Reaching for her mobile as it rang, Vivi saw it was one of the GaLs and decided to let it go to voicemail. She simply had to go to the bathroom before speaking to anyone, and then she’d pop down to Maxi’s for an Americano and pastry to fuel herself for the day. If her mother called and didn’t get an answer, she’d assume Vivi was either out for a run, or at Greg’s, or still asleep with the phone turned off. She wouldn’t worry, because that was something Gina resolutely refused to do, in spite of the fact that the tight line between her beautiful eyes showed that she spent just about every moment of every day worrying about something.

Did she even realize that?

Vivi thought she probably did, but she guarded jealously whatever was causing her anxiety—and maybe it was many things—as though letting go of a single hint of an issue would snap the strings inside her and everything would fall catastrophically apart.

Standing in front of the twin-mirrored bathroom cabinet with its frame of snowball lights and inbuilt heat pad, Vivi pulled a face at herself and stretched out her jaw. She must have slept awkwardly because her neck seemed achy, and the stiffness in her limbs told her that she ought to get back to some proper exercise soon. Still, at least she was breathing more easily this morning, so the bug she’d no doubt picked up on one of several flights she’d made in the past three weeks might finally be clearing.

She was, by anyone’s standards, a strikingly lovely young woman. With almond-shaped eyes, blue as a summer sky, and a full, sloppy mouth (her description), she was so entrancing that her friends swore she could hypnotize at a hundred paces. Her complexion was smooth and olive, her cheekbones high, and her light brown hair was a wayward riot of waves that fell about her face and neck in a style all its own.

Right now it was a tangled mess, and her still-sleepy eyes were shadowed by the residue of last night’s mascara.

Last night?

Oh, that was right; she’d been at the office until almost midnight, after returning from New York on the red-eye in the morning. It had been a flying visit to the Big Apple, quite literally: one meeting, followed by a dull dinner at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse and an overnight stay at the Beekman.

After dragging some sweats on over her pajama shorts and a T-shirt over her camisole, she slipped her feet into an old pair of flip-flops and texted Maxi with her order. Before leaving she quickly scanned her emails to be sure nothing earth-shattering had cropped up overnight, and finding that nothing had, she went through to the spacious open-plan kitchen-cum-sitting-room and gave a small sigh of pleasure to find it virtually drowning in sunlight.