in. ‘Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite as much information from Alex as I’d like to have done the other evening. I thought I’d better let you know that I may need to meet with him again.’
Saffron threw her head back and tipped an oyster down her throat then shrugged. ‘Fine. Whatever you need to do to get the job done.’
Nicole let out a breath. She’d be honest about the present, even if the past was better left in the past. ‘I’m keeping up my cover story and attending a wedding posing as a journalist next Saturday,’ she told her client. ‘Hopefully, it’ll give me some really good ideas.’
Saffron grinned at her. ‘As long as those ideas are big and colourful and expensive, I’m all in. What have you come up with so far?’
Nicole smiled as she toyed with her dressed crab. At least now she was back in her comfort zone. They spent the rest of the time discussing the merits of different venues and proposal types and ended up with a shortlist of three basic outlines, which Nicole would tailor further to Saffron’s requirements when she had more of an idea of what made the wonderful Alex Black tick.
When they were finished, Saffron thanked her for lunch and swept off to another urgent appointment she was already an hour late for, and Nicole settled the bill.
It had started to rain while they’d been eating. She had a raincoat with her, but it didn’t have a hood, so she had to pull her collar up and jog down the alleyway that ran past a theatre and out onto St Martin’s Lane. She looked sideways as she ran past the row of posters advertising the latest play. The glass was just shiny enough to send back a reflection.
She slowed to a walking pace, still glancing at her image in the dark posters as she passed them. Her eyes were large and she looked younger. She was reminded of the night Jasper hadn’t proposed. She’d run away from the restaurant, down alleys like this, desperate to get to the main road and find a cab.
She’d thought she’d got rid of that woman, that only an echo of her had been left behind. It was a shock to see her staring back at her, the pale face superimposed on those of the actors in the posters.
She couldn’t be that person again. Not now. And definitely not for the next six weeks as they ran up to Christmas and Saffron’s big proposal. The clock couldn’t turn backwards. She wouldn’t let it.
She had this horrible feeling that if she didn’t finish the journey she’d started after Jasper left her, she’d always be stuck in some horrible limbo between being the girl she once was and the woman she wanted to be. And that wouldn’t do. She needed every bit of armour about her now.
Especially if she was going to survive a whole Saturday in the company of Alex Black.
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