Tell Him About It by Holly Kinsella Page A

from the regiment and he’d sold over a hundred books (crucially Sara had arranged for an independent bookshop, registered with Bookscan, to sell copies of the novel so that any sales would help in breaking the book into the bestseller lists). Yet there was a hole in the evening, for Sara not being there. Adam had been tempted to apologise on the phone earlier, should he have somehow done something wrong to upset her. She had behaved in a distant way towards him all day.
    Instead of his publicist Adam found himself sitting next to a foreign correspondent, Tara Deaver, over dinner. They had first met – and slept together – during his time in Afghanistan. She was smart, sexy and they had been under fire, as well as under the sheets, with each other. Tara was looking good. She had bought a Karen Millen black faux-leather panelled dress to celebrate her recent promotion. Her dress was revealing – and she little disguised her desire to spend the night with Adam.
    “She’s on a plate for you mate, as your last course tonight,” the organiser of the dinner had whispered to Adam during dessert.
    For all of Tara Deaver’s charms though Adam spent most of the evening thinking about someone else. It wasn’t due to Adam still feeling raw from his divorce that he politely declined the journalist’s invitation to come back to her hotel for a drink. No. If he would have spent the night with Tara Adam would have strangely felt that he was being unfaithful to Sara.
    But how can you fight for someone when they don’t want to be won? If she’s happy in her relationship I should just disappear.
    Adam received a text message. Tara asked if he was still awake. She was still buzzing – and had some coke to give them an even bigger buzz. She could be with him in ten minutes. He turned off his phone. A year ago, or a day before he had met Victoria, he would have called her back. Sex and drink were great tonics. But Adam wanted something different from life, love, now. Not a Tara. Or a Victoria even. They were game players, as he had once been. He wanted...
    Sara.
    The only game she would want to play with me was Scrabble, he smilingly thought.
    *
    Sara was a lot more self-conscious standing in the hallway, about to knock upon a hotel door, than Adam had been the night before. Partly because, it must be said, Adam had had more experience in knocking on the hotel doors of the opposite sex over the years.
    She had initially struggled with the decision. She told herself that she wanted revenge on Simon. She also told herself that she would be using Adam, as Adam had probably used other women before. She had been unable to sleep and so had been listening for her author to return whilst reading one of his old novels. During a love scene in the book Sara thought of Adam Cooper rather than his hero John Powell.
    She had kept her phone on silent, but noticed that Simon had called repeatedly. Already she was becoming bored and annoyed, rather than angry, in regards to her ex-boyfriend. She was also beginning to feel content and grateful that she was free of him. Free to do what she wanted. Rosie had rightly reminded Sara how she had said, on more than one occasion, that she felt trapped in the relationship. “You’ve had a lucky escape,” her flatmate had argued. Sara decided she would return her sapphire earrings.
    He can re-gift them to his secretary... Heaven can send him another Domestic Goddess.
    Her heart beat faster as she heard a number of revellers along the corridor getting out of the elevator. She was wearing her pearl-coloured silk pyjamas. She had thought about wearing her normal clothes, or putting on an evening dress. Should she have been in a movie or a Danielle Steele novel she would have been wearing a robe with lingerie underneath it, she mused. But she was neither in a film nor a novel.
    What would happen after he opened the door? Where would this leave them personally and professionally? What if he rejected her? But as