The Plan - Chances & Choices Prequel Read Online Free

again to attend another function and there would be no misconceptions, no expectations, only genuine, unconditional acceptance and affection.
    Slowly, quietly, sweetly over three years their bond built and a deep friendship grew.  Landmarks in their lives were shared:  her college graduation, his best–selling collections and awards, her first job.  They dated other people, took an unimportant lover here and there, but they were the constant in each other’s lives, the safe, platonic, significant other.
    In the solidness of their friendship, they both forgot the feeling of those first passionate moments in front of Claire’s apartment door.  The feeling stayed where it suited them both – safe, quiet and undisturbed.
    Until one sparkling afternoon on the beach in front of Julian’s house, when she came running out of the water to flop beside him.  Lying down, she tossed away her long mane of hair and, handing him some suntan lotion, asked him to put it on her back.  Then, without so much as a trace of self-consciousness or coquetry, she un-hooked the back of her bikini to avoid strap marks.
    The sexuality of the moment thrust him back three years to when he took the stairs two at a time to scold a young girl and was stopped in his tracks by the primal beauty of a virgin goddess with cascading golden locks who was all woman. The woman had retreated into the blushes of the girl who became his friend, but now she was emerging full force and he and the plan were well and truly screwed.
    He was thankful she kept her eyes closed throughout the procedure and afterwards he went for a swim to counteract the effect she was having on him. At the time, he told himself it was simply a natural reaction to a beautiful woman and didn't mean anything other than Claire had matured.  But as weeks passed, he knew it was more than that - he was in love with her.
    It wasn't the intense emotion Susanna had elicited, but it was love.
    She started to fill his thoughts more and more.  He started to imagine a future and he began to notice how his sketches took on her appearance, how much his designs had changed over the past year.  Their cut now flattered her tall, full figure and the colour and fabrics were attuned to the cool tones of her pristine beauty.
    Uneasily, he began to realise how insidiously love for her was infecting him.  It was then he began to fear what that could mean; how vulnerable he could become.  It was then he was truly grateful for the plan.  He had carefully nurtured and developed the plan with great success in the past three years.
    Claire played an important role in that success. Her platonic friendship allowed him to bank his emotions, to stay clear of intensity or emotional intimacy on an erotic level.  He had learned to guard his emotions carefully, to create a life with a safe structure that could not be toppled by emotions as futile as passionate, intense love.
    Been there.  Done that.  No longer part of the plan.
     

Chapter Eight
    Coming Home
     
    When Claire was offered the job with Choices lifestyle magazine in New York, he let her go.  Encouraged her.  From that distance, the plan worked well for another three years. They kept in touch, emails, texts, a weekly Skype.  As a fashion designer, he made trips to New York and they would have lunch together, dinner if she wasn't seeing someone. Overall, her move to New York had seemed to provide him with the distance he needed for the plan to work.  He could avoid how he felt when he only actually saw her a few times a year and only had to deal with her digital presence.
    A presence that far too often left him rattled, restless, rampant.
    On the nights of their weekly Skype, he would be mesmerised by the sight of her lips, the swell of her breasts, the cascade of her long golden hair as she shifted it from side to side, absently, while animatedly sharing her news. Sometimes he had to fake their conversation because he lost track of what she was