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the small matter of his girlfriend,’ Angel replied dryly, not even sure if the young good-looking guy was Zac.
    ‘But maybe Zac would like the chance to go out with an older woman,’ Gemma insisted. ‘I could be the sexy Cougar. I reckon I could show him a few moves.’
    ‘Gemma, I never saw you as a star fucker,’ Angel told her.
    ‘You’re right,’ Gemma conceded. ‘Anyway I could never starve myself to be a size zero. Never mind that Kate Moss bollocks mantra “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, shall we have pudding? I fancy the Key Lime Pie. I can always hit your in-house gym this afternoon before we go out clubbing.’
    Pleasantly full from lunch and slightly tipsy from champagne, the three friends linked arms and headed out of the restaurant towards their ride – they planned to go on to the Beverly Centre, an upmarket mall packed with high-end designer boutiques, for yet more retail.
    Suddenly a young woman with glossy blonde hair tied back in a pony tail, wearing a smart navy suit and clutching a microphone, stepped out in front of the trio,forcing them to stop. She thrust the microphone out. Just behind her a camera was being pointed directly at Angel. ‘Miss Summer, do you have any comment to make about the claim of Ella Richards that Ethan Turner is the father of her little girl?’
    Angel stared blankly at the journalist; she had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
    ‘Did you know about Ethan Turner’s relationship with Ella Richards?’ the journalist persisted, a fake smile on her blandly pretty face.
    ‘No comment.’ Jez took over, marching Angel away from the journalist and into the car as quickly as he could. ‘Can you take us straight home?’ he asked Raul, the chauffeur. No one felt in the mood for shopping now.
    ‘What the hell do you think she was on about?’ Gemma asked, looking at her friend with concern as the car pulled quickly away, denying the journalist any further shots.
    Angel shook her head and said despairingly, ‘I’ve no idea. Oh my God! D’you think he’s been cheating on me?’ She was gripped with a sickening and all-too-familiar feeling of insecurity and doubt. Cal had cheated on her . . . maybe Ethan had as well. She had never believed in a million years that Cal would cheat on her, but he had. It wasn’t such a big leap to imagine that Ethan had done the same. Maybe that’s why he had gone to all the trouble over their anniversary, the presents and the plane tickets; it was an attempt to butter her up before the truth about his affair came out. She suddenly had a pounding headache and was trembling.
    ‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ Jez said wisely, putting his arm round her. ‘You know what the press are like, babe.’
    Angel knew only too well. Her success as a glamourmodel, combined with her great beauty and the fact that she had had relationships first with a boy-band singer and then with a footballer, meant that the tabloids had always been obsessed with her. This had reached fever pitch with the revelation that Cal had been unfaithful during their marriage. He’d had a three-month affair with a beautiful Italian woman who was married to a player for AC Milan during his time playing for the club over a year ago. Back then he and Angel hadn’t been getting on – she was crippled by post-natal depression but hadn’t revealed that to Cal, who’d had no idea why his wife was being so cold towards him. As soon as news of his affair broke, the press camped outside their house all day and all night and pursued the couple everywhere. The constant intrusion, combined with her pain over the affair, had been unbearable. Angel knew she couldn’t go through it again with Ethan. She reached for her phone, then changed her mind. After all, what would she say?
    She ran straight into the house and found Ethan in the living room, deep in conversation with Benny. The two men looked serious. Was that a flash of guilt in Ethan’s eyes? Before she