Fortune in the Stars Read Free Page A

through it.
    'How you behave towards women is your own affair,' she declared, her pride swept aside by a surfacing streak
of self-preservation warning her that she should placate rather than
antagonise him. 'I really had no right to make the comment I
did—and I certainly had no intention of shattering your
illusions.'
    She wondered if perhaps she had overdone it when he gave
her a slightly alarmed look.
    'You
are
the Penny who was at
secondary school with Lexy, aren't you—one of the quartet?'
he demanded.
    Penny nodded, not trusting herself to speak, yet taking a
tiny measure of comfort from his reference to the quartet.
    'Lexy was expelled from two schools before that
one—did you know?'
    Again Penny nodded.
    'You can't imagine how relieved I was when she seemed to
settle down at that third school, especially when she began talking
about the three close friends she'd made.'
    'The quartet,' murmured Penny, relaxing a little at the
realisation that his hitherto rambling words appeared to be leading
somewhere. She helped herself to some prawns, watching as his slim
fingers deftly shelled several on his plate, and waiting for him to
continue.
    'Until she met you three I was the only friend she had. As
you can imagine, a man of twenty is hardly the ideal confidant for a
twelve-year-old girl… The illusion you've just shattered is
that for all those years I believed she was confiding in her three
friends.'
    Her eyes wide with shock, Penny shook her head. 'But your
parents… Surely she could confide in your mother?'
    'Both our parents, together with our paternal
grandparents, were killed in a plane crash when Lexy was still a baby.
I thought girls of that age told their friends everything; didn't the
rest of you find it odd her not even mentioning her parents?'
    Penny shook her head, an aching sadness filling her. 'It's
not that we didn't find it odd… There were so many girls
around from wealthy yet disastrously unstable backgrounds,' she told
him unhappily. 'All three of us realised pretty quickly that family was
a taboo subject as far as Lexy was concerned, and we accepted it as
such… Not that Sarah ever really spoke of her family either,
and Erica's parents—' She broke off, her teeth biting sharply
against her lower lip.
    'Erica's parents?' he probed.
    'They had been divorced so often, Erica claimed to have
lost count of how many step-parents she had had.'
    She gave a start of surprise as he reached over and patted
her lightly on the hand.
    'Sorry,' he muttered. 'Erica was the one who died a few
years ago, wasn't she?'
    Penny nodded, unable to speak for the pain she knew would
always haunt the remaining three of that childhood quartet.
    'And you, Penny, what's your background?' he asked, his
deliberate alteration of the course of their conversation leaving her
none the wiser as to how much he really knew of the details of Erica's
tragic death.
    'It's pretty straightforward. The only reason I was sent
to that particular school was because my father's a diplomat and he was
posted to the back of beyond just before I was twelve.'
    'And where are your parents now?'
    'Brazil—so naturally I don't see much of them.'
    'You should try the mayonnaise with those prawns,' he
suggested, with a smile so utterly charming that she had difficulty
believing she had earlier judged him to be completely without charm.
'It's very good… If you like garlic, that is.'
    She tried the mayonnaise and pronounced it delicious.
    'And the wine—you haven't tasted that either.'
    She took a dutiful sip from her glass and found even her
untutored palate suspecting that this must be an exceptionally high
quality wine.
    'It's fantastic,' she enthused. 'Is it local?'
    He gave a small laugh as he shook his head. 'A remark
guaranteed to have my grandfather turning in his grave,' he murmured.
'I feel obliged to qualify my remark about his taste—he had
an exceptional nose for wine. What you are now sampling is part of a
truly magnificent cellar.'
    'Did