Love notes by Avis Exley Page B

where he hadn’t been quick enough to dodge a punch.
Without thinking, Erika leaned across the table, took his face in
her hands and kissed it better, taking them both by surprise.
    “Isn’t it ridiculous?” she said,
laughing again at his expression. “I play concerts to audiences of
fifty thousand, my music videos reach a worldwide audience and
millions download my songs, but I still miss singing to a hundred
people in a grotty pub in the middle of nowhere.”
    “Is that what you want to do
when this is all over? Go back to pub singing?”
    The thought tipped Erika over
into helpless giggles again and she covered her face, unable to
control herself. Aiden moved around the booth to sit next to her
and rubbed her back, laughing as hard as she was and imagining
Marty’s expression if she ever put the idea to him.
    “The man would have a heart
attack,” he said, struggling for breath. “I almost feel sorry for
him.”
    “Well don’t.” The image of
Marty’s face cleared Erika’s head immediately and the laughter
dropped away. “If you’re right, and he has been defrauding me, he
deserves everything he gets.”
    She leaned back, conscious that
Aiden’s arm was still around her but enjoying the closeness. She’d
been deprived of these simple pleasures in her ivory tower –
sharing a meal with a handsome man; laughing to the point of tears;
reminiscing about the time when she’d been as unrecognisable as any
other girl in the street.
    “Thank you,” she said, worn out
and letting her head fall against Aiden’s shoulder. “Thank you for
reminding me that our relationship wasn’t all about the broken
heart at the end.”
    “Far from it.” Aiden’s arm
tightened around her shoulders and he shifted to tuck her closer in
beside him. “When I look back, all I remember is the laughter. And
singing, and dancing. And sex.” He sighed. “A lot of sex.”
    “Was it really that easy?” Erika
asked. Compared with the heartbreak that had marked the end of
their relationship, she found it difficult to believe their time
together could have been so idyllic.
    “You were the original low
maintenance girlfriend. Always happy, undemanding, never jealous
and I can’t once remember you asking me to buy you something.”
    “And your relationships since
have been the opposite?” Unsubtle, she knew, but she was
curious.
    “None of them has lasted as long
as five months, if that answers your question.”
    It didn’t exactly but Google
would fill in the gaps for her. “If our relationship really was
that perfect, you have to ask whether it could have gone on
indefinitely.”
    “I don’t see why not.”
    “Well, there was Little Miss
Naked for a start.”
    “Ouch!”
    “Don’t tell me you didn’t
deserve that.” Erika sat up and looked at him, expecting him to be
irritated but Aiden was shaking his head as the last remnants of
laughter seeped from his face.
    “I won’t make excuses for what I
did because I was so far in the wrong it was a very long walk
back.” This time his smile was grim. “But you weren’t the only one
with a broken heart.”
    Forty-eight hours ago, Erika
would have found this a comfort and thought he’d deserved every bad
thing that had happened to him. But now, she felt the first glimmer
of sympathy.
    “So you’ll have to think of me
as the one that got away,” she joked, trying to lighten the
atmosphere.
    “Perhaps I wouldn’t have been so
stupid had I known you were going to turn into Erika Fenn,
worldwide superstar and darling of the red carpet.”
    “And maybe I would have been a
bit more forgiving had I known you’d quadruple your fortune and
could keep me in designer shoes.”
    Aiden grinned and held out his
hand to Erika. “No hard feelings then?”
    “Life’s too short.”
    Erika shook his hand but didn’t
let go of it, and stared down at the broad, strong fingers she’d
once known as well as her own. She turned his hand over and looked
at his palm, running her