Chapter 1
Bella lay beside the pool, letting the unusually warm October sunshine soak into her skin.
Somewhere behind her, a radio played quietly. Wind chimes moved in the breeze, bees buzzed lazily around the garden, and beyond the villa the mountains disappeared into a hazy blue horizon.
For the moment, life looked almost perfect.
Bella knew better.
She might have been lying in a bikini hundreds of miles from rainy London, but unfortunately she hadn’t managed to leave her problems at Heathrow.
There were the businesses.
The bank balance.
The recession.
And, not to be forgotten, the complete absence of anything resembling a love life.
Or a sex life.
Especially the sex life.
Bella closed her eyes and turned her face towards the sun.
God, she needed this.
The villa belonged to family, which was the only reason a woman currently examining every direct debit leaving her bank account could justify lying beside a private swimming pool.
Normally Bella made a point of getting away whenever she could. She needed something in the diary to look forward to. A few days somewhere warm, a city break, anything.
It kept her sane.
But the last couple of years had been different.
Money was tighter.
Business was harder.
And London appeared to have forgotten what summer was.
Still, at least the last few weeks had been entertaining.
Bella smiled.
The television people.
That had been ridiculous.
It had begun with an email forwarded to her by one of her managers.
A production company was looking for independent businesses willing to participate in a new candid-camera-style television pilot.
The concept was simple.
Members of staff would be secretly filmed while actors and fake customers put them through increasingly bizarre situations.
The employees wouldn’t know what was happening.
The owner would.
And the business would be paid for taking part.
Bella didn’t need asking twice.
They needed the money.
The publicity couldn’t hurt.
And, perhaps most importantly, she employed two people who were absolutely perfect for something like this.
If the programme never made it to television, at least she’d get a good laugh out of it.
She rang the number immediately.
A man called Craig answered.
Within minutes Bella was explaining exactly why her business and her unsuspecting staff should be chosen.
Craig responded with the standard television-production speech.
“It’s very early stages…”
“Nothing’s guaranteed…”
“We’re considering several locations…”
Blah, blah, blah.
Could she email photographs of the premises, the staff and herself?
Of course she could.
Bella sent everything over and promptly forgot about it.
Two days later, Craig called again.
He wanted to visit with a video camera.
The cover story was that he was filming a programme about independent businesses competing against large corporate organisations.
He would interview Bella first, then casually speak to the staff.
There was only one problem.
Bella knew her employees.
If some television crew suddenly appeared asking to interview her for free, they’d smell a rat immediately.
So Bella invented a fee.
She told everyone she was being paid for a short interview and that afterwards Craig might ask them a few questions too.
Perfectly believable.
Or so she thought.
Bella’s own interview was a disaster.
The moment the camera pointed at her, she seemed to lose the ability to form normal sentences.
Even knowing the entire premise was fake didn’t help.
Suddenly she had enormous respect for actors.
Apparently standing in front of a camera and behaving naturally was an actual talent.
Who knew?
Once her ordeal was over, Bella escaped and left Craig with the staff.
Then everything went quiet.
A couple of weeks later, an email arrived informing her that Craig was no longer working on the project and somebody else would be in contact.
Bella read it twice.
Bloody hell.
The world of television must be cut-throat.
Thank God she didn’t work in it.
Another couple of weeks passed before a man named Robert telephoned.
He was now working on the programme and wanted to arrange a secret meeting after visiting Bella’s business pretending to be a customer.
They met in a café a couple of doors away.
Hardly James Bond.
Still, provided nobody saw them arriving together, Bella supposed their cover was safe.
Robert was in his late thirties, slightly scruffy and wonderfully scatty-looking.
In fact, he looked almost exactly how Bella imagined someone working in television production should look.
He was very nice.
He was also incredibly slow at finishing sentences.
Bella wasn’t.
After the first few minutes she found herself completing them for him.
She couldn’t help herself.
Patience had never been one of her gifts.
Bella valued time.
She hated wasting it.
Unless she’d specifically decided to waste it, obviously.
That was completely different.
Robert eventually explained what the production company had planned.
First, a fake sales representative would arrive and persuade the staff to promote some ridiculous new products.
Later, actors disguised as customers would enter.
One would be an outrageously flirtatious older woman determined to make the male staff uncomfortable.
Another would be the kind of customer who insisted on trying absolutely everything before agreeing to buy anything.
Bella loved it.
She could already imagine the reactions.
Then came endless conversations about cameras, microphones, access, loading bays and whether a huge production vehicle could fit behind the building.
Bella started wondering whether any of it would actually happen.
Twenty minutes later, she made her escape.
Robert reminded her that everything depended on secrecy.
If the staff discovered the truth, the production company would pull out.
Bella promised she wouldn’t say a word.
Then came the call.
They’d chosen her.
Which was how Bella found herself lying through her teeth to people she worked with every day for the next three weeks.
The night before filming, she was still at the premises in the early hours while cameras and microphones were hidden around the building.
She had to return only a few hours later.
By the time filming began, Bella was functioning on almost no sleep.
And somehow, she thought now, opening one eye and looking across the pool, that wasn’t even the most complicated part of her life.
Because Bella was approaching another birthday.
A birthday she didn’t particularly want.
Thirty-six.
The number itself wasn’t terrible.
What bothered Bella was everything she thought was supposed to have happened by now.
No husband.
No children.
Not even a remotely suitable candidate for husband.
At this rate she might as well buy two cats and make the whole spinster thing official.
There was some comfort in knowing that several of her closest friends were in exactly the same position.
Misery loved company.
Then there were the businesses.
During better times, owning them had made Bella feel successful.
Independent.
Secure.
Now, during the recession, those same businesses sometimes felt like expensive children that needed feeding every month.
Bella loved what she did.
She loved being her own boss.
The slight problem was that she’d somehow become one of the lowest-paid people working for herself.
Still.
Nobody told Bella what to do.
Except God.
And occasionally her mother.
So what was she supposed to do?
Sell?
Walk away?
Start again?
Find a completely different career?
The thought of having a boss telling her when to arrive, what to do and when she could go home filled her with horror.
Or she could fight.
Ride out the recession and hope there was something worthwhile waiting on the other side.
Bella had once heard that recessions created millionaires.
She had absolutely no idea whether that was true.
But she liked the sound of it, so she’d decided to believe it.
Bella had always been a fighter.
Her philosophy was fairly simple.
Why not die trying?
Life was supposed to be lived.
As far as Bella was concerned, it was one enormous adventure full of unexpected twists, disasters, lucky escapes and stories you could laugh about afterwards.
It certainly beat being normal.
No.
The recession wasn’t going to beat her.
Bella sat up and reached for her drink.
She wouldn’t have described herself as stunningly beautiful.
She was petite, with a slim figure and legs that appeared disproportionately long compared with the rest of her.
She often joked that if somebody chopped her up, they’d only need a carrier bag for her torso.
Admittedly, not the most sophisticated description.
But accurate.
Bella wasn’t model beautiful.
What she did have was confidence.
And sex appeal.
She was comfortable with what God had given her and wasn’t above using a little charm when it helped her get what she wanted in business.
Bella could flirt.
Bella could negotiate.
Bella could walk into a room full of strangers and talk to anybody.
Her actual romantic life, however, was an entirely different matter.
In that department, she appeared to have missed several important lessons.
She had spent most of her adult life single.
Properly single.
She’d only ever had one relationship that she considered genuinely serious, back when she was ridiculously young.
Sometimes she wondered whether, had she known how difficult real love would prove to find again, she might have fought harder for what they’d had.
He had married years ago.
Had children.
Built another life.
Bella was genuinely happy for him.
Mostly.
Occasionally she wondered whether he’d ever found a love as intense as theirs had been.
Then she would immediately tell herself not to be an idiot.
Of course he had.
He married her, didn’t he?
A year earlier, Bella had finally decided something needed to be done about her romantic situation.
And Bella dealt with problems in the only way she knew how.
Like business.
First, identify the problem.
Her love life was nonexistent.
Second, identify the cause.
Insufficient opportunities.
Third, increase the opportunities.
Simple.
And where, in the twenty-first century, could a woman find hundreds—possibly thousands—of apparently available men without even leaving her sofa?
The internet.
Bella knew people who had met their partners online.
Perfectly normal people.
Successful people.
People who hadn’t subsequently appeared on Crimewatch.
Unfortunately, Bella had also heard every internet-dating horror story imaginable.
This wasn’t helped by the fact that some of her favourite television programmes involved murder investigations, missing women and forensic evidence.
Still.
Her birthday had been approaching.
Drastic situations required drastic measures.
Besides, it had been so long since she’d had sex she was beginning to wonder whether she’d remember what to do.
One of her girlfriends had joked that if Bella ever finally got some, there would probably be fireworks over London.
So Bella signed up.
And started scrolling.
Man after man after man.
She stared at the screen.
Where had they all come from?
So this was where all the single men had been hiding.
Eventually, one profile made her stop.
Tall.
Dark.
Handsome.
Very handsome.
Dangerously handsome, in fact.
He lived nearby.
Bella studied his photograph.
There had to be something wrong with him.
Men who looked like that weren’t supposed to need dating websites.
Surely?
The thought crossed her mind.
Briefly.
Then Bella did what people had been doing since the beginning of time when presented with an obvious warning sign.
She ignored it.
And asked him to send more photographs.
