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.
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
