partying her way through her parents’ appalling divorce and pretending she didn’t care.
It was hard enough having high-profile actors as parents and wearing the Rothsberg name, but when that marriage had ended, to have it played out over the media had been agony.
And when a journalist had pointed out that Freya was just a little bit younger than her father’s latest girlfriend, a magazine had taken it one nasty step further and pointed out that Freya was also considerably larger.
Her comfort during the very public break-up had, till then, been food and she’d had to endure the spotlight that had shone on her parents suddenly widening to accommodate both herself and James.
She had rigorously denied herself the comfort of food.
Very rigorously!
And she had also partied hard.
James had hauled her out of a nightclub and, too weak to row with her brother, Freya had collapsed and been rushed to hospital.
There she had been stripped and put into a gown and then James had been allowed back in, and that was when he had seen her spine and the true extent of her problem had been exposed.
Now, fourteen years later, she would stand today with the most loathed part of her body on show and, joy of joys, eat at the top table.
Freya was better now—so, so much better.
Recovered, healed, whatever the best word was, but there were still hurts and repercussions that she had to deal with, and one of the big ones was that she rarely had a period.
Seriously rarely.
Once, maybe twice a year.
‘It’s your own fault,’ Freya told her reflection, and then came away from the mirror and headed out to the elevator.
She got in and closed her eyes, resting against the wall as she angled her neck to release tension. When she opened them, instead of being on the mezzanine level, she was on the ground floor, and looking into the eyes of Him!
‘Well, you prove my theory,’ he said in a deep, sexy voice.
It was Him!
The man she had seen a few days ago.
Freya had been speaking with the hotel’s events coordinator and working out how long they would need to freeze the escalators for, when they’d both stopped talking as the sound of Cuban heels had rung out on the marble floor. And they had stopped talking with good reason. Tall, tanned, with shaggy, curly black hair, he had walked past them in dark jeans and tight T-shirt, carrying a large backpack. He had been just so sexy that he’d simply stopped conversations. Both women had watched him go up to the desk to check in and then shared a guilty smile once they’d finished checking him out.
And now Freya was in the lift with Him.
‘And your theory is?’ Freya asked.
‘That all the good girls are taken.’ He asked her which floor she wanted. ‘I’ve already pressed...’ Actually, no, her selection had been erased. ‘The mezzanine level.’ She watched as long suntanned fingers pressed said level and then he pressed for floor twenty-eight and she wished, how she wished, she had given the thirtieth floor as her choice of destination, just for a minute or two more alone with him.
‘Shouldn’t brides be smiling on their wedding day?’ he asked, and Freya tried to place his accent.
‘Believe me, the bride is smiling,’ Freya said in a dry voice. ‘I’m the bridesmaid.’
‘Did I hear the word maid?’
Freya laughed at the cheeky inference and the slow smile he gave in return had her stomach tighten. Sexy green eyes were looking right at her, and he didn’t make her feel like an old maid in the least...
Freya blinked at her own thought process.
The hotel events coordinator had, when they’d been watching him, sighed that he was probably gay and Freya had said if that were the case, again, then she really had to get out of LA.
Oh, he was so not gay. His eyes might as well be blowtorches because he had her face just turn to fire.
Sadly the doors pinged open.
‘Enjoy the wedding...’ he said.
‘Oh, I shan’t, it’s going to be a very long evening,’ Freya replied, peeling herself from the wall, when she really didn’t want to get out.
‘Yeah, I get it.’ he said. ‘I do my best to avoid weddings.’ He met her eyes. ‘Especially my own.’
Was he telling her that he was single?
She thought back to the flirty emails that she would live to regret tomorrow, but flirting was kind of fun, Freya was finding out, and she was very single.
‘And me,’ Freya said.
The elevator doors were open but the conversation wasn’t closed and he put one big boot out to keep them open as he asked Freya a question. ‘Why did she want a big white wedding on a Thursday?’
‘Because it’s New Year’s Eve.’
‘So it is! Well, thanks for reminding me, I’d be in trouble if I didn’t call home.’
‘You’re Australian?’ Freya asked, now that she’d placed his accent.
He nodded.
‘LA’s a long way from home.’
‘It is,’ he answered. ‘And I’m suddenly lonely.’
He didn’t look lonely in the least, not with that smile.
‘Poor you,’ Freya replied, and met his smouldering gaze. His deep green eyes were thickly lashed and she looked down to a dark red mouth and stubbled jaw.
He was so hot, so direct, so bad, so sexy and her reaction to him so acute that Freya could possibly have forgiven herself if she’d hit the button to close the doors and leapt up onto those lean hips.
‘I’d better go,’ she said, because, yes, she’d better. ‘It was nice to meet you...’ Freya fished for his name.
‘We don’t need names, do we?’
She ought to have been offended, Freya thought. She ought to be very, very offended and yet she wasn’t.
‘Enjoy the wedding,’ he offered, ‘and thanks for messing up my theory.’
‘But I haven’t,’ Freya said, simply unable to resist prolonging this delicious, rare flirt and, just as when she had hit ‘send’ on that blasted email, she offered a verbal response that would be just as hard to retract. ‘I’m not a good girl.’
‘It would seem that you are,’ he answered smoothly, ‘given that you’re about to get out.’
The
