The Morning After the Night Before: Love & Lust in the city that never sleeps! (20 page)

Google immediately knew better.

Did you mean Harrison Mitchell Broadmore?
it asked.

‘Not really,' she muttered, irritated, her finger hovering over her original search, ready to override the computer brain. But then it hit her: maybe Harry really was short for something like Harrison?

She clicked yes. Why not?

Dozens—hundreds—of results streamed down for Harrison Mitchell and Broadmore. Images, news reports, gossip articles. The works.

Someone was a busy boy.

She clicked through image results for some big New York masters of the universe corporate gathering until she paused on a familiar, lined face. Weston Broadmore, founder of the firm she'd so recently stuck one finger up at. One or two of him with what could only be called his trophy wife. Mostly breast. And everything that wasn't breast was blonde. And young. Really, quite young compared to Broadmore's seventy-plus years.

But…they were still together and both on their only marriage. And that was something in this day and age. Must be love.

She clicked the next image result and hit an older shot, a less-grey version of Broadmore, ushering a gaggle of teenaged children into a stadium. All girls but one.

The Broadmore brood, the caption read. Carla, Margaret, Kathryn and Harrison.

Nice-looking girls—or they would be by now. Nice-looking boy, too. Little. No more than ten. Their father had a slightly harassed look on his face and the hand urging his son forward looked impatient. In return, the kid was glancing up at him with a conflicted twist on his little lips.

Wait…

Izzy squinted and scrolled the image bigger. Zooming right in on that little face as the hairs on her neck sprang to attention. Why did that sardonic grimace look so familiar? A baby…admittedly…but familiar.

She redid the web search to remove
Mitchell
from the mix and the list of results refined dramatically.

Harrison Broadmore, captured in Australia a dozen years ago. Dressed for the beach. Cap down low over his eyes. Nice, stubbled jaw visible
below it. Amazing young torso below that. Her whole body responded before she could think about the inappropriateness of her nipples tightening for a teenager.

She focused on hunting further.

Click. Click. Cli—

Her finger froze, suspended over the keypad, eyes glued to her laptop's screen, which displayed a more professional photo of a more professionally presented Broadmore heir. In a suit, like his father. And recent. She let the finger fall gently onto the screen. Resting it over Harrison Broadmore's heart.

Using it as an anchor to stop the wild thrumming of her own.

Not Harrison Mitchell
and
Broadmore.

Harrison Mitchell Broadmore.

Harry.

Corporate to the max, but one hundred per cent
her
Harry.

Her stomach rolled. Was this what he'd been keeping from her? The reason for all the caginess and ambiguity and his aversion to media attention? Had he been working his way up through departments in one of Broadmore's subsidiary firms? Was it some kind of hidden camera
Undercover Boss
thing for television? Or
had he gone rogue, and his family didn't even know where he was as some of the websites suggested? Or was this some kind of hilarious incognito experiment rich people liked to conduct?

A dozen questions swamped in at once and pressed down onto her roiling stomach but they all pointed the same way.

Harry Mitchell and Harrison Broadmore were the same man.

And they were both liars.

Every time he didn't tell her the truth. Every time she gave him one of her quizzical looks and he distracted her with a kiss.

Lying. And rich.

And lying about being rich.

All the while shagging her senseless.

Why? Did he prefer his sexual activity to be confidential? He was already taking her to top restaurants and entertainment—did he imagine she'd want more? Did he think she'd demand to be part of his celebrity world, if she knew?

That set her off in a fury of searching and, sure enough, the internet was clogged with images of a younger him mixing it up with celebrities and gazillionaires alike.

And women… So many women…

She swallowed back a soggy lump and forced herself onwards.

Only a handful of images from the past few years, and a few ‘What's happened to Harry?' type blog pieces trying to dig up his whereabouts. So his lying was purely a UK thing, then?

Lucky England.

No wife,
her subconscious urged.
No organised crime.
That was something, right?

He was just rich.

Rich. Four little letters.

Four little letters and a few minutes on her laptop and Harry suddenly became her ‘better'. The exclusive privacy of the places he took her to eat made her feel suspicious, not special. The exciting foreplay up against the Tate and on the tube suddenly smacked of slumming when viewed through a money-coloured filter.

Because it was no longer between two people who were each other's equal. Two people who were enjoying exploring and getting to know each other. Two people just caught up in an unexpected affair.

Harry was heir to one of the top fortunes in the corporate world.

She was a nobody from the Chorlton estates who slept in a closet.

‘Did you find him, Iz?'

Poppy's voice was an indistinct blur amid her wildly spiralling thoughts. Impossible to marshal once they were whipped up into a dread-based frenzy.

Every fear she'd ever harboured warred with her sense of natural justice. She couldn't condemn the man before giving him half a chance, right? And there were no relationship rules stipulating a timeframe for full disclosure. Harry might have had a really good reason not to tell her who he really was before now.

Like…

She sat there staring at her laptop screen, thinking. And she got nothing. Nothing but the witness protection thing.

There was only one way to find out—a crazy, novel thought.

Ask him…
Like a grown-up, and then deal with what came. That was what brave Izzy would have done. Brave, idealistic Izzy.

Or
—logical, unflappable Izzy reasoned—
you could give him a chance to tell you off his own bat.
Be available. Be willing to hear. Be calm and mature and modern about it. Let it come.

See if he tells you at all
, whispered burned, cynical Izzy.

‘He will,' she said aloud, shaking her computer just slightly.

And soon.

‘Who will what?' Tori frowned.

She refreshed the page and selected the top news story, the one from two hours ago.

Harry…!

Poppy cried out as Izzy shot to her feet and sent her computer flying into her friend's lap.

‘I have to go…'

She snatched her phone from the table, shoving it into the accessory pocket of her running pants, and sprinted for the door. Behind her, Tori reached for the laptop as Poppy gaped.

‘What—?'

‘I have to go!'

‘Please, can
you drive any faster?'

‘This is London, love, not Monaco,' the taxi driver commented. ‘I go as fast as the traffic allows.'

Izzy took pity on her inner cheek and gnawed on her fingernail instead. It seemed to help with the interminable drive across town.

‘I'll jump out here, thanks,' she said, knowing it was probably quicker to jog on foot through the bikeways and private lanes down to the embankment than to sit here in the taxi observing the niceties of the peak-hour road rules.

She tossed the driver her emergency twenty from her bra and sacrificed the change as she slammed the door behind her. Her long legs carried her down the rear lane of endless residential buildings, through parks and between the
creeping traffic towards Vauxhall Bridge. Boom gates and no-entry signs meant nothing just now. It occurred to her, vaguely, that some of those no-entry laneways probably belonged to MI5, but hopefully all they'd see on their security monitors was a young woman out for a jog and taking a few unsanctioned short cuts.

Her runners ate up the last five hundred metres of the bridge and Riverside Walk and she arrived, gasping for breath, at the glamorous Thameside entry to Harry's sprawling complex.

Thank God for the register. It meant only the barest pause to announce herself to the security, who were too polite to so much as lift an eyebrow at her casualwear and flushed face. And thank God for the mirrored walls of the lift, which let her remedy the worst of the damage to her face and hair.

The lift opened on the top floor just metres from Harry's apartment and she fell on his door, leaning hard on the bell.

Harry opened it almost immediately, shadows under his beautiful eyes, and paler than his lifetime tan should have allowed. His face transformed from grief to something blazing and bright as she fell into his arms. They slid
up around her and held on as if she was the one giving him strength.

She practically willed some into him.

‘You came,' he breathed against her neck.

‘Your father!' she gasped, still struggling for air. ‘I'm so sorry. What can I do?'

His entire body locked up hard, except those parts he needed to push her slightly away. Apparently his Australian tan
could
get paler. ‘What?'

‘I read about his heart attack online. Are you going home? What do you need?'

The shock slowly morphed into something else. Something edgy and unfamiliar. ‘My father?'

‘Weston Broadmore,' she explained in case he was in some kind of shock from the news. But that wasn't shock on his face, she finally realised, it was anger.

A rigid kind of anger.

A man exited the second lift behind her. The man from Portishead. And Shakespeare. And Harry's building. Harry caught his eyes and acknowledged him with the briefest of nods.

‘Do you really want to talk about this out here?' she puffed.

He stepped aside and she practically tumbled into the comfortable apartment.

He spun on her. ‘You know?'

She waved away his concern and crossed close to him and curled her fingers around his arm. ‘What can I do, Harry?'

He didn't yank his arm away but the frozen way he stood was almost worse. ‘Nothing.'

‘So you're going home?'

‘Of course.'

His icy tone muddled her already racing mind. ‘Yes, sorry. Dumb question.' She squeezed his arm again. ‘How is your father?'

‘Dying.'

Icy
and
little better than monosyllabic. It finally got her attention. She stepped back and peered up at him. ‘Are you okay?'

‘Well, my father's in critical care…'

‘I mean, are you okay
with me?
You seem angry.'

‘What gave me away?'

Sarcasm had always been his sharpest tool. The unfairness of that bit deep inside. ‘I've just run across half of London to be here for you.'

‘If you'd run just a bit slower you'd have missed me.'

Her eyes fell on the two packed bags by his feet. And on the man waiting politely in the hall.

Now? He was going right now? A wild panic started building in her gut. ‘I'll come with you to Australia.' That was what credit cards were for, right? Emergency transcontinental flights. ‘We'll just need to stop by the—'

‘I hope you're not expecting me to pick up the tab?'

His blunt tone had her taking a step back from him. In all his many guises, she'd never heard Harry be outright nasty. Or snarky about her lack of funds. Though a tiny voice reminded her that she really wouldn't know what Harrison Broadmore was like at all.

‘No, I…'

But her airways weren't clear all of a sudden. There was that feeling again, the whole he-makes-me-feel-bad-about-myself thing. Amplified times ten. She pressed shaking fingers to her sternum.

His face twisted for a half ümoment but then steadied. He shuddered in a breath. ‘How long have you known who I am?'

She rushed to reassure him. ‘I'm not upset. I figured you'd tell me when you were ready.'

‘
You're
not upset? Oh, good.'

‘Harry, do you really want to talk about this now?'

‘You've been lying to me, Izzy!'

Old wounds stretched their scars at the flat-out judgement in his tone. Guilty until proven innocent.

But it wasn't
her
father lying in a hospital halfway around the world, and, now that she knew who that father was, Harry had to be facing a world of new pressure. Sisters. A mother. A global corporation. Responsibility she could barely conceive.

She was the one who needed to suck it up, right now. Be the grown-up.

She took a deep breath. ‘Let's talk about this when you get back.'

Not that she wanted either of them stewing on the hurtful accusations of the past few minutes, but he wasn't thinking clearly now. And her own adrenaline was so high she was liable to say something she'd regret.