‘I wasn’t thinking of him being exciting,’ said Nell, still more than a little unnerved by her sister’s perspicacity. ‘I was just going to say that meeting him was just as unlikely as meeting Brad Pitt… I can’t believe you guessed it was him!’

‘I suppose it’s just because we’ve been talking about him recently,’ said Thea soothingly. ‘I knew he was back in London and it would be a surprise to run into him, that’s all. Tell me what happened.’

‘It was so weird, Thea,’ Nell said. ‘I still can’t really take it in. One minute I was walking along with Clara, and the next he was there.’ She told Thea about falling off the kerb into P.J.’s car. ‘I thought I was imagining things at first. I thought it was the shock of the accident, but it really was him.’

Thea was delighted. ‘Ooh, Nell, you know what this means, don’t you? It’s fate, literally throwing you together again!’

Nell sighed. She might have known Thea would start on that line. ‘It was a coincidence, Thea, that’s all.’

‘A pretty amazing one, though! Well, go on, what’s he like now?’

‘He’s just the same…’ P.J.’s image rose before Nell with startling clarity. Those blue, blue eyes with their lurking laughter, the strong nose and jaw and the humorous mouth that seemed constantly about to quirk into a smile, and something clenched inside her. ‘But he’s…well, he’s different, too,’ she finished lamely. ‘He’s sixteen years older, for a start.’

‘Has he grown into his looks, then?’ asked Thea, straightforward as ever. ‘I always thought he would look better when he was older.’

‘Well…’

‘Oh, Nell, he was gorgeous, wasn’t he? I can hear it in your voice!’

‘Not gorgeous exactly,’ Nell protested, before her sister got too carried away. ‘But, yes, he’s quite attractive,’ she added, rather proud of her cool and casual manner.

Sadly, it didn’t fool her sister. ‘Gorgeous, then,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Are you going to see him again?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Nell, trying to sound as if she didn’t care one way or another. ‘He asked me to have dinner with him but…’

‘But what?’ demanded Thea ominously.

‘But I said I didn’t think it was a good idea.’

There was a pause while Thea made an audible attempt to contain her exasperation. ‘Why not?’

‘Thea, there’s no point,’ said Nell.

‘No point in meeting a single, straight, attractive billionaire who just happens to have been in love with you?’

‘He’s certainly not in love with me now,’ said Nell, alarmed to hear, too late, the unconsciously wistful note in her voice.

She made an effort to sound more casual and upbeat. ‘You should see him now, Thea. He wears a suit and tie now, drives an incredibly flash car. He’s very…assured.’

‘P.J. was always like that,’ said Thea to her surprise. ‘Even when he was a teenager, and all legs and nose, he always seemed quietly confident and at ease in his own skin. You don’t meet many people like that, especially not at school!’

‘Well, he’s even more like that now,’ Nell admitted. ‘It was so…odd. I felt as if I knew him, but at the same time it was obvious that I didn’t know him at all. Maybe it was just that I’d changed too much.’

‘You haven’t changed at all.’

‘Yes, I have. I used to be so young and so confident…’ She trailed off a little sadly. ‘I haven’t felt like that for a long time.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Thea conceded thoughtfully. ‘Back then, it was P.J. who seemed to be the lucky one, wasn’t it? Everyone liked him, but he was a bit of a nerd, wasn’t he? And you were always the pretty one with all the boys after you.’

‘He used to say that he couldn’t believe I would even look at him,’ Nell confessed. ‘He made me feel like I was some kind of goddess…and then, this morning… Oh. Thea, I just felt so dowdy and inadequate and a failure compared to him!’

‘I don’t suppose he’d ask you out if he thought that,’ said Thea.

‘I expect he just felt sorry for me,’ said Nell gloomily.

Thea clicked her tongue in exasperation. ‘Nell, you’re still gorgeous! If he asks you out again, you’re to say yes.’

‘He won’t. Anyway, he doesn’t know how to contact me.’

‘That’s not going to be much of a challenge to an intelligent man like P.J., is it? He just needs to ring Janey, who’ll ring me.’

Nell sat up straight in alarm. ‘Thea, you’re not to give her my phone number!’

‘I most certainly will!’ said Thea in her most uncompromising voice. ‘You may want to throw away the chance of getting back together with a wonderful man who’d solve all your problems, but I’m not going to help you do it!’

‘Anyway, he won’t call,’ said Nell perversely. ‘I made it very clear I didn’t want to see him again.’

‘Oh, well, it seems a pity.’

Rather to Nell’s surprise, Thea left it there. ‘Now, what are you wearing tonight?’

‘Oh, I don’t know… My black trousers?’

‘You’re not wearing those trousers again, Nell,’ said Thea bossily. ‘You can wear that dress you bought for my wedding. You look wonderful in that.’

Nell sighed. ‘Do I have to go?’ she asked, thinking that if she hadn’t had this blind date Thea had set her up on, she wouldn’t have had to refuse P.J. that morning. She could have been thinking about looking wonderful for him instead. She would have let herself be persuaded. Just so as not to be rude.

‘It’ll be awful,’ she grumbled. ‘We’ll just end up talking about how wonderful cars are, or about our divorces the way I have with every other man I’ve been out with since Simon.’

‘Well, there haven’t been many of those,’ Thea pointed out reasonably. ‘Not enough to form a pattern, anyway.’

‘I’ve been on four blind dates this year,’ Nell objected, ‘and every single one has been ghastly.’

‘That’s because they were strangers from the lonely hearts column,’ Thea explained patiently. ‘It’ll be different tonight. Why would I set you up with someone awful? I know this guy tonight, and I think he’s great. He’s perfect for you.’

‘Then why won’t you tell me anything about him? Knowing his name is John and that he’ll be sitting in Bar Barabbas with a Swahili dictionary tonight isn’t much to go on!’

‘That’s because I don’t want you going with any preconceptions,’ said Thea. ‘You know what you’re like. You’ll make up your mind about him before you even meet him, and then you’ll get nervous and go all prickly on him.’

The way she had with P.J. that morning, thought Nell guiltily as Thea talked on. She wished she hadn’t been quite so short. It wasn’t his fault that she had felt so flustered, but if only he hadn’t been quite so…overwhelming. She could recall everything about him in vivid detail-his hands on the steering wheel, the twitch at the corner of his mouth, the warmth and humour in his eyes as he’d turned to look at her.

And the way she had longed to reach out and touch him. That was what had really made her uneasy. You couldn’t go around throwing yourself at ex-boyfriends, especially when they had turned into billionaires overnight…well, over sixteen years, anyway.

Thea broke off, suddenly suspicious. ‘Are you listening to me?’ she demanded and Nell caught herself up.

‘Of course I am,’ she lied.

‘I’ve just got a good feeling about today,’ said Thea. ‘You know how you used to tell me that one day I’d wake up, and not know that that was the day I was going to meet the man who would change my life forever? Well, you were right. One day I had no idea about Rhys’s existence, and the next, he was part of my life. All it takes is one day, and your whole life can change.

‘I think today is your day,’ she finished portentously, ‘so all you have to do is go out tonight, relax and be yourself.’

‘There’s no chance of me relaxing until this meeting is over.’ Nell lowered her voice. ‘Eve’s driving us all nuts about it. I’m so wound up now, I’ll be a gibbering wreck by the time we actually get there.’

‘Well, you would go for this high-powered job,’ said Thea unsympathetically. ‘It’s more important that you’re not a gibbering wreck tonight, so don’t be late back. I’ll come over early to make sure you don’t get those black trousers out.’

P.J.’s assistant opened her mouth to pass on a notebook full of messages but he waved her aside. ‘In a minute,’ he said. ‘Can you get my sister on the line first?’

‘P.J.!’ Janey was surprised to hear from him. ‘You don’t usually ring at this time… Nothing’s wrong is it?’

‘Far from it,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Guess who I knocked over this morning?’

‘You knocked someone over?’ Janey was horrified.

‘Not really, but it was pretty close.’ P.J. put on his best Humphrey Bogart accent. ‘But of all the pedestrians on all the pavements in London,’ he paraphrased, ‘I had to knock over Nell Martindale!’

There was a stunned silence at the other end of the phone. ‘Nell? You’re kidding me!’

‘No, I’m not.’ P.J. grinned. ‘And because I know sisters always like to be right, I thought I’d say it before you had a chance to say, “I told you so.” I’ve changed my mind and I do want to see her again. Can you get her number for me from Thea?’

There was another pause. P.J. could practically hear his sister thinking. ‘Why didn’t you just ask Nell out when you saw her?’

‘I did, but she turned me down. She said she had a date tonight.’

‘So do you,’ said Janey in a dry voice.

The smile was wiped from P.J.’s face. ‘Oh, God, I’d forgotten all about that!’ he said, clutching his hair.

‘Don’t even think about trying to back out of it now!’ Janey warned before he could say any more.

‘But, Janey, you’re the one who wanted me to get in touch with Nell!’ said P.J., baffled as ever by his sister’s perverted logic. ‘I’ve admitted that you were right and I was wrong. I do need to get Nell out of my system. Don’t you think it’s a bit unfair on what’s-her-name to pretend I’m looking for another relationship when I’m really only interested in another woman?’