Then I guess my next question’s gotta be, what makes you think I want you to pay me for that privilege?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I don’t want your money,’ he said.

She blinked, the tiny spurt of hope comprehensively drowned out by total astonishment as what he seemed to be implying simply failed to compute. ‘So you’d be willing to keep us out of it without being paid?’

No way, that couldn’t be right. The man was a rat. He’d shown his true colours sixteen years ago. She had not misread this situation that much.

‘Not exactly,’ he replied.

Bingo. ‘I thought not,’ she said, pleased she hadn’t been wrong. Twenty grand was a small price to pay for the heady satisfaction of finally being right where he was concerned.

‘But money’s not what I’m after from you.’

‘Well, I’m afraid that’s all I’m offering.’ She had no idea where he was going with this, and she didn’t want to know. Luke’s cunning plans, his ridiculous schemes, his hidden agendas were not her problem any more. She’d gotten over caring what the heck was going on inside his head years ago.

‘All I want is a favour from you,’ he continued. ‘Then I’ll do you one in return and drop the book deal. Autobiography’s not really my thing anyway.’

‘What favour?’ The question spilled out, one split second before she remembered she didn’t give a toss about Luke’s stupid hidden agenda.

She realised her mistake when his eyes took on the intent gleam that had once excited her to the point of madness, but now looked decidedly feral. ‘I’m doing a piece on Jackson Monroe, ever heard of him?’

‘Of course I have, he’s that American guy who calls himself the Love Doctor and runs some fancy rehab clinic for divorcing celebrities. He was on The Graham Norton Show a few weeks ago, pushing his bestselling book.’ She searched her memory. ‘And talking loads of bollocks about his new method of relationship rehab for the rich and incredibly gullible.’

And what the bloody hell did some jumped-up, smooth-talking twerp who had made a killing pretending to be the answer to the rising divorce rate have to do with the privacy of her and her children?

‘He calls himself the Love Surgeon, actually,’ Luke said. ‘But bollocks is right and I plan to prove it, by going on one of the relationship retreats at his place in Tennessee. But to do that, I need a plus-one with a profile. Because it’s a course for high-profile couples.’ He lifted his fingers to do air quotes. ‘Who are experiencing a breakdown in their love relationship. And that’s where you come in.’

It took a moment for her to process what he was asking. But then realisation hit her square in the face. And the unpleasant jolt hit eight point five on the Richter scale.

‘Are you completely fucking insane?’ She never used the F-word—not since she’d got over her infatuation with Luke and discovered it wasn’t that pleasant coming from your three-year-old daughter. But it shot out without warning as her head started to implode.

He could not be serious. He’d blackmailed her into coming to Paris to give her some bullshit ultimatum for an article he was writing? As if she had nothing better to do? As if her career wasn’t far more important and full on than his? As if she were still the wide-eyed, besotted acolyte who had been prepared to do anything for him?

‘We don’t have a love relationship,’ she said, just in case he’d missed that salient point. ‘We never had a love relationship.’

‘Gee, that hurts.’ He clapped his hand to his chest in a pantomime of wounded feelings. ‘I distinctly recall you telling me how madly in love with me you were when we first went all the way.’

‘That’s funny, because I don’t recall any such thing.’ Of course she recalled it. And how incredibly crass of him to rub her face in it now.

‘Really?’ he said, the mocking smile lancing through the last of her composure. ‘It was right after I—’

‘If I did say something like that …’ she interrupted, to stop him going into any more detail. The last thing she needed was to have the humiliating picture stuck in her head of him lying on top of her with that I’ve-finally-popped-my-cherry smile on his face while she clung on to him and told him how wonderful he was, because she was desperately trying to romanticise the moment and take her mind off the extreme chafing caused by his enormous cock. ‘It was probably because I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.’