Tempting Fate Read Free Page B

for years to come her self-esteem, recently so fragile, will be able to treasure this evening, this gentle chemistry, this feeling of someone as gorgeous as Matt being interested in her.
    And what would be the harm?
    ‘I’ve really had fun tonight,’ Gabby sighs, a couple of hours later. Coffee became Irish coffee, and she is aware that her sobriety said goodbye a very long time ago.
    ‘For the record,’ Matt says, ‘I don’t make a habit of sitting at bars and flirting with lovely-looking ladies. Especially when I’m travelling for work. You have made a boring business trip completely delightful.’
    Gabby says nothing, too busy turning the words he just used over and over in her mind. ‘Lovely-looking’! ‘Flirting’! I wasn’t imagining it!
    ‘I’ll have them call you a cab.’ He doesn’t move.
    It is now the early hours of the morning. There is noone else in the dimly lit hotel lounge. One receptionist is over at the desk.
    Matt and Gabby stare at each other, and Gabby wills herself to move, to get up, to get out and go home before … before it’s too late. But she can’t move. Her heart is pounding, an unfamiliar heat is coursing through her body, and she knows she has to go, but she can’t do anything other than gaze into the eyes of this man as she lets out a deep sigh.
    ‘Why are all the women I like unavailable?’ he murmurs, making Gabby’s heart threaten to jump out of her body. She doesn’t know what to say. She wants to leave, knows she has to leave, but oh, how she wants to stay.
    ‘I should go.’ Her voice is a whisper, and mustering all the strength she can she reluctantly climbs to her feet.

Chapter Two
    Minutes stretch into hours as Gabby thinks about getting out of bed. As a student at Bristol University, hangovers were a way of life for her. Her group of friends would toss back shots on pub crawls, but they still somehow managed to crawl out of bed the next morning and make it to lectures.
    Despite the hangovers, the nausea, she didn’t stop drinking. It was part and parcel of university life in England, part and parcel of growing up. She hasn’t been drunk in years, not since she and Elliott first started dating. Well, perhaps there have been a few times, a handful – fewer – since the girls were born.
    She now knows her limits. Being drunk may be fun, but it isn’t worth it. This isn’t worth it. She had no idea, last night, that she had drunk enough to make her feel as bad as she does now. Martinis. Irish coffees. Mixing drinks. That’s what did it. That’s why she feels like living death this morning.
    The bathroom used to be so close, but overnight it appears to have moved three miles away. If I can get to the shower, she thinks, I’ll feel so much better. She can almost sense the cold water pouring over her head, the relief the shower will bring, but making the journeyfrom the bed to the bathroom seems like an impossible task. She actually doesn’t believe she can move. What she wants to do is think about last night, but thinking about it means thinking about the Martinis she drank, and if she thinks about those she may very well throw up. Instead she imagines jumping into a swimming pool, imagines the cool water surrounding her, bringing her back to normality. It helps.
    Her head is pounding, her throat is dry. She squints at the curtains, then at the clock, knowing there is nothing to do but wait until she feels strong enough to make it to the bathroom, the shower, life.
    Hours later, she stands under the shower, making the water as cold as she can bear, until she finally starts to feel human again. She scrubs her skin, then wraps herself in a terrycloth robe and goes downstairs to make some strong black coffee.
    Years ago, watching
Cabaret
, she was struck by the sight of Sally Bowles swigging a prairie oyster – a raw egg swirled with Worcestershire sauce – as a hangover cure. As a teenager she would do this regularly, not because she was convinced it