Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
Zoe had promised herself three things before her cousin’s wedding.
One glass of champagne. No dancing with drunk uncles. Home by midnight.
By half past nine she had broken the first rule twice, and she was seriously thinking about the third.
The reception was on the twentieth floor of a glass hotel in Sandton, all white roses and fairy lights and a band that only seemed to know songs from 2009. Zoe sat at table eleven in an emerald silk dress that had cost far too much, listening to a man called Gerhard explain his golf handicap for the fourth time.
That was when she noticed him.
He was standing near the bar in a charcoal suit, no tie, his top button open. Dark hair, a little too long. Stubble along a sharp jaw. He was holding a beer and looking around the room the way someone looks at a party they were dragged to, bored and amused at the same time.
Then his eyes landed on her, and he stopped looking bored.
Zoe looked away first. She picked up her glass, took a sip, and counted to ten. When she looked back, he was still watching her. He lifted his beer half an inch, a tiny salute.
She felt it all the way down her spine.
“Do you know that guy?” she whispered to her friend Thandi.
Thandi glanced over and nearly choked on her wine. “No. But I’d like to.”
“Is he with the bride or the groom?”
“Babe, I don’t care if he’s with the caterers.”
Gerhard started on his handicap again. Zoe smiled politely and didn’t hear a single word.
Ten minutes later a shadow fell over the table. She looked up, and he was right there, close enough that she could smell his cologne, something warm with a hint of cedar.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said to the whole table, though he was only looking at her. His voice was low and easy, with an accent she couldn’t place. “Would you like to dance?”
“I don’t dance at weddings,” Zoe said.
“Neither do I. I don’t even know anyone here.” He held out his hand. “So nobody will remember if we’re terrible.”
Thandi kicked her under the table. Hard.
Zoe put her hand in his.
His name was Luca. He was a friend of the groom’s brother, he told her, a last-minute plus-one for someone who had then left early with a migraine. He was an architect. He had grown up in Cape Town and lived in Milan for six years, which explained the accent and the way he wore that suit.