made her ask in a tiny voice, ‘What if I don’t—bounce back? What then?’
Something flooded his eyes. Was it...compassion? ‘We plan to keep you so busy you won’t have time to wallow.’
Wallow? Anger rushed up and billowed under her coat. But she didn’t let it out. Not directly. ‘Busy with what?’ she gritted.
‘Makeovers. New clothes. Access to all the top clubs... You name it, we’ll arrange it. EROS is making it our personal business to get you back on your feet. Total reinvention. And on your way to meeting Mr Right.’
She stared at him, aghast. ‘Mr Right?’
‘This is an opportunity to reinvent yourself and to find a new man to love.’
She just stared. There were no words.
It was only then he seemed to hesitate. ‘I know it feels soon.’
She blinked.
He frowned. Scowled. ‘OK, I can see that you’re not understanding—’
‘I understand perfectly well. But I refuse. I have no interest in reinvention.’ That wasn’t entirely true—she’d often dreamed about the sorts of things she might have done if she’d grown up with money—but she certainly had no interest in a manufactured man-hunt.
‘Why not?’
‘Because there’s nothing wrong with me, for a start.’ Hmm...defensive much? ‘I’m not in a hurry to have you tally up my apparently numerous deficiencies and broadcast them to the world.’
He stared at her. ‘You’re not deficient, Georgia. That’s not the point of this.’
‘Really? What is the point? Other than to tell women everywhere that being yourself is not sufficient to catch a good man.’
Something her gran had raised her never to believe. Something that was starting to look dangerously possible.
‘OK, look... The point of this is ratings. That’s all the network cares about. This promotion was mine and it went arse-up and so it’s my mess to tidy. I just thought that we could spin it so that you can get something decent out of it. Something meaningful.’ Sincerity blazed warm and intense from his eyes. ‘This is an opportunity, Georgia. Fully paid. To do anything you want. For a year.’
She couldn’t even be offended at having her life so summarily dismissed. Arse-up was a pretty apt description. She sighed. ‘Why would you even care? I’m nobody to you.’
He glanced away. When he came back to her his eyes were carefully schooled. ‘I feel a certain amount of responsibility. It was my promotion that ended your relationship. The least I can do is help you build a new one.’
‘I ended my relationship,’ she pressed. ‘My decisions. I’m not looking to shift blame.’
‘And so...?’
‘I don’t want to find someone to replace Dan. He wasn’t just someone I picked up out of convenience.’ Though, to her everlasting shame, she realised that maybe he was. And she’d almost made him her husband.
‘So you’re just going to hide out here for the next twelve months?’
Yes.
‘No. I’m going to take a year off life to just get back to who I really am. To avoid men altogether and just remember what I liked about being by myself.’ The idea blew across her mind like the leaves on the gravel path ahead of them. But it felt very right. ‘It will be the year of Georgia.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘The year of Georgia?’
‘To please no one but me.’ To find herself again. And see how she felt about herself when left alone in a room with no one else to fill the space.
‘Well, then, think about how much you could do for yourself with a blank cheque behind you.’
It was a seductive image. All those things she’d always wanted to do—secretly—and never had the courage or the money to do. She could do them. At least some of them.
‘What would you do,’ he went on, sensing the shift in his fortune, ‘if money was no object?’
Build that time machine... ‘I don’t know. Self-improvement, learn a language, swim the English Channel?’
That got his attention. ‘The Channel, really?’
She shrugged. ‘Well, I’d have to learn how to swim first...’
Suddenly he was laughing. ‘The Year of Georgia. We could mix it up. Get a couple of experts to help us out with some ideas.’ Grey eyes blazed into hers. ‘Fifty thousand pounds, Georgia. All for you.’
She stared at him. For an age. ‘Actually, I really just want all of this to go away. Can fifty grand buy that?’
The compassion returned. It flickered across his eyes and then disappeared. ‘Not literally, but there’s an extra-special level of feeding-frenzy that the public reserves for those not wanting the attention. Maybe fronting up to it will be a way to help end it?’
That made some sense. There was a seedy kind of fervour to the interest of the English public specifically because she and Dan were both trying so hard to avoid it. Maybe it tapped into the ancient predator parts of mankind, as if they were scenting a kill.
‘You were willing to sell us your marriage before,’ he summed up. ‘Why not sell us your recovery? How is it different?’
‘Sharing the happiest time of my life with the world would have been infinitely different.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what you thought? That marrying him would make you happy?’
‘Of course.’ But then she stumbled. ‘Happier. You know, still happy.’
It sounded lame even to her own ears.
‘Clearly Bradford thought otherwise.’ Then he took a breath. ‘Why did you ask him if you weren’t certain of his answer?’
Her brow folded. ‘Because we’d been together for a year.’
‘A year in which he thought you were both just enjoying each other’s company.’
For a moment she’d forgotten—again—how very public her proposal was. And Dan’s decline. Three million listeners had heard every excruciating word. She hid her shame by dropping her gaze to the path ahead of them.
‘So...what? His twelve-month expiry date was approaching?’
She lifted her eyes again. ‘It was your promotion, Mr Rush. “Give him a leap year nudge,” you said in all your advertising.’
His eyes flicked away briefly. ‘We didn’t imagine anyone would take us literally.’
She stared at him as a small cluster of walkers passed by. Her friend’s illness was none of his business. Nor
