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  He was through being treated as if his place in Lizzie’s life was as important as a cat flap in an elephant house. Which meant forcing Halle to talk to him about his daughter, at length and at his convenience, where there was no chance of any five-hundred-pound-an-hour dickwads running interference.

  ‘What do you mean he’s refusing to respond through his solicitor? How can he do that?’ The knot under Halle’s breastbone cinched tighter as she gaped at Jamie Harding, top City solicitor and the head of her legal team. ‘Surely if we threaten a court order to stop publication of his book, he has to respond?’

  Jamie propped his forearms on his cherrywood desk, brushing the smooth wave of chestnut-brown hair back when it flopped over his brow. ‘I didn’t say he hasn’t responded. I said he’s refusing to respond through his solicitor.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  Jamie let out a long-suffering sigh. ‘Look, Halle, I know you’ve always preferred to communicate with Best through us. And that makes sense when it’s a legal matter to do with Lizzie’s custody. But she’s been of age now for two years, and I’m not even sure this book’s been written yet. Or if he’s actually signed a contract. So if we start throwing our legal weight around, it could be counterproductive.’

  ‘How could it be counterproductive? I want this thing stopped. As quickly and cleanly as possible, before anyone finds out about it.’ The hideous thought that people would be able to read about her starry-eyed teenage self, that needy vulnerable girl who’d fallen for Luke Best’s dubious charms, made her feel nauseous. She hadn’t been able to think about anything else ever since Lizzie had broken the news about Luke’s book deal yesterday evening. She’d spent a long night going over all the things Luke could reveal in his memoirs that would humiliate her beyond bearing, and, worse, allow the tabloid press to feast on all the stupid mistakes she’d made where that man was concerned.

  The Domestic Diva wasn’t just a bakery brand, it was a statement of purpose, a symbol of empowerment, that said to women everywhere, you can come from nothing and still make something of yourself. She didn’t want people to know that her whole empire had been built on the pain, the loss, of being ceremonially dumped by an arsehole like Luke Best.

  Wasn’t it bad enough that the man had screwed her over once, without him wanting to do it again?

  ‘Halle, you need to think with your head here, not your heart,’ Jamie said in that patronising tone that reminded her once again why she should never have slept with the guy.

  It had been only one night, six years ago, after a party to celebrate her first book deal, and Jamie hadn’t even been her solicitor at the time. She’d been horny and tipsy, Jamie had lingered to help clear up, or so he’d said, and they’d ended up in a lip lock over a dishwasher full of dirty champagne flutes.

  The sex had been hot—because Jamie had surprising physical stamina for a desk jockey and was as goal-orientated in the bedroom as he later proved to be in the courtroom. But not hot enough to atone for the cripplingly awkward moment the morning after, when a four-year-old Aldo had run into the room to wake her up and accidentally bounced on Jamie’s balls. Or all the times since she’d hired Jamie to head her legal team—on the understanding that they would never mention their former indiscretion—when Halle had detected that trace of condescension in Jamie’s tone.

  Note to self: If you screw a man who later becomes your solicitor, expect him to assume he’s your moral and emotional superior.

  ‘I am thinking with my head, Jamie,’ Halle replied with exactly the same level of condescension. ‘Believe me, my heart hasn’t been anywhere near Luke Best for a number of years.’ Sixteen to be precise.

  ‘OK, well, let me spell it out, then,’ Jamie said sharply, obviously miffed that he couldn’t out-patronise her. ‘We haven’t got grounds for an injunction until the book’s actually under contract. All that flexing our legal muscles now would achieve—apart from costing you five hundred pounds an hour for my services—is to alert the press to the impending deal and make the advance publishers are willing to offer Best go through the roof. That’s what I meant by counterproductive.’

  ‘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?

  ‘Th
at 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.

  Chapter 3

  Halle 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 bu
t 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.