Excerpt of Marriage Reunited by Jessica Hart

"THANK YOU for coming in. I'll be in touch." Georgia closed the door firmly behind the latest applicant for the post of senior photographer on the Askerby and District Gazette and let the bright, polite smile drop from her face.

Mentally she began to compose a letter for Rose to type up and send to all five of the hopefuls who had responded to the advertisement.

Dear X, Thank you so much for coming in and wasting my time today. While admiring your nerve in applying for a job for which you have no experience and absolutely no talent, I am afraid that I am unable to offer you the post. I am desperate for a photographer, but not that des- perate. Yours sincerely, Georgia Maitland, Editor.

What a shame you couldn't tell it how it was, instead of wrapping it in meaningless phrases, thought Georgia, al- ready resigned to drafting a letter that would make her sound kind and encouraging instead of cross and impatient, which was how she really felt.

As if she didn't have enough to do. Taking off her glasses, she dropped them on to her desk and threw herself into the battered executive chair with a gusty sigh, spinning round to face the window behind. The view over the rooftops of the town to the hills beyond was one of the few bonuses of the Gazette"s location on the third floor of a bleak Victorian warehouse which had been badly converted in the Seventies.

On this March afternoon, a weak winter sun was strug- gling to stay above the horizon and the hills, still dusted with snow from a cold snap earlier in the week, were re- flecting a pinkish glow. It would make a nice picture, thought Georgia morosely.

If only she could find a photographer capable of taking it.

Behind her, she heard the door to her office open. This would be Rose, still struggling to learn the ropes as the Gazette"s secretary, and almost as anxious as Georgia to find a new photographer. She would be wanting to know how the last interview had gone.

"He seems terribly nice," she had whispered to Georgia confidentially before ushering the last candidate in.

Nice he might have been, a talented photographer he most certainly wasn't.

"Please tell me that guy wasn't the best photographer Askerby can come up with," Georgia said without turning round.

"I could tell you that if you want, but then I'd be lying, and you know I've never lied to you, Georgia."

The voice that answered her was far from her secretary's cut-glass tones. Instead it was warm and amused, with a Scottish lilt that was more a softening of the hard edges than a full-blown accent.

It was a voice Georgia hadn't heard for four long years. A voice so unexpected and so bizarrely out of place in her dull provincial office that she froze for a moment, certain that she must be imagining things.

Then, very, very slowly, she swivelled her chair round to face her husband.

"Hello, Georgia," he said.

Georgia's heart, which had lurched into her throat at the sound of his voice, did a series of spectacular somersaults before landing with a sickening thud that left her reeling and breathless.

Mac Henderson, the love of her life. The man she had married. The man who had broken her heart.

The first instinctive surge of joy at the sight of him was rapidly succeeded, much to Georgia's relief, by a welcome rush of therapeutic anger. It was typical of Mac to turn up when she was least expecting him!

Just when she had managed to convince herself that she was over him.

How dared he come here looking just the same, with the same heart-shaking smile and the same unsettling humour gleaming in his navy-blue eyes, making her senses pirouette and her bones dissolve exactly the same way they always had?

It wasn't fair.

Georgia took a deep breath and wished she could remem- ber some of those calming yoga exercises she had once tried.

"Mac," she said, hating the way shock had made her voice husky, although, to be fair, it was a miracle she was able to speak at all given the way her heart was carrying on, ca- vorting around her ribcage like a red setter out of control. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you."

Mac looked as if he would have liked to have strolled around, but her office simply wasn't big enough for him to do more than take a couple of steps in any direction.

There you go, Georgia told herself. Another bonus to add to the view.

In the end, Mac sat down uninvited in the chair recently vacated by the would-be photographer. "It took me a little while to track you down," he said. "You didn't tell me that you'd left London." 'Is there any reason why I should have done?" asked Georgia coolly.

"We are married," he pointed out. "Technically, perhaps," she conceded, "but we've been separated for nearly four years and, since you haven't made any other attempt to contact me in that time, it didn't occur to me to keep you informed of my movements."

Hey, who would have thought she would have been able to come up with a coherent sentence like that? Georgia mar- velled. Who needed yoga anyway? She could do this. She could deal with her soon-to-be ex-husband without falling apart or letting the frantic churning get the better of her. Ha!

"I don't recall you letting me know whenever you went off to the Middle East or Angola or Liberia or all the other trouble spots you've been to over the last few years," she added, feeling more confident now.

"You've been keeping track of me?" The undercurrent of amusement in Mac's voice made Georgia grit her teeth. He had never really taken her seri- ously, and it looked as if nothing had changed.

"I read the papers," she said, managing a careless shrug. "I see your name under the pictures so I know where you've been, that's all."

And every time it had been like a knife turning in her heart, knowing that he was in danger, never getting a phone call to say that he was safe, knowing only that he had sur- vived one conflict the next time his photographs of another appeared in the paper.

Of course, Mac had always thrived on risk. His was an odd mixture of recklessness and competence, a confidence bordering on arrogance that he could deal with any obstacle that stood between him and a good picture.

It was what made him a wonderful photographer and a terrible husband. How many nights, Georgia wondered, had she lain awake worrying about where he was and what he was doing, only for him to breeze back, to laugh at her fears and tell her that she should learn to live dangerously, life was so much more fun that way? But it hadn't been fun for Georgia, just waiting for him to come home. He had never understood how hard it was for her.

She looked across the desk at him now. No, he hadn't changed. Nobody could call Mac a handsome man, his fea- tures were too irregular for that, but he was undeniably at- tractive, with those dark, lean looks, and that reckless, good- humoured assurance that gave his mobile face its compel- ling charm.

He was a little thinner now, maybe, a little more battered around the edges, but then, weren't they all? Georgia thought wryly. You didn't have to spend your life in war- torn countries to lose your sheen after you hit forty.

He had aged better than she had, she had to acknowledge, but then men always did. Mac's lines made him look rugged and humorous, hers just made her look tired and tense.

"Besides," she went on, abandoning that depressing line of thought, "I am a journalist. It wouldn't have been that hard to have found you if I'd needed to, which I haven't until now. I sent the divorce papers care of the Picture Desk at the paper. I presume that's why you're here?"

"Got it in one," said Mac, not feeling nearly as casual as he sounded.

Her letter had been forwarded to him in Mozambique. He had been sitting in a bar in Maputo, having collected the mail that had accumulated in his post box while he'd been covering a story up country. He had ordered a beer while he leafed through the letters, opening anything that seemed interesting and leaving the rest until later.

Mac remembered the moment exactly. Remembered frowning slightly at the solicitor's stamp, turning the enve- lope over, ripping it open with his thumb. Even at the time he'd thought of Georgia, who would undoubtedly have used a letter opener or a knife to open it neatly rather than leave a jagged tear like that. It was the kind of memory that would catch at him like barbed wire, just when he least expected it.

He remembered shaking the thought of her aside as he'd pulled out the papers and unfolded them, remembered the sickening jolt as he'd read the solicitor's covering letter and the words sank in. After all this time, Georgia wanted a divorce.

"I appreciate the effort," she said now in a dry voice, "but there was no need for you to come. All you had to do was sign the papers and send them back to my solicitor."

"But I don't want to sign," said Mac, tipping the chair back so that he was balanced alarmingly on the back legs. "I want to talk."

"There's nothing to talk about," said Georgia, trying to ignore his balancing act and failing miserably. "And stop doing that!" she snapped, succumbing to the blatant provo- cation in spite of herself. "You're only doing it to wind me up anyway. You know I hate it when you take stupid risks."

"Georgia, I'm only sitting on a chair!" Mac rolled his eyes, but let the chair legs drop back to the floor.

"You're the only person I know who can sit on a chair dangerously," she said with a trace of resentment and he grinned.

"That almost sounds as if you still care about me!" 'Well, I don't," said Georgia, not quite truthfully. "It's nothing to me if you want to break your neck. Just don't do it in my office when I'm trying to work!"

"You're not working now," Mac pointed out. "We're just talking." 'We're not talking," she insisted crossly. "What is there to talk about?"

"Our marriage." 'Mac, we don't have a marriage." Georgia sighed. "We agreed to separate four years ago. It was a mutual decision and since neither of us has changed our mind since then, there doesn't seem much point in carrying on being married on paper only. Surely you can see that it's sensible to sort everything out now?"

Sensible. There was a word to describe Georgia, thought Mac, studying her over the desk. She looked tired, he de- cided, and there were new lines around her smoky-grey eyes, but her blonde hair was still drawn neatly away from her face in a French plait, and she was as immaculately groomed as ever, wearing one of those little suits that al- ways made her look crisp and elegant and just a little but- toned up.

The contrast in the two sides of Georgia had always in- trigued him. There was the cool, controlled Georgia who faced the world, and then there was the other, much more alluring Georgia who shed her inhibitions with her neat suit and her sensible shoes, whose smile as she shook her beau- tiful hair free of its tidy plait had never failed to send a frisson of excitement down his spine.

Look at her now, sitting at her perfectly organised desk, crisp and capable in a scoop-necked silk top and discreet earrings. Who could guess that behind that practical façade was a warm, vibrant, alluring woman? Mac liked to think that he was the only one who knew, the only who had glimpsed the potential in the steady, sensible girl who had escaped the confines of a small Yorkshire town for London all those years ago, the only one to be fascinated and in- furiated by her in equal measure.

The realisation that he might not be the only one after all had brought him all the way back from Mozambique, jeal- ousy churning in his gut.

The amusement evaporated from Mac's face. "The thing is, Georgia, you said that neither of us had changed our mind, but that's not quite true. I have."

She stared at him. "What do you mean, you've changed your mind?"

"About being better off apart than together. I don't think that any more." The navy-blue eyes looked directly into hers. "I don't want a divorce."

For one long, long moment Georgia couldn't say anything at all. She was too busy struggling to control her wayward heart which, contrary to all its hard training over the past four years, had done the equivalent of leaping to its feet and punching the air with an exhilarated yes!

How pathetic was that? All those tears, all that heartache. The pain, the confusion, the desolation...she had got over it all. She had survived, she was over him, and now all her body could do was thrill at the mere suggestion that he might, after all, still want her.