He straightened slightly, as if he’d heard a noise, or had sensed something. Anna held her breath as he turned and looked around. He didn’t spot her straight away. His gaze swept past her, and she could see him scanning the crowd, looking more tense than hopeful.

Now she could see his face properly, she realized he did indeed look very much like the photo on his website. Older, yes. A little more battered around the edges, but pretty much the same. She should have expected that. The Brody she knew would never allow himself to be airbrushed.

What was she doing just standing there? It was stupid. This was the moment she’d been waiting for all year. In a few short seconds, she’d be standing in front of him, and she knew without a doubt that the first thing she was going to do was wrap her arms around him and pull him close. How could she do anything else?

She started walking towards him. He must have sensed the movement out of the corner of his eye because his head turned, and he looked straight at her. Their gazes locked.

Anna stopped, momentarily winded, her smile petrifying on her face. She couldn’t quite describe the sensation that had rolled over her the moment they’d made eye contact. It was like… It reminded her of…

Running into a brick wall at full pelt.

The world shifted beneath her feet, causing her to shoot out a hand to steady herself, inadvertently grabbing onto the arm of a fellow partygoer. She couldn’t think straight. Her head was swimming. Only one thing made sense at that moment. Only one person.

Brody.

This was Brody.

Everything she felt for him – all the emotions she now realized she’d wilfully ignored or mislabelled – erupted from deep inside her, leaving her breathless. She’d only experienced this rush once before in her life, and she’d foolishly assumed she’d been safe, that it had been a one-time thing.

This wasn’t just Brody. It was her Brody.

‘Hey,’ the guy she’d grabbed onto said. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Anna snapped her head around to look at him. That was a very good question. She let go of the arm of his suit, shook her head in apology, and stepped away. Then Anna did the only possible thing she could do.

She began to run.

Chapter Fifty-Three

BRODY HAD ARRIVED the moment the doors of the observation deck opened to the public for the New Year’s Eve party. He’d reckoned it would be easier to find a quiet place to wait and let the crowd build around him, rather than having to push through all those people just before he was due to come face to face with Anna. He’d hoped it would help to become slowly accustomed to the space, to the rising numbers of bodies, and he’d been right.

Yes, he was still hyper-aware of the people behind him that he couldn’t see. Yes, the music was too loud to his ears and the city lights stung his eyes. By his reckoning, he was somewhere between a six and a seven on his panic scale, nine being the point at which he started to slide into the full-blown attack of a ten. He probably would have got to that point already, but there was one thought he clung to as the sea of anxiety churned around him.