Sleepless in Manhattan (From Manhattan with Love 1)

“I know what it means.” Eva added the final cupcake and stood back. “So now I’ll ask you again. How does it feel, Paige?”

“Scary.” Almost too scary to think about. She’d felt this way about him before and he’d rejected her. Hurt her. What had she been thinking? Had she really thought that this time she’d be immune? That she could keep this up until they both—until they both what? “It feels terrifying. Like I’m about to jump from a plane with no parachute.”

Like the biggest risk of all.

“Are you going to tell him?”

“No!” Never in a million years would she have the courage to put herself out there again.

“You should.” Frankie was blunt. “You should tell him.”

“I told him once before. It didn’t turn out well.”

“That was different. It was years ago. You were virtually underage.”

“I was not underage! And it went badly wrong. This time I’m keeping my feelings to myself.” She’d promised him, hadn’t she? She’d promised him she could handle this. That she was fine with this. It wasn’t fair on him to suddenly change her mind about that. “I have to—I have to think about how to handle this. I have to think about the options.”

“And the obvious option isn’t to tell him straight?” Frankie looked at her with exasperation. “And you wonder why I avoid love? This is why! It’s like one of those cryptic crosswords. No one actually says what they really feel.”

“If I tell him how I feel, I’ll lose him. It’s too much of a risk.”

“But you’re always saying you want to take risks. That you want to live.”

“I do, but—” Paige thought about the consequences if she was wrong. She thought about how much it had hurt the last time. “This is different.” She could carry on with the affair. Carry on having sex and having fun. She didn’t need to put a name to it.

The door opened and she glanced up.

“We can talk about this later. Let’s keep it professional, gang. Our client is here.”

“And it looks as if our client has already had a drink or ten,” Frankie muttered. “Better water down the champagne. And put the paramedics on standby, because if she falls in those heels there is going to be damage.”

Paige walked across the room to meet her client, her smile warm and sincere.

“Happy Birthday, Crystal.”

“I’m not sure how happy I am.” The woman teetered on impossibly high heels. “Thirty. Can you believe that? I was trying to keep it quiet at work, but they opened champagne for me. I may have drunk too much too fast. And there was no food.”

“We have food.” Paige gestured discreetly to Eva and took Crystal to one of the tables that had been laid for dinner. “You should eat something before your friends arrive.”

“I don’t even know why I’m celebrating, frankly. An

d if you tell me I look twenty I’ll know you’re lying, so don’t.”

“You don’t look twenty. You look a whole lot better than twenty.” Paige narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know about you, but at twenty I was gawky and I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted, and even if I had known I wouldn’t have had the courage to go after it. At thirty, you’re confident about who you are. And Crystal, you look incredible.”

Crystal blinked. “I do?”

“You know you do. You chose the dress. I bet you stood in front of the mirror and thought this is it.” Paige’s smile was genuine. “It’s perfect. You look perfect.”

Crystal glanced down at herself. “I did fall in love with the dress. It was my consolation for being thirty and not having achieved any of the things I wanted to achieve.”

“What did you want to achieve?”

“Oh, you know, all the usual things—” Crystal gave a wistful shrug. “I wanted to change the world and make a difference. Instead I’m a tiny cog in a wheel.”

“You don’t always have to change the whole world,” Paige murmured, “just a small part of it, and sometimes those changes are small but it doesn’t make them less important. Without the cog, the wheel wouldn’t move.”

Crystal gave her a long look. “That’s nice. I like it.”