Free The Queen of New Beginnings by Erica James

espresso coffee. It seemed to be taking for ever. She wished he’d opted to use the kettle as he had before.
    Eventually he brought two goldfish bowl-sized cups of frothy coffee to the table. “Biscuit?” he asked.
    “No thank you.”
    “Mind if I do?”
    I don’t care what you do, she thought, so long as I get out of here alive. And so long as it isn’t in ten years’ time when I’m found chained and emaciated in the cellar.
    Once he was settled at the table and had managed to wrestle open a packet of Jaffa Cakes, she started the process of negotiating her freedom by engaging him in conversation. “Um…you mentioned something about being under a lot of stress recently. Problems at work?”
    “Problems with everything would be a more accurate description,” he said glumly. “My life’s hit the skids and there doesn’t seem to be a damn thing I can do about it. I’m a cliché in my own lifetime.”
    “Oh, we’ve all been there,” she said airily. If he was looking for a sympathetic hostage, he was out of luck.
    “But did you have your every misfortune, failure and cock-up written about in the newspapers? Did you have journalists doorstepping you all hours of the day and night?”
    Alice thought of her mother’s death and then of the events that took place some years later. There had been a brief flurry of press interest and speculation, but not on the level he appeared to be talking about. “No,” she said, “I can’t say that I have.”
    “Then count yourself lucky.”
    His tone was morose and it made her wonder. There was something going on here. She had been right to think there was more to him than met the eye. What’s more, she sensed the only hostage sitting round this table was the one opposite her. She took a sip of her coffee. It was surprisingly good. Feeling that she was now the one in control of the situation, she helped herself to a Jaffa Cake. “Having established my true identity,” she said, “how about we do the same with you?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    She smiled her best winsomely enticing smile, the same smile she would be putting to good use during lunch with James Montgomery tomorrow.
    He looked at her strangely. “You’ve got—” He flapped his hand vaguely across his top lip, “coffee froth on your…” His voice trailed away.
    She wiped her mouth. So much for winsome and enticing. “What did you find so hysterically funny earlier?” she asked.
    He shifted awkwardly in his seat, closed his eyes. They stayed closed for some moments as if he were in pain. When he opened them, he said, “I think it was the absurdity of it all. That and remembering something Beckett once said, that there’s nothing funnier than unhappiness. Haven’t you ever thought how futile and ludicrous life is sometimes, and that if you don’t take refuge in laughter you’ll end up in a far worse place?”
    “That’s quite profound.”
    “What can I say? I’m a profound kind of guy.”
    A profoundly unhappy guy, she thought. “Shall I tell Ronnetta that she needs to find a replacement for me? I don’t know how long it will take—she’s short-staffed at the moment. Which is why you landed up with me. She scraped the barrel and there I was.”
    A silence fell between them.
    “I’d rather not have anyone else,” he said after a lengthy and uncomfortable pause.
    “Will you be able to manage on your own?” she asked, surprised. “What about your shopping? How will you do that without a car? You could walk, I suppose. It’s over three miles to the nearest shops, though. You could always use a taxi. I can recommend a good firm to you.”
    He picked up his coffee cup and looked at her uneasily over its rim. “I thought maybe you could keep coming.”
    “Even though I lied to you and you think I’m untrustworthy?”
    “Who’s to say the next person won’t lie to me? But at least I know you.”
    “Now that’s where you’re wrong. You know my name, my