CHAPTER ONE

      I’m coming to get you, Bella texted swiftly. Hold on.

      For once, it looked as if she was going to be the rescuer instead of the rescuee. With her new job to boost her confidence, she thought she might just be able to handle it. For once she would be the sister who was calm, collected and totally together instead of the flaky, ditzy one who always made a mess of things and needed to be bailed out of a sticky situation.

      She glanced around and saw a black cab waiting at the kerbside. Relieved, she rushed up to it and jumped in.

      ‘Can you take me to the Bramerton Hotel in Kensington, please?’ she asked the cabbie.

      There was a dry cough from beside her, and she whipped her head round to discover that there was already a passenger sitting in the back seat.

      She’d been so focused on getting to Grace that she hadn’t even noticed the other passenger when she’d climbed into the taxi.

      ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. Look, I realise that you were here first, and technically I ought to leave right now and let you get on with your journey, but I really do need to get to the Bramerton as quickly as possible. Would you mind finding another taxi and...and...?’ She waved a desperate hand at him. ‘Look, I’ll pay for your cab.’ It’d mean extending her overdraft yet again, but what were a few more pounds if it meant that she could return the favour for once and help Grace? Besides, she was about to start a new job. Next month, her cash-flow situation would be a bit better.

      ‘Actually, I’m heading towards Kensington myself,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop you off at the Bramerton.’

      Relief flooded through Bella. She’d found the modern equivalent of a knight on a white charger: a man in a black cab. She wouldn’t have to let her sister down. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’ She gave in to the impulse, leaned forward and kissed him soundly on the cheek. ‘You have no idea how much I appreciate this.’

      ‘What’s so urgent?’ he asked as the taxi drove off.

      ‘It’s a family thing,’ she said. It wasn’t her place to tell anyone about her sister’s situation, let alone tell a complete stranger.

      ‘Uh-huh.’ He paused. ‘Did I see you just come out of Insurgo Records?’

      She looked at him, surprised. The man looked like a businessman on his way home from a late meeting, and he was hardly the target market for an independent record label—even though Insurgo’s artists were a real mixture, from folk singer-songwriters to punk and indie bands, with a few oddities thrown in. ‘Yes,’ she said.

      ‘Are you one of their acts?’

      In her black jeans and matching plain T-shirt, teamed with a shiny platinum-blonde bob, Bella knew that she probably looked as much like an indie musician as she did a graphic designer. ‘No,’ she said.

      But