Afterwards, they’d showered together, watched some TV in bed.
‘Sorry, I was a tit,’ he’d told her, trying to make light of it. ‘Think it’s some kind of midlife crisis.’
Celeste had groaned. ‘Great. Although, it would probably be better for our marriage if you just bought a bomber jacket and a motorbike.’
That should have been it. End of suspicion. Case closed. Nothing to see here.
But the senses that made him a great mitigator in court, that gut instinct for lies and weaknesses, the ability to feel when danger was coming, to predict an ambush, just wouldn’t let it drop.
Then there was the factual evidence. The dropped phone calls. The late-night dinners that stretched until the early hours of the morning. The weekend trips, supposedly to scout event locations. The spa breaks that she insisted on going to on her own, despite offers from him or Skye to tag along. There was a separation, a feeling of a fork in the road and they were both now going on separate paths.
Most of this he could put down to familiarity and to the length of their relationship. The biggest change of all, though, was the one that made the hair on the back of his neck bristle. He loved his wife, but there was no denying that Celeste was emotionally high maintenance. She needed to know that she was valued and adored. He’d once thought it was a beautiful vulnerability, and he’d been happy to give her the attention she needed, but in the last few months she’d been almost low-key. Wanted nothing from him. And if she wasn’t getting the ego strokes from him, were they coming from somewhere else?
Unaccustomed to practising patience, he fidgeted in his seat of his Mercedes as the minutes continued to tick by with no sign of Celeste, until eventually, a knock on his window snapped him out of his thoughts. Bloody traffic warden.
Mitchell rolled down his window just as the small-eyed, pinched face of a man who loved his uniform contorted into a sneer.
‘You planning on buying a ticket any time soon? You’ve already been here an hour.’
Mitchell immediately went into bluff mode. ‘Sorry, mate. The wife said she was popping into the shop for five minutes. But, you know, once she gets talking…’
The traffic warden didn’t look impressed, but before he could react, Mitchell spotted a figure in a stunning white jacket and pencil skirt, huge shades adding to the glamour, alighting from the studio. Celeste had obviously changed in there, and now she was sliding into the front seat of her car.
‘Actually, you know what? Stuff it. I’m not waiting any longer,’ Mitchell shrugged, ‘She can walk home.’
With that, he indicated, then swerved out of the space, leaving a slack-jawed jobsworth staring after him.
He was pretty sure his heart rate was on the rise again as he navigated the traffic in pursuit of his wife, a new observation adding to his feeling of dread that he might actually be on to something here.
The suit. The gleaming hair. The Chanel bag. The heels.
Even for a first lunch with a potential new client, she’d gone way above and beyond on her look. Celeste McMaster clearly made a huge effort for someone today and Mitchell knew he had to find out if it really was a business meeting, or was it the kind of pleasure that led to a division of property and expensive legal bills?
As he pressed his foot on the accelerator, he had a sinking feeling that it was too close to call.
7
Agnetha and Celeste – 1997
‘She’s not shy, is she?’ Aaron drawled, putting his bottle of Budweiser down on the table on his side of their double sunlounger.
Agnetha followed his eyeline, to see Celeste, on some guy’s shoulders in the pool, playing an impromptu game of pool volleyball with a crowd she’d introduced herself to about twenty minutes ago. They were a group of graduates from UCLA, here celebrating the end of term, and very happy to welcome the gorgeous tourist into their celebrations. All plans for seeing the Vegas sights had been postponed after Celeste’s bottom lip had shot out at the very mention of an open-top bus tour. ‘What are we, like sixty? This is Vegas and it’s your birthday! We should be drinking, partying, meeting people, not traipsing around looking at things we can see on postcards in the fricking gift shop.’
Lying here at the side of the pool, snuggled in a cabana with Aaron, Agnetha conceded that she had a point. Sometimes going with the flow took you to exactly where you were meant to be. And right now, she couldn’t think of anywhere more perfect.
Aaron nodded his head in Celeste’s direction. ‘Has she always been like that?’
Agnetha took a sip of her pina colada, then winced, her buttocks instinctively clenching when she rested the ice-cold glass on her bare stomach. ‘Pretty much. She likes to enjoy herself. It’s great now, but it used to get us into all sorts of trouble when we were at school. When we were fifteen, she got us suspended because she persuaded me to sneak out to the pub at lunchtime to celebrate my birthday. We walked in and four of our teachers were already there. Caught red-handed.’
His face melted into the sexiest grin as he rolled towards her, so that he was lying on his side facing her, resting his chin on his beer, the contours of his muscular torso glistening in the heat.
‘Don’t laugh. My parents grounded us for a month.’
‘Us? She lived with you?’
Agnetha nodded, surprised that they were only having this discussion now. In the three months since they’d met, they’d spent every night and weekend together. Sometimes they were a foursome, other times in separate couples. At weekends, they’d jump in the car and head to Malibu, where they’d sneak on to the private beach at the Colony and chill in front of some of the most expensive houses in the country. During the week, they’d head to bed early, because Aaron had to be up at 6 a.m. every morning to go to work on the construction of a mega mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Agnetha would get up with him and, leaving Celeste to sleep, she would use the time to explore the area on foot, sometimes covering miles before Aaron got home around 5 p.m.. They’d have dinner on the roof terrace of the apartment, then catch an early night, while Zac and Celeste hit the hotels and clubs up and down Sunset.
‘She had a pretty crap life at home. Her parents split up, her dad took off and her mum loved the single life and the party scene, so even as a kid, she was left alone all the time. I knew her from school, but we were in different crowds. Then my dad gave her a Saturday job in the café when she was fourteen, and she pretty much moved in and didn’t go home. Best friends ever since.’
The pamphlet version of the story would do for now. Aaron didn’t need to know that Celeste’s mum had left her alone on Christmas Day to go to Gleneagles with her new boyfriend. And for weeks at a time while she swanned off on holiday with her latest man. Or that her dad had barely spoken to her since the day he left. Or that Agnetha’s mum and dad, Alex and Ella, had been so worried about Celeste going off the rails that they had welcomed her into their home for the whole of the last two years of school and Celeste’s mum hadn’t complained or questioned it, delighted to be free of the constraints of motherhood. None of that mattered now. They were both happy and getting on with their lives, and Agnetha was grateful that Celeste’s thirst for enjoyment had rubbed off on her and given her an appetite for adventure too. They’d had almost ten fantastic years of friendship and she treasured her friend like a sister. An unpredictable, wild, hilarious sister who was probably going to land them in jail, but she loved every crazy bone of her anyway.
Aaron reached over and pushed a red curl off her cheek. ‘So your parents are as nice as you then?’
Her smile was automatic. ‘Much nicer. You’ll love them.’ It was out before she even realised she was saying it. Damn it. Where had that come from? This was a holiday romance,