Free Love Rules by Freya North Page A

Sally said impatiently. ‘Away with you to Primrose Hill! It seems to me his balls are in your court.’
    Thea paced Alice's flat, then she sat down and reread the article.
    I hope she likes the jacket. She looked far better in it than I ever did anyway.
    Was he making a pass or taking the piss? Should she read between the lines or disbelieve what she read? Alice hurry home!
    Ultimately, what could the Gorgeous Thief do but tramp up Primrose Hill for the third Sunday in a row?
    He wasn't there.
    What could she have been thinking?
    Of course he wasn't there.
    ‘I made good copy, that's all,’ Thea said with reluctant resignation, having loitered for half an hour. Overhead, ascruff of crows littered the sky, like flits of charcoal coughed up by a bonfire. Thea found herself wondering if the crows were somehow goading the birds caged in the London Zoo aviary, just down the hill and over the road. Perhaps she'd take herself off to the zoo right now. She hadn't been for years. And it wouldn't make her afternoon seem so wasted. Did people go to the zoo alone? she wondered. Were you let in if you didn't have a child in tow?
    ‘Where's my sodding jacket, you gorgeous thief?’ a voice behind her halted her meanderings.
    Thea did not turn to face him. ‘My friend's husband has now nicked it,’ she replied, her eyes tracing the rise and fall of the aviary.
    ‘Sod my Sir Walter Ralegh Moment,’ said Saul, now pressing up close, enfolding his arms around her waist, ‘and sod my image – I'm going for full-blown Mills & Boon.’ And with that Saul turned Thea to face him, cupped her head in his hands and kissed her.
    ‘Champagne, madam?’ the stewardess asked Alice who was pressing all the buttons on her vast First Class seat whilst rummaging in its capacious pockets too.
    ‘Absolutely!’ said Alice. ‘And can you pop my name down for the massage?’
    ‘Certainly – would you like a massage too, sir?’
    ‘No, thanks very much, but no,’ Mark declined.
    ‘Champagne?’ he was offered.
    ‘Thanks – but no.’
    ‘Paper?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Mark, ‘ Sunday Telegraph , please.’
    ‘Madam?’
    ‘ Observer , thanks,’ said Alice. ‘ Tory-graph !’ she teased Mark.
    ‘Limp lefty!’ he sparred back. Without having to be asked, he handed over his luxury complimentary travel pack for his wife to rifle through. By the time Alice had reached Saul's article, laughing aloud a couple of times, 38,000 feet below, the author of it was scrutinizing her best friend's scars.
    ‘Fifty-four stitches,’ Thea told him, ‘from a weedy little terrier. The bizarre thing is, at the time, I was far more distressed that the dog was destroyed.’
    Thea Luckmore had never before jumped into bed on a first date, let alone slept with a relative stranger. Moreover, she had hitherto guarded her scars as fiercely as her perceived chastity. Yet here she was, naked and post-coitally languid above the covers on Saul Mundy's bed, feeling more than fine while he traced the snaking line of scar that scored her waist and the top of her right thigh. He found the site and sight of her injury disturbing but intriguing. The scar was like a single line of pale pink silk braid laid in a particular route. It was obvious where the dog's jaws had clamped, where the teeth had punctured her, where her flesh had been ripped away and the flap carefully sewn back down. It was almost a cartoon scar, so perfect was the impression of the bite.
    ‘I was twelve years old,’ Thea continued, ‘and it was Alice's dog. Tiddler. I've been petrified of terriers ever since.’
    Saul rolled over and dipped his face down to her stomach. ‘I'm not surprised,’ he murmured, dipping his nose into her navel.
    ‘I'm not too bad with Rottweilers, oddly enough,’ Thea added while Saul let his lips touch her lightly, so gently that when she closed her eyes she couldn't tell if he was kissing scar or skin. ‘Big dogs tend to lollop, little terriers just go berserk.’
    ‘Your