Zoe took the paper, her hands suddenly trembling uncontrollably. With her heart in her throat she looked down at the front page and in a numb daze she read the headline that basically screamed kiss-and-tell. She looked at the photos of her that she’d let be taken and the archive pictures of Dan, and then on legs that were turning to water she stumbled over to the bed and sank down onto the mattress a second before her knees gave way.
Somehow she managed to read the words that started on page one, and somehow she managed to turn to pages four and five where they continued.
And with every word she read she went a little bit colder, her heart beat a little bit slower and her horror increased that little bit more because, oh, God, it was all there. Every single thing she’d told Lizzie—who’d seemed so interested and friendly—in relentless appalling quoted detail. The bullying she’d suffered at school, the names of the girls behind it and what she thought of them. The way she and Dan had met and the circumstances that had led to the ‘engagement’. His three-date rule and the confidentiality agreement she’d agreed to sign. His relationship with Natalie—although thank God she hadn’t mentioned the abortion—and his feelings towards his mother and his aunts.
Oddly she didn’t give a toss about the gorily personal stuff about her. She didn’t care about how it might affect her reputation or Lily’s or that of their business, although that was something she’d have to figure out later. Right now all she could think about were the things she’d revealed about him.
Indiscreet didn’t come close to describing the way she’d spilled the information. It was as if Lizzie had slipped her a truth drug and to every question she could now see hadn’t been simply the friendly enquiry she’d thought at the time, she’d given an answer. A full, in-depth and sometimes highly personal answer.
She’d done what she’d sworn she’d never do. She’d kissed and told.
As the enormity of what she’d done sank in shame swept through her and a cold sweat broke out all over her skin. ‘Dan, I—’ she started with no idea of how to continue because she couldn’t even begin to work out where to apologise.
‘How could you?’ he interrupted with such icy calm that she flinched.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ she said, and inwardly cringed because it sounded so lame, so wholly inadequate.
‘How could you have been so bloody naïve?’
‘I just...well, she seemed nice and interested and asked so many questions and...’ She tailed off, unable to look him in the eye, unable to look at him at all, in fact, so great was the shame pouring through her.
‘Of course she was interested,’ he said, his voice too eerily calm and in control for a man who was clearly beyond furious. ‘Of course she asked questions. She’s a bloody journalist.’
‘But I didn’t know that,’ said Zoe, beginning to feel a little desperate because this was bad, very bad, and she didn’t know what to do. ‘She implied that she was a distant cousin.’
‘A cousin?’ he echoed in chilling disbelief. ‘And you believed her?’
‘I didn’t have any reason not to.’ Although she hadn’t exactly asked many questions of her own, had she?
‘She was there to cover the wedding for one of those celebrity gossip magazines. How could you not have known?’
Zoe let out a little nervous hysterical laugh. ‘Well, you know how bad I am with people.’
For a moment there was utter silence. Silence so absolute that Zoe could hear the rustling of the leaves of the tree outside their window. The thumping of her heart. The slow breath that Dan blew out as if to release the pressure that had built up inside him. Silence that went on for so long that Zoe thought he’d accepted her defence. Accepted her apology and was maybe ready to forgive her for her stupidity and move on.
So she risked a glance at him and as her stomach somersaulted she saw that he didn’t accept her defence or her apology and whatever they might have had was now hanging in the balance because his eyes were blazing, the pulse at the base of his neck was pounding and his face was thunderous.
‘Bad with people?’ he said, practically exploding. ‘Bad with people? That’s your excuse for this?’
Zoe leapt to her feet, racking her brains in an effort to work out what she could say to make things better. ‘No, of course not,’ she said quickl
y, panic sweeping through her at the realisation that there wasn’t anything she could say to make it better. ‘There is no excuse.’
‘No, there isn’t,’ he snarled, ‘because you know the press are interested in me, you know the efforts they’ll go to to get even a crumb of information and you handed them everything. On a bloody plate.’
The only thing she could do was continue with the genuine regret, take his fury and his accusations on the chin and wait for his anger to blow out. Hope it did. Hope this wasn’t the end, that she hadn’t screwed things up for good.
‘If I’d known she was press,’ Zoe said, her throat thickening at the thought that she might have ruined everything, ‘I’d have walked away the minute she came over and said hello. You must believe that.’
‘Must I? Why? Didn’t you stop and think about what you were doing even for a second?’
‘No.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘I was distracted.’ She’d been so dazed and stunned she hadn’t been thinking clearly at all.
‘By what?’ he all but shouted. ‘What you were going to get out of it?’