So Now You're Back (3 page)

‘Ah, I see.'

Bugger, maybe he does have one small, infinitesimal point.

‘So what's your advice, then? There must be something I can do?' The knot tangled with the pitch and roll of raw panic. After a sleepless night debating all her options—including sneaking over to Paris and garrotting Luke in his sleep—Halle had convinced herself that Jamie would provide an answer to her predicament this morning. Something quick and relatively painless and fiendishly clever that wouldn't involve the first-degree murder of her child's father.

Jamie leaned forward. His hair flopped over his brow again, but he didn't sweep it back this time. ‘My advice would
be …' He hesitated, then sighed, as if he were preparing to say something particularly difficult. ‘Go over to Paris and talk to the guy.'

What?
‘No.' The jolt of horror didn't do much to settle her roiling stomach.
I'd rather garrotte myself, thanks.
‘I've told you before …' she began, because this wasn't the first time Jamie had suggested the unthinkable. ‘That's not an option.' She'd made a decision sixteen years ago that she would never see or speak to Luke Best again, directly or indirectly. Even though they shared a child, she didn't want him to have even the smallest toehold in her life. She'd been so determined about that that she'd never even spent a penny of the money Luke had sent each month towards their daughter's upkeep. Even when she'd really, really needed it. Even when she'd had to work two jobs to survive. She'd set up a trust fund for Lizzie with the money instead, to testify to the fact she would never ever need anything Luke Best had to offer again.

She hadn't been through all that to let Luke back in now. Especially over something this crass.

‘Why not?' Jamie continued, being more persistent than usual. ‘Why not appeal to his better nature?'

‘Luke doesn't have a better nature, it's part of his charm.'
The rat.

‘Yes, but he does care about Lizzie,' Jamie pressed, going the full patronising. ‘Surely if you tell him how this will impact on her, he'll back down. The guy's not a complete arsehole.'

‘Really, Jamie? And how would you know that?' She struggled to lower her voice. ‘Have you ever waited for two weeks for him to come home from a weekend assignment? Texting and emailing, and ringing his mobile and getting no response? Trudging round most of East London
with his two-year-old daughter to speak to all his known friends and associates, begging for news, only to see the pity in their faces or hear the smug sympathy in their tone? And eventually getting a text message saying simply “It's over, I can't come back”? And then spending months more not sleeping, not eating, not knowing how to comfort your child, while racking your brains trying to decipher those six measly words after a four-year relationship—and figure out what you'd done wrong? Because, of course, it had to be your fault he'd left.'

Jamie lifted his hands in a quelling motion. ‘OK, Halle, I get it. I know what he did was tough for you and Lizzie.'

‘No, you don't know.' She looped her bag over her shoulder. She had to get out of this office. Her voice was getting a bit shrill, a bit shaky, and she didn't plan to make a scene. Not in front of Jamie, and certainly not on Luke's account. What he'd done was a million years ago now and it didn't matter to her any more. ‘Offer to pay him off if you have to. But I won't talk to him. And I certainly won't go to Paris to beg him to do the right thing, the decent thing for his daughter.'
Or me.

Because that would make her feel like that lovelorn teenager again—begging for scraps from a man who had never deserved her.

‘Find a way, Jamie, that's what I pay you for. And give me a call when you figure it out.'

Jamie stood as she headed for the door. ‘I'm sorry, Halle.'

‘Sorry for what?'
Being a patronising twat perhaps?

‘That what he did still hurts so much.'

Halle frowned at the note of sympathy. ‘Don't be ridiculous. It doesn't hurt any more. I got over it years ago.' She opened the door, glad to feel in control again. And to have made her feelings clear without losing her cool. Much.

Jamie would do what had to be done. Even if he was a bit of a pain sometimes, he had one of the sharpest legal brains in the country. He'd find a way to make this catastrophe go away without her having to be involved.

‘But it's great that you're sorry,' she added. ‘Because he never was.'

It took less than a fortnight for Halle to discover she had chronically overestimated the sharpness of Jamie Harding's legal brain—and chronically underestimated the full extent of Luke Best's rat tendencies.

H
alle stepped from the first-class Eurostar carriage into the teeming chaos of the Gare du Nord at nine a.m. on a Monday in early June. She popped another antacid into her mouth, then pursed her lips to ensure the lipstick she'd just applied, again, didn't smudge. After dodging wheel-along suitcases being used as lethal weapons, she paused at the end of the platform to consider the daunting prospect of reaching the station's main exit alive.

Streams of Parisians flowed along the crowded, dimly lit concourse as they rushed towards the RER, TGV and metro interchange at the other end of the station, or stood gathered round the ticket kiosks, a pizza booth and the tables of an ice-cream café—which had been strategically stuffed into the narrow thoroughfare between the Eurostar platform and the exit, to thwart any passengers attempting to get out of the station in one piece.

She'd been to Paris once on a school trip in her teens and had avoided the place ever since. Because she'd felt then, as she did now, that the city's squalid reality didn't live up to the romantic hype.

Her belly did a couple of backflips—the biggest fright
being the one waiting for her at the rendezvous they had arranged in the Marais. Assuming of course Luke bothered to show. Given his abysmal track record, her expectations were fairly low on that score.

She clutched her briefcase and tried not to dwell on what horrors might await her in the café he'd suggested in the Place des Vosges. Or the anger bubbling away like a volcanic pool under her solar plexus and threatening to erupt at any moment despite her copious use of antacids.

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.