She frowned. ‘Hmm. Yes, well, I can see why you’d be put off relationships for life.’
‘I’m not.’
Dan hadn’t meant to say that, the words just sort of slipped out, but now they had, maybe they were true. He was in a relationship with Zoe and, OK, so it hadn’t been going on for all that long, but by and large the press had left them alone and things so far had been ticking along quite nicely. So all in all far from being put off relationships he rather thought he actually might be in favour of the things.
Her brow cleared and a light appeared in her eyes. ‘It hasn’t?’
‘No.’
Zoe nodded, as if to herself. ‘OK, well, in that case maybe I ought to practise what I preach.’
‘What?’
She took a deep breath and something about the way she pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin had his senses on high alert. ‘What are we doing here, Dan?’ she said. ‘And I don’t mean here at this wedding. I mean—’
But whatever Zoe did mean Dan didn’t catch because from somewhere he heard a throaty laugh and his head filled with a whooshing kind of noise that blocked out pretty much everything.
And then his brain cleared, and as trepidation began to flow through his veins he turned to locate the source of the laugh and when he found it, when he saw her, all the warmth and light that Zoe aroused in him fled, and as memories slammed into his head his blood turned to ice and his stomach turned to lead.
TWELVE
Bugger.
The question about where they were heading that Zoe had plucked up so much courage to ask had fallen on deaf ears, because while a second ago Dan’s focus had been totally on her, now it was most definitely not.
Now, instead of looking deep into her eyes as if they were the only two people in the marquee and enveloping her with a warmth that not even the chilly December air could pierce, he was staring at a point in the distance, his face utterly expressionless and his eyes more shuttered than she’d ever seen them. It was as if he’d sort of switched himself off and the sudden startling change in him was bewildering to say the least.
‘Dan?’ she said, wondering whether she ought to be a bit worried at the ashen pallor of his face and the tension suddenly gripping his body.
He didn’t answer and she got the impression that he was barely aware she was there. He looked as if he were somewhere else entirely, and she would have found the whole thing rather unflattering if she hadn’t been so concerned.
‘Dan?’ she said again, only this time a bit louder.
He whipped his gaze back to her and as he looked down at her, his eyes completely blank, she shivered with a weird sense of apprehension.
‘What?’ he said, so abruptly, so coldly that she took a quick step back in shock.
‘A
re you all right?’
‘Of course I am,’ he snapped, clearly not all right at all. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Because you’re all tense and you’ve gone very pale. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
He shot her a humourless smile. ‘Merely an ex-girlfriend.’
‘Oh?’ said Zoe, trying and, she suspected, failing to keep the suddenly rampant curiosity out of her voice. And then because of the strength of his reaction it didn’t take her long to land on the heart-sinking conclusion that this wasn’t just any old girlfriend. It was The Ex-Girlfriend, the deceitful ambitious cow he’d loved, who’d selfishly put her career first without even discussing it, and torn him to pieces. Nothing ‘mere’ about that at all. ‘Where?’
‘By the ice sculpture.’
‘It’s a vodka luge.’
He frowned at her. ‘What?’
‘It’s a vodka luge not an ice sculpture.’
‘Does it matter?’