Private Relations Read Online Free

sped to the eighteenth floor and walked down the lushly carpeted hallway to the Carnaby Suite where she took a moment to take a deep breath and center herself before knocking.
    The door opened.
    “Hi,” said the attractive dark-haired man standing on the other side wearing a crisp white shirt, navy blue slacks and a tie that needed knotting.
    For a moment everything went still. She couldn’t breathe, her heart didn’t seem to beat. She couldn’t hear anything. In that instant, she was standing in her wedding gown, reliving the moment when she’d finally accepted she’d been jilted at the altar. She stared at the man she’d planned to marry. She hadn’t seen him in the three years since the night before their wedding day. Such a barrage of emotions slammed into her that she couldn’t process any of them.
    Another woman might have railed, or fainted, or kicked him in a strategic spot. Not Kit, even though she felt like doing all three. Her famous smile wobbled a little, but she hung on to it, just as she hung on to the pink clutch that started to slide out of her grip.
    “Peter,” she said. “What a surprise.”
    “Kit. It’s good to see you.” An awkward moment passed when he didn’t move back or speak but simply stared at her. She glanced at the discreet bronze plaque announcing that this was indeed the Carnaby Suite.
    So what if Peter turning out to be the winner was a cruel cosmic stroke of fate. There was no way she was going to falter in front of her ex-fiancé. After all, she had faced a ballroom filled with shrieking patrons scrambling to get out of the way of crocodiles reveling in their new-found freedom. One snake she could handle. “So, do I take it you are the lucky winner of the fantasy weekend?”
    He seemed to pull himself together with an effort. “Yes. I’m thrilled.” He stood back. “Come in.”
    “Thanks.” She was thinking fast as she stepped into the luxurious, sensuously appointed suite with the man she’d once planned to spend her life with. There was no way she could bail on dinner tonight, not with the Times photographer coming. But tomorrow, as another famously jilted woman once said, was another day.
    “I’m here to take you to dinner,” she said briskly, then raised her brows in a challenge. “Is that a problem?”
    “There’s no one I’d rather have dinner with,” he said.
    Bite me. “Fine. Anytime you’re ready to go.”
    “Look. Would you like to have a drink here first? Maybe we should talk before we go out into public together.”
    She simply looked at him and let her brows ride higher. Soon they’d take off in flight.
    He fiddled with the ends of his tie. “In case there are any hard feelings you want to get off your chest. From before.”
    “By before, I assume you mean when you left me standing at the altar on our wedding day?”
    He nodded, and she had the satisfaction of seeing a reddening above his collar that meant he was embarrassed. Damn straight.
    “Your letter of apology was nice. And the check you sent my parents more than covered the cost of the wedding. Obviously, we were too young, and not getting married was for the best. No hard feelings.”
    “I would like to explain. Or at least try.” He pushed a hand through his hair, making a mess of it. “I know it was unforgivable what I did but—”
    “Peter,” she interrupted him, “I don’t believe in dwelling on past mistakes. My life has turned out fine. I’m happy. Shall we go?”
    He looked confused, even a little offended. Ha! What had he expected? Tears and her heart held out for him to study the old scars? Forget it. Jabbing at old scars was likely to make them bleed again.
    “Okay,” he said and turned to the full-length mirror framed in a kaleidoscope of shards of mirror and crystal.
    She turned away so she wouldn’t have to watch Peter knot his tie. She didn’t want to witness that much intimacy. Instead, she examined the room for the slightest flaw.
    There were