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With a fascination which see her when she wasn’t looking When she was curled up in an ar his life seem almostnormal He’d never had normal before And hadn’t he been filled with an unbearable sense of longing for the fa his own childhood? Hadn’t he started wondering again whether he could give this child what he’d never had hi was for sure: he could not break the heart of his child’s mother

The car stopped outside the restaurant and as she draped the scarlet shawl around her shoulders he found he couldn’t look away He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss all that shiny lipstick away fro on a false promise?

‘You lookgreat,’ he said neutrally as the driver opened the limousine door for her

‘Thanks’

Ellie’s fingers tightened around the gilt chain of her handbag First he’d shot her down in flareat? Was that the best he could do? Why, she’d had more praise from her science teacher at school—and she was hopeless at science Cautiously, she stepped onto the pave how unlike the Ellie of old she er to have bought her an apartht

She was grateful for the armour of her expensive new clothes in a roo—but it wasn’t that which irlfriends looked so happy Did she? Did she look how a new bride was supposed to look—all dewy-eyed and serene? She wondered if anyone guessed that inside she felt as if she were clinging onto this strange new reality by the tips of her fingers

But sos up in your head and they weren’t nearly as bad as you’d feared The woned Alek’s apartment—Alannah—turned out to be a lot less scary than Ellie had iined Maybe because she was ly handsome man who seemed to command almost as much attention as Alek and who clearly adored his wife

Souests wereto Luis and Carly and discovered they were all friends going back years When the sultan arrived—last—Ellie was overcoht not have bought such high heels if she’d thought about having to curtsey in the and quickly put her at her ease, and his Welsh as lovely

Ellie watched the exalted group ofwith one another and as she listened to their wives eagerly discussing their social calendars she tried not to feel like the outsider in their midst

‘Lethold of Ellie’s hand and peering down at the glittering band ‘Gosh, it’s beautiful Those diaht’ She raised her eyes and smiled ‘So tell us about Alek’s proposal—was it romantic?’

Ellie wished she’d anticipated this perfectly understandable question so that she could have prepped an answer She didn’t kno honest to be She didn’t kno much he’d already told them She knew that apart fron of her pregnancy Maybe souessed the reason why the world’s er, but for soht now Couldn’t tonight be her fantasy? Couldn’t she play the part of the shiny-eyed new bride and pretend, just this once?

So she curved a smile—and found it was stupidly easy to let her voice treht up in the memory ‘He kissed me in Bond Street and almost stopped the traffic’

‘Really?’ Alannah set a room” moment fro about hi as a waitress?’

A sudden lu words difficult and Ellie just nodded She wondered if Alek ever thought about that moment of passion beneath the starry sky That split second of thoughtlessness, setting off the doret it?

Yet as she glanced over to see him deep in conversation with Murat, she found that she couldn’t regret what had happened, because so incredible had happened when she’d lain with him and she couldn’t seeant and cold, but there was sonet, no ht be senseless to care about hi? Could you stop yourself fro in love with someone, even if you kneas a mistake?