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monumentally stupid.
    Tanner kissing another girl had been gutting. Kissing mean-girl Jessica had heaped insult on injury.
    And he didn’t get to flirt his way out of that, no matter how much her body bitched at her. She was here for information. For her gutting exposé of the mythical Tanner Stone. For her future career. Everything else was ancient history.

    Tanner asked the maître d’ to take their meal orders while he was there. He ordered an entrée of oysters and followed it with a main of lobster. As a teenager, hungry to hit the big league, he vowed he’d enjoy whatever came his way if he did eventually break through, and oysters and lobster were a symbol of how far he’d come.
    He’d grown up the eldest of four kids in a working class family in a small town about a thousand kilometres from the ocean. Lobster had never been part of his vocabulary. To be able to bring Tilly here and show her how far he’d come, share his success with her, was the ultimate.
    She ordered the risotto after an inordinate amount of time spent choosing. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was trying to figure out what was the cheapest thing on a menu that didn’t come with prices for a very good reason. Either way, it’d had given him longer to check her out.
    The light on the balcony was subdued to emphasise the view just over his shoulder, with only a low candle burning on the table between them. But it burnished the tips of her wispy, blonde pixie cut and threw her face into flickering relief.
    It was familiar and yet not. Shadows fell in the hollows beneath cheekbones more prominent than he remembered. She’d always been petite—he’d felt like a giant beside her—but cheeks that had once been fuller were now spare. Her chin was pointier, her mouth more noticeable.
    A very distracting thought.
    Almost as distracting as her dress. The shoestring straps, perfect for a sultry Sydney night, showed off her delicate collarbones and shoulders, and the shortness of her hair exposed her throat and the bareness of her nape. It wasn’t one of those dresses that hugged every inch of a woman’s body. It skimmed rather than clung, and left a lot to the imagination.
    Tanner liked that. He had a very good imagination. And an even better memory. It sure as hell beat the pantsuit from last week.
    It was her dress that had done it. He’d come here tonight determined to cooperate. To set her at ease and by doing so, draw her out, make her laugh a little. But then he’d laid eyes on her in that dress and it had taken him one second to realise he wanted her back.
    Yes, he’d screwed up. Big time. Yes, he had a lot of making up to do. But he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed her. Until now.
    And he was determined to win her back.
    So he’d started flirting with her. The results so far had been encouraging. She didn’t seem so sure of herself anymore.
    “Okay, let’s begin, shall we?” she said as the maître d’ departed, her serious journo voice back in play, and she pushed the record button on the Dictaphone.
    He hated that voice already.
    “You want to start at the very beginning? It’s a very good place to start.”
    She was the only woman he’d ever met that had seen The Sound Of Music at least fifty times, and he wasn’t above using intimate knowledge of her to try and earn his way back into her favour.
    The reference had to be worth a grudging smile, right?
    “No.”
    No? Tough audience. But then she wouldn’t need him to start there, would she? Because she knew the beginning part. Intimately.
    “Let’s start after—” She faltered for a second, her gaze dropping to the starched linen tablecloth before rising again, glittering with determination. “After I went to Stanford.”
    They chatted all through dinner. Tanner resolved to be on his best behaviour and didn’t even push a third glass of champagne on her when she refused. He wasn’t keen on talking about himself, but it was a means to an end. Once