Fast Friends by Jill Mansell Page B

amazingly sexy. From what he had seen, this woman had a superb body. Wisely, however, he forbore to
state his opinion aloud, since she was
quite capable, he sensed, of closeting herself in the bedroom once more.
    ‘ Would your son mind, do you think, if we were
to have just one game before you wrapped it
up for him?’ he said longingly.
     
    ’You really are the most appalling cheat,’ exclaimed
Camilla, trying not to laugh. Since Loulou
didn’t possess a dictionary she could
only listen in disbelief to Nico’s long, involved explanations of words
which he insisted were real, half of which sounded suspiciously Italian anyway.
    ‘ I swear on my life!’ declared Nico, his green
eyes innocent. zuka is a wonderful vegetable, rather like an aubergine, but
slightly smaller and more rounded.’
    ‘ And fitting perfectly
on to a triple-word score,’ she observed. ‘Incredible.’
    ‘ You don’t believe me?’
he protested, clutching his heart. ‘Shall
I phone my dear old mother so that you can ask her yourself? Why, at this very moment she is probably
sitting at her kitchen table peeling delicious zuka in preparation for
the evening meal . .
    ‘ We’ll phone her,’ intercepted
Camilla firmly, calling his bluff and reaching for the phone. ‘Where is
she?’
    ‘ At home, in northern Italy.’
    He grinned as she dropped the phone back on to the floor. ‘Why,
how good of you, deciding to believe me after all. That’s another fifty-four
points to me, I think.’
    When Loulou returned home at almost five o’clock, Nico and Camilla
were still sprawled on the living-room floor, so engrossed in their game that
they didn’t even notice her arrival. Loulou
gazed in astonishment at the cosy scene, registering the empty wine bottle and glasses beside them, the
totally relaxed atmosphere and the laughter in Camilla’s eyes as she accused
Nico of stealing her Q. She guessed instantly that Camilla had no idea whom she was lying next to; if
she had known that Nico Coletto was one of Britain’s most successful rock stars and a huge
sex-symbol to boot, she would be paralysed
with shyness. And if she knew that he was another of Roz’s lovers Loulou
doubted whether she would even remain in the same room as him.
    Her heart softened and she felt a
small surge of personal triumph as she realized how lovely Camilla was looking. The other night, when she had dragged her down into Vampires
and placed her at the mercy of Miles
Cooper-Clarke, all the make up and finery in the world had been unable to
disguise her inner anxieties. But now,
bathed in the intimate glow of the twin brass lamps on either side of the sofa, her exquisite new hair style
endearingly tousled, and her lipstick scarcely visible, she exuded confidence
and joy.
    With Miles, an ordinary man, she had been cripplingly ill
at ease, Loulou recalled wryly, yet here with
Nico – who was by any standards extraordinary – she was at peace.
    From her position in the doorway,
Loulou smiled. There couldn’t be
that many people in Britain who wouldn’t recognize Nico when they saw him.
Trust Camilla to be one of that tiny minority.
    ‘ Zuka!’ she exclaimed,
having crept up behind them, and Camilla jumped. Nico, who could detect
the click of a photo grapher’s camera at fifty
paces and who had known all along that Loulou had returned, reached out
and grabbed her slender ankle, pulling her down in an untidy heap beside him.
    ‘ Rinti?’ howled Loulou,
transfixed by the outrageous words he had been allowed to get away with.
Camilla, she knew instinctively, would never cheat like that.
    ‘ Keribel!’
    ‘ Sshh, Lou,’ Nico chastised her, pulling a lock of her
rippling blonde hair for emphasis, ‘you know perfectly well that a keribel is a child’s rocking-chair. Look, I’m winning by
seventy-two points. Isn’t that incredible?’
    ‘ It’s a miracle of modern cheating,’ she
observed drily.
    ‘ Oh, come on. Jane knows
I’m not cheating. Merely because I
have a