“Let’s have a bet, shall we?” said Mac.

A bet. The very word brought back a rush of memories. Their marriage had had an undercurrent of competition that had kept their relationship sparking, because no matter how frivolous, tender or erotic the challenge, the truth was that neither of them had ever liked to lose.

“So what’s the bet this time?” Georgia asked as coolly as she could.

“I bet I can convince you that I love you and can be what you need,” said Mac. “And, what’s more, I bet I can make you realize that you still love me.”

Georgia laughed. “Well, I bet you can’t!”

“If I win, you tear up those papers and we stay married. If you win…” Mac shrugged. “I’ll sign and the divorce will go straight through.”

“Oh, this is ridiculous! We can’t possibly make a bet like that!”

“Chicken?” said Mac provocatively.

Georgia glared at him. “Is there a time limit on this bet? I don’t want to be hanging on indefinitely.”

“Why don’t we say three months?” suggested Mac.

Three months. She could easily hold out that long.

“All right.” Georgia met his gaze squarely, her own bright with challenge. “You’re on.”

Jessica Hart

Vibrant, fresh and cosmopolitan, Jessica Hart creates stories bursting with emotional warmth and sparkling romance!

Did you know that Jessica Hart won the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award in July 2005 for her Harlequin Romance® novel

Christmas Eve Marriage!

About Christmas Eve Marriage

“Jessica Hart makes this classic plot work like a charm and all her characters are wonderful!”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

Marriage Reunited
Jessica Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Jessica Hart was born in west Africa, and has suffered from itchy feet ever since—traveling and working around the world in a wide variety of interesting but very lowly jobs, all of which have provided inspiration to draw from when it comes to the settings and plots of her stories. Now she lives a rather more settled existence in York, U.K., where she has been able to pursue her interest in history, although she still yearns sometimes for wider horizons. If you’d like to know more about Jessica, visit her Web site www.jessicahart.co.uk

Books by Jessica Hart

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3820—CHRISTMAS EVE MARRIAGE

3844—HERE COMES THE BRIDE*

3861—CONTRACTED: CORPORATE WIFE

3869—MISTLETOE MARRIAGE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘THANK YOU for coming in. I’ll be in touch.’ Georgia closed the door firmly behind the latest applicant for the post of senior photographer on the Askerby and District Gazette and let the bright, polite smile drop from her face.

Mentally she began to compose a letter for Rose to type up and send to all five of the hopefuls who had responded to the advertisement.

Dear X, Thank you so much for coming in and wasting my time today. While admiring your nerve in applying for a job for which you have no experience and absolutely no talent, I am afraid that I am unable to offer you the post. I am desperate for a photographer, but not that desperate. Yours sincerely, Georgia Maitland, Editor.

What a shame you couldn’t tell it how it was, instead of wrapping it in meaningless phrases, thought Georgia, already resigned to drafting a letter that would make her sound kind and encouraging instead of cross and impatient, which was how she really felt.

As if she didn’t have enough to do.

Taking off her glasses, she dropped them on to her desk and threw herself into the battered executive chair with a gusty sigh, spinning round to face the window behind. The view over the rooftops of the town to the hills beyond was one of the few bonuses of the Gazette’s location on the third floor of a bleak Victorian warehouse which had been badly converted in the Seventies.

On this March afternoon, a weak winter sun was struggling to stay above the horizon and the hills, still dusted with snow from a cold snap earlier in the week, were reflecting a pinkish glow. It would make a nice picture, thought Georgia morosely.

If only she could find a photographer capable of taking it.

Behind her, she heard the door to her office open. This would be Rose, still struggling to learn the ropes as the Gazette’s secretary, and almost as anxious as Georgia to find a new photographer. She would be wanting to know how the last interview had gone.

‘He seems terribly nice,’ she had whispered to Georgia confidentially before ushering the last candidate in.

Nice he might have been, a talented photographer he most certainly wasn’t.

‘Please tell me that guy wasn’t the best photographer Askerby can come up with,’ Georgia said without turning round.

‘I could tell you that if you want, but then I’d be lying, and you know I’ve never lied to you, Georgia.’

The voice that answered her was far from her secretary’s cut-glass tones. Instead it was warm and amused, with a Scottish lilt that was more a softening of the hard edges than a full-blown accent.

It was a voice Georgia hadn’t heard for four long years. A voice so unexpected and so bizarrely out of place in her dull provincial office that she froze for a moment, certain that she must be imagining things.

Then, very, very slowly, she swivelled her chair round to face her husband.

‘Hello, Georgia,’ he said.

Georgia’s heart, which had lurched into her throat at the sound of his voice, did a series of spectacular somersaults before landing with a sickening thud that left her reeling and breathless.

Mac Henderson, the love of her life. The man she had married. The man who had broken her heart.

The first instinctive surge of joy at the sight of him was rapidly succeeded, much to Georgia’s relief, by a welcome rush of therapeutic anger. It was typical of Mac to turn up when she was least expecting him!

Just when she had managed to convince herself that she was over him.

How dared he come here looking just the same, with the same heart-shaking smile and the same unsettling humour gleaming in his navy-blue eyes, making her senses pirouette and her bones dissolve exactly the same way they always had?

It wasn’t fair.

Georgia took a deep breath and wished she could remember some of those calming yoga exercises she had once tried.

‘Mac,’ she said, hating the way shock had made her voice husky, although, to be fair, it was a miracle she was able to speak at all given the way her heart was carrying on, cavorting around her ribcage like a red setter out of control. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you.’

Mac looked as if he would have liked to have strolled around, but her office simply wasn’t big enough for him to do more than take a couple of steps in any direction.

There you go, Georgia told herself. Another bonus to add to the view.

In the end, Mac sat down uninvited in the chair recently vacated by the would-be photographer. ‘It took me a little while to track you down,’ he said. ‘You didn’t tell me that you’d left London.’

‘Is there any reason why I should have done?’ asked Georgia coolly.

‘We are married,’ he pointed out.

‘Technically, perhaps,’ she conceded, ‘but we’ve been separated for nearly four years and, since you haven’t made any other attempt to contact me in that time, it didn’t occur to me to keep you informed of my movements.’

Hey, who would have thought she would have been able to come up with a coherent sentence like that? Georgia marvelled. Who needed yoga anyway? She could do this. She could deal with her soon-to-be ex-husband without falling apart or letting the frantic churning get the better of her. Ha!

‘I don’t recall you letting me know whenever you went off to the Middle East or Angola or Liberia or all the other trouble spots you’ve been to over the last few years,’ she added, feeling more confident now.

‘You’ve been keeping track of me?’

The undercurrent of amusement in Mac’s voice made Georgia grit her teeth. He had never really taken her seriously, and it looked as if nothing had changed.

‘I read the papers,’ she said, managing a careless shrug. ‘I see your name under the pictures so I know where you’ve been, that’s all.’

And every time it had been like a knife turning in her heart, knowing that he was in danger, never getting a phone call to say that he was safe, knowing only that he had survived one conflict the next time his photographs of another appeared in the paper.

Of course, Mac had always thrived on risk. His was an odd mixture of recklessness and competence, a confidence bordering on arrogance that he could deal with any obstacle that stood between him and a good picture.

It was what made him a wonderful photographer and a terrible husband. How many nights, Georgia wondered, had she lain awake worrying about where he was and what he was doing, only for him to breeze back, to laugh at her fears and tell her that she should learn to live dangerously, life was so much more fun that way? But it hadn’t been fun for Georgia, just waiting for him to come home. He had never understood how hard it was for her.

She looked across the desk at him now. No, he hadn’t changed. Nobody could call Mac a handsome man, his features were too irregular for that, but he was undeniably attractive, with those dark, lean looks, and that reckless, good-humoured assurance that gave his mobile face its compelling charm.

He was a little thinner now, maybe, a little more battered around the edges, but then, weren’t they all? Georgia thought wryly. You didn’t have to spend your life in wartorn countries to lose your sheen after you hit forty.

He had aged better than she had, she had to acknowledge, but then men always did. Mac’s lines made him look rugged and humorous, hers just made her look tired and tense.

‘Besides,’ she went on, abandoning that depressing line of thought, ‘I am a journalist. It wouldn’t have been that hard to have found you if I’d needed to, which I haven’t until now. I sent the divorce papers care of the Picture Desk at the paper. I presume that’s why you’re here?’

‘Got it in one,’ said Mac, not feeling nearly as casual as he sounded.

Her letter had been forwarded to him in Mozambique. He had been sitting in a bar in Maputo, having collected the mail that had accumulated in his post box while he’d been covering a story up country. He had ordered a beer while he leafed through the letters, opening anything that seemed interesting and leaving the rest until later.

Mac remembered the moment exactly. Remembered frowning slightly at the solicitor’s stamp, turning the envelope over, ripping it open with his thumb. Even at the time he’d thought of Georgia, who would undoubtedly have used a letter opener or a knife to open it neatly rather than leave a jagged tear like that. It was the kind of memory that would catch at him like barbed wire, just when he least expected it.

He remembered shaking the thought of her aside as he’d pulled out the papers and unfolded them, remembered the sickening jolt as he’d read the solicitor’s covering letter and the words sank in. After all this time, Georgia wanted a divorce.

‘I appreciate the effort,’ she said now in a dry voice, ‘but there was no need for you to come. All you had to do was sign the papers and send them back to my solicitor.’

‘But I don’t want to sign,’ said Mac, tipping the chair back so that he was balanced alarmingly on the back legs. ‘I want to talk.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ said Georgia, trying to ignore his balancing act and failing miserably. ‘And stop doing that!’ she snapped, succumbing to the blatant provocation in spite of herself. ‘You’re only doing it to wind me up anyway. You know I hate it when you take stupid risks.’

‘Georgia, I’m only sitting on a chair!’ Mac rolled his eyes, but let the chair legs drop back to the floor.

‘You’re the only person I know who can sit on a chair dangerously,’ she said with a trace of resentment and he grinned.

‘That almost sounds as if you still care about me!’

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Georgia, not quite truthfully. ‘It’s nothing to me if you want to break your neck. Just don’t do it in my office when I’m trying to work!’

‘You’re not working now,’ Mac pointed out. ‘We’re just talking.’

‘We’re not talking,’ she insisted crossly. ‘What is there to talk about?’

‘Our marriage.’

‘Mac, we don’t have a marriage.’ Georgia sighed. ‘We agreed to separate four years ago. It was a mutual decision and since neither of us has changed our mind since then, there doesn’t seem much point in carrying on being married on paper only. Surely you can see that it’s sensible to sort everything out now?’

Sensible. There was a word to describe Georgia, thought Mac, studying her over the desk. She looked tired, he decided, and there were new lines around her smoky-grey eyes, but her blonde hair was still drawn neatly away from her face in a French plait, and she was as immaculately groomed as ever, wearing one of those little suits that always made her look crisp and elegant and just a little buttoned up.

The contrast in the two sides of Georgia had always intrigued him. There was the cool, controlled Georgia who faced the world, and then there was the other, much more alluring Georgia who shed her inhibitions with her neat suit and her sensible shoes, whose smile as she shook her beautiful hair free of its tidy plait had never failed to send a frisson of excitement down his spine.

Look at her now, sitting at her perfectly organised desk, crisp and capable in a scoop-necked silk top and discreet earrings. Who could guess that behind that practical façade was a warm, vibrant, alluring woman? Mac liked to think that he was the only one who knew, the only who had glimpsed the potential in the steady, sensible girl who had escaped the confines of a small Yorkshire town for London all those years ago, the only one to be fascinated and infuriated by her in equal measure.

The realisation that he might not be the only one after all had brought him all the way back from Mozambique, jealousy churning in his gut.

The amusement evaporated from Mac’s face. ‘The thing is, Georgia, you said that neither of us had changed our mind, but that’s not quite true. I have.’

She stared at him. ‘What do you mean, you’ve changed your mind?’

‘About being better off apart than together. I don’t think that any more.’ The navy-blue eyes looked directly into hers. ‘I don’t want a divorce.’

For one long, long moment Georgia couldn’t say anything at all. She was too busy struggling to control her wayward heart which, contrary to all its hard training over the past four years, had done the equivalent of leaping to its feet and punching the air with an exhilarated yes!

How pathetic was that? All those tears, all that heartache. The pain, the confusion, the desolation…she had got over it all. She had survived, she was over him, and now all her body could do was thrill at the mere suggestion that he might, after all, still want her.

Georgia was disgusted with herself. Well, her heart could do what it liked, but her will was stronger now—it had had to be—and she had absolutely no intention of going back to the arguments and the disappointments and the being taken for granted. It had taken her a long time to recover and be ready to move on. This was not the time to slide back down the slippery slope of desire, however sweet and seductive it might be.

‘You may not want a divorce, Mac, but I do,’ she said, hoping that her face didn’t show the turmoil inside her. ‘We’ve been perfectly happy separated for the last four years. What’s the point of us staying married?’

‘What’s the point of us getting divorced?’ he countered.

Tension began to tug at the edge of Georgia’s eye, in spite of her best efforts to stay calm. That tic was a bad habit, one she thought she had kicked along with their marriage.

She could feel the old familiar frustration uncoiling inside her, leaving her taut and jittery. She had tried so hard to get rid of that feeling. Yoga, Pilates, relaxation classes, exercise…all utterly pointless when all it took was for Mac to walk into the room to bring it all back.

Breathe deeply, Georgia told herself. Don’t let him get to you. You’re forty-one, a professional woman, and you don’t need to prove anything to anyone, least of all Mac.

‘I want to move on,’ she said as calmly as she could.

‘Move on?’ Mac echoed, raising derisive brows. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You know what it means, Mac.’ Georgia had to clamp down hard on the irritation that threatened to boil over. She was not going to let this descend into one of their old, circular arguments.

‘Look, we agreed,’ she reminded him. ‘We wanted different things, and neither of us was prepared to compromise, so we decided to separate, and we’ve both led our own lives since then. We should have got divorced four years ago, but it was difficult with you away so much and, since nobody else was involved, there didn’t seem any particular reason to go through all the hassle of a divorce.’

‘But now there is?’ said Mac in a hard voice.

‘Yes.’ Georgia let out a breath. ‘Yes, there is. My life has changed.’

‘So it seems.’

Mac looked pointedly around her cramped office, with its dreary beige walls, old-fashioned filing cabinets, chipped desk and its view through the one glass wall of a newsroom so dated that it was almost a surprise to see computers instead of antiquated typewriters on the desk.

Georgia followed his gaze, knowing that he was remembering the newsroom in the national newspaper where she had worked in London, all steel and glass and technology and endlessly ringing phones. Did he have any idea how trapped she felt here?

‘Why Askerby?’ he asked abruptly. ‘It’s the last place I expected to find you. You couldn’t wait to get away, and it was only guilt that brought you back to sort out family problems. Every time you came home, you’d breathe a sigh of relief to be back in London.’

It was true. She had never wanted to come back and live in Yorkshire, but sometimes you didn’t have a choice.

‘I had my reasons,’ she said in a restrained voice.

His expression hardened. ‘To do with the little boy you’ve adopted?’

‘Yes, Toby. You remember him, don’t you?’

Expecting her to be defensive about her adopted child, Mac was thrown. ‘No…Toby? Who’s Toby?’

‘He’s Becca’s son.’

He might have known Becca would have been behind all this. Mac remembered Georgia’s sister all right. Talk about chalk and cheese. Becca was wild and chaotic, Georgia cool and determined. Forever held up as a contrast to her clever, ambitious sister, Becca had, perhaps inevitably, taken to her role as the black sheep of the family with gusto.

He sighed with exasperation. ‘What’s Becca up to now?’

With Becca you could never tell. She might be in prison, or simply have abandoned her child to go off and live in a commune, and either way it would no doubt fall to Georgia to clean up the mess she had left behind her. Becca had always relied on Georgia to help her out of whatever trouble she was in. Mac hadn’t liked the emotional blackmail she had exerted, implying that it was somehow Georgia’s fault that she hadn’t made a success of her life.

‘Just let her sort it out herself,’ he used to tell Georgia. ‘She’ll never learn to look after herself if she knows all she has to do is pick up the phone to you when things go wrong. I’d let her stew.’

But Georgia never would. ‘She’s my sister,’ she would protest, but Mac knew she felt guilty about being their parents’ favourite, guilty about having the brains and the beauty, guilty about the fact that Becca had never really been able to struggle out from under her shadow.

And now it seemed Becca never would.

‘She’s dead,’ said Georgia tonelessly.

Mac stared at her, shocked. ‘Dead? How? What happened?’

Georgia sighed and ran her fingertips under her eyes. ‘A car accident. She’d been out at a nightclub in Leeds, and she’d been drinking. She should never have been driving at all, but you know Becca.’ Shaking her head, she blew out a breath. ‘It was just fortunate that no one else was involved. Sometimes she could be so…so…’

‘Irresponsible?’ Mac suggested, watching Georgia’s hands clenching and unclenching with frustration.

Her grey eyes met his and then slid away. ‘She was my sister, and I loved her, but sometimes I feel so angry with her for what she’s done to Toby,’ she confessed in a low voice, not looking at him.

‘It’s normal to feel angry at times when you’re grieving,’ said Mac in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘You shouldn’t feel guilty about it.’

He was wasting his breath, of course. He didn’t need to look at her face to know that. Georgia was bound to feel guilty. She always had felt guilty about Becca, and Becca dying wasn’t going to change that.

‘I’m sorry about Becca, Georgia,’ he said sincerely. ‘It must have been a shock for you.’

‘Yes.’ Georgia remembered that terrible phone call, more than a year ago now. Her mother’s distress had been so acute that it had taken ages before Georgia could understand what had happened and, when she had finally grasped what her mother was trying to tell her, she had known at once that her life would never be the same again.

‘Yes, it was,’ she said. ‘It was terrible, but not as terrible as it was for Toby. He was only seven, and he’d lost his whole world. Becca might have been irresponsible, but she did love him, and she was his mother. No one else will ever be able to take her place.’

‘But you’re trying?’

Georgia looked up at that. ‘I’m doing the best I can,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s never going to be enough.’

‘Why you?’ asked Mac after a moment. ‘Where’s Toby’s father?’

‘Who knows?’ Georgia lifted her shoulders helplessly. ‘I don’t think Becca did. He took off before Toby was born, and she never tried to find him. Even if it were possible to somehow track him down, I couldn’t hand Toby over to a perfect stranger. That’s why I adopted him.’

Mac shifted restlessly in his chair. He wanted to get up and prowl around, but the office was simply too small, so he was stuck there, struggling to assimilate what she had told him. It was totally unreasonable to resent Georgia for doing the right thing by her nephew, but he still did. He didn’t like the fact that she had gone ahead and changed her life for her sister’s child when she hadn’t been prepared to change it for a child of his.

He didn’t like himself for not liking it. He knew he was being unfair and unkind and unreasonable.

But that was how he felt.

‘What about your mother?’ he said. ‘Couldn’t she have taken Toby?’

‘She couldn’t cope, Mac. She used to babysit him when Becca went out, but he was really too much for her. And anyway—’ Georgia stopped as she felt her voice wobble treacherously.

Damn Mac. There was something about him that brought all her emotions to the surface and left her feeling raw and vulnerable. She hadn’t cried for ages, and she wasn’t about to start again in front of him.

Fiercely swallowing down the tears, she cleared her throat. ‘Anyway,’ she said again, more strongly this time, ‘Mum never got over the shock of Becca’s accident. She had a fatal stroke three months later.’

‘Oh, Georgia.’ Mac half rose out of the chair, then checked himself. Her father had died before they were married, and it was Georgia who had supported her mother and sister ever since.

He looked at her sitting behind her desk, her chin lifted defensively as if to ward off any attempts at sympathy for the fact that she had recently lost all her family. And he hadn’t been there to help her through any of it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said inadequately.

Georgia gave a brief smile of acknowledgement, and then went on. ‘Mum did her best with Toby, and I came down every weekend, but it wasn’t really working, and the social services were suggesting that they tried to find him a foster family when she died. I was due to have a meeting with them after the funeral, but I just looked at Toby that morning and realised I couldn’t go through with it. I was the only family he had—and he was the only family I had.’

Her eyes darkened with the memory of those dreadful days. ‘I told them that I would take him.’

‘So that’s why you’re here in Askerby?’ said Mac after a moment.

She nodded. ‘I tried taking Toby to London, but he hated it. I had a super-cool loft apartment by the Thames, but no garden and there were no other children there. He was miserable at school and childcare arrangements were a nightmare…

‘Toby just closed down,’ she told him, shuddering at the very memory. ‘He stopped talking, and I realised I was either going to have to give up on him or give up on my career.’

She mustered a smile and looked at Mac. ‘I didn’t really have a choice. He’s been better ever since I brought him back. I’d sold Mum’s house, but I’ve bought a new one, and he’s back at his old school. I thought I might have to try freelancing, but then I got this job…and look at me now.’ She waved grandly around her tiny office, her expression ironic. ‘I always did want to be an editor.’

Of a national newspaper, maybe. Georgia’s plans had never included a dusty little local rag like this, Mac knew. She had given up a lot for Toby.

‘It can’t have been easy for you,’ he offered. ‘We all thought you were going far and that you would be editor of The Times at least by now!’

‘Oh, come now, why would I want The Times when I can have all this?’ said Georgia with a wry smile. Through the glass wall she could see the shabby newsroom whose only occupant, Kevin, the sports reporter, was leaning back in his chair reading a tabloid. God only knew where the others were. They seemed to drift in and out at will, as far as Georgia could make out.

The sense of torpor that hung over the place depressed her anew, and Mac’s presence only made the contrast with her previous life the crueller. He sat there exuding recklessness and an exotic mix of danger and glamour that belonged with breaking news and rush of adrenalin, the sense of being where important things were happening and news was being made, not just reported.

Mac looked as out of place in this dull, provincial office as she felt. He didn’t have to be here, though, and she did. It wasn’t about what she wanted any more. Toby came first now, she reminded herself fiercely.

But, oh, there were times when she longed to wake up and find that it was all a bad dream and that she was back at the newsdesk in London, two phones at each ear and emails from around the world bombarding her inbox, with the clock ticking towards the deadline and the whole office buzzing with excitement.

Georgia suppressed a sigh and focused on Mac once more. ‘This is my life now,’ she said, wishing she could sound more excited and positive about it. ‘I’ve accepted that I need to make a new life here in Askerby, and I can’t do that as long as I’m legally married to you.’

‘You’ve met someone else.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

She hesitated, although she couldn’t think why. ‘Yes,’ she said after the tiniest of pauses.

‘And you want to get married again?’ he asked in an abrasive voice.

‘No.’ She shook her head firmly, surprised at the way she had instinctively recoiled at the very idea of marrying anyone else.

Although, if she was honest, marriage was probably what Geoffrey had in mind. Georgia wasn’t prepared to go that far just yet, though.

‘There’s no question of marriage at the moment,’ she said. ‘It’s true that I’ve met someone…a nice man who cares for me and who I think can offer me what I need, but it doesn’t seem fair to embark on a serious relationship with him until I’ve resolved things with you. He’s made me realise that by always putting off the idea of divorce I’ve never really moved on, and that’s what I think I need to do now.’

Mac began to feel a little better. It didn’t sound as if this so-called ‘serious relationship’ had got very far. It was typical of Georgia to want to play fair and start a new relationship uncluttered by baggage from the old one—she always did like things tidy—but this man, whoever he was, couldn’t be that keen if he was prepared to hang around and wait until she had sorted everything out.

‘Who is this guy?’ he demanded, wondering why the man didn’t just sweep Georgia off her feet, the way he would do.

The way he had done, he remembered.

‘I don’t think he’s any of your business,’ said Georgia with a quelling look. Mac had met Geoffrey once, soon after they were married, and it couldn’t be said that the two of them had got on. It was hard to imagine two men more different from each other, in fact.

Typically, Mac wouldn’t let it go. ‘Do I know him? Who would you know in Askerby?’ He leant back in his chair once more, tipping dangerously, and pulled his upper lip down in an effort of memory, until it struck him. ‘Ah…I know! ‘It’s that guy who always pined after you, isn’t it? The one who came to dinner once when we were staying with your mother? Bit of a stuffed shirt?’

Georgia’s lips tightened, annoyed. Geoffrey could be a bit stuffy sometimes, but she had no intention of admitting that to Mac.

‘He’s a very nice man,’ she said defensively. ‘He’s been incredibly kind since I moved back here.’

‘What was his name again?’ asked Mac. ‘Gerald? Jeremy? Jim?’

‘Geoffrey,’ said Georgia coldly, knowing that if she didn’t tell him Mac was more than capable of going on speculating with more and more ridiculous names all night.

‘Geoffrey! That’s it.’ Mac seemed pleased to have had that little puzzle solved for him. He eyed Georgia narrowly. ‘Well, well…so Geoffrey’s your new man? You know, I wouldn’t have said that he was exactly your type, Georgia.’

‘Maybe I’ve changed,’ she said with a certain defiance. ‘I don’t see what it has to do with you, anyway. To be honest, I could just wait another year and the divorce would come through automatically, but I thought we could be civilized about the whole thing. I can’t believe you seriously want to stay married. You certainly never had any interest in being married before!’

Mac’s brows snapped together at that and he let the chair drop abruptly to the floor once more. ‘That’s not true!’

‘Isn’t it?’ Georgia met his look directly. ‘Oh, I dare say you didn’t mind having a wife who waited at home and dealt with things while you were away. It was easy for you to drop everything and go when there was someone there to pay the bills and get the boiler fixed and have some milk in the fridge when you came home, but you could get all that from a good housekeeping service. You weren’t interested in being married to me.’

The lazy humour had vanished from Mac’s face, to be replaced by a grimness she had never seen before. ‘Of course I was interested in you!’ he protested, rather white about the mouth. ‘I loved you!’

‘But what did you love, Mac? Oh, the sex was great, I’ll give you that, but the rest of the time I’m not sure you even saw me. How much did you know about what I thought and what I felt and what I wanted? It was wonderful when we were first married,’ she acknowledged, ‘but after a while you started to take me for granted, and you forgot about me.’

‘How could I forget you? You were my wife!’

‘Exactly, and that’s all I was. I was just your wife, someone who was always there, someone you could always rely on, who could see what needed to be done and got on and did it without making a fuss because what was the point? Someone had to do it, after all. I knew your job meant that you had to go away at a moment’s notice, but after a while it began to seem that my only role was to support you, and that wasn’t enough for me.’

She stopped and made herself breathe slowly, fighting down the old resentment. Mac had never understood this.

‘I needed you to look at me and see me, see how I’d changed and what I could do for myself, not just for you,’ she said quietly. ‘But you never did.’

‘I knew you better than anyone else,’ he said, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

‘You knew me as I was when we got married,’ Georgia agreed, ‘but you didn’t know me when we separated, and you don’t know me now. It’s not me that you want at all. You want the Georgia you married,’ she told him, ‘but you can’t have her. She doesn’t exist any more.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU’RE just being a dog in the manger,’ Georgia went on, warming to her theme. ‘You haven’t wanted me for the past four years, but you don’t want anyone else to have me either. And please don’t try telling me that you’ve been faithful to my memory!’ She fixed Mac with a clear look. ‘Journalists are a gossipy lot, and I know all about your girlfriends.’

Faint colour tinged his cheekbones. ‘I’m not going to pretend I’ve been celibate for four years. Yes, there have been women, but I didn’t love any of them the way I loved you and, God knows, I tried.’

‘Oh, thanks, that’s very reassuring!’

‘I’m trying to be honest,’ said Mac with obvious restraint. ‘I know we both agreed we would be happier on our own, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel hurt and bitter about the way things had ended. I wanted to meet someone else, someone I could love, someone who wanted children too, but the harder I tried to forget you, the more I found myself missing you. I’d meet someone young and beautiful and gentle, she’d be good with children and longing to have a family of her own, and all I could think about was you.’

He sounded almost angry about it.

‘I did everything I could to get you out of my head. Over and over again, I reminded myself about your annoying habits, the way you drove me mad with your lists and your routines and the way you always had to be at the airport four hours early.’

But then he would remember her sensuality and her intelligence and her honesty, the kindness she kept concealed behind that brisk façade.

And, more treacherously still, he would remember her perfume, her warmth and her softness and the tickle of that glorious hair as she leant over to kiss him. Even now the very thought of it could make his whole body clench with desire.

‘So you were always there, whether I wanted you or not,’ he went on, resigned. ‘I went a bit crazy after you left. I threw myself into work. The more dangerous the story was, the more I wanted to go. I got myself sent on a long assignment in Africa, but even that couldn’t dislodge you from my mind. The thought of you just wouldn’t go away. In the end I gave up,’ he said simply. ‘I decided it was always going to be you.’

Georgia bit her lip. She had been through the long, weary process of trying to shake off a haunting memory herself.

‘If you felt like that about me, why didn’t you do anything about it?’ she challenged him, her grey eyes bright and direct. The last thing she wanted was to start identifying with him!

‘I’ve only reached that conclusion recently,’ he said, picking his words with care now. ‘I could have come back, but I think part of me was afraid to change the balance of things. I used to hear about you occasionally. I knew you were doing well and I guess the fact that you never did anything about a divorce made me think it might be better to leave things as they were until I finished my assignment and could try and see if we could have another go.’

‘In fact, I’m fitting conveniently into your schedule,’ said Georgia in a withering voice.

That was typical! She had spent her whole marriage waiting for Mac’s attention, waiting for him to finish one assignment, waiting for him to shake off the memories of some bitter, dreadful conflict that consumed him when he came home, hoping for a moment when he could stop thinking about what he had seen and think about her instead. But the call to the next war, the next disaster, the next misery had always come first.

‘No.’ Mac’s jaw tightened. ‘I got your letter, and that changed everything. I can make a living as a freelance, so I resigned and came home to find you. There was no way I was going to stay in Africa and let you divorce me without a word of explanation.’

‘I have explained!’

‘Not in a way that I can understand,’ said Mac. ‘I want to talk.’

Georgia regarded him crossly. It never occurred to him to think about what she wanted!

This was her new life, and she didn’t want him here, reminding her of what she had left in London, reminding her of the kind of person she used to be, leaving memories and associations behind after he had gone. He changed things just by walking into a room. Now she would never be able to look at that stupid chair he kept tipping back in without thinking of him.

‘I can’t talk now,’ she said irritably. ‘I’m busy.’

Mac lifted a disbelieving eyebrow and looked into the newsroom where Kevin now had his feet on the desk while he checked his mobile phone.

Georgia gritted her teeth. ‘I’ve got a lot to do, even if no one else does!’

‘You were just staring out of the window when I came in,’ Mac pointed out unfairly.

‘I was thinking!’

‘Well, I’m not going to sign any papers until we have talked some more,’ he said, ‘so when do you suggest we meet?’

Georgia could feel her shoulders tighten with tension. It was just like Mac to go on and on and on until he got what he wanted. He just never gave up. His persistence had won him some fantastic pictures, but it was a less appealing quality on an emotional level.

Really, she had more than enough problems at the moment without Mac strolling in and unsettling her, Georgia thought with a mixture of exasperation and weariness. It had always been the same. He would turn her world upside down, make a mockery of her attempts to stay cool and calm, send her senses spinning. She had hated the way he could make her feel wild and abandoned and out of control.

She had loved it too, a small part of Georgia acknowledged.

But not any more. She had changed, she reminded herself sternly. She had other priorities now, and they didn’t include resurrecting a doomed relationship.

Georgia wished that Mac would just go, but she knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t move until he got what he wanted. Well, let him talk if he wanted to. She had made the decision to move on and change her life, and she wasn’t about to change her mind now, no matter what he might have to say.

She might as well get it over and done with.

‘Come to supper tonight,’ she said with a sigh. It was lucky that she had already invited Geoffrey. Geoffrey was safe and solid and reliable. His very presence would remind her of all that was good about the new life she was choosing and all that was bad about her life with Mac.

Putting on her glasses, she pulled a pad of paper towards her and wrote out her address in her characteristically neat script.

‘As you’ve tracked me down this far, I’m sure you won’t have a problem finding your way,’ she said as she tore off the sheet and handed it to Mac.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and twirled the paper between his fingers with a smile that Georgia only just managed to steel herself against in time. ‘What time?’

He was always late. That was the one reliable thing about Mac, she thought, just as she could always rely on Geoffrey to be on time. She had asked Geoffrey for eight o’clock, when Toby went to bed, so they would have some time together before Mac turned up.

‘Come at eight,’ she said.

Mac got easily to his feet. ‘Shall I bring anything with me?’

‘Just the divorce papers,’ said Georgia coolly. ‘Preferably signed.’

She waited until the door had shut behind him before she groaned and dropped her head on to the desk with a thump. What was it with life at the moment? She’d no sooner struggle over one hurdle than another would be dropped in her way.

Ever since Becca had died, it had been one thing after another. Adjusting her life around a small boy. Giving up the job she loved so much. Leaving London. Dealing with hostility over her appointment as editor here. Staff walkouts. And now Mac, thinking that he could stroll in here and take up where he’d left off!

Well, he would learn that he was wrong, thought Georgia with grim determination. She had listened to ‘I will survive’ and now she could sing along with Gloria Gaynor with the best of them. She had survived, and she was going to go on surviving. She had enough to worry about without Mac.

Of course, it was typical of him to come back now, just when she was getting her life under control, she reflected bitterly. But he would find that she had changed. She was stronger now, more sure of herself, and she had learned to manage perfectly well without him.

It had taken her four long years to get to this stage, though, and it had been a hard process. There was no way she was going through all that again, no matter how tantalising his smile might be. She was a professional woman, with a career and a life of her own. She didn’t need him and she didn’t want him.

Now all she had to do was convince her treacherous body of that. Particularly her heart, springing around like a boisterous puppy, and those legs, whose bones had dissolved at the mere sound of his voice…They were just going to have to shape up, Georgia thought as she lifted her head from the desk.

And as for her stupid senses, who knew no better than to start throwing a ticker tape parade, cheering the good memories as they marched victoriously past Georgia’s puny defences—well, they could just pipe down too. Her head was in charge now.

Unconsciously, Georgia stiffened her spine. That was better. She was not going to let Mac cast her into confusion and turmoil the way he had before. She had other problems to deal with and more important things to consider, Toby chief among them. Let Mac have his say tonight, if that was what he wanted, but he would just have to accept that she had moved on and that her own need was for a very different life now.

Surely he would be able to accept it when he saw how much she relied on Geoffrey now?

Which reminded her; she ought to ring Geoffrey and warn him that Mac was coming for dinner. Geoffrey was about as different from Mac as it was possible to be. The Y chromosome was about all they had in common, Georgia thought ruefully, so while Mac might like surprises and living on the edge, Geoffrey most certainly didn’t. He would want to be prepared.

Georgia settled her glasses back on her nose and immediately felt more businesslike. Reaching for the phone, she braced herself to deal with Geoffrey’s PA, Ruth, who controlled access to her boss with a steely efficiency and a crisp manner that even Georgia found intimidating.

Sure enough, her attempt to speak to Geoffrey was immediately stonewalled by Ruth. ‘I’m afraid he’s with a client,’ she said, and Georgia knew better than to ask her to interrupt the meeting.

She had often thought that Ruth’s talents were wasted on a mere chartered surveyor. She should have been guarding the office of a Cabinet Minister at least. In fact, Rose could do with picking up a few tips from Ruth, Georgia reflected wryly. It might not be so easy then for the likes of Mac Henderson to stroll in and out of her office. No way would Mac have got past Ruth!

‘Can I take a message?’ Ruth was always polite, but Georgia sensed that she didn’t like her. Georgia wasn’t sure whether she was jealous of her relationship with Geoffrey or, in common with a good many other locals, resented her appointment as editor of the Askerby and District Gazette.

Probably both, thought Georgia wearily.

‘No, it’s all right, thanks, Ruth,’ she said, unwilling to launch into an explanation of the fact that someone who was technically her husband was coming to dinner. She could just imagine how Ruth would react to that little bit of information! ‘Just remind Geoffrey that I’m expecting him at eight tonight, would you?’

‘There won’t be any need for that,’ said Ruth primly. ‘He has eight written in his diary.’

In other words, dinner with Georgia was just another appointment for Geoffrey.

Biting back a retort, Georgia put down the phone and took off her glasses once more so that she could rub her eyes. She was fed up with today. She would write the leader tomorrow morning. It wasn’t as if it would change anything. People in Askerby knew what they thought, and they weren’t going to have any jumped-up journalist from London tell them any different.

It was hard to believe that she had grown up here sometimes. The ex-editor of the Gazette had been very popular locally, never mind that he had brought the paper to its knees, and few people were prepared to extend a welcome to Georgia when she was appointed in his place.

Geoffrey had been a notable exception, and she would always be grateful to him for that.

Although perhaps grateful wasn’t the best way to describe how you felt about a man you were seriously considering having a relationship with?

Georgia pushed that particular worry aside impatiently. Really, she had too much else to think about now. One thing about Mac’s reappearance—it would convince Geoffrey that she needed to finalise her divorce once and for all before she could contemplate embarking on another serious relationship.

She gave her email a final check and cast a quick eye over the agency reports in case anything dramatic had happened. Not that there would be much she could do about it if there were, she thought bitterly. Nobody in Askerby wanted news in their paper.

Her last job was to tidy her desk. She hated coming into a mess in the morning. Mac had used to call her a control freak but, if she was, she didn’t seem to be a very good one, Georgia had long ago decided. If she was so controlling, how come life so often seemed to be completely out of her control?

Shrugging on her coat, she went out into the outer office, aware, as always, of the tiny moment of silence that fell whenever she appeared.

‘I’m off now, Rose,’ she said, hating the way her voice sounded a little too hearty, a little too much as if she were trying too hard not to mind how long it was taking her to be accepted. ‘Don’t forget the editorial conference tomorrow morning. I want everyone there.’

‘I won’t.’ Rose looked important. She had been thrilled when Georgia had taken a chance on her and given her the job, and was even more pleased to find herself included in all the workings of the newspaper after being made to feel useless by her ex-husband for so long. ‘Have a good evening. Are you meeting your friend?’

‘My friend?’

‘Mr Henderson. He said he knew you,’ said Rose, suddenly anxious. She had made so many mistakes since she started, and she knew Georgia got impatient sometimes.

‘Oh…Mac,’ said Georgia. ‘Yes, we did know each other a long time ago.’

‘He seemed so nice,’ said Rose. ‘I thought he was absolutely charming.’ Her voice dropped as she leant forward to whisper confidentially, ‘And very attractive!’

Georgia couldn’t help smiling at her tone. In spite of the disastrous end to her own marriage, Rose was very concerned about her boss’s single state. She thought Georgia needed help bringing up Toby.

Georgia thought so too.

But Mac wasn’t the man to help her. Toby needed a father figure, someone kind and steady like Geoffrey, not someone like Mac, who had never really grown up himself.

Toby, come and pick up some of these toys, please!’

Georgia sighed as she stooped to retrieve a sock from the living room floor. It had been a shock to realise just how much mess one small boy could generate.

She had thought no one could be messier than Mac, whose habit of carelessly discarding clothes wherever he happened to take them off had driven her mad when they were married, but Toby was even worse. His bedroom floor was carpeted with cards, small plastic figures, bits of paper, crayons, books, unidentified and probably broken pieces of toys, and a good deal else that Georgia preferred not to think about too closely.

Picking up a ball of what looked suspiciously like discarded chewing gum, she grimaced in disgust.

‘Toby!’ Her voice went up in spite of herself. She tried so hard to be patient and loving, but after a long day at work, with only a few minutes to prepare dinner for Geoffrey, let alone think about how she was going to deal with her soon-to-be ex-husband, it was a huge effort not to snap.

‘There’s someone coming to the door,’ said Toby, which at least proved that he wasn’t deaf. Ever anxious for an excuse to avoid tidying up, he was peering out of the window at the front of the house. He was wearing pyjamas and, having ignored her request to use a comb, his damp hair stuck out spikily in different directions.

‘It’ll just be someone delivering junk mail, I expect,’ said Georgia, forcing herself to stay calm. Nothing was gained by losing her temper. Toby just withdrew even further into his shell.

‘He’s got a cool motorbike,’ Toby commented, without leaving his vantage point at the window.

Georgia frowned slightly. Junk mail wasn’t usually delivered by motorbike. Miss Sibley at number twenty-three often pushed newsletters for the local neighbourhood watch through the door at this sort of time, but she didn’t ride a motorbike and, if she did, it certainly wouldn’t be one Toby would describe as cool.

Curious, she went over to join Toby at the window. Sure enough, a motorbike was propped on its stand in the road outside the gate. It was a mean-looking machine, black and gleaming and very powerful, and something stirred inside Georgia. She knew only one person likely to ride a bike like that.

A sense of foreboding gripped her as the owner of the bike, hidden by the porch, rang the doorbell, and her frown deepened with suspicion. There was something awfully familiar about the arrogance of that ring.

‘Who is it?’ asked Toby.

Nobody could call Toby a beautiful child. He was thin and gap-toothed, with big ears and an expression that was usually sullen, but when he looked up at her, like now, with implicit trust that she would know the answer to everything, Georgia would feel her heart constrict.

‘I don’t know who it is,’ she told him. But I’ve got a pretty good idea, she added mentally. ‘We’d better go and see.’

He followed her out into the hall and lurked behind her as she opened the door. Sure enough, there stood Mac, in faded jeans, a white T-shirt and his battered old leather jacket, camera slung as always around his neck. Not to put too fine a point on it, he looked gorgeous. His dark hair was ruffled where he had pulled off his helmet, and his blue eyes were warm with a smile that Georgia had to physically steel herself to resist.

‘You’re early,’ she said brusquely. ‘I said eight o’clock, and it’s not even seven-thirty yet.’

‘I thought it would be nice to meet Toby before he went to bed,’ said Mac, completely unfazed by the hostile welcome, and he winked at Toby who was watching him with a wary expression.

‘Who are you?’ asked Toby, which seemed a fair enough question.

‘This is Mac,’ said Georgia quickly as Mac opened his mouth to answer. Life was complicated enough for Toby without trying to fathom his aunt’s exact marital status. There was no need for him to know that she and Mac had been married.

Were still married, fool that she was. Why on earth hadn’t she followed through with the divorce when they had first separated?

‘I knew him a long time ago,’ she said to Toby, trying to keep her explanation of this strange man’s arrival as simple as possible. ‘It was a real surprise when he turned up in Askerby, so I thought it would be nice if he came to dinner.’

Georgia had a nasty feeling that she was babbling, but Mac’s presence on the doorstep was ridiculously disturbing.

He didn’t look disturbed, of course. He looked utterly at ease, as always, with that good-humoured assurance that had taken him through more dangerous situations than Georgia cared to think about.

‘Hi, Toby,’ he said casually, but wisely made no move to get any closer or to engage him in conversation.

Toby was very wary of strangers and hated being overwhelmed by attention. It had taken him a long time to accept Georgia, and even now she still had to handle him with care. Geoffrey’s laborious attempts at conversation were met with monosyllables at most. More worryingly, he didn’t seem to be any more forthcoming at school, and he was slow to make friends.

Mac turned back to Georgia and produced a mango from his pocket with a flourish. ‘For you,’ he said, holding it in his outstretched palm, and Georgia’s breath snared in her throat.

It was just a fruit. A beautiful piece of fruit, plump and juicy, its skin blushing from pinkish-green to ripe red, but still just a fruit, and not even that rare. You could even buy mangoes in Askerby nowadays, if you were lucky.

But for Georgia mangoes meant so much more than a exotic edge to a fruit salad. Mangoes meant long, hot tropical nights, creaking ceiling fans and eerie yips and yowls in the darkness beyond the veranda. Mangoes meant Mac. She had never eaten one until he had cut one carefully into almost-cubes so that she could bend back the skin and eat the fragrant orange flesh easily, and for her the taste would forever be associated with him. Just the sight of one was enough to swamp her with memories.

Almost without thinking, she reached out and took the mango from Mac and held it to her nose. Breathing in its distinctive smell, she was instantly transported back to their veranda in West Africa. Mac would cut up the mango for her and watch her as she ate it, the juice running down her chin.

‘You eat mangoes the way you make love,’ he would tell her, smiling in a way that made her blood flare, and he would lean across to kiss the stickiness away. ‘I love the way you do that. Everyone else sees just a little bit of you, the particular, precise Georgia, but I know what you’re really like. I know that behind that prim and proper façade, you’re a very naughty girl!’

They always ended up making love when he brought her a mango.

It was the happiest Georgia had ever been. Memories of those times gripped her cruelly now, tightening her chest until she could hardly breathe. She could just stand there dumbly holding the mango, struggling to make her lungs work once more.

Why couldn’t Mac be like Geoffrey, who brought her flowers without fail? They were always lovely flowers, not just a tired old bouquet from a garage forecourt, but nonetheless Georgia never had the sense that Geoffrey had any idea of what she would really like. He brought her flowers because that was the correct thing to do, and Geoffrey was always correct. Sometimes she wished he would surprise her, bring her a shiny conker he had picked up in the street, or a pot of honey, or a book that he thought she would enjoy.

Or a mango.

Why did Mac have to be different? she wondered in despair. Why did he have to choose the one gift that would mean so much, that would unlock so many memories? He had an uncanny ability to get under her skin when she least expected it, when she was certain that she could resist him, when she thought she was prepared.

Georgia’s hands closed around the mango. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, her voice shaking with the effort to keep it neutral.

‘What’s that?’ said Toby as she stepped back to let Mac inside.

‘This? It’s a mango.’

‘No, that,’ he said impatiently, pointing at the camera around Mac’s neck.

‘It’s my camera,’ said Mac easily, and pulled it from around his neck. ‘Do you want to have a look at it?’

Toby nodded and, to Georgia’s consternation, Mac handed him the camera.

‘Um…do you think that’s a good idea?’ she said meaningfully. The camera was his livelihood, after all, and professional cameras didn’t come cheap.

‘It’s fine,’ said Mac, looping the strap around Toby’s neck. ‘He won’t drop it.’

Toby frowned down at the camera. ‘It doesn’t look like a camera,’ he said suspiciously. ‘It’s not digital.’

‘No,’ Mac agreed solemnly, ‘and you can’t use it to make a phone call, either! This is a camera that just takes pictures.’ He paused. ‘Would you like me to show you how it works?’

Toby nodded again, and Georgia was too pleased to see him interested to object when Mac sat down with him on the sofa and showed him how to look through the camera and use the telescopic lens.

So much for clearing up before her visitors arrived. Mac wouldn’t have noticed if he’d had to wade knee-deep through a rubbish tip to get to the sofa. He was as oblivious as Toby to any mess.

Life must be so much easier if you could just blank out whatever you didn’t want to see, Georgia reflected. She would have loved to have been the kind of person who simply didn’t notice or didn’t care about her surroundings. Sadly, she was obsessive—according to Mac, anyway—about keeping her surroundings clean and tidy, and there was no way she could enjoy her supper with the room looking like this.

Sighing inwardly, Georgia got down on her knees and began to pick up toys while Mac and Toby bent their heads over the camera. She was too used to Mac continually clicking away to be bothered when they began pointing the camera at her and talking about framing a picture. One thing about being married to a photographer, you never got shy when someone got out their Instamatic and started snapping photos. After a while, it was just background noise and you stopped feeling self-conscious in front of a camera.

It was oddly comfortable to be clearing up while the man and the boy sat on the sofa, absorbed in what they were doing. It felt almost normal. Was this what it would have been like if she and Mac had had a family? Georgia wondered.

Wrapped up in her thoughts, she didn’t at first register that Mac was talking to her.

‘Sorry?’ she said, sitting back on her haunches and smoothing a stray hair back from her face.

‘I was just saying that Toby and I could finish tidying up if you want to go and change.’

Mac’s blue eyes held a strange expression as they rested on her, and for some reason Georgia flushed.

‘It’s all right, thanks,’ she said stiffly, aware for the first time that she was still wearing her work clothes. ‘I don’t usually bother to change any more.’

Mac frowned. He had always loved the moment when she would change in the evenings. That was when she would unbutton the crisp, cool Georgia and let the secret Georgia out, the Georgia who ate mangoes in a way that made the breath dry in his throat, the Georgia who was warm and loving and so sensuous that it was hard for him to think clearly when she was near.

‘Why not?’

Georgia shrugged. ‘Oh, the usual reason—no time. There’s just too much to do every evening.’

And there was no one to change for any more, she added to herself as she gathered up some plastic counters that were scattered over the carpet.

Oh, there was Geoffrey, of course, but he inevitably came from work in his suit and, anyway, he would no doubt think that it was practical of her to stay in her work outfit too. Georgia couldn’t imagine how he would react if she were to greet him at the door wearing one of the little numbers she had used to wear for Mac.

But she had been younger then, and everything was different now.

Mac watched her crouching down, piling Toby’s toys into a box, and he felt the old familiar tightening of his chest. Her skirt was tight over her bottom and thighs, and he could see the graceful curve of her spine, the way her silky top rode up slightly as she stretched out.

He had once asked her why she wore such prim clothes instead of dressing like the warm, sexy woman that she really was. ‘Because when I’m with you it’s the only way I can keep any control over what’s happening,’ she had said. ‘With you, everything’s chaos. I don’t know which way up I am when you’re there, and when you’re not I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing. At least if I get up and put on some suitable clothes to go to work, then I feel as if I’ve got some control over what’s happening.’

Poor Georgia; it hadn’t been easy for her, Mac thought with some compunction. She liked everything in its place and firmly under control, and she had never got used to the fact that love just didn’t work like that.

‘Can I take a picture of Georgia?’ Toby asked him, holding the camera reverently.

‘Sure,’ said Mac absently, still thinking about Georgia.

‘Look at me, Georgia!’

Glad to hear him sounding so animated, Georgia looked up dutifully and smiled.

Toby lifted the heavy camera in his thin hands and pointed it at her, then glanced up at Mac. ‘Now?’

‘Well, you could take it now,’ Mac agreed, ‘but she doesn’t really look like Georgia when she’s posing like that, does she? The thing about Georgia is that she’s not an easy person to capture,’ he went on easily, talking to Toby as if he were an interested adult rather than a small boy who simply wanted to press a button. ‘You’ve got to think of it like hunting a wild animal. You have to be very quiet and wait until she’s forgotten that you’re there with a camera, and then—snap!—you can catch her unawares.’

Toby was listening intently to his advice, although Georgia was sure that he had no idea what Mac was talking about. She did, though. Catching her unawares, the way he had done today, was what Mac had always done best.

Well, he wasn’t going to capture her this time.

Over Toby’s head, she met Mac’s amused navy-blue gaze, her own eyes bright with unspoken challenge, and the space between them was suddenly charged with an electric tension that sparked and sizzled alarmingly.

It was interrupted by the ring of the doorbell. ‘That’ll be Geoffrey.’ Georgia leapt to her feet in relief. ‘Toby, can you just finish putting away the last of the toys?’ she asked, without much hope that he would oblige.

Toby heaved a sigh. ‘Geoffrey’s Georgia’s boyfriend,’ she heard him mutter glumly to Mac as she headed for the door. ‘He’s boring.’

Georgia suppressed an equally heavy sigh. She wished Toby would accept Geoffrey. He might not be fun or have a ridiculously expensive camera for Toby to fiddle with, but he was a nice man and very kind, quite apart from being the only friend they had at the moment.

She wished he wasn’t standing on the other side of the door, though.

It was bad enough with Mac here, making her feel edgy and hassled, without having to deal with the two of them together. Dinner was shaping up to be its usual disaster, too. What Georgia really wanted was for both of them to disappear so that she could put Toby to bed and collapse on to the sofa with a stiff gin.

Still, it was too late for that now. Pinning a suitably bright smile to her face, she opened the front door.

CHAPTER THREE

PUNCTUAL to the minute, Geoffrey was standing there with—surprise, surprise—a bunch of flowers.

‘They’re lovely, thank you, Geoffrey,’ said Georgia, dutifully accepting the proffered tulips and a kiss on the cheek. ‘Come in.’

He followed her into the living room where, much to her surprise, Mac and Toby were on their knees, putting the last of the toys into the box.

‘Oh…thank you,’ she said, rather thrown by this evidence of helpfulness on Mac’s part. She was fairly sure Toby wouldn’t have done it on his own, but then Mac had never been able to comprehend the need to see the carpet before you walked on it, either.

‘I knew you wouldn’t relax until it was done,’ said Mac virtuously. Getting to his feet in a leisurely way, he offered his hand to Geoffrey, who had stopped dead at the sight of him. ‘Hello, there,’ he said.

Too late, Georgia realised that she should have thought how she was going to handle the introductions. ‘Um…you remember Mac, don’t you, Geoffrey?’

‘Mac…?’ Geoffrey looked at her in dawning dismay.

‘Mac Henderson,’ Mac reminded him helpfully, and quite unnecessarily. ‘Georgia’s husband.’

‘Ex-husband,’ snapped Georgia.

‘Husband?’ said Toby.

‘We met once at dinner at Georgia’s parents’ house,’ Mac went on, obviously enjoying Geoffrey’s consternation.

‘I remember,’ said Geoffrey stiffly, taking Mac’s hand and shaking it with obvious reluctance.

‘Husband?’ Toby asked again, looking from Georgia to Mac. ‘Does that mean you’re married?’

‘No,’ said Georgia, just as Mac said ‘Yes,’ and Geoffrey looked disapproving.

Georgia sucked in her breath crossly, furious with Mac for mentioning the subject in the first place, but reluctant to start an argument in front of Toby.

‘It’s a long story,’ she told him after a moment. ‘I’ll explain it to you later, but for now I think it’s time for bed.’

Toby’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘But it’s not time yet!’ he said with a scowl.

‘It is time,’ Georgia insisted. The prickly atmosphere was making her edgy, and gave her voice a sharper edge than normal.

‘Oh, but Georgia…’ Toby moaned. ‘Mac hasn’t finished showing me his camera.’

‘I can do that upstairs.’ Mac stepped in, seeing that Georgia was looking frazzled. ‘Why don’t you show me your room, and we can take a picture up there? I expect Georgia would like to talk to Geoffrey on her own, anyway.’

Georgia would, but she didn’t like Mac calmly arranging her life for her. On the other hand, getting Toby upstairs was half the battle most of the time, and she didn’t want to embark on a big confrontation in front of Geoffrey, who thought Toby was too undisciplined at the best of times.

‘That’s a good idea,’ she said, managing a tight smile. ‘Why don’t you go up with Mac, and I’ll come up and say goodnight in a bit?’

‘What’s he doing here?’ Geoffrey demanded the moment they had gone.

‘He says he wants to talk about the divorce,’ said Georgia, conscious of a twinge of irritation.

She didn’t have to explain to Geoffrey. She’d made it very clear that for now they were simply friends, and that she wasn’t prepared to take their relationship any further until she had divorced Mac. She had every intention of doing that, but until then Geoffrey had no right to disapprove of anyone she chose to invite to her home.

‘He turned up out of the blue this afternoon, and I thought it would be better to talk about things over supper. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be civilized about this.’

‘You might have warned me!’ said Geoffrey, still huffy.

‘I tried, but Ruth said that you were busy.’

‘I was with a client, hence I couldn’t come to the phone.’

Irritation flickered again at Geoffrey’s fondness for the word ‘hence’. He used it a lot and it always grated on Georgia, although she wasn’t usually as exasperated by it as she was today.

That was Mac’s fault, she thought darkly. Geoffrey had hardly irritated her at all until he turned up. He had just been kind and helpful and friendly—as he still was, Georgia reminded herself guiltily. She could put up with ‘hence’ if it meant having a steady, reliable friend like Geoffrey by her side.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said penitently. ‘I wish I had been able to warn you that Mac would be here tonight. It was a bit of a shock to me too when he turned up, but perhaps it’s not a bad thing. Now that he’s here we can talk properly, face to face, and sort things out. With any luck Mac will sign the papers while he’s here, and then I’ll be able to move on. I did explain that I didn’t want to start a proper relationship with you until I’d done that.’

‘Yes, you did,’ Geoffrey agreed. ‘And you know I think you’re worth waiting for. I’ve waited a long time, and I don’t mind waiting a bit longer.’ He smiled. ‘But you can’t blame me for getting impatient sometimes!’

Georgia kissed him impulsively on the cheek. ‘Thanks for understanding, Geoffrey.’

How different he was to Mac, who would never have stood patiently by and given her the space she needed to sort out another relationship! With Mac it was always all or nothing.

Which only went to show that Geoffrey was a much better man for her.

Geoffrey followed her into the kitchen as she checked the meal. She had never been a very enthusiastic cook—OK, she was a terrible cook—but Geoffrey liked home cooking, so she was trying to make more of an effort.

After all, he was making so much more of an effort for her. He was holding back when he could have been pushing, giving her time when he could have been issuing ultimatums, offering support when she needed it most. Trying to follow a few recipes seemed the least she could do in return, although there were times, like now, when she was tired after a day at work and dealing with Toby, that Georgia wished she could just pop into the supermarket on the way home and buy something easy.

Tonight she was making pork with prunes followed by plum crumble. Geoffrey wasn’t fond of garlic or spices, which made it difficult to come up with ideas sometimes, but this menu had seemed safe enough. Shame it was all so…brown.

Georgia wrinkled her nose and closed the oven door. Too late to do anything about it now. She would just have to hope that it tasted better than it looked.

Leaving Geoffrey in charge of opening a bottle of wine, she went upstairs to say goodnight to Toby. Rather to her surprise, she found him sitting up in bed and chatting to Mac.

She paused, unnoticed, in the doorway, struck by the animation in Toby’s face. He never looked that happy and interested when he was with her, she thought sadly, and her eyes slid of their own accord over to Mac, who was lounging on the other bed, arms behind his head and long legs crossed, careless of his boots on the coverlet, and looking utterly relaxed.

He looked up just then and caught sight of her. ‘Uh-oh,’ he said to Toby. ‘Looks like your time’s up!’

‘I’m in bed,’ Toby declared, somewhat unnecessarily.

‘So I see,’ said Georgia, coming into the room and trying not to notice how inviting the space on the bed next to Mac looked. ‘Good boy!’

‘Mac said I should. He said it would be…what was that word again, Mac?’

‘Politic,’ said Mac with a grin.

‘…he said it would be politic if I was in bed before you came up,’ Toby finished guilelessly.

Georgia suppressed a smile at the earnestness in his face as she sat on the edge of his bed. ‘Did he explain what that meant?’

Toby screwed up his face in an effort of memory. ‘That it would make life easier for me if I did what you wanted?’

‘Sounds like good advice to me,’ she agreed, and glanced at Mac, who had swung his legs on to the floor and was watching her, amusement glinting in his navy blue eyes. ‘It’s made life easier for both of us.’

‘Maybe you should take my advice more often,’ said Mac with mock smugness.

‘Oh, you’re an expert on childcare now, are you?’ said Georgia, keeping her tone light in front of Toby.

‘I’m an expert in making life as easy and as comfortable as you can make it under the circumstances,’ said Mac. ‘It’s called making the best of things.’

Yes, he’d always been good at that, thought Georgia. He was good at living for the moment, at living each day as if it might be his last. He didn’t do worrying and planning the way she did. He didn’t agonize about what people thought, or waste any time feeling torn between conflicting demands.

He would have made a lousy woman.

Georgia turned back to Toby and tweaked his nose affectionately. ‘You might as well make the best of things now and go to sleep. You’ve got school in the morning.’

‘I’m not tired,’ said Toby automatically. It was a point of honour never to admit that he was tired, but he seemed quite happy tonight to snuggle down under his duvet.

‘Goodnight, Toby,’ said Mac, reaching down to ruffle his hair gently, and Georgia had to close her eyes for a moment against the tantalising effect of his nearness.

It was a relief when Mac moved away. Leaning forward, she kissed Toby gently on the cheek. He didn’t kiss her back, but it was a big step even to get this far, and Georgia was always very careful not to push it.

‘Sleep well,’ she said.

Mac watched her from the doorway, touched by the combination of tenderness and awkwardness she showed with Toby, and shaken by a contrasting memory of Georgia sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling as she leant forward to kiss him. She acted so cool, but her lips had been so soft, her body so warm.

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