Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming

‘I’m Joe Hansen,’ he said, holding out his hand.

‘Izzie Silver,’ she replied automatically, catching his and feeling something inside her jolt at the touch of that firm, masculine hand.

Nearly forty, but she could still feel the surge of attraction, couldn’t she?

And the way he was looking at her, watching, made her think that he wasn’t looking for a twenty-five-year-old. He was looking at her.

Smiling, a nice, real smile. Making her think of him with that shirt ripped off, and her close to him, kissing him, being cradled in those big arms, his mouth closed over the brown nub of her nipple. Phew.

Even now, Izzie could recall every precise detail of the moment. ‘So, what’s the “curly girl” thing?’ he asked.

Wiping the nipple-sucking vision from her mind, Izzie grinned at him now, not her sassy New Yorker-by-adoption grin but the born-and-bred-country-girl grin her family would have recognised. ‘My best friend from school used to call that sort of thing “curly”. Don’t know why. She had an odd way with words. Curly means the sort of person who loves pink ribbons and hairclips, makes her eyes look like Bambi’s and believes in eating before a dinner date so men won’t think she’s a great horse of a creature with a huge appetite.’

‘I’d warrant a guess you never did anything like that in your life,’ he said, assessing her with his eyes. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with a huge appetite.’

A quicksilver flip in her stomach made Izzie think he wasn’t referring to appetites at mealtimes.

‘I like my food,’ she said flatly.

He’d get no games from her. She knew how they were played after years of dating in Manhattan. Games were games. This was for real, wasn’t it?

‘Favourite meal, then? Your last meal on earth?’

He was leaning back in Linda’s chair by now, totally oblivious to everyone round them. The charity auction had begun. Some hideous piece of sculpture was being sold and the other alpha males in the room were practically beating their chests like gorillas trying to buy it.

But Joe wasn’t interested. His total focus was on her. In turn, she couldn’t take her eyes off his face, off the steely grey eyes that were making her feel like the most important person in the room. That couldn’t be a trick, could it? Could a person fake absolute fascination?

Izzie sensed rather than saw the women at their table noticing the courtship going on between her and Joe, and she knew that it was time to put a stop to it all, and go back to the real world. Somebody would notice. She half-recognised his name and was sure that Mr Hansen was big fry, while she was just a shrimp in the pond. But somehow, she couldn’t put a stop to this just yet. It had been so long since she’d flirted with a man or felt even a quarter of the attraction she felt right now. Just a few minutes more, that couldn’t hurt, right?

‘Cough medicine and painkillers, probably,’ she joked. She joked when she was nervous.

‘Not your last meal in Cedars-Sinai,’ he said, eyes glinting now and a smile turning up his mouth ever so slightly. He smiled with his eyes, Izzie realised. So few people did that.

‘Trout caught from the stream beside my home in Ireland, with salad – rocket from the garden my grandmother set. She says it’s a great cure for grumpiness, puts a bit of pep back into you, and gooseberry tart with cream.’

‘Real food,’ Joe said, and his eyes were smiling more, sending out even more warmth that hit her square in the heart. ‘I was afraid you might say something about rare Iranian caviar or champagne out of a small vineyard that they only stock in five-star hotels in Paris.’

‘Then you don’t know me very well,’ Izzie countered. There weren’t many things that surprised Mr Hansen very much, she felt sure. Shrewd wasn’t the word. Izzie had a feeling she’d managed a feat few people ever had, and all because she’d been herself. Normally, being herself got her nowhere with men. How lovely to meet one who liked the unvarnished, raw Izzie Silver. The on-the-verge-of-forty Izzie.

‘I’d like to,’ he said. ‘Know you well, I mean.’

‘Sold at seventy thousand dollars!’ yelled the auctioneer triumphantly. Izzie glanced up. The red-faced oil billionaire at the table next to theirs was now the proud owner of what looked to Izzie like a squashed car gearbox painted with acid yellow dribbles. Art, schmart.

‘I’m boring you,’ Joe said softly.

‘No.’ Izzie flushed. She never flushed. Flushing was man-hunting girlie behaviour, ranking alongside her pet hates like hair-flicking and the tentative licking of lip thing that men always seemed to fall for, brain surgeons and cab drivers alike. Men could be so dumb.

‘You’re not boring me at all,’ she said quickly. He was unsettling her, though. Not that she could say that. Hello, I haven’t been on a date in six months and have given up on men, so you’re not boring me, but you’re freaking the hell out of me because I like you. No, definitely not something she could say.

He was talking again: he’d think she was a total nutter, the way she kept tuning in and out.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I’d hate to be boring.’

As if, Izzie thought with a little sigh.

The voice of the MC boomed out of the sound system: ‘The next item in today’s auction is a portrait painted by art legend, Pasha Nilanhi. Who’ll start the bidding at twenty thousand dollars?’

Everyone made the correct noises of appreciation. Izzie had no idea who this Pasha person was, but everyone else must from the approving murmurs. Or else, they were pretending in case they looked like art philistines.

‘Do you collect art?’ he asked her as she craned her neck to see the picture that was now being carried round between the tables.

‘Only if it’s in the pages of magazines,’ she said with a mischievous smile. ‘To let you in on a secret, I didn’t pay for my ticket today,’ she added. ‘I’m not one of the art-collecting ladies who lunch.’

She waited for him to retreat. She was too old and not rich, either.

‘I’ve a secret too,’ he murmured, moving closer so that she instinctively bent her head to hear him. ‘I figured that out for myself. That’s why I’m talking to you.’

Izzie felt another swoop deep in her belly. ‘You’re saying I stand out like a sore thumb?’ she teased.

‘In a good way,’ he grinned. ‘The big giveaway was seeing you actually eat the entrée.’

Izzie couldn’t help herself: she let out a great roar of laughter.

‘Greed was the giveaway,’ she laughed. ‘How awful.’

‘Not greed,’ he insisted. ‘Hey, I ate mine too.’

‘You’re a guy,’ Izzie said, as if explaining experimental physics to a four-year-old. ‘Guys can eat and it looks macho. In our screwed-up universe, women can’t eat.’

‘Except for you,’ he urged.

‘Except for me,’ she agreed, feeling suddenly heifer-like.

‘Good. Because I was going to ask you out to lunch and there wouldn’t be any point if you wouldn’t eat. Or if lunch isn’t acceptable, we could have dinner?’

Izzie wanted to shriek ‘yes!’ at the top of her voice. This man, all elegance in a Brioni suit that cost more than a month’s rent on her apartment, had captured her as surely as if he’d caged her. He might dress like a civilised man, but he was a hunter all the same, a predator, the alpha male.

And playing with alpha males was madness. They knew what they wanted and went after it ruthlessly. Izzie didn’t want to be hurt.

To steady herself, she reached for the stem of her wineglass and twirled it. The table no longer looked pretty. It was sad now: the menus tossed aside, place names scrunched up, dirtied napkins left carelessly alongside coffee cups and untouched petits fours.

The whole shebang was nearly over and she had to go back to work afterwards, back to her normal life where millionaires didn’t flirt with her.

She lived in a tiny apartment with a dripping shower head, mould in the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen and still owed $1,200 on her credit card, for God’s sake, after splurging on those Louboutin platforms and the Stella McCartney trousers. Had he mistaken her for someone else from his blue-chip world? She imagined people she knew hearing about her flirting with Joe Hansen and winced. She’d never wanted to be a rich man’s arm candy: arm candy was twenty-something and ninety pounds, most of it breast enhancement, veneers and ego.

‘Everything is possible,’ she said cheerily, the way she spoke to woebegone models on the phone when they hadn’t been booked for something they were sure they’d got. ‘Not probable, though.’

‘Why not?’