Socialite's Gamble

And that was when he realised why she had scared him so much. Why he felt like he had been running from the minute he’d met her. He’d fallen in love with her. And dammit if she wasn’t right. When you fell in love, truly in love, you couldn’t not be with that person.

‘Aidan?’

Aidan looked across the table at Ben and realised he had no idea what was going on in the meeting.

He leaned back against the window and gripped the ledge. ‘Gentlemen, if you would all excuse me, I would like to speak with Ben James alone for a moment.’

The board members blinked almost in unison, then one by one they slowly rose and exited the room.

Ben let out a low whistle. ‘I’m not sure anyone’s ever asked the AFL board to wait in the hallway like that before. Hell of a way to convince them to reject Ellery’s bid. What the blazes is going on?’

Aidan pushed away from the window and reached for his jacket. ‘I need you to run the meeting.’

‘You need me to …’ Ben stopped. ‘Why?’

‘I have somewhere I need to be.’

‘Right now?’

Aidan gave him a faint smile. ‘I made a bad decision yesterday and now that I know it I have to fix it straightaway.’

Ben shook his head. ‘Do I know about this decision? Do you need my input?’

Aidan smiled. ‘Only to hold the fort while I’m gone.’

‘What if we lose the bid?’ Ben said quickly. ‘I can tell you, Aidan, I feel pretty confident to stand in for you on most things but I know how important this is. If I lose it …’

Aidan buttoned his jacket. ‘It won’t matter.’

Ben stared at him. ‘Mate, are you sure you’re okay?’

Aidan smiled. ‘Yes, I think, finally, maybe I am.’

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

Cara looked up at Lucilla, who had insisted on accompanying her to the Demarche launch party. Despite the slight tiredness around her sister’s eyes, Lucilla looked stunning. She’d look even more so with her hair down but no amount of nagging could convince Lucilla to do anything other than tie it back out of her way. Sighing, Cara wondered how to answer her sister’s concerned question.

Yes, she was okay, even though she felt slightly sick in the stomach. The model she was competing against to win the contract was one of the most beautiful women Cara had ever seen. And one of the nicest. On a scale of one to ten Cara put Serena Bhattessa at eleven and herself at maybe a seven. On a good day.

In fact, Cara wasn’t even sure why she was in the running anymore and it bothered her that she wasn’t more bothered by the thought of losing the contract. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? This was why she had left Aidan.

Well, no, this wasn’t why she had left Aidan. In fact, she hadn’t wanted to leave him. She’d wanted to go to Sydney with him. And she probably would be there right now if Aidan had wanted her with him.

She felt her throat constrict. She promised herself that she wouldn’t think of him for the next three hours at least.

So far she’d lasted five minutes.

‘Never better,’ she finally answered Lucilla, smiling reassuringly at her sister.

Lucilla regarded her dubiously. ‘You seem different.’

‘It’s the brown hair,’ Cara said. ‘I look normal.’

‘Cara, you’re far too beautiful to ever look normal,’ Lucilla murmured. ‘No, it’s something else. You seem really … worried.’

Drat. Her bathroom mirror had lied when it had reflected sophisticated confidence and she straightened her shoulders and blanked her mind of everything but where she was.

‘It’s this horrible competition. I hate being on show and the waiting is killing me.’

‘I can imagine. It’s a pity Aidan couldn’t make it tonight.’

‘Yes.’ Cara swallowed the lump in her throat at the mention of Aidan’s name. She had yet to tell her sister that the whole Aidan Kelly thing had been a ruse and she wasn’t about to do so right now.

It had taken at least five drops of special eyedrops and six mushy teabags to clear the redness and swelling from her eyes as it was and the only reason she hadn’t put contacts in was because she hadn’t wanted to aggravate them more than the nonstop crying had.

Which was going to stop, too. Her heart might feel shattered by Aidan Kelly’s rejection, but that didn’t mean that her life had to be, as well.

And one way to make sure that it wasn’t was to win this annoying competition and keep busy.

So far she had cried for almost twenty-four hours straight and she knew if she started thinking about Aidan she would start crying again and she couldn’t afford to do that.