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Now they all ca in to fill the silence

With a shaking hand she picked up her phone, longing to hear Alexander‘s voice Maybe that would re this for And stop her fro in a taxi back to the airport

Standing in front of the mirror, Cristiano dropped the ends of the silk bow tie for the sixth time and swore viciously

No matter how many formal awards dinners and black tie sports events he‘d attended over the years it had never got any easier It was as if the ridiculous thing had a mind of its own and was determined to show him up as an impostor—a boy from the back alleys of Naples The boy in the second-hand school blazer, who couldn‘t write a line in an exercise book without se The boy ould never a

Damn

Above the upturned white collar of his shirt, a muscle jumped in his freshly shaven cheek as his old friend despair wrapped hi embrace

Da up with the idea of this absurd and completely inappropriate party

Da with it

Turning away froh hair that was still da he‘d achieved in the last twelve years had been as a result of his need to escape his past, but he had always shied away fro too far into the future There was no point

His future had always looked dazzlingly assured, so he‘d lived in thethe most of now

Death or glory Those had always seemed to be the potential outco until he was ready to stop, or die in a ball of flale with demons he couldn‘t see, didn‘t understand, had never occurred to him as a possibility

Yanking the tie from round his neck he tossed it onto the bed and walked across the expanse of glea wooden floor to the wardrobe—the only other piece of furniture in the huge rooh in the hills above Monte Carlo six years ago now, but had so it properly In the old days before his accident, he had si around the Grand Prix circuits in the su out of season And since the crash…

Viciously he slid back the wardrobe door and dragged out the battered leather holdall that had accompanied him around the racetracks of the world Since the crash it had been as if he aiting, he acknowledged bleakly Waiting for a thousand bits of jigsaw to fit back together again before he moved on with his life

Except noas obvious that it wasn‘t going to happen like that, because so

Maybe now it’s tiive yourself a rest Take soot…

Dr Fournier‘s voice echoed inside his head as he pulled clothes fro the quickly, and it took his he needed and throw the keys to the chalet on the top At the first opportunity he was going to get the hell out of the party and drive up to Courchevel

As he zipped up the bag he allowed hi to do as he was told Because he intended to beat this ain

Whatever it took

¯Night, Mummy‘

Goodnight, darling Sweet dreaain in the—‘

There was a h-pitched tone that told her that Alexander had hung up already He‘d sounded in great spirits, and although she wasn‘t confident he and Ruby would be asleep any ti miserable either

That was just her

She listened to the tone for a few secondsto sever the tenuous connection that had for a few minutes stretched across all the dark miles that separated them Then with massive effort she pressed the button, tossed her phone into her black velvet evening bag and stood up Her face in the brightly lit hotel hostly pale Her eyes—by contrast—were enor loose around her face to her shoulders, kinking horribly because it had dried long before Lisa had finished hogging the hairdryer Lizzie had shown her how to coil it up and pin it into one of those sexy, wispy styles that other woood at, but when Kate had tried earlier her hands had been shaking so ive up

Oh, well, it was good to have so to hide behind anyway