while he drove me home.’ She could see Max now, standing on her doorstep, holding out his hand for her key, which she had meekly handed over. ‘When we got there, he made me drink a vat of water until I’d sobered up. He sat on the sofa next to me and told me about living in Africa while I drank glass after glass.
‘It was the first I’d heard about Mbanazere,’ she went on, a distant expression in her green eyes. ‘I remember Max telling me about staying in a hotel by the Indian Ocean and eating crab mayonnaise sandwiches under the palm trees. He made it sound so…so magical, I suppose, that I got caught up in the whole thing, like a dream. It’s the only way I can explain it.’
‘Explain what?’
Freya fiddled with her glass. ‘It was really strange, but as he talked I suddenly began to find him irresistible. One minute I was rambling on about being dumped by Alan and the next I could hardly keep my hands off Max. It was bizarre! I mean, I’d never found him remotely attractive before, but it was like being possessed. I honestly couldn’t do anything about it.’
She squirmed, remembering how she had tried to slide seductively along the sofa, only to spoil the effect by toppling against him. The way Max had frozen as she whispered huskily in his ear. That heart-stopping pause before his arms had come round her and pulled her down onto the cushions.
‘I must have been completely blootered,’ she said, shifting uncomfortably on her stool.
But not so blootered that she couldn’t remember everything that had happened then in extraordinary detail.
‘Everyone has embarrassing moments like that,’ Pel tried to console her, seeing her scarlet cheeks. ‘I remember when—well, never mind. The thing is, it could have been a lot worse. It’s not as if you—’
He broke off as he noticed Freya’s expression. ‘Ah,’ he said in belated realisation. ‘You did?’
She nodded.
There was a pause. Pel cleared his throat. ‘So what happened? Afterwards, I mean,’ he added hastily.
‘Nothing.’ Freya concentrated on twisting the glass between her fingers. ‘Max couldn’t wait to leave. Said it had been a mistake, and that it would be better if we both pretended that it had never happened. Which was fine by me.
‘I mean, it was a relief,’ she went on, very conscious that she sounded as if she were still trying to convince herself. ‘I’d been lying there, wondering how I was going to face him in the morning. He was Lucy’s brother. It was practically incest.’
Pel snorted. ‘Rubbish!’
‘That’s what it felt like,’ she insisted. ‘It wasn’t even as I’d ever liked him that much. He was certainly never the stuff of my adolescent fantasies. He’s not bad-looking, but there’s nothing special about him either, and he was always too serious and stuffy to have any fun. He used to look down his nose at Lucy and me, and make the kind of cutting remarks that you never quite knew how to take.’
Freya brooded into her glass, thinking about Max and his uncanny ability to make her feel stupid. ‘Anyway, I was perfectly happy to pretend that it had never happened. Max obviously wished it hadn’t, and so did I.’
‘Really?’
Her eyes slid away from Pel’s. ‘Well…’
‘Ooh, Freya, it was fantastic, wasn’t it?’
‘Pel!’
‘You can’t fool me.’ Pel was enjoying himself hugely. He loved gossip, especially if he was the only one in the know. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’
‘No! Yes! Oh, I don’t know,’ she admitted on a sigh. ‘It was like we were two entirely different people in a completely different world.’
‘Sounds like the ultimate fantasy,’ commented Pel.
‘Well, it’s not mine, and I’m quite sure it wasn’t Max’s,’ said Freya tartly. ‘As far as I’m concerned it was just an embarrassing incident, which I’d really rather forget. It’s six years ago now, and Max and I have hardly exchanged a word since. When I saw him at Lucy’s wedding last year, he behaved as if he hadn’t seen me since Lucy and I were doing our A-levels.’
She couldn’t quite keep an edge of chagrin from her voice. It might be a huge relief to think that Max had no memory of that embarrassing night, but no girl wanted to know that she could be quite so comprehensively forgotten, especially when she herself had had so much trouble putting the whole incident from her mind.
‘He’d obviously forgotten the whole business,’ she said.
‘You haven’t,’ Pel pointed out.
‘Only because I’m living in his apartment with all his things. I hadn’t thought of him for years before Lucy suggested that I move in there,’ she added, not entirely truthfully.
‘It must be a bit awkward, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is, but I was desperate for somewhere to live where I wouldn’t haemorrhage money on rent, and it wasn’t as if I had to actually see Max or anything. He flew out the week before I moved in and left the keys with Lucy. And she was so thrilled with her idea that I couldn’t tell her why I didn’t feel comfortable taking such a huge favour from Max.’
Pel sat up, suddenly alert. ‘You mean Lucy doesn’t know that you and Max…?’
‘I couldn’t tell her,’ Freya admitted, running her finger around the rim of her glass. ‘It was too difficult. She was my best friend.’
‘I thought I was your best friend!’ said Pel, ruffling up immediately.
‘Yes, yes, you are,’ she soothed him, ‘but in a different way. Besides, I didn’t know you then. And Max is Lucy’s brother. She’s always grumbling about him, but I know that deep down she adores him, and she’d hate to think that there might be a problem between us.
‘It was my fault, too, and you know what it’s like if you don’t confess immediately. The longer I didn’t say anything, the harder it got to bring the subject up, and in the end it just seemed easier to keep quiet.
‘You’re the only person I’ve ever told,’ Freya went on, fixing Pel with a steely look, ‘and if you mention it to anyone—even Marco—I will take you back to the gym and attach a certain part of your anatomy to the heaviest weights I can find so that you spend the rest of your life talking in a very, very high voice. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly,’ he pretended to squeak. ‘Your secret is safe with me!’
‘It had better be! Now, can we please drop the subject and go back to my party? Max is just a blip in my past. I’m much more interested in the divine Dan Freer and how he’s going to change my life, so let’s get another drink and draw up a guest list.’
CHAPTER TWO
DECIDING to seduce Dan Freer was all very well in theory, Freya reflected as she sipped a cocktail and tried to look as if she was enjoying her own party, but in practice it didn’t seem quite so easy as she had
