Killer Queens Read Online Free PDF

for the rest of her life, and if she had to tell a few white lies to make him feel secure – well, she’d want him to do exactly the same for her.
    ‘So—’ Hugo bent to kiss her. ‘Shall I go and get the bananas? I’m feeling
very
randy.’
    ‘Yes . . .’ Chloe said, with just the right touch of hesitation in her voice. ‘Yes, that’d be lovely.’
    Hugo frowned. He was clearly torn: she had given him the go-ahead with her words, but not with her tone, and Hugo was not only a well-brought-up young man, but genuinely sweet-natured. With obvious reluctance, he said: ‘Darling, is something wrong?’
    ‘Oh, not really . . .’ Chloe sighed. ‘It’s those horrible paps, I suppose. They do really get me down. It wasn’t just tonight – they were outside my work again at lunchtime, yelling things. You know what they shout. The name they call me.’
    ‘They’re just trying to get a reaction,’ Hugo said uncomfortably, his erection, which had shot up as soon as he mentioned the word ‘bananas’, diminishing for the second time this evening.
    ‘I couldn’t go and get a coffee, even,’ she said sadly. ‘Lauren had to get one for me. It’s like being under house arrest. I’m in that office all day and I can’t even pop out for some fresh air at lunchtime.’
    ‘I don’t know how you do it, working in an office all day,’ Hugo said sympathetically, still hoping that he could soothe her quickly and get on with the business in hand. He stroked her hair, his hand slipping down to caress her neck in a way he knew she loved. ‘Those horrible light strips overhead! I’m damn lucky to be out on a destroyer, you know. Most of the time it’s so much fun it doesn’t even feel like work.’
    Chloe bit her lip; she was going to have to push harder. But after Toby’s supportive words, coupled with Sophie’s ‘Dog Rose’ comment, she was determined not to be distracted by Hugo’s attempts to move matters from the conversational to the physical.
    You’ve got to get on with it
, she told herself firmly.
Just tell him how you feel. It’s decision time. Lauren says that you should tell him if he doesn’t propose in six months, you’ll leave him.
    Lauren, Chloe’s best friend and work colleague, was tough as nails, and pretty much always right.
Don’t think of it as becoming a princess – that’s always what messes with your head
, Lauren had advised.
Just think of it as getting your man.
    And she thought, too, of her last visit home, and what her mother had said to her when her father was out in the garden: ‘Men all need a push, love, princes or not. I needed to give your dad a big old nudge to get him to go down on one knee, believe you me.’
    Mum and Lauren together have to be right
. Chloe took a deep breath and said as winsomely as she could manage:
    ‘You know the weird thing? It’s not even being able to pop out to the
coffee shop
that really upsets me. Every time I go in there it makes me smile, because it reminds me of how we met.’
    This made Hugo sentimental, just as she had known it would. It was one of his favourite memories, because it proved to him all over again how genuine Chloe’s feelings for him were. Even someone with as open and friendly a personality as Hugo couldn’t have helped but be aware, when he was single, how much his title might influence a young woman’s view of his other attractions. So it was always hugely reassuring to him that Chloe hadn’t had the faintest idea of the identity of the young man in jeans and stripy rugby shirt and sunglasses who had been ahead of her in Freedom of Espresso, fumbling in his pocket for enough change for his coffee, five years ago . . .
    ‘God, I’m so sorry!’ Hugo had said to Carmen, the Romanian girl behind the counter, his cheeks flushing pink with embarrassment. ‘I’m just back from, um, overseas, and I don’t quite seem to have enough dosh – can I cancel the order?’
    ‘No, I already make the cappuccino!’ Carmen