five, then dinner and speeches, but instead of being able to relax afterwards she had to keep the cameraman and photographer sober, as well as get two hundred guests out of the ballroom and onto the main staircase. Oh, and her ex, Edward, was going to be there.
As he had been at three other weddings she’d attended this year.
Freya was so over weddings!
She knew that her PR skills were a very large reason that Beth had chosen her to be bridesmaid.
It didn’t offend Freya.
To survive as top PR consultant in LA, you needed to keep in with your contacts. Beth was a journalist, and the many hours that Freya had spent organising the wedding would be returned in kind.
It was called networking and Freya was very good at that.
Freya got to her hotel room to freshen up. She checked her make-up and wished she hadn’t—it was far too much.
She really didn’t like this dress and how much it revealed of her shoulders. Her upper back was bare too and she felt exposed. Freya turned and craned her neck and told herself that everyone in the chapel would be looking at the bride rather than the bridesmaid’s spinal column.
As always, she checked her phone and saw that there were several messages and missed calls from her brother, James.
Work.
Freya knew that it would be.
James Rothsberg was the cosmetic surgeon in LA and for the past six years he had poured everything into The Hollywood Hills Medical Center. It was an amazing facility frequented by the rich and famous. Affectionately known as The Hills, it had everything from obstetrics to intensive care and was the top tier of health care. Two years ago James had asked Freya to come on board and she had put her PR skills to excellent commercial use.
Till now.
It was time to give back, she had told James.
And he’d listened.
Which was why, instead of rolling her eyes at being called late afternoon on New Year’s Eve, Freya called her brother.
‘Hi, James,’ Freya said. ‘You’ve been trying to get hold of me.’
‘I have,’ James said. ‘Freya, I need you at The Hills tomorrow at nine.’
‘On New Year’s Day?’ Freya checked.
‘I’ve just taken a call from Geoff, and Paulo’s condition has deteriorated. I’ve just spoken with Zackary and he’s agreed to come in and be interviewed tomorrow instead of waiting till Monday.’
Freya’s eyes screwed closed as James carried on talking.
‘I need you to be at the interview.’
‘Me?’ Freya tried to keep the quake from her voice. ‘Since when did I sit in on the hiring of medical personnel?’
‘Since you talked me into taking on charitable cases,’ James answered tartly. ‘And, given we’re going to be asking him to donate his skills for nothing...’
‘He already knows that he’ll be doing some pro bono work.’
‘Freya?’
She could hear the question in her brother’s voice at her reluctance to sit in on the interview. After all, Freya had been the one pushing for The Hills to embrace this. Freya had been the one looking into a suitable charity to properly support and now things were finally moving along. But what James didn’t understand was that the very seemingly together, always-very-much-in-control Freya had got herself into a little pickle that her older brother didn’t know about.
There was a big pickle her brother didn’t know about either, namely that the charity she’d found was headed by his ex, Mila Brightman, but it was the other pickle in the jar that Freya was wrestling with now.
She had already been dreading meeting the hotshot cardiac surgeon Zackary Carlton.
Or Zack, as she’d found out he’d prefer to be known.
They had flirted via emails.
Not much.
It felt massive to Freya, though.
‘I need you there tomorrow at nine,’ James said. ‘I’m sure he’s going to have questions about the promotional side of things and I want a press release out saying that we have Zackary on board.’
‘Zack!’ Freya said. ‘He prefers to be called Zack.’
‘Noted,’ James responded. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at nine. I’ll flick over some details tonight.’
‘Thanks.’
Oh, God.
After the tame girls’ night with her smug married friends, Freya had poured another cocktail and opened up her laptop and located a certain series of emails.
She never got involved with people she worked with. Actually, Freya really didn’t get too involved full stop. But this teeny tiny flirt had been fun and Zack had outright asked if she was single.
Several daiquiris later, when Freya, who took her health seriously and didn’t often drink, had decided to embrace the merits of not being married, she had typed her response back.
Very single. (Don’t tell James.)
And now, tomorrow, she had to face him.
His response had made her blush and it was making her blush now.
I never kiss and tell.
Hopefully he wouldn’t get the role, Freya thought, but who was she kidding? James wanted Zack Carlton on board, so much so that he had him currently housed in a luxury apartment that The Hills owned and was interviewing him on New Year’s Day.
It had been a stupid flirt, a tiny one, but it had been completely out of character for her, and not just professionally. Freya wasn’t a flirty person at all, she was far too controlled for that.
Blame it on the daiquiris.
Actually, she couldn’t because the flirt had started a couple of emails prior to that.
She sighed. He was probably fifty and married with sixteen children. She’d blush about it tomorrow, but right now she had to deal with the wedding.
First, though, she texted her neighbour Red. Freya had a late checkout but hadn’t been intending to use it as she wanted to get home to her little dog, Cleo. Instead, she asked Red if he would let her out and feed her in the morning.
With that sorted she went to go but then Freya caught sight of her bare shoulders; she turned and looked again at her spine.
It had been that sight that had terrified James. Freya could still remember his shocked reaction as he had sat her up so that the doctor could listen to her chest.
‘Freya!’
