Read A Hundred Ways to Break Up (Let's Make This Thing Happen 2) for Free Online

what this was, but moments like these... Something was happening. Something big. Something that was so much more than a bit of fun.
    Just then, Ronnie appeared from around a corner of the building. “Darling!” he rumbled. “Tell me you weren’t just sneaking off. Does the boy have no manners?”
    “I...” Emily’s response was cut off as Ronnie stepped up to her and took her into a big hug. He smelled of roses and lavender – a scent, or simply because he’d been gardening, Emily couldn’t tell.
    Still holding her, he arched his back so that his head drew away and he fixed her with a sharp look from those famous pale blue eyes. “He’s told me all about you,” he said. “Before you came here.”
    She remembered the Angry Cans pictures on the wall.
    Ronnie went on: “He doesn’t do that kind of thing. He doesn’t allow himself to get drawn in. He doesn’t fall in love.”
    She glanced sharply at Ray, but he was chatting with the driver.
    “Don’t you go hurting him, you hear?”
    Then Ronnie released her, stepped back and turned to hold the car door for her.
    §
    He doesn’t do that kind of thing. He doesn’t allow himself to get drawn in. He doesn’t fall in love.
    Was that Ronnie’s spin on things, or had Ray confided something in his old friend?
    She sat in the back of the car as it inched through the city traffic, her head a jumble of thoughts, late for work and not caring at all.

6
    Nobody raised an eyebrow when she finally reached her desk at almost 9.30. They’d always been good like that at Hamilton and Chambers. She’d been fast-tracked there since joining three years before, a rising star and someone they trusted with difficult cases, going in and straight-talking failing businesses, reshaping and refocusing them until they were fit for purpose. As long as she delivered and didn’t miss appointments, nobody minded what hours she kept or whether she was working in the office or in the Costa across the road.
    She busied herself with emails and then turned to a report she was redrafting for a presentation later that week. She felt good, she realized. On top of things. Full of the afterglow from her night with Ray.
    A couple of days ago she’d set the wallpaper of her computer to an old Angry Cans poster photo: the one of them standing looking moody on top of a high wall that Ronnie had put up in their room last night. Studying that image now was like looking at something far removed from the Ray Sandler she had come to know. Her Ray Sandler.
    She returned to the report, briefly distracted from the sharp focus she had found.
    Some time later, her phone buzzed with a message from Ray – ‘RS’, as she’d put him in her Contacts. He’d already texted her a couple of times that morning. The first message had come through while she was still in the car:
    Hey gorgeous. Let me know all ok? Head still spinning with you. Rxx
    The second had come later:
    All good at work? No trouble for being late? My bad ;) Rxx
    This new message was different, though:
    Hey there. Just heard from Mo. Press sniffing around. Couple of them got into the Roxette gig. Bastards. Wish they’d just leave me be.
    Emily’s first reaction was to panic. Press sniffing around? Around what ? Around her and Ray? Was this thing blowing up in their faces already?
    She re-read the message and saw that it was all about the music, the gig. She called him from the office, and he answered on the first ring.
    “Hey,” she said. “So what’s the panic? Isn’t it good that the press are interested?”
    Silence, then he said, “I just... They’ve put me through the ringer before. I know it goes with the territory, but I just... It sounds dumb to say I don’t like the limelight, doesn’t it? But I don’t. And here they are, sneaking around, writing about stuff that’s not ready to be publicized yet.”
    A pause, then: “Saying it out loud makes it sound pretty feeble, doesn’t it?”
    She could hear him lifting himself as he