machine and giving her the slip to sign. ‘It’s all been sorted out now, and Maxine is fine. It was nice of you, though, to be so concerned.’
Serena watched Elsie leave the shop. ‘Well,’ she said, calmly sliding the credit card back inside an expensive purse, ‘you can say one thing about Maxine.’
Janey could think of several but they weren’t wonderfully polite. Instead she said, ‘What’s that?’ Senena smiled. ‘She certainly lives life to the full.’
When the cricketers had departed to play cricket somewhere in the north of England, Maxine had been briefly despondent. Only briefly, though. The very next day, whilst walking along the beach with Josh and Ella, she had encountered Tom.
‘Bleeeuchh!’ yelled Tom, coming awake with a jolt. Josh, who had been running, had stumbled against an abandoned shoe and inadvertently sent up a fountain of sand. Tom, spitting it out of his mouth, glared at Josh.
‘Gosh, sorry,’ said Josh. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’
‘It was my fault.’ Maxine, removing her sunglasses, grinned down at the body on the sand.
It was quite the nicest body she’d seen in ... ooh, twenty-four hours. ‘HI hadn’t been chasing him, he wouldn’t have tripped.’
She was wearing a pastel pink bikini and her long, blond hair was tied back with a pink scarf. Tom’s mood improved almost at once.
It doesn’t matter.’ Ruefully wiping his cheek, he said, ‘It’s a long time since anyone kicked sand in my face.’
‘I should think it was.’ Maxine admired his biceps. ‘Do you weight-train?’
‘Three times a week.’ Tom was intensely proud of his physique. ‘Have to,’ he added, because he was also an incurable show-off. ‘When you’re out in the lifeboat it might mean the difference between life and death.’
‘The lifeboat?’ gasped Maxine, playing it to the hilt and deciding that Josh had earned himself an ice cream at the very least. The dazzling smile came into play. ‘Goodness, you must be incredibly brave ...’
But going out to dinner with a man who carried a beeper had its drawbacks. Maxine, who had worked long and hard on Guy in order to wangle another night off, and who had promised to babysit for the next three evenings to make up for it, was dismayed when she realized what was happening: one minute they were in Bruno’s restaurant, about to dive into great bowls of mussels swimming in garlic butter sauce, and the next minute Tom was responding to his beeper as if he’d been stuck with an electric cattle prod.
‘You’re leaving now?’ Maxine stared at him as he leapt up from the table. He could at least stay to finish his first course, surely.
Everyone in the restaurant had by this time turned to stare at the source of the beeping. Tom loved it when that happened. He felt just like Superman.
‘Vessel in distress,’ he said, just loudly enough for them all to hear. Snatching up his car keys he added, ‘Every second counts. Sorry, love. I’ll be in touch.’
That’s what you think, Maxine thought moodily. Whilst she appreciated the urgency of the situation, she still wasn’t happy about it. She’d never been stood up in the middle of dinner before. Even more disturbing, it looked as if she was going to be stuck with the bill.
‘Bugger,’ she said aloud, pouring herself another glass of wine and now wishing she hadn’t chosen such an expensive bottle.
‘Oh dear.’ Bruno materialized at the table as the door swung shut behind Tom. ‘Lovers’
tiff?’
Maxine, poking at the mussels with her fork, gave him a wry smile. ‘Saving lives, apparently, means more to him than my scintillating company and your stupendous food.’
‘Some people have no sense of priority.’
‘If he only knew what a struggle I had, getting the night off,’ she went on with a trace of irritation. ‘I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d thought this might happen. What a waste!’
‘Some people are so selfish,’ Bruno mocked. Interestingly, he observed, she was no longer bothering to flirt with him as she had done on her previous visit. Since discovering him in Janey’s flat, presumably, she had decided he was off-limits.
‘You’d better go and tell the chef to stop cooking the steaks,’ said Maxine. ‘I can’t afford to pay for them as well.’ Gloomily she added, ‘I don’t even have enough cash on me for a taxi home.’
But Bruno was hungry and the Scotch fillets this week were superb. ‘Please,’ he said, in the same wry tone. ‘You’ll have me in tears next. I’ll eat with you, if you like. If you’re good,’ he added with a brief smile, ‘I’ll even give you a lift home.’
If the mussels had been great the steaks au poivre were even better. Maxine, demolishing hers with enthusiasm, soon cheered up. ‘Tell me all about it then,’ she demanded, when the party at the table closest to theirs had left. ‘How long have you been sleeping with Janey? And why on earth was she so desperate to keep this ravishing little item of gossip from me?’
‘I think you’ve just answered that one yourself.’ Bruno raised an eyebrow as he picked up his glass. Janey’s hardly the type to enjoy being an item of gossip.’
‘Oh you know what I mean,’ said Maxine crossly. ‘But she could at least have told me. I’m her sister! It isn’t as if I’d go rushing out, broadcasting the news to all and sundry. I can be discreet, you know. When I have to be.’
Having heard all the lurid tales of Maxine’s past conquests, Bruno didn’t doubt it. But he was more interested right now in discovering whether she really knew why Janey had been so determined to keep their relationship a secret.
‘In that case,’ he said mildly, ‘there must have been other reasons.’
Maxine, however, just looked puzzled. ‘What other reasons?’ she demanded. ‘Your girlfriend? Her absent husband? She could still have told me.’
‘Don’t be dense,’ sighed Bruno. ‘You’re the reason she didn’t want to tell you.’
