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‘Eddie—you were the one partying in that box with your new girlfriend.’
‘She was no one special. We both need to stop hurting each other. I admit that I was furious when I saw you kissing the prince, then I realised that it must have been hard on you, watching me get that promotion and then losing me. But it seems to have loosened up something inside you. A whole new you emerged.’ He grinned like a schoolboy who had just discovered girls. ‘You’ve always been quite shy and a bit prim. And suddenly you were, well, wild. When I saw you kissing him, I couldn’t help thinking it should have been me.’
Looking at him, Holly realised that not once during her entire passionate episode with the prince had she thought ‘this should have been Eddie’.
‘I know you only did it to bring me to my senses,’ Eddie said. ‘And it worked. I see now that you are capable of passion. I just need to be more patient with you.’
The prince hadn’t been patient, Holly thought absently. He’d been very impatient. Rough, demanding, forceful.
‘I didn’t kiss the prince to make you jealous.’ She’d kissed him because she couldn’t help herself.
‘Never mind that now. Put my ring back on your finger, and we’ll go out there and tell the press we’d had a row and you kissed the prince because you were pining for me.’
Life had a strange sense of humour, Holly reflected numbly. Eddie was offering to get back together. But she was already being propelled down a very different path.
‘That isn’t possible.’
‘We’re going to make a great couple.’ He was smugly confident. ‘We’ll have the Porsche and the big house. You don’t need to be a waitress any more.’
‘I like being a waitress,’ Holly said absently. ‘I like meeting new people and talking to them. People tell you a lot over a cup of coffee.’
‘But who wants to be weighed down with someone else’s problems when you can stay at home and look after me?’
‘It can’t happen, Eddie—’
‘I know it’s like a fairy tale, but it is happening. By the way, the flowers cost a fortune, so you’d better put them in water. I need the bathroom.’
‘Door on the right,’ Holly said automatically, and then gave a gasp. ‘No, Eddie, you can’t go in there.’ Oh, dear God, she’d left everything on the floor—he’d see.
Wanting to drag him back but already too late, she stood there, paralysed into inactivity by the sheer horror of the moment. The inevitability was agonising. It was like witnessing a pile-up—watching, powerless, as a car accelerated towards the back of another.
For a moment there was no sound. No movement.
Then Eddie appeared in the door, his face white. ‘Well.’ His voice sounded tight and very unlike himself. ‘That certainly explains why you don’t want to get back together again.’
‘Eddie—’
‘You’re holding out for a higher prize.’ Looking slightly dazed, he stumbled into the living room of Nicky’s flat. Then he looked at her, his mouth twisted with disgust. ‘A year we were together! And we never—you made we wait.’
‘Because it didn’t feel right,’ she muttered, mortified by how it must look, and anxious that she’d damaged his ego. That was the one part of this whole situation that she hadn’t even been able to explain to herself. Why had she held Eddie at a distance for so long and yet ended up half-naked on the table with Prince Casper within thirty minutes of meeting him? ‘Eddie, I really don’t—’
‘You really don’t what?’ He was shouting now, his features contorted with rage as he paced across Nicky’s wooden floor. ‘You really don’t know why you slept with him? Well I’ll tell you, shall I? You slept with him because he’s a bloody prince!’
‘No—’
‘And you’ve really hit the jackpot, haven’t you?’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘No wonder you weren’t excited about my Porsche. I suppose he drives a bloody Ferrari, does he?’
Holly blinked. ‘I have no idea what he drives, Eddie, but—’
‘But it’s enough to know you’re getting a prince and a palace!’
‘That isn’t true. I haven’t even decided what to do yet.’
‘You mean you haven’t decided how to make the most money out of the opportunity.’ Eddie strode towards the door of her flat, scooping up the flowers on the way. ‘I’m taking these with me. You don’t deserve them. And you don’t deserve me. Good luck in your new life.’
Holly winced as the flowers bashed against the door frame and flinched as he slammed the door.
A horrible silence descended on the flat.
