Public Affair, Secretly Expecting

She rubbed her cheek where Brody’s stubble had stung. She knew exactly how. As soon as he’d looked at her, as soon as his lips had touched hers, all her common sense and her good intentions had been burned to cinders in a blast of pure unadulterated pleasure.

Kissing him had been like falling into a sunbeam, making every single cell in her body explode with rapture. But how could her body have picked him, of all people, to respond to with such fervour? A man who had the emotional integrity of a gnat? It was against everything she knew and understood about herself. Against everything she had made herself become in the last six years.

She thrust her hand back into her pocket, turning into Colville Gardens.

Forget about the stupid kiss.

It wasn’t important. She couldn’t let it be. Mac Brody’s dangerous sex appeal and devilish good looks would play havoc with any woman’s hormones at a distance of two hundred yards—and she’d got a lot closer to him than that. That was all. Her shocking reaction was simply an accident of chemistry—and geography. An accident of thermonuclear proportions maybe. But still just an accident. It didn’t have to mean any more than that. Especially as she never intended to step into Mac Brody’s orbit again.

She gave a shaky sigh as Mrs Valdermeyer’s bedsit co-op came into view, looking like the poor relation to Daisy and Connor’s graceful five-storey Georgian next door.

Right now all she wanted to do was hide out in her room at Mrs Valdermeyer’s and spend the rest of her day off catching up on the shop’s bookkeeping and persuading herself this morning had never happened.

She took the first step up to Mrs Valdermeyer’s door. Then stopped.

‘Blast.’ The hissed expletive cut the summer afternoon like a knife.

She couldn’t do it. Six years ago she’d promised herself she’d always face up to what she’d done. This morning, she’d screwed up and let two people she loved down in the process.

Whatever the extenuating circumstances, she owed it to Daisy to come clean and then apologise.

‘I’m so glad you dropped by.’ Daisy beamed a smile over her shoulder as she led the way down the long hallway of her home. ‘The material for my bridal gown arrived from Delhi. It’s absolutely gorgeous—you have to come and drool over it with me.’

‘Great,’ Juno replied, trying to muster some enthusiasm as they entered the sunny open-plan kitchen at the back of the house. ‘Where’s Ronan?’ she asked, busy postponing the inevitable.

‘Having his nap. The little terror.’ Daisy filled the kettle at the sink. ‘Can you believe it? He woke us up at four this morning.’

Daisy’s eyes lit up as she talked about her son and Juno felt an odd pang in her chest.

‘Enough about He Who Does Not Sleep,’ Daisy continued. ‘We need to have another talk about your maid of honour gown.’ She dropped teabags into a couple of earthenware mugs. ‘There is no way I’m letting you walk down the aisle behind me in jeans and a—’

She stopped talking abruptly as her gaze landed on Juno. Her eyes widened. ‘What on earth happened to your face? Is that a heat rash?’

Juno clapped her palms to her cheeks. ‘Um…maybe.’ How much worse was today going to get?

‘Let me go get some salve,’ Daisy said.

Juno held a hand up. ‘Don’t bother. Honestly, it doesn’t hurt.’ She took a steadying breath, determined to force out her confession before Daisy spotted anything else. ‘I’ve done something reckless and irresponsible and I—’

‘Reckless and irresponsible?’ Daisy interrupted her. ‘You? I don’t believe it,’ she scoffed. ‘You’re the most cautious person I know.’

That would be yesterday.

‘I met Mac Brody at Heathrow Airport this morning and tried to give him the wedding invite.’ She rushed the words, before she lost her nerve completely.

Daisy blinked. ‘You met Mac? Connor’s brother? But…’ She trailed off, clearly at a loss for words.

‘I had this stupid idea I could persuade him to come.’ Juno twisted her hands in her lap. ‘I knew how much you wanted him there. You and Connor and after—’

‘Wait, wait,’ Daisy interrupted again. ‘Go back a bit.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Are you seriously telling me that you went all the way to Heathrow this morning to meet the handsome, charming and stupendously sexy Mac Brody, movie star? Of your own free will?’

Was that a smile wrinkling Daisy’s lips?

‘So?’

Daisy giggled. ‘So, that’s fantastic.’ Her friend zipped round the breakfast bar and perched on the stool next to Juno’s. ‘Now, tell me all about it. No detail is too insignificant.’

‘What’s got into you?’ Juno sensed a trap, but couldn’t figure out what it could be.

‘Just tell me. Is he as hormone-meltingly gorgeous in the flesh as he is in his films?’

A blush blazed across Juno’s chest. ‘You can’t say that. You’re practically a married woman.’ Was no woman immune to Mac Brody’s charms?

‘I may be practically married,’ Daisy said, not sounding remotely chastened, ‘but I’m not blind, am I? Anyway, it’s required that I appreciate him—on a purely aesthetic level—after all, Connor and he are the spitting image of each other.’

The instant Daisy had said it, Juno’s mind conjured up a picture of Brody in the moment before he’d kissed her. A picture now branded on her brain for all eternity in glorious Technicolor.

The brutal blush scorched the back of her neck.

The two brothers did look remarkably alike. Mac Brody’s features were a little less blunt than Connor’s and the colour of his eyes was a purer, fiercer blue, but both men shared the same dark, brooding Celtic beauty. The high, hollow cheekbones, the sharply defined brows, the long, leanly muscled physique and that air of casual danger. So why, apart from Brody’s gait, hadn’t she spotted the resemblance until Daisy had mentioned it?

Maybe because Connor’s looks had never made her heart race or her pulse hammer as his brother’s had.

She forced the picture to the back of her mind. She couldn’t afford to start hyperventilating again.

‘It doesn’t matter what he looked like,’ she said as soberly as she could manage. ‘The point is he refused to come to the wedding, he even said he didn’t have a brother and I lost my temper with him and made things worse. I wanted to apologise to you and to Connor. Because there’s no chance at all he’ll come now.’

‘Apologise for what? We already know he’s not coming,’ Daisy said so matter-of-factly, Juno wondered if her sensitive friend had been taken over by Martians. ‘We got that letter from his agent, remember?’ Daisy finished.

‘I know, I was there. You were really upset.’

Daisy waved the comment away. ‘I was a bit at first. But after I’d thought about it I could see I was being overly optimistic thinking he’d come around so quickly. Connor was just as stubborn and misguided when I first met him. After the terrible things that happened to them both as kids, it’s no surprise Mac has hang-ups to spare.’ Daisy gave a heavy sigh. ‘It doesn’t surprise me he said he didn’t have a brother.’

What terrible things?

The question burned on Juno’s tongue but she stopped herself from asking it, and ruthlessly controlled the little spurt of sympathy that went with it. Maybe there was more to the situation between him and Connor than she’d assumed. But Mac Brody had been right about one thing: none of this was any of her business—and she’d got into quite enough trouble already trying to make it her business.

‘I’m sure Mac needs a family as much as Connor did,’ Daisy continued. ‘But it’ll probably take him a while to figure it out.’

Juno wondered if the man who had kissed her with such confidence had ever needed anybody. But decided not to mention it.

‘But enough about me.’ Daisy patted Juno’s knee, the spark of excitement returning to her voice. ‘What did you think of him?’

‘Who cares what I thought of him?’ Maybe Mac Brody wasn’t as big a jerk as she had thought. Maybe he had his reasons for treating Connor the way he had. But what difference did it make what she thought of the man if she was never going to see him again?