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that made her feel as though she was gliding on air beside him. “I was corrupted by a very naughty Swiss finishing school debutante eleven years ago. It seems I acquired a taste for risk afterwards.”
    All Christie could summon in response, through the pulse racing around her body at the reminder of why she was even with him now, was the thought Oooer…
    * * * *
    “Do you want to see the paper?” Adrik asked her, sensing that she might need distracting during take-off.
    If her mood had turned any darker in the last few minutes… She was staring numbly out of the windows, her face the perfect representation of someone leaving behind a meticulously-crafted life – before she had a chance to live it. As if she was unable to complete the building of a dream house at the very last hurdle, and had been forced to give it up to the clutches of some faceless bank.
    “No, thank you,” she muttered.
    “ It’s not bad. Take a look.”
    She dragged her gaze from the window as he held the page in front of her.
    Someone – he didn’t know who, maybe Eddie or Doug – had snapped a picture of them standing together at the mic in Harding’s last night. It must have been taken right after he said that only she knew the truth about him, prompting her to look up into his eyes.
    Adrik heard her little intake of breath, even while the plane’s engines revved up as it started to taxi onto the runway.
    No wonder everyone in the room guessed they had a past.
    “ Small Manhattan Gallery’s Big Secret …” Christie gulped as she read the headline aloud.
    “ They’ve just said it explains the mystery of why the identity of ‘Paparazzka’ was revealed at Harding’s ,” Adrik reassured her, running a finger down the two neat paragraphs below the picture. “Our relationship.”
    “ Oh.” Christie nodded, apparently not daring to read further in case anything negative leapt out at her. Fortunately, words like ‘engaged’ and ‘delighted’ and ‘Lake Como’ stood out – Eileen’s contacts had done their job well already. But the snapshot outshone any number of words that could have been printed. “Okay.”
    “ It’s a nice photo,” he added, encouragingly. “I’m going to keep it.”
    She did not react or comment, just gave him a look of blank curiosity. It intrigued and saddened him in equal measure, and he reached for her hand once more as the plane took off.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE.
     
    “ Oh no…”
    Even though it was now the middle of the night in London, a small handful of optimistic photographers had gathered at the leafy Holland Park address Adrik had given to their transfer driver from the airport.
    “Drive past,” Adrik instructed the chauffeur, and the car remained in gear, not slowing too much as they skirted the front gates. “Now who could that be…?”
    At second glance it appeared that the focus of the knot of journalists outside the huge, double-fronted white stucco villa was a tall brunette in Burberry, with a too-large Louis Vuitton overnight stay bag conspicuously over one arm. Dark glasses in place against the glare of nothing more than streetlamps and cameras, she was alternately checking her watch and cell phone, as if pretending she was not surrounded by the British paparazzi.
    “Isn’t that Olga Rose?” the driver commented, glancing in his side mirror. “The supermodel – the one who dropped her bag of coke on Harry’s foot.”
    “ How do you know her?” Christie asked.
    “ I don’t,” Adrik replied, equally mystified. “Never met her. But this is nothing new, believe me. Stop just down here on the left, please.”
    He took out his own cell phone, and dialled the house as the driver pulled into a discreet shadow outside a scaffolded property nearby, beyond a builder’s skip full of perfectly adequate bathroom suites.
    “There appears to be a crack party on the pavement outside,” he said, as the call was answered. “Would you move them on so I can get in, please?”
    He