Free The Ex Factor by Laura Greaves Page A

gunfire.
    On the corner, the pretend pizza guy has abandoned the pretence of tinkering with his moped and is now pointing his camera directly at us, blatantly capturing our entire interlude for posterity. When he sees me looking in his direction, he lowers it and gives me a little wave. Cheeky bugger.
    ‘Just out of curiosity, if a picture of you leaving a restaurant can earn a waiter a hundred bucks, what’s a shot of you kissing some obscure woman likely to go for?’
    ‘You’re not obscure, Kitty,’ Mitchell says, planting a quick peck. ‘You’re worth a million bucks. Now, how about that swim?’
    He keeps hold of my hand as we stroll on. But even after I feel the ocean spray against my skin and the warm sand between my toes, I’m still wondering. Was Mitchell serious? Is a picture of me and him worth a million dollars?
    Why do I feel like I have a bounty on my head?

6.
    Being wrenched from sleep by the sound of my sister screaming is becoming tedious, to put it mildly. But at least when her ear-splitting shrieks pierce the morning quietude this time, I can tell right away she’s excited as opposed to terrified.
    I roll over and pull Dolly’s paw across my ear, but it’s no use. Frankie’s squeals are approaching crescendo as she ricochets down the hall toward my bedroom. In the next second, my door bangs open and she launches herself onto the bed.
    ‘Kathryn Hayden, you saucy minx!’ She swats me over the head with what feels like a newspaper.
    With a sulky
whuff
, Dolly gives up her position on my bed and curls up on the floor, firing an irate look at Frankie. I force my eyes open and look at my bedside clock.
    ‘Frankie, it’s five-thirty in the morning. Whatever this is, can’t it wait?’
    My sister’s response is to peel back my doona and fling it on the floor, where it covers the somehow still-snoozing Reggie, Carl and Bananarama. Not one of them moves.
    ‘No! It most certainly can
not
wait.’
    The instant the pre-dawn chill caresses my skin, I’m wide awake. I admit defeat and haul myself into a sitting position. ‘What are you even doing up at this hour?’
    ‘Oh, I . . . had some things to do. But that’s not important.’ She spreads the newspaper across my lap. ‘Explain yourself, madam!’
    Groggily, I peer down at the front page of the
Daily Telegraph
.
Mitchell Pyke in seaside tryst
, screams the headline, which seems a bit much, even for a rag like the
Tele
. The headline is accompanied by a grainy picture of me and Mitchell holding hands as we sit side by side on the sand in the fading twilight. The caption reads:
    BEACH BABY, BEACH BABY, GIVE ME YOUR HAND:
Superstar Mitchell Pyke, in Sydney shooting his latest blockbuster
Solitaire
, thrilled fans at Narrabeen beach late yesterday as he frolicked with a mystery redhead. So much for the thirty-five-year-old movie god’s vow to never love again. Do YOU know the identity of Mitchell’s lady love?
    There’s even an email address for readers to dob me in to the paper. I wonder how long it will be before I’m outed.
    ‘Hmph, I’d have thought the photo would be better quality, considering how close they were,’ I say. ‘And we were hardly frolicking. Who frolicks in this day and age?’
    I wouldn’t consider myself a redhead either; my locks are more a coppery auburn. Although I must admit the term ‘lady love’ gives me an unexpected thrill.
    ‘Wait, you
knew
about this?’ Frankie trills.
    ‘These photographers aren’t exactly discreet.’
    ‘There’s more pics inside,’ she says, flipping the pages until she finds a two-page spread that virtually charts Mitchell’s and my entire evening in real time. Our walk to the beach has been documented, along with our quick dip (I’m pleased to see I look pretty good in my borrowed cossie) and our relaxed dinner at a beachfront steakhouse.
    But the biggest picture – it fills almost a whole page – is of course the one in which Mitchell and I are locking lips. He