I risked a swift glance anyway, and spotted Jonathan, pushing his way through the crowd towards us. He had Lori with him, looking tiny and delicate in a sophisticated ivory number. I immediately felt crass and garish in comparison, but it was too late to run away.

‘Remember-make him jealous,’ Phin murmured in my ear.

There was no way Jonathan would even notice me next to Lori, I thought, but I turned obediently and slid my arm around Phin’s waist, snuggling closer and smiling up at him as if I hadn’t noticed Jonathan at all.

Perhaps that kiss had worked after all. It felt oddly comfortable to be leaning against Phin’s hard, solid body-so much so, in fact, that when Jonathan’s voice spoke behind me I was genuinely startled.

‘I’m glad you’re here, Phin,’ Jonathan began. ‘I just wanted to check everything’s under control. We want to kick off with your speech, and then Stephen’s going to-’

He broke off as his gaze fell on me, and I gave him my most dazzling smile. ‘Summer!’

‘Hi, Jonathan,’ I said.

Gratifyingly, he looked pole-axed. ‘I didn’t recognise you,’ he said.

Beside him, Lori raised elegant brows. ‘Nor did I. That colour really suits you, Summer.’

‘Thank you,’ I said coolly. ‘You look great, too.’

Jonathan was still watching me with a stunned expression. Funny, I had dreamt of him looking at me just that way, but now that he was doing it I felt awkward and embarrassed.

‘You look amazing tonight,’ he said, and all I could think was that it wasn’t fair of him to be talking to me like that when Lori was standing right beside him.

‘Doesn’t she?’ Phin locked gazes with Jonathan in an unspoken challenge, and slid his hand possessively beneath my hair to rest it on the nape of my neck.

I could feel the warm weight of it-not pressing uncomfortably, but just there, a reassuring connection-and I had one of those weird out of body moments when you can look at yourself as if from the outside. I could see how easy we looked together, how right.

Jonathan and Lori had no reason not to believe that we were a real couple. They would look at us and assume that we were used to touching intimately, to understanding each other completely. To not knowing precisely where one finished and the other began, so that there was no more me, no more Phin, just an us.

The thought of an ‘us’ made the world tip a little. Abruptly I was back in my body, and desperately aware of Phin’s solid strength beneath my arm, of the tingling imprint of his palm on my neck.

There was no us, I had to remind myself. I only just stopped myself shaking my head to clear it. Everything about the party seemed so unreal, but I was bizarrely able to carry on a conversation with Jonathan and Lori while every cell in my body was straining with Phin’s closeness.

True, it wasn’t much of a conversation. Some small talk about Stephen Hodge and his vile temper. I complimented Lori on her earrings, she mentioned my shoes, but all I could really think about was the way Phin was absently stroking my neck, his thumb caressing my skin.

Every graze of his fingertips stoked the sizzle deep inside me, and I was alarmingly aware that it could crackle into life at any time. If I wasn’t careful there would be a whoosh and I would spontaneously combust. That would spoil Stephen Hodge’s party all right.

I had to move away from Phin or it would all get very messy. Straightening, I made a show of pushing my hair behind my ears. ‘Um…isn’t it time for your speech?’ I asked him with an edge of desperation.

‘I suppose I’d better throw a few scraps to the monster’s ego,’ sighed Phin. ‘He hasn’t been kow-towed to for all of thirty seconds! Where would you like me to do it, Jonathan?’

‘We’ve set up a podium,’ said Jonathan. ‘I’d better go and warn Stephen that we’re ready to go.’

‘Lead on,’ said Phin, and held out his hand to me. ‘Are you coming, CP?’

Jonathan looked puzzled. ‘CP?’

I smiled uncomfortably as I took Phin’s hand. ‘Private joke,’ I said.


After that, we had to kiss every time we got ready to go out. ‘Come here and be kissed,’ Phin would say, holding out his arms. ‘This is the best part of the day.’

I was very careful to keep reminding myself that those kisses didn’t mean a thing, but secretly I found myself looking forward to them. I always tried to make a joke of it, of course.

‘Oh, let’s get it over with, then,’ I’d say, putting my arms briskly around his neck, but there was always a moment when our determined jokiness faded into something else entirely, something warm and yearning-the moment when I succumbed to the honeyed pleasure spilling along my veins, to the tug of longing and the wicked crackle of excitement between us.

I would like to say that it was me who put an end to the kiss every time, but I’d be lying. It was almost always Phin who lifted his head before I remembered that it was only supposed to be a quick kiss and thought about pulling away.

‘We’re getting good at this now,’ Phin would say. I noticed, though, that the famous smile looked a little forced, and he was often distracted afterwards.

The theory had been that the more we kissed, the easier it would get. But it didn’t work like that. It got more and more difficult to disentangle those kisses from reality, harder and harder to remember that I wanted Jonathan, that Phin was just amusing himself.

To remember why we had to stop at a kiss.

And the worst thing was that there was a bit of me that didn’t want to.

Whenever I realised that I’d give myself a stern ticking off. This would involve a rigorous reminder of all the reasons why it would be stupid to fall for someone like Phin. He wasn’t serious. He wasn’t steady. He didn’t want to settle down. I’d end up hurt and humiliated and I’d have no one to blame but myself.

Much-much-more sensible to remember why I had loved Jonathan. Why I still loved him, I’d have to correct myself an alarming number of times.

Jonathan was everything Phin wasn’t. He was everything I needed.

I just couldn’t always remember why.

Ironically, the harder I tried to remind myself of how much I wanted Jonathan, the more often Jonathan found excuses to drop into the office.

‘You can’t tell me our plan’s not working now,’ Phin said to me one evening as we sipped champagne at some gallery opening. ‘Jonathan’s always sniffing around nowadays. I trip over him every time I come into office. I notice he was there again this afternoon.’

He sounded uncharacteristically morose, and I shot him a curious look.

‘He just came to see what I knew about the Cameroon trip,’ I said uncomfortably, although I had no idea why I felt suddenly guilty.

‘Ha!’ said Phin mirthlessly. ‘Was that all he could think of as an excuse?’

‘It wasn’t an excuse,’ I said.

I had the feeling Jonathan was looking forward to going to Africa about as much as I was. I’d tried everything I could to get out of the trip, but Phin was adamant. The flights were booked for the end of March, and I was dreading it.

It was so not my kind of travelling. I like city breaks-Paris or Rome or New York-and hotels with hairdryers and mini bars, all of which were obviously going to be in short supply on the Cameroon trip. We’d had to be vaccinated against all sorts of horrible tropical diseases, and Phin had presented us all with a kit list so that we’d know what to take with us. Hairdryers didn’t appear on it. I would be taking a rucksack instead of a pull-along case, walking boots in place of smart city shoes.

‘And don’t bother with any make-up,’ Phin had told me. ‘Sunblock is all you’ll need.’

I was taking some anyway.

I don’t suppose Jonathan was bothered about the make-up issue, but he was clearly anxious about the whole experience. Phin had presented the trip as a staff development exercise, and I suspected Jonathan didn’t want to be developed any more than I did.

‘I’m really glad you’re going to be in same group when we go to Africa,’ he had said to me, only that afternoon.

Phin was eyeing me moodily over the rim of his champagne glass. ‘Nobody could be that worried about going to Africa. He just wants to hang around and talk to you.’ He scowled at me. ‘I hope you’re not going to give in too easily. Make him work to get you back!’

‘Look, what’s the problem?’ I demanded. ‘Isn’t the whole idea that Jonathan starts to find me interesting again? Or did you want to spend the rest of your life stuck in this pretence?’

‘It just irritates me that he’s being so cautious.’ Phin hunched a shoulder. ‘If you’d been mine, and I’d realised what an idiot I’d been, I wouldn’t be dithering around talking about malaria pills, or whether to pack an extra towel, and how many pairs of socks to take. I’d be sweeping you off your feet.’

It wasn’t like Phin to be grouchy. That was my role. The worst thing was that there was a bit of me that agreed with him. But I had no intention of admitting that.

‘Yes, well, the whole point is that you’re not Jonathan,’ I said. ‘Yes, he’s being careful-but that’s only sensible. As far as he knows I’m in love with his boss. It would be madness to charge in and try and sweep me off unless he was sure how I felt.’

I lifted my chin. ‘And I wouldn’t want to be with someone that reckless,’ I went on. ‘I’d rather have someone who thought things through, who saw how the land lay, and then acted when he was sure of success. Someone like Jonathan, in fact.’

And right then I even believed it.

Or told myself I did, anyway.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, but you have to remember how clear Phin always made it that he would never consider a permanent relationship. He liked teasing me, he liked kissing me, and we got on surprisingly well, but there was never any question that there might be more than that.