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comfort.
    Alex liked to think he was able to forgive weakness in others, but he set higher standards for himself. Though he’d got out of there as fast as he could the morning after, memories of the night before had haunted him. Well, he was about to lay that ghost—literally if things turned out as he intended—to rest.
    ‘Only the star is missing.’ His inability to prevent his eyes going to the doorway sent a surge of irritation through Alex. ‘Does the lady like to make an entrance?’
    Beside him Nico responded defensively to the disdain in his uncle’s voice. ‘She’s really nice.’
    The balding executive whom he had directed his sardonic comment to nodded in agreement with his nephew’s assessment. ‘She certainly doesn’t stand on ceremony and the last thing you can accuse her of is being a diva.’ He laughed at some private joke and took a sip of the orange juice he was nursing. ‘And if she wanted people to notice her she wouldn’t need any stunts. With Angel in the room no one else exists.’ He drew a line in the air and pronounced with utter confidence, ‘End of story.’
    Alex recalled Angelina, or Angel as it seemed he must learn to call her, in his room, an anonymous hotel room. For him that night, no one else had existed. He clenched his teeth in an effort to eject the image of her sitting on the bed gloriously naked and utterly unselfconscious, acting as if they had just shared more than lust, acting as if there would be a tomorrow.
    Dragging himself into the present, he wondered if the executive’s admiration was purely professional. Was the man sleeping with the model? He knew little of the world they occupied but he supposed it would hardly be a revelation if they were.
    ‘Rudie says Angel simply doesn’t have a bad angle. The camera loves her,’ Nico, the new president of her fan club, informed him.
    ‘And Rudie is?’
    ‘Our lighting man, one of the best.’
    The guy was probably in love with her too, Alex thought sourly.
    * * *
    Oh, God, she was the last to arrive. Angel fought the impulse to step back into the shadows, then smiled to herself at the irony that she made her living posing for a camera, having her image stared at by the public, though she genuinely hated being the centre of attention.
    She didn’t retreat but paused in the doorway, her eyes sweeping the room, the light breeze pulling the silky fluttering fabric of her dress against long legs until Ross spotted her. The photographer grinned, giving a thumbs-up sign, in the process slopping what she knew would be tonic water down his front. People assumed he had a drink problem, and he let them think that. He had once confided to Angel that he simply didn’t like the taste of alcohol, but being thought an ex-alcoholic made him seem more interesting.
    Angel’s spontaneous burst of throaty laughter alerted the others to her presence and she was immediately involved in a lot of luvvie air kissing.
    Well, she’d been right about one thing: she was underdressed. The men, with the exception of Ross, were wearing suits and ties and the women cocktail dresses.
    ‘Worth the wait,’ he heard someone say and Alex could not disagree.
    The late arrival’s appearance had sent a rush of scalding heat through his body. Six years ago she had been stunning, possessing a natural grace and sleek sensuality that had been all the more powerful for appearing totally unstudied. She still possessed all those attributes but now she held herself with the confidence that came when a woman knew the power she wielded with her beauty, when she enjoyed it.
    Every man in the room was enjoying it.
    Alex’s enjoyment was tempered by this knowledge and the discomfort that could be traced to the testosterone-fuelled ache in his groin. The intervening years slipped away as his blue eyes made a slow sweep upwards from her bare feet, and the pink-painted toenails—presumably the sandals dangling from her fingers belonged there.
    Though it looked as