She knew better than to stop her momentum, so she pushed the trolley hard into the bald guy’s shins until his prone body spun out of the way. She didn’t feel especially bad about it. In the gap vacated by the bald man, Chris Foster emerged. He wore his smart jacket and an impossibly crisp white shirt. He looked utterly unflustered. His face was inscrutable and Keller could not be sure if he had been responsible for the reporter falling to the floor. Not until his eyes locked with hers, at least. The twinkle in his eye made her smile, which made the camera flashes go crazy all over again. Then suddenly he was beside her and she noticed his frame properly for the first time. He was taller than she was, which was not true of all of the men she had known in her life. He was broad-shouldered; not muscle-bound, but stretching his suit in all the right places. He reached out an arm firmly enough to encourage the Gentlemen of the Press to back off.

Keller breathed for the first time in a minute.

Rosario looked as if she’d have been happier to be torn limb from limb by the paparazzi than be saved by Foster. Which he noticed, and registered, and stored for later. At that moment Maria Rosario was not his biggest concern. He was sharp-focused on every cameraman within twenty yards of Kirsten Keller and wondering if any of them had a knife in their pocket.

CHAPTER 5

CHRIS FOSTER FELT the warm moulded plastic on his back as he settled into a green chair at the side of Kirsten Keller’s practice court. The sky above them was a deep azure-blue and there wasn’t a cloud for a hundred miles. The breeze had dropped, and Foster could feel the sun on the back of his neck as he watched Keller going through her routines on the manicured grass. She was wearing her sponsor’s burgundy dress, fiery orange and yellow around the skirt so that when she moved it looked like fire was licking at her belly.

She worked on her serve, slamming ball after ball to the far end of the court. The smash of her racket pierced the still summer air with such ferocity that it reminded Foster of his own practice sessions on the firing range. Bullets, again and again – her intensity never dropping and her concentration unwavering. She was the opposite of the frightened woman he had guided through Heathrow. On the court she was in control, commanding and powerful.

As each ball exploded off her racket she let out a gasp or a grunt. She seemed to have no control over it. None of the players called it cheating exactly, but from what Foster had read in the newspapers over the past few days, Keller certainly hadn’t made any friends in the locker room over it.