Green Tea Won't Help You Now! (21 page)

"What?"

"Yes, you completely forgot about me and went on to attack the guy."

I had nothing to say.

"I only realised much later you probably needed to get rid of him first, before your heart could be free again."
 

Drake could not have said it better himself. We're in our Rich and Ruthless script and no use denying it. Oh blah, who cares? Let's go full monty.

"No, there was nobody else in my heart, nobody but you. Alex, I never loved anybody like I love you. Never! But why did you come here? Why did you change your mind? Have you forgiven me?"

"I don't know, but I missed you so much and then Drake told me you were here and how he had spent the day with you after I left you and how desperate you had been and what a brave girl you were to live without all the privileges you had been born to and how you gave happiness to everyone you met and had the purest heart; how he admired you for having made it out of the dark and how you had planned on telling me who you were in Palm Springs and how your brother came to pick you up and said there would be no justice in beating me up. And then he told me how much you helped him in his own struggle with life."

"Oh no, did he tell you the story of his life, too?"

"Yes and all the time I just wanted to leave and fly across the Atlantic to bring you back home to LA."

"When did you get here?"

"Two days ago, I've looked everywhere for you. Drake did not know where you lived."

"At the Schwarzsee..." I breathed. He must have been holding me very tight. His face was so close...

"Take the helmet off, please."
 

I took the goggles and helmet off and threw them away.

"Do you know who you look like?" he softly asked.

"Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Portman?"

"No, you still look like a housefly. I hadn't noticed until now."

"And do you know who you look like?"

"No."

"Like the man who's going to kiss me now."

"Exactly."

Epilogue

The autumn sun bathed Los Angeles in its orange light. The sky above the mountains was slowly changing into the colours of the rainbow, the Pacific glittered peacefully in the distance and I was lying on the veranda, looking at none of it.

"I dearly love you, but I really, really don't want you in there any longer," I told my unborn baby daughter. "I feel like a rhino."

 
(Quote Ryan: "Good gad, not another girl in the family." Unquote. — I know one doesn't write, "unquote", but I'm the author here so I do as I please.)

It was her due date today, but so far she showed no interest in the outside world.

"I'm offering you the arguably best view in the universe." I spread my legs into a V. "Look."

"Only five percent of the children are born on the due date, Tish," Lilly wistfully explained. She was also pregnant, but only in the twentieth week. I had told her she did not have to come, I would find somebody else, but she had insisted. Nicky and Mia currently lived in my flat above my yoga studio, while Lilly resided in the white cube. They had announced they wanted to, "take a sabbath year anyway", so why not teach yoga and healing in California? Especially if one had friends there with real estate? I had the distinct suspicion Lilly would have gladly left me to the care of a local obstetrician had I happened to live in... say Kansas City or Manchester or Vladivostok.
 

"Come on, little darling," I begged. "It never rains in Southern California."

The little darling had been an accident, I confess. She was conceived in an overhasty reunification romp against a Tyrolean haystack, but she was eagerly awaited now.
 

"They come when they want to come." Lilly lilted.

"You will come out of there right now, or I will never take you to La Spiaggia Pizzeria. — Ouch!" A pain like a seared knife slowly grinding itself all the way through to my spine drove the air from my lungs. "Ouch, ouch, ouch!"

"What?"

"I think she heard me."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Huh? Lilly, I think my water broke."

"What? You are making fun of me."

"ALEX!" I screamed.

Alex ran out of the house looking like a man who feared becoming a father for the first time in his life. Too bad for him. He was.

He stopped right in front of me and stupidly looked down. "What's going on?"

"Help me up, I need to go inside."

He pulled me up, eyes wide and shining. "Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, my love. The bird's on time."

THE END

***

[Fluffer Nutter]

NEXT: Saddle Up, Señorita

Poppy Jude's cousin Dido from Oxford does not at all live up to the tragical name she was given by her fundamentally intellectual parents. On the contrary, she is rather unglamorous. She spends her days in riding breeches and makes money giving lessons at the pony club. She dutifully completes a bachelor's degree in art history to calm her family, but as soon as she quits college she follows the path of passion and trains to be an equine physiotherapist. How providential her cousin has married into an Argentine dynasty of polo pony breeders. Why not take a stage at the
Estancia Reyes del Viento
under the supervision of her almost-uncle, the powerful polo don Augustin Corvera-Fabergé, and brush up on her Spanish? Seriously, what the devil could possibly come to a friendly, twenty-four-year-old, flaxen haired female who cares only for creatures with four legs and hooves?
 

The devil comes with green eyes and auburn hair. Sebastián Farley-Mendoza.
 

But he is too old, isn't he? And he is married, isn't he? And he is such a swine! And oh, so very beautiful...

ALSO BY DASHA: BILLIONAIRE ON BOARD

Want to know how Ryan and Poppy Jude met? You'll find a teaser on the next page...

EXCERPT FROM BILLIONAIRE ON BOARD

BILLIONAIRE ON BOARD

"Who could seriously get a grip when one's imaginary boyfriend had just materialised like a genie from a bottle, looking larger than life?"
 

Welcome to this international fairy tale...
 

Jude is happy.
 

She's almost 27, she has great friends, a great family, a job as a tour guide and a doctoral thesis to write. She lives in a beautiful city, she's single and she likes it.
 

Until the day she finds out she's not invited to her oldest friend's wedding because his madcap bride believes she has designs on him.
 

Without further ado she invents a boyfriend and while she's at it: why not make him rich and handsome?
 

He would need a name of course, something truly jet set, something with flair!
 

She tries to conjure one up when she remembers her time at an English girls' school. One of her schoolmates had an older brother who was outrageously handsome and rich and his name had been Ryan Corvera-Fabergé.
 

So Ryan Corvera-Fabergé it is.
 

Too bad the real Ryan Corvera-Fabergé suddenly stands next to her in a five star hotel, two days before the wedding.
 

Even worse, her game is up.
 

Suddenly Jude finds herself, not quite by choice, on a whirlwind trip to Saint-Tropez and Monte Carlo, to Barcelona and Capri, to a world of private jets and hilltop villas, of mega-yachts and sport's cars, of sex, drugs and rocks of diamonds.
 

The billionaire in question turns out to be quite a handful and Jude has her work cut out for her.
 

But enjoy her own account of the adventure.
 

It has it all! Drama, romance, fun and passion... in no particular order

EXCERPT

The suite was grand but I had been there before, with a group of Italian travel journalists covering it for a magazine. Everything was kept in midnight blue, pastel yellow and rosewood.
 

He led me into the sitting room.

"Please take a seat." He pointed to an armchair with striped coverings and sat himself down on a matching couch, left arm over the back rest, right leg over the left.
 

I sat too and folded my hands, trying to give myself a dignified appearance. The guys from candid camera had to show up any minute, Tina and Lilly right behind them, laughing their heads off.

He was not smiling anymore. Instead he observed me calmly.

"Now, Poppy Jude, tell me. Is this a serious case of stalking? Do I have to call my lawyers?" His tongue brushed ever so slightly across his upper lip and I felt a jolt of electricity run right through me.

"No, no, no, no, no, no! Not at all! Absolutely not, it's just a really silly story, gosh, I'm so sorry." I clapped my hands over my eyes.

"Tell me the story."

"Excuse me?"

"Kindly inform me why you have chosen to abuse my name and invent me as your fiancé."

"Oh, no," I hurried to correct, "don't worry, you're not my fiancé, we're not engaged."

"I'm relieved."

"It's all Corinna's fault, you see."

He moved to face me directly, leant forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. His dark eyes bore into me.

"I don't see at all. Why don't you start from the beginning?"
 

I swallowed and closed my eyes. I concentrate better that way. My account was halting at first but it got better in time. When I was finished I thought I detected some understanding in his unmoving features.

"Did you have a teenage crush on me back in school?"

I shook my head. "Certainly not, I only saw you for the briefest moment, I had completely forgotten about you. It was only your name that stuck. It's pretty unique."
 

I did not intend to tell him how I had been completely blown away by his looks in those fifteen seconds, twelve years ago.

"I see. You never saw me at the Christmas concerts? My mother forced me to go there to do something for the family. It was dreadful."

"No, I was probably too busy worrying about other things."

"What kind of things?"

"I can't remember now, teenage angst, I guess."

"You were looking different. I think there was far more eyeliner involved and lipstick. You actually looked older than you do now."

"I was fifteen," I declared. "We practically bathed in make up back then."

He paused for a moment.

"I gather it's rather inconvenient I've shown up and run into your mother."

"Rather."

His mouth twitched. "I guess it's a perfect example of what the mystics call cosmic ordering. Be careful what you wish for."

"I hadn't wished for you, I can promise you that."

He raised his eyebrows. "What would you have done with me, I mean, how would you have explained my absence from the wedding?"

"You'd have died in a plane crash with your private jet perhaps."

"How enticing."

I grimaced. "Sorry."

"Enlighten me, Poppy Jude, are you in love with this Christian guy?"

"Good God, no. And it's Jude, just Jude. Nobody calls me Poppy Jude. Only my mother." (In German, the word 'pop' has one other, unequivocal connotation apart from the music style, and it has nothing to do with remembering the fallen soldiers, but I did not tell him.)

"Fine. Jude. — But are you certain? You don't want to convince him he's actually your soulmate? You know, like in the Julia Roberts movie? Where this other actress marries her best friend?"

My entire situation seemed to me like an assortment of Julia Roberts movies gone wrong.

"Cameron Diaz, you mean. No. Nothing of the sort."

"Fine. Because I'm not gay."

"That's your private affair."

"Yes, but in the movie, Julia Roberts gets her gay best friend to fake being her lover, doesn't she."

"I believe so."

"Well, I'm not gay."

"What does it matter?"

"Since I'm coming to the wedding as your fake date, I thought you should know."