Valentine's Day. Nicola Marsh

his own humiliation had been limited to just his family and friends.

      Just two hundred of his and Lara’s nearest and dearest.

      Georgia Stone’s would be all over the city today and all over the world by tomorrow.

      He was counting on it. Though he’d have preferred it not to be on the back of someone’s pain and humiliation. He hadn’t got that bad...yet.

      He eased his foot onto the brake as the traffic ground to a halt around him and resisted the urge to lean on his horn.

      Not that he imagined a girl like that would suffer for long. Tall and pale and pretty with that tangle of dark, short curls. She’d dressed for her proposal—that was a sweet and unexpected touch in the casual world of radio. Half his on-air staff would come to work in their pyjamas if they had the option. But Georgia Stone had worn a simple, pale pink, thin-strapped dress for the big moment—almost a wedding dress itself. If one got married on a beach in Barbados. Way too light for February so maybe public proposals weren’t the only thing the pretty Miss Stone didn’t think through?

      Or maybe he was just looking for ways that this wasn’t his fault.

      He’d approved the Valentine’s promotion in the first place. And the cheesy ‘does your man just need a shove?’ angle. But EROS’ listeners were—on the whole—a fairly cheesy bunch so it had been one of their most successful promotions.

      Which had made the lift ride all the more painful.

      Something about her pale, wide-eyed courtesy. Even as her heart ruptured quietly in its cavity.

      Thank you.

      She’d said it four times in half the minutes. As though he were a guy just helping her out instead of the guy that put her in that position in the first place. It was his contract she’d signed. It was his station’s promotion she’d put her hand up for.

      Her life was now in shreds around her feet but still she thanked him.

      That was one well-brought-up young woman. Youngish; he had to have at least fifteen years on her, though it was hard to know. He reached for his dash and activated the voice automation.

      ‘Call the office,’ he told his car.

      It listened. ‘EROS, Home of Great Music, Mr Rush’s office. This is Casey, can I help you?’

      Christ, he really had to have their company-wide phone greeting shortened.

      ‘It’s me,’ he announced to his empty vehicle. ‘I need you to pull up the contract with the Valentine’s girl.’

      ‘Just a tick,’ his assistant murmured, not taking offence at his lack of acknowledgement. She knew life was too short for pleasantries. ‘OK, got it. What do you need, Zander?’

      ‘Age?’

      Her silence said she was scanning the document. ‘Twenty-eight.’

      OK, so he had nine years on her. And her skin was amazing, then. He would have said twenty-two or -three, max. ‘Duration of contract?’

      Again a brief pause. ‘Twelve months. To conclude with a follow-up next February fourteenth.’

      Twelve months of their lives. That was supposed to include engagement party, fully paid wedding, honeymoon. All on EROS. That was the fifty-thousand-pound carrot. Why else would anyone want to make the most private, special moment of their lives so incredibly public?

      The carrot was cheap in international broadcast terms, for the kind of global exposure he suspected this promo would get. Even more so now, given it had probably already gone viral. Exposure brought listeners, listeners brought advertisers, and advertisers brought revenue.

      Except that follow-up twelve months from now wasn’t going to make great radio. At all. His mind went straight to the weakest link.

      ‘Casey, can you send that contract to my phone and then call Rod’s assistant and let her know I’m about half an hour away?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      He rang off without a farewell. Life was too short for that as well.

      A year was a long time to manufacture content, but if they played their cards right they could salvage something that would last longer than just the next few days. Really make that fifty thousand pounds work for them. He still expected EROS to directly benefit from the viral exposure—maybe even more now—but that contract locked them in for the next year as much as her.

      A black cab cut in close to his bonnet and he gave voice to his frustration—his guilt—finally leaning on the horn the way he’d been wanting to for twenty minutes.

      He spent the second half of his drive across town formulating a plan. So much so that when he walked into his network’s headquarters he had it all figured out. A way forward. A way to salvage something of today’s mess.

      ‘Zander...’ Rod’s assistant caught his ear as he breezed past into her boss’s office. He paused, turned. ‘He has Nigel in there.’

      Nigel Westerly. Network owner. That wasn’t a good sign. ‘Thanks, Claire.’

      Suddenly even his salvage plan looked shaky. Nigel Westerly hadn’t amassed one of the country’s biggest fortunes by being easily led. He was tough. And ruthless.

      Zander straightened his back.

      Oh, well, if he had to be fired, he’d rather it be by one of the men he admired most in England. He certainly wasn’t going to quail and wonder when the axe was going to fall. He pushed open the double doors to his director’s office with flair and announced himself.

      ‘Gentlemen...’

       TWO

      Thank goodness for seeds. And quiet lab rooms. And high-security access passes.

      Georgia’s whole National Trust building was so light and bright and...optimistic. None of which she could stomach right now. Her little X-ray lab had adjustable lighting so it was dim and gloomy and could look as if she were out even when she wasn’t.

      Perfect.

      She’d called in sick the day after Valentine’s—unable to crawl out of bed was a kind of sick, right?—but she’d gone tiptoeing back to work, her Thursday and Friday an awful trial in carefully neutral smiles and colleagues avoiding eye contact and a very necessary and very belated inter-departmental email to Kew’s carnivorous-plant department.

      It was also very short.

      I’m so very sorry, Daniel. I’ll miss you.

      She knew they were done. Even if Dan hadn’t concurred—which he had, once he’d cooled down enough to speak to her—she couldn’t spend another moment in a relationship that just drifted in small, endless circles. Not after what she’d done. Conveniently, it also meant she didn’t have to explain herself, explain something she barely understood—at least not for a while. And she was nothing if not a master procrastinator. She’d see Dan eventually, apologise in person, pick up her few things from his place. But this way they were both out of their misery.

      Relationship euthanasia.

      You know, except for the whole intensive public interest thing...

      And now it was Saturday afternoon. And work was as good a place as any to hide out from all those messages and emails from astounded friends and family. Better, probably, because there were so few staff here with her and because she worked alone in her little X-ray lab behind two levels of carded access restrictions. The world wasn’t exactly interested enough in her botched proposal to have teams of paparazzi on her trail but it was certainly interested enough to still be talking about it—everywhere—a few days later. She didn’t dare check her social media accounts or listen to the radio or pick up a paper in case The Valentine’s