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‘This is almost as bad as talking about your anatomy,’ Sienna said, sipping her own drink and grimacing. ‘Next time we do this, can you sneak one of your uncle’s bottles my way? This stuff is…’ She pulled another face. ‘Insufficient.’

‘Sorry, babe,’ Astrid said, making a mental note to do just that.

‘What for? My cheap plonk or having the hots for my ex?’

‘That’s just it, Aiden’s too clean cut for me, but Blake…’ Her tummy gave a flutter. ‘I don’t know.’ Only she did know. He was right up her street.

‘He terrifies me,’ Bella said. ‘Are you sure about this?’

‘You’re meant to be encouraging me, not putting me off.’

‘But… look at him.’

Astrid shrugged. ‘He doesn’t scare me.’

He appealed to her and that was worse. When would her body learn that bad boys were no good? The clue was right there in the name.

‘But you were supposed to be getting close to Aiden, not Mr Hard-Ass.’

‘ Mr Hard-Ass is how I got in the door. The team are so well guarded during the season and without the threat of expulsion hanging over Blake, they’d never have agreed to let me shadow them. Besides, he’s all bark and no bite. Tell her, Sissi.’

They both looked to Sienna who appeared ever more on edge, her hand twisting through her ponytail. ‘The guy I knew won’t hurt you; the opposition on the ice, that’s another matter.’

‘But that fight he got into,’ Bella said, pointing one French-manicured nail at the pub scene, ‘wasn’t on the ice.’

‘Rumour has it he was defending a teammate,’ Astrid said.

She’d investigated it. Along with everything else she could find in the public domain, info spanning their entire career.

Though very little of it had come directly from them.

Most of it was hearsay. People with an axe to grind.

Old coaches with nothing but praise. Old classmates more interested in getting their name in print than the truth.

And she craved the truth from the horse’s mouth.

As did so many other journos, and here she was, this close to getting it.

‘Do you buy that?’ Bella leaned in closer, scanning the text beneath the picture. ‘No one’s corroborated the story.’

‘Because the team will be telling them to keep quiet, paying off people if need be,’ Sienna said, the law student in her shining through. ‘Hoping it’ll all blow over.’

‘And I’ll find out the truth when I get in there and start asking questions.’

Bella’s eyes bugged at her. ‘You’re going to ask him about the fight?’

‘Of course. I’m going to ask all the questions.’

‘You really want to rattle that snake?’

Astrid shimmied her shoulders. ‘I’m all for a bit of rattling.’

Bella squinted at her. ‘Are you talking sexy time now, or…’

Astrid laughed. ‘And you think I have a one-track mind…’

‘But you know you’re going in there to get Aiden, right?’

‘While doing my job. Absolutely.’

‘It’s the doing both simultaneously that worries me.’

‘It’s only what you’re doing with Chase and working at the gallery.’

‘But Chase is a single entity, this is… he doesn’t come with a Blake.’

‘Bella’s right,’ Sienna said. ‘You don’t have to do this. If it’s too messy or you’re worried about how it’ll go down, I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘Ladies, if you’d seen half the shit I’ve dealt with in the past, you wouldn’t be concerned for a second. The job I can do standing on my head, it’s luring Aiden that’s the challenge. And we’re only talking a bit of mild messing with his ego, nothing career ending. For him or me!’

‘I still don’t get why you couldn’t catch his eye in a VIP club or something,’ Bella said, her nails drumming nervously against her glass. ‘I could have got you access to one of those.’

‘Because from what I can tell the guy doesn’t do clubs. He doesn’t do parties. He’s not Blake.’

‘After a game then, just strategically thrown yourself at him, broke a heel and feigned a twisted ankle. Given him no choice but to notice you without having to hang around with…’ She nodded to the screen.

‘And then what? How could I make him stick around? The women he’s dated, they all had a reason to be on his arm in some way.

For a sponsorship deal, an advert, a staged event…

work always put them in his path and my job will do the same for me.

The more time I get in his life, the more I can mess with it. ’

‘In that case’ – Bella plucked an outfit off the bed and shoved it at her – ‘go get this on, because this is the one!’

Astrid frowned down at the sedate black skirt suit. ‘Really?’

‘Quit it with the doubts!’

‘Says you!’ But she grinned. ‘You know, I think wine turns you into a bossy devil.’

Mortified, Bella gawped at her glass. ‘Oh, God, do you think?’

‘Don’t oh God me, B. I love it. You’re a classy bossy devil.’

And she was going to have to channel some of that classiness if she was going to lure one brother in while writing an expo involving the extremely distracting and disturbing other…

‘And don’t forget Paige’s contribution to the outfit.’ Bella grabbed the black-rimmed specs that had arrived in the post that week and handed them to her. ‘I think she’s suggesting you go in for the whole Clark Kent vibe.’

‘You know glasses make a shit disguise, right?’

‘It’s not about a disguise, it’s about getting into character.’

She eyed them with a shrug. ‘Well, if it’s good enough for Superman…’

‘ And good old Delia with some of those bedroom scenes.’ Bella tapped the very racy book she had bought for Astrid on the bedside table – a copy of one Bella had been gifted by said Delia at the airport last month. ‘Though perhaps it’s best not to think of those while…’

She twirled a finger at the guy on the screen.

‘Hell, no!’ Astrid blurted. Blake and bedroom equalled bad bad bad. ‘Justice, here I come … right after I finish this wine!’