The door that would get her onto that plane was so damn close-

“Moreaux, Miss Moreaux!”

Dammit.

“Miss Moreaux, please, if you’ll just answer a couple of quick questions!”

Elle sighed, and resigned to the fact that passing through an airport undetected was simply unachievable. She slowed, and turned to face to breathless voice that had hurried so earnestly after her. A young man – new to the job obviously, he was wearing a suit. Only newspaper reporters new to the job felt the need to physically prove themselves to the naked eye.

“Quickly. Which paper are you from?”

“The New York Times, Miss Moreaux. Off to California?”

“To visit my brother and niece.”

“So soon after the father of your partner has passed away?”

He had been warned of those eyes. So unbelievably blue and pretty enough to make one’s heart ache. But as they fixated upon his face, he suddenly understood the reason behind her nickname – Ice Queen. A glare as cold as winter frost; all he could do beneath that gaze was shiver.

“If you are referring to Mister Draico Ricardo, then you are mistaken in thinking that I have any responsibility in being by his side.”

“But it was reported that Mister Ricardo arrived at your apartment soon after learning the news-“

“And I turned him away.”

The reporter didn’t seem to have a response to that – perhaps because he was like a deer caught in headlights beneath that bitter gaze – and Elle was becoming exasperated. She seemed about to cut the conversation short – but if anyone knew her face well enough, they would have seen the split-second thoughtful expression as an epiphany whispered like a lover against her listening ears; and the almost untraceable signs of a sneer twitch the corners of her soft pout.

“I am not in a relationship with Draico Ricardo. He has, however, been insistent in having my company in recent months, and I have been humoring him until this point. But turning up to my apartment the other night was the final straw, and I have issued him with the warning that if he comes near me again, I will be filing a restraining order.”

It’s hard to believe something with a voice like honey could be such a brilliant liar.

The reporter - having just fallen head over heels into his biggest story in his short career - was looking like all his Christmases had come at once. He tried his best to conceal his delight, but Elle could see it in the way fingers twitched towards the cell phone clipped to his belt.

“Thank you, Miss Moreaux.”

“No, thank you.”

And as she turned her back to the young man and set her sights upon the set of doors that would fly her away from everything she didn’t want to remember, she could already hear him muttering frantically into his phone.

Draico Ricardo’s pristine reputation was about to receive a flogging.




Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.