Lucy King - The Reunion Lie

He narrowed his eyes and looked at her a little more closely. ‘Do we know each other?’

She shook her head, and the way the movement sent silky blonde hair swirling around her shoulders would have had him imagining his fingers winding through it had he not been ignoring that side of things in favour of finding out what this was all about.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, not really. At least not in the strictest sense of the word.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’

‘It is all a bit bemusing, I’ll grant you,’ she said. ‘But the thing is I’ve got myself into a bit of a fix and I need your help.’

‘What kind of a fix?’

She blushed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. ‘I seem to have—ah—sort of invented a boyfriend.’

‘Sort of?’

She sighed. ‘OK, not sort of. I did invent a boyfriend.’

Dear Reader

Some people say that your schooldays, with few responsibilities, hordes of friends and long, long holidays, are the happiest of your life. Others add that, whether you loved them or hated them, they can shape you for years.

Who hasn’t idly browsed through Facebook to see what’s become of the class bully or the prettiest, most popular girl in the year? And who hasn’t wished they could sail into a reunion looking a million dollars, brimming with confidence and showing everyone what a fabulous success of their life they’ve made?

That’s perennially single Zoe Montgomery’s plan when, against her better instincts, she decides to attend her fifteen-year school reunion. Her schooldays definitely weren’t the happiest of her life, and much to her dismay they’ve subsequently had quite an impact, so she’s out to get closure. But, as can happen with the best-laid plans, things rapidly go awry—and before she knows it she’s not only invented a fabulous fake boyfriend, she’s brought him to life. When gorgeous advertising exec and latest tabloid hottie Dan Forrester and a very active grapevine become involved things start to get really complicated!

The school reunion that I went to, which provided the initial spark for this story, wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Zoe’s, but I can’t help wishing it had been! I had a blast writing Dan and Zoe’s story—I hope you enjoy it.

Lucy x

The Reunion Lie

Lucy King

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LUCY KINGspent her formative years lost in the world of Mills & Boon ®romance when she really ought to have been paying attention to her teachers. Up against sparkling heroines, gorgeous heroes and the magic of falling in love, trigonometry and absolute ablatives didn’t stand a chance.

But as she couldn’t live in a dream world for ever she eventually acquired a degree in languages and an eclectic collection of jobs. A stroll to the River Thames one Saturday morning led her to her very own hero. The minute she laid eyes on the hunky rower getting out of a boat, clad only in Lycra and carrying a three-metre oar as if it was a toothpick, she knew she’d met the man she was going to marry. Luckily the rower thought the same.

She will always be grateful to whatever it was that made her stop dithering and actually sit down to type Chapter One, because dreaming up her own sparkling heroines and gorgeous heroes is pretty much her idea of the perfect job.

Originally a Londoner, Lucy now lives in Spain, where she spends much of the time reading, failing to finish cryptic crosswords, and trying to convince herself that lying on the beach really is the best way to work.

Visit her at www.lucykingbooks.com

This and other titles by Lucy King are available in eBook format—check out www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the class of 1990

(none of whom are anything like the girls in this story!)

and our fun and fabulous school reunion.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

ONE

In all her thirty-two years, Zoe Montgomery had never once entertained a truly violent thought, but if one more person asked her whether she had a husband and children and then tutted in sympathy when she said she had neither she was going to have to hit something hard. Possibly the gin.

Did it matter that she’d been running her own mystery shopping agency for the past five years and was responsible for a two-million-pound turnover? No, it did not. Did anyone care that she’d started off refurbishing a tiny studio flat in an insalubrious part of London, sold it for double what she’d paid and had subsequently leapt up the property ladder to the spacious Hoxton maisonette she lived in now? Of course they didn’t. And what about the doctorate she’d toiled over for five long but happy years? Did that have them gasping in awe? Not a bit of it.

All that mattered to the forty or so depressingly tunnel-visioned women gathered in the bar for their fifteen-year school reunion was that she was still single and childless.

Zoe gritted her teeth and knocked back a mouthful of lukewarm Chablis as the conversation about house prices, catchment areas and Tuscany rattled around the little group she’d been dragged into.

How she could ever have imagined her contemporaries would have changed was beyond her. Back in their boarding-school days, despite the best private girls’ education the country had to offer and despite a handful of intellects far more formidable than her own, all most of them had ever wanted to achieve in life was marriage to an aristocrat, an estate and a socking great bank balance, and judging by the number of double-barrelled surnames, titles and diamonds being shown off tonight that had been accomplished with dazzling success.

Zoe sighed in despair. All that money spent. All that potential untapped. All that dedication and ambition so badly mis-channelled. What a waste.

As this evening was turning out to be.

She’d been here for fifteen minutes, but it had taken her only five to realise that there was little to no chance of achieving any of the things she’d hoped to achieve by coming.

When the email inviting her to the reunion had popped up in her in-box a month ago her first instinct had been to ignore it. While she appreciated the fantastic academic education she’d had and the sacrifices her parents had made for her to have it, she’d never got on all that well with these girls. She hadn’t had anything in common with most of them, and some of them—one in particular—had made her life pretty miserable for the best part of seven years. So without a moment’s hesitation she’d replied that she was busy, deleted the email and firmly put it from her mind.

She’d gone back to doing what she did best—work—and buried herself in a whole load of statistical analysis for one of her and her sister’s biggest clients, and had been so absorbed by the numbers and the implications they might have that that should have been that.

But to her intense frustration that hadn’t been that because despite its consignment to the bin the invitation seemed to have opened up a Pandora’s box of adolescent angst, hormonal chaos, and brutal and painfully clear memories, and, as a result, over the past couple of weeks she’d found herself dwelling on her school days with annoying regularity.

It didn’t matter how hard she tried to shore up her defences and push it all back, or how much she tried to concentrate on something else. Her memory hammered away, and beneath such relentless pressure the sky-high barriers she’d erected to protect her from those hideous years crumbled, leaving it to trip down lanes she’d blocked off long ago, picking at emotional scabs and prodding at the wounds beneath as it did so.