Free Almost Love by Christina James Page A

recollect the events of the night before, grateful not to find Edmund lying beside her in the bed; then she had had to prepare for the main day of the conference with a debilitating hangover, which she had just about managed to overcome when she had had to calm Oliver down enough to persuade him not to abandon his role as chairman; finally, there had been the whole Claudia McRae business. It was true that the morning’s programme had run reasonably smoothly, but there had been a listlessness, almost a mass depression, hanging over the proceedings. All of the delegates were in a subdued mood following the news of Dame Claudia’s disappearance, so that the morning had gone like clockwork in more ways than one: according to plan, but mechanically, as if everyone were merely going through the motions. Finally, just before lunch, Oliver’s policeman had arrived. Now lunchtime itself was upon her and she knew that she was going to have to face up to Edmund.
    She had caught his eye across the ‘cabaret-style’ tables once or twice that morning. The first time he had looked away quickly, clearly embarrassed. The second time he had beamed at her an imploring smile, his blue eyes as open and bashful as an errant schoolboy’s.
    Even more bizarrely, ‘boy’ was how he actually referred to himself when they each forced themselves to talk. It was during the ten minutes or so between the last session and lunch, a mini-networking break which most of the delegates used for one single purpose only. Indefatigable topers as they were, three quarters of them had hurried or drifted towards the bar, an extended arrangement set up especially for the conference which ran the full extent of the main residents’ lounge. She spotted Edmund sitting at one of the tables farthest from the bar, peering into his laptop. Quietly she moved across the room and sat down next to him.
    He looked up as if startled, though she was pretty certain that he had been aware of her as soon as she entered the room. He flashed her another sheepish grin and then stared back into the depths of the computer screen again, as if his life depended on what he saw there.
    “‘Never apologise, never explain,’ as my mother used to say,” he whispered, his voice almost too low for her to hear. “Nevertheless, I am sorry,” he added, “and I want you to know that I am not a bad boy.”
    Alex shrugged in a way that she recognised as theatrical.
    “We should forget about it,” she said. “Put it down to the fact that we’d both had too much to drink.”
    Edmund bristled.
    “I wasn’t that far gone,” he said. She didn’t know whether he was defending his ability to take his liquor, or whether he did really . . . what? . . . ‘fancy’ her? Sincerely wish to have an affair with her? Or an even more serious relationship? Or was this just his way of beating a retreat with as much dignity as he could scrape together?
    She looked across at his computer.
    “What are you doing?” she asked.
    “Writing my annual report. An interminable process, always, but it’s been particularly bad this year. It’s riddled with politics – not so much about what we have achieved, but what we could have achieved if we’d had more money. But I’ve got to include plenty about what we have done, as well: this government’s not so much interested in checking that value for money has been delivered as in clawing money back, but if it has any suspicion that the former is in doubt, it will have no compunction in swooping down on the modest funds that we’re allowed. Why do you ask?” he added.
    Alex smiled inwardly. It was obvious that she was making small-talk, trying to get them over the awkwardness of the night before.
    “No reason. I just wondered why you had to spend every spare moment of the conference working. What’s that?” she added, as his screen-saver flashed on.
    “It’s a motor-bike; one which I am almost certainly going to buy.”
    “A motor-bike!”
    “You