“Who did you think it was?” Alice replied in a smart-arse fashion, before looking at her once more with a seriously concerned look on her face.

“Dana really we have to get you out of this rain. You’re shivering all over.” She wrapped the blanket around Dana’s shivering body, not failing to notice that the tennis star shivered more as Alice‘s hands touched her body. Feeling a small sense of accomplishment for stirring such feelings, Alice quickly realised that they were both still out in the rain.

“C’mon, into my car. I’ll give you a lift.” Dana, still shocked by how nice Alice was being towards her, just nodded in agreement, and jumped into the passenger seat of the mini.

‘Wow this isn’t awkward,’ Alice thought as she started the car and drove off. Alice had assumed that everything would sort itself out once she had found Dana, but there was an undesirable amount of tension between the two of them, and neither of them knew what to do.

“Next time you’ll have to think twice about suddenly scooting off,” joked Alice. Her voice was shaking slightly but it was better than the suffocating silence. “Maybe read the weather reports beforeha-”

“I’m so sorry.” Dana blurted out suddenly, unable to keep the intense feelings of remorse inside of her any longer.

“About the weather? Don’t beat yourself up about it.” Alice didn’t know what to do. She was glad that Dana had said sorry, thrilled even, but she had doubts as to whether she meant it, or felt she had to say it because Alice had come to find her.

“No. A-About what I said at The Planet. About paying you to keep what I said out of the interview.” Dana looked up at Alice, who was concentrating extra hard on driving. “I didn’t mean any of it. I think that you were just so genuinely nice to me, without any secret motivations that I freaked out.” Alice turned toward her suddenly, and Dana’s head shot down as soon as the two made eye contact. “I’m just not use to having people being nice to me because they want to, that’s all,” she whispered. It was true – thinking back Dana could probably count on one hand the amount of people that had been friendly to her because they liked her, not because she was a soon to be celebrity tennis player, or because her family were rich, or because they had to. It meant a lot to Dana that someone like Alice, who she had never met before, could take such an interest in her life. But it also scared her to death.

Alice turned into the far lane and stopped the car. She turned around to Dana, who was still looking at the floor, and gently brushed her hand down her cheek to pull her chin up.

“Dana, please look at me,” Alice whispered softly, so softly that Dana immediately responded without fear or embarrassment. Alice looked into Dana’s eyes intently, she stared into them and Dana stared back.

“I don’t care about what you said back at The Planet. You freaked out; everybody does at one point or another.” She smiled at the brunette, who was visibly comforted by Al’s words. “I don’t want to use you Dana. I don’t want to use your celebrity status or your money or your deepest fears. My job honestly isn’t worth anywhere near as much. And the truth is that even though I’ve only just met you…” Alice hesitated, trying to string together some sort of coherent sentence which would explain how much the brunette meant to her.

“Ha-ha ***** this is hard… even though I have just met you, your opinions, your friendship means a lot to me – and I don’t want to mess that up for a lousy page two interview.”

And bang, like that, Dana was gone. In the space of not even an hour, Dana had met, joked, insulted and run away from Alice. She had also fallen in love with her.

“You mean a lot to me too.”