Free The Foster Husband by Pippa Wright Page B

need introductions to people. I’d reached an age where the annual shindig was not just about getting hammered and getting off with someone. Times were tough at Hitz, and I knew
I had to focus on the work part of the work party.
    As Sarah joined the cameramen, disappearing amongst the checked shirts, I saw Chris look over at me and then quickly look away again, busily checking his phone as if he had lots to attend to. He
didn’t even offer a smile.
    There was a time I’d assumed a deep soul lay behind his taciturn ways, but I seemed to remember I’d ended up snogging him in Lagos mostly because when he started talking he was so
immensely dull.
    Well. If I was Chris’s last resort, then he was mine. Surely I could have much more fun tonight without revisiting my lazy cameraman? And I still had my mission to consider. This was going
to require tactics. I squeezed my way past a crowd of people just coming into the marquee, and started weaving between the tables so I could scope out the room. It was too early for many people to
be sitting down yet, though by the end of the evening it was a safe bet that the tables would be full of slumped Hitz staffers, snogging couples and glassy-eyed drunkards.
    A movement caught my eye by the Christmas tree. Almost hidden by the branches, a barrel-shaped man stood, his back to the outside wall of the marquee. The muscles in his massive neck bunched and
flexed as he chewed gum while surveying the dance floor from his half-hidden position. The tell-tale curly wire of a radio headset disappeared into the collar of his white shirt, suggesting hidden
reinforcements close at hand. A security guard. This was a complication.
    ‘What are you up to?’ said a voice close to my ear. I turned around quickly and there was Matt Martell, looking far too gorgeous in a dark navy suit that made his eyes distractingly
blue.
    ‘Hello, Matt,’ I said frostily. ‘What makes you think I’m up to anything?’
    ‘A little bird tells me you’re pretty entertaining at the Hitz Christmas party. You and your friend Sarah. I couldn’t help notice you checking out the security arrangements
over there. Are you sizing up some sort of misbehaviour?’
    ‘You’ll just have to wait and see,’ I said, raising an eyebrow and hoping I looked mysterious and inscrutable. Although there was no hope of remaining mysterious and
inscrutable once I was on the mission. Demented would be closer to the mark.
    He smiled back with that confiding little head tilt of his. How did he manage to make every exchange feel like we were the only two people in the room? I could feel myself falling for it all
over again. I felt like giving my own face a sharp slap. Or Matt’s. Get a grip, Kate, I thought. Don’t let your guard down.
    ‘So it’s funny we haven’t seen each other at all since Lagos,’ Matt said. ‘I’ve been looking out for you.’
    ‘Have you? Well, Hitz is a big place, Matt, and I’m a busy person.’
    ‘It’s not that big,’ said Matt. ‘And no one’s that busy. I get the feeling you’ve been avoiding me, Basher Bailey.’
    ‘I don’t know why you’d think that,’ I said hastily. Because of course that is exactly what I had been doing ever since we got back. I’d sent Sarah to meetings when
I knew he’d be there. I’d avoided the third floor entirely. I’d even gone so far as to take the stairs instead of the lift for a full month to ensure I wouldn’t bump into
him, with the added and unexpected bonus of some impressive thigh-toning action.
    ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Matt. ‘I suppose for you it’s normal to flirt with a guy and let him think he’s going to kiss you, and then when he turns his back
for one minute you disappear off with another man?’
    ‘That is not at
all
what happened, Matt Martell,’ I snapped.
    ‘Really?’ he asked, his expression no longer amused. ‘Because I went to get you a drink and the next thing I saw was you sitting on the lap of some