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The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams
Fiona Harper
Nicole Harrison is planning the proposal of the century. Too bad it's not her own…Nicole, a born organiser and true romantic, has created her dream job when she sets up the Hopes & Dreams proposal agency – staging YouTube worthy proposals… until she’s hired to plan a proposal by gorgeous photographer Alex Black’s girlfriend.Alex is the New Year’s kiss that Nicole hasn’t been able to forget – and now she’s planning his wedding to someone else! But if she lets herself fall for Alex’s charms, her reputation and business will be ruined before it’s even got off the ground! Suddenly, the girl who's always prepared is at a loss… and falling head over heels.Praise for The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams"Sweet and romantic, a story guaranteed to have you smiling" - Milly Johnson"Perfect cosy feel you want from a good book" - Paris Baker's Book Nook"A nice warm hug" - Fabulous Book Fiend"Fiona Harper writes with an abundance of warmth and wit" - Dot Scribbles"I would whole heartedly recommend this and I will be looking what else Fiona has done" - Afternoon Bookery"A great romantic read" - Book Chick CityFans of Jenny Colgan, Abby Clements and Miranda Dickinson will love Fiona Harper's fresh, fun writing.
As a child, FIONA HARPER was constantly teased for two things: having her nose in a book and living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least she’s found a career that puts her runaway imagination to use!
Fiona loves dancing, so clear the floor if you’re ever at a party with her, and her current creative craze (one of a long list!) is jewellery making. She loves good books, good films and good food, especially anything cinnamon-flavoured, and she can always find room in her diet for chocolate or champagne!
Fiona loves to hear from readers and you can contact her through fiona@fionaharper.com (mailto:fiona@fionaharper.com) or find her on her Facebook page (Fiona Harper Romance Author) or tweet her! (@FiHarperAuthor (http://www.twitter.com/FiHarperAuthor))
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#ulink_94c59999-27ff-5d10-be0c-a4b0a5d76c63)
Thank you to Anna Baggaley and all the team at Harlequin for their hard work and enthusiasm, and also to Lizzy Kremer, my fabulous agent.
To the members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. So many of you have supported and encouraged me along the way and I have made friendships that will last a lifetime. May love always turn your pages.
YES!
Planning on proposing to the woman of your dreams? Feeling the pressure to deliver a romantic spectacle worthy of YouTube?
Don’t panic! Help is at hand!
HOPES & DREAMS,
London’s first proposal-planning agency, can work with you to create a romantic personalised proposal on any scale, for any budget. Give your loved one a memory to treasure and increase the chance of hearing that all-important word—YES!
To make your hopes and dreams come true, contact:
Nicole Harrison, 2a Old Carter’s Yard, Clerkenwell,
London EC1M 7BB
nicole@hopes-and-dreams.co.uk
Table of Contents
Cover (#u8c09eeee-8955-54fc-8408-6e2ff5d3845b)
About the Author (#ue93f860c-755f-5f2a-93f2-7b9f5e219d3c)
Title Page (#u7973b29e-0c08-5af1-8252-9f2272ee83a8)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#ulink_182762bf-8bf9-5e06-b891-85f5fff693b1)
Dedication (#ud11aa012-b63e-5c40-a382-a22870a90266)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_3dbdbf5a-b383-5c56-8bba-3edb5044de4a)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e1c5d56d-15bb-5d1e-8c3a-b2367a054a6e)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_640f0896-c4c9-5a56-ba08-2bf6e2cdfc65)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_46fdc073-20d1-53c3-88bd-b847c4dce3b9)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_e6379077-cbf8-54d6-a9dd-0853865f659a)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_47f9dbff-2646-5742-8060-d60acaca5de9)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_8a933b88-cd8d-5f88-b4b8-f05fdf9b8c9e)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_c7537897-3c2f-51e6-b8d9-1ce446ef5ca2)
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_d22b9288-5177-5291-b9c1-23f34dc84362)
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_4ce84664-ab40-5386-822f-3dd1fad27506)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpage (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_79f74308-f088-5e0b-a10f-ce8a3ae0edac)
‘What you need is another cosmopolitan.’
Nicole Harrison swayed on her high heels and frowned at her best friend and soon-to-be business partner, who was starting to look a little fuzzy around the edges. ‘You sure about that?’
She squinted at the large clock behind the bar of Déjà Vu, a trendy little place not too far from Covent Garden. Quarter to twelve. One more cocktail and she might not stay vertical until midnight, and she really wanted to be conscious when the new year started. Next year was the year when everything was going to fall into place and all her plans and hard work paid off.
‘‘Course I’m sure,’ Peggy said, beckoning the bartender with an elegant wave of her blood-red nails. ‘Best remedy for a broken heart.’
Nicole took a few seconds to unfocus from the clock and refocus back on her friend. She blinked slowly. For a moment she’d forgotten this was a fancy-dress party. The sight of Doris Day sitting on the next stool had momentarily confused her. The real Peggy was loud and curvy, and while she often dressed in vintage, it was always something with a little more va-va-voom than this pastel frock. As Nicole stared at her, the white polka dots started to dance around on the pale pink background.
‘My heart’s not broken,’ she mumbled.
At least not any more. But it had been. Once. What she’d felt today had just been an echo of that.
‘It was just an engagement announcement,’ she said, absent-mindedly accepting the glass of ruby liquid that Peggy slid in her direction. ‘And Jasper and I were over a long time ago.’
It shouldn’t matter any more. It didn’t.
‘Well, he’s an idiot,’ Mia, her other best friend, muttered with her usual bluntness. ‘No matter how long ago he let you slip out of his fingers.’
Mia had been sitting so quietly sipping her drink that Nicole had almost forgotten she was there, although she was hard to miss in her Lara Croft outfit, complete with chicken-fillet enhanced chest and thigh holsters. She wasn’t in the best of moods this evening, seeing as her army fiancé was out of the country on active duty. Lots of women got soppy when they missed their other halves, but Mia just got feisty.
Nicole raised her glass. ‘To the idiot,’ she said and toasted her friend’s ineffable wisdom by downing the contents in one go.
Only she knew she was lying. Jasper hadn’t been an idiot. Not at all. He was the most wonderful man she’d ever known.
‘Steady there, Nicole,’ Mia said. ‘You don’t normally put this much away.’
Peggy sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘She’ll be fine. And it was either this or sitting home with six gallons of ice cream in those tatty tracksuit bottoms of hers, and I know which one I’d rather watch her do.’
Mia frowned but nodded. ‘Forget the jerk,’ she said vehemently. ‘You were too good for him back then and you’re definitely too good for him now.’
Nicole saluted her with her empty glass. Too right. She’d worked really hard to become the woman she was today, the kind of woman who could bring the Jaspers of this world to their knees, reflected in her choice of costume this evening. Who embodied effortless elegance more than Audrey Hepburn in her Breakfast at Tiffany’s little black dress?
Okay, maybe Holly Golightly herself hadn’t always been cool, calm and dignified, but it was the overall image that counted. It was iconic.
‘Stuff Jasper! May he marry the cow and have a brood full of boys as shallow and stuck-up as he is!’ she said, trying to slide onto the stool next to Peggy’s and missing.
‘Exactly,’ Peggy said and ordered another round of cosmos.
Lara…or Mia…tapped Peggy on the arm. She nodded at Nicole. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.’
Peggy turned and studied her friend, pursing her lips. ‘Well, we’ve got to do something to cheer her up. My gran used to say the way you start a new year is the way you’ll end it, and I don’t want her moping around our brand-new office for the next twelve months.’
Mia sipped beer out of the bottle. ‘You’re all heart,’ she said, giving her a very Lara look.
‘Of course, I want Nicole to be happy too,’ Peggy added, pouting a little.
Nicole listened to her friends debate the merit of a fourth—or was it fifth?—cocktail. She hadn’t kept count. Probably because she really hadn’t planned to drink much this evening.
She felt oddly detached, as if the room was swimming in and out of focus, sounds waning and then becoming magnified. She tried to fix her gaze on Peggy, but the spots on her dress were now involved in the complicated choreography of a Busby Berkeley number, complete with split-second timing and terrifying symmetry. Nicole could have sworn, as she tried to tear her eyes away from the swimming mass of white-on-pink polka dots, that one of them actually winked at her.
‘It’s just because it’s been a while since you’ve had a man in your life,’ Peggy explained, ‘and that can always make you susceptible to the “if only”s.’
Mia snorted. ‘So that’s your excuse for not having more than a half-hour break between relationships, is it?’
Peggy glared at Mia. ‘We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about Nicole. It’s been two months since she waved bye-bye to the last boyfriend, and it’s about time she got back on the horse.’
Horse? Nicole didn’t think there’d been a horse that evening, but she’d drifted off for a moment there. Maybe there had been. She was starting to realise that whole swathes of New Year’s Eve were a complete blank. Probably because Mia was right—she didn’t usually drink much, if at all. She didn’t usually like the way alcohol fuzzied up her edges, made her lose control. She ended up doing things that really weren’t like her at all.
‘Having a conveyor belt of men in your life isn’t the answer to everything,’ Mia replied. ‘Sometimes a girl needs a bit of breathing space.’
Peggy waved a hand. ‘Breathing space, schmeathing space. There’s only one way to deal with a situation like this—she needs to find a cute guy to smooch at midnight and start the year in the way she means to go on.’
‘No,’ Nicole said, suppressing a hiccup. ‘I don’t do things like that.’
‘Then it’s about time you started,’ Peggy said, grinning at her, then scanning the room for a likely candidate.
Thankfully, Mia rescued her. ‘Who needs to pin our happiness on men, anyway? I say we refill our glasses…’ she nodded at Nicole ‘…orange juice for you, my love, and toast ourselves and Nicole’s new business venture. This time next year she’ll own the first proposal-planning agency in London and we’ll be rich because we had the good sense to invest in it!’
‘Now, that I can drink to,’ Nicole said, thumping the bar. ‘A pint of water, if you will, bartender!’
‘Classy,’ Peggy said, shaking her head.
‘Sensible,’ Mia countered, swinging her long plait behind her head.
The bartender sloshed a glass of water in front of Nicole and she scooped it up, not even caring it was dripping on her dress. ‘To Nicole!’ she said. ‘And her little shop of Hopes & Dreams!’
Peggy and Mia joined her, clinking their respective cocktail glass and beer bottle with her pint glass. ‘To us!’ they chorused.
They were all just drinking deep when Peggy nudged Nicole in the ribs. ‘Ooh, don’t look now, but…two o’clock…’
Already? Had she missed midnight? Those cocktails must be more lethal than she’d thought!
‘You’re hopeless,’ Peggy said, physically moving Nicole’s head so she dragged her gaze from the clock behind the bar and across the seething mass of partygoers. ‘I mean two o’clock. The guy with the black T-shirt standing over there. He’s a dish. I think you should claim him for that midnight kiss.’
A dish? Peggy was really getting into character, wasn’t she?
Nicole shook her head. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’ Peggy said, nudging her off her stool and in the right direction. ‘There’s no force field stopping you, is there?’
Nicole shook her head. But there probably should be. His black T-shirt clung lovingly to his broad chest and his hair was just messy enough to be sexy but just short enough to stop him looking foppish. It was as if the air pulsed around him, the molecules excited by his presence. Or maybe that was the fifth cosmo messing with gravity…Whatever it was, there was a definite whiff of danger in the air, and if there was one thing Nicole knew, bad boys like him didn’t go for good girls like her.
‘Interesting choice of trousers,’ Mia said, looking him up and down, ‘but I suppose you can’t have everything.’
And while Nicole tried to work out what Mia meant, and if the soft fuzz of his jeans was something more than the delicious blurring effect of vodka and cranberry juice, Peggy leaned in and whispered in her ear.
‘Go on, Nicole. It’s almost midnight…I dare you.’
He watched the brunette over by the bar snap to attention and stare directly at him. He toasted her with his bottle of beer and smiled. Well, he hadn’t seen that coming. He’d been half-watching her all night and he’d thought he’d had her pegged.
He didn’t know why she’d caught his eye. She wasn’t his usual type—extroverted and free-spirited—but there was something about her calmness and poise in a room full of chaos that had drawn his gaze.
But he still hadn’t been able to help looking over now and then, and the more he’d looked, the more he’d noticed the good bone structure, the fine features that weren’t arranged to make her conventionally pretty, but interesting.
He liked interesting.
She got up from her bar stool, straightened her black dress, adjusted the rope of large pearls circling her neck, then wobbled her way towards him.
He would have said she was heading straight for him, but halfway across the room she got distracted and veered off course until the blonde in the pink dress by the bar yelled something at her and she shook herself and started pushing her way through the heaving dance floor to where he was leaning against the wall.
He couldn’t help smiling to himself. He was glad it was the Audrey Hepburn girl, not Doris or Lara, who was teetering her way towards him. He put his beer bottle down on a nearby ledge and pushed himself away from the wall.
If he’d said women hadn’t approached him in bars before he’d be lying. So badly his pants would probably burst into flames. But there was something different about this girl. Instead of that hungry, almost predatory, look he’d come to expect, she was wide-eyed and uncertain. For some reason that made her approach all the more tantalising.
‘Incoming,’ his buddy Tom, and partner in crime, whispered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Which means I’m going to make myself scarce. In fact, now that the group at the bar is depleted a little, I might just see if Lara Croft would like to get into some one-to-one combat with me.’ And with a flash of a wicked smile he set off.
‘Good luck!’
Tom was going to need it. Lara had spotted him coming her way and was glaring at him, but that probably wasn’t going to stop him. Tom liked a challenge, and you didn’t get to be a hot up-and-coming record producer without being able to handle a few prickly customers.
He watched his friend’s progress for a few seconds then turned his attention back to the brunette. She was only a few steps away now, blocked by the people on the fringes of the dance floor, but then a groping pair stumbled off to one side and suddenly she was right in front of him.
‘Hi,’ he said, his smile growing wider.
‘Hi,’ she replied, and one ankle buckled a little beneath her before she found her footing again. And then she just stared at him, as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do with him. He found he liked that too. There was a hum of anticipation that was missing from a more direct approach.
He saw her ribcage rise as she hauled in some air and then she stepped forward and placed her hands on his chest. Her long-boned fingers were pale and delicate, but they packed quite a punch. A jolt shot through him, as if he’d been on a hospital trolley and someone had zapped him with a defibrillator.
Suddenly, things got very, very interesting.
In the background the music dimmed and someone turned the television up. An overexcited presenter was bouncing up and down in a bobble hat and scarf on the Embankment, and then the shot switched to the face of Big Ben. There was a heartbeat of silence before the chimes started, but Alex hardly heard them.
‘It’s midnight soon,’ she said and leaned in closer. He caught a whiff of her perfume, fresh and delicate with an undertone of spice. ‘So I’m going to kiss you.’
He wasn’t going to argue with that.
Well, not much.
Her face was inches away now, her eyes huge and dark. His heart was pumping wildly, throbbing in his ears. ‘Not if I get there first,’ he whispered and dipped his head to taste her lips, just briefly.
He heard her little gasp of surprise, and he decided he liked it, so he kissed her again, more deeply this time. She responded, a little hesitantly at first, which was intriguing, seeing as this had been her idea, but then her hands moved from his chest, skimming his torso through his T-shirt, until they were on his back, setting off a chain of tiny fireworks that were just as potent as the ones about to explode on barges in the Thames not half a mile away.
Big Ben’s bongs went uncounted and uncelebrated, at least by him and the mystery brunette, as they took what had started as a simple kiss and kicked it up a notch.
That moment of held breath when everyone waited for the twelfth chime was long over when they came up for air. People were dancing again, although he hadn’t been aware when the music had turned back on or even how long it had been playing. The brunette swayed slightly in front of him, her eyes closed, a tiny smile curving her lips, as he looked down at her.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked hoarsely.
She didn’t reply, just traced the lone dimple on his left cheek with her finger then kissed him again. Her hands slid lower to rest on his hips, and then he felt her lips purse. She pulled away, frowning. ‘You’re wearing furry trousers. What did you come as? Mr Tumnus? Because if you did, you should have a scarf. And an umbrella. Where’s your umbrella?’
He laughed. ‘No, nothing so exotic as a faun,’ he said. ‘I’m the back end of a pantomime horse.’
She smiled a serene little smile, as if that made perfect sense. ‘Peggy said there’d be a horse…but I can’t really remember how the horse was going to get here or why.’ She screwed up her face, as if she was thinking hard. ‘Where’s your head?’
He nodded in the direction of the bar. ‘Trying to chat up one of your friends,’ he replied.
Lara was still scowling. It looked as if Tom had struck out for once, but he probably wouldn’t mind too much. His motto in everything—especially when it came to women—was ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’.
The brunette looked over her shoulder, then turned to look him in the eye and thought hard for a moment. ‘I think I need to kiss you again. Three times is supposed to be lucky, isn’t it?’
He nodded, equally serious. It certainly was. And he hoped these cheap hired horse hindquarters were fire retardant, because the kiss that followed topped the previous two on the scorch-o-meter. That was the best kiss he’d had all year. And not just the one that had started. He’d included the one before that too.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked again.
She laughed loudly, indicated her black dress and string of pearls with a hand. ‘Don’t you know?’
He shook his head, smiling. A few wisps of hair had escaped from her neat bun thing and she looked totally adorable.
‘But I’m from Breakfast at Tiffany’s! Everybody’s seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s!’
He shrugged. ‘Not me.’
Her mouth dropped open. ‘Really! Never?’
Alex shook his head. Breakfast…Now, there was an appealing idea. ‘Let me guess…Are you Tiffany?’
She went from shocked to amused in a heartbeat, hitting him gently on the chest. ‘No, silly!’
He caught her hand and kept it trapped under his.
‘I’m Holly!’ she said with a weary sigh, as if even his two-year-old niece would know that. But then again, she probably did. Women seemed to know everything about every chick flick ever made from the moment of their births.
‘Well, Holly…Can I have your number? I’d like to call you.’
She closed her eyes and rested against him, mumbled sleepily, ‘Sure.’
He waited for a moment. ‘Care to enlighten me?’
One eyelid lifted. ‘Huh?’
‘Your number?’
The eyelid slid closed again. ‘It’s oh-nine-three…no, seven…no, three…’ She lifted her head and peered at him from under half-mast false lashes. ‘I can’t seem to remember.’
‘How about I give you mine?’
She nodded. He tore a corner off a flyer on a nearby table and scribbled his number down for her. When he handed it to her she blinked twice, very deliberately, then tucked it down in the front of her dress. All the saliva evaporated from his mouth.
He caught a flash of baby-pink moving towards him and realised her friends had come to rescue her.
She smiled dreamily at him. ‘Thank you…for my midnight kiss. It was very nice.’
His smile grew wider. ‘Yes, it was.’
Over her shoulder he saw Tom heading back in his direction, down but not out, according to the rueful smile on his face. His mystery woman’s friends weren’t far behind. They pushed their way through the dance floor, stopped a short distance away and beckoned for their friend.
The one in the pink gave him a saucy wink, while the Lara Croft lookalike kept an eye on Tom, making sure he was heading away from her.
‘Call me,’ he said, as they led her away.
Pinky looked back at him over her shoulder as they headed for the door. ‘If she doesn’t,’ she said with a little smirk, ‘I will.’
Tom sighed as he leaned back against the wall beside him. ‘Damn. Knew I should have gone for Doris instead.’ He took a swig of beer and smiled at the polka-dotted hips wiggling their way out of the door. ‘The good girls are always so much fun when they’re persuaded to be just a little bit bad.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_8415fc68-6bb7-5db8-b5b2-6d1aea554ba0)
Ten months later
Nicole stood on top of an office building in Lambeth, arms wrapped around her for warmth. The sun had set half an hour ago, leaving just a smudge of peach peeping out between the glass towers and church spires that crowded the London horizon.
She risked a glance over the edge and instantly regretted it. Twenty storeys below, the November wind tugged papery leaves from trees then threw them carelessly in the path of the rush-hour traffic.
‘Are you ready, Warren?’ she asked, only just managing to stop her teeth chattering. She forced her cheeks into the soothing, yet professional smile she always used on her clients at this part of the proposal process.
Warren, a baby-faced, slightly balding forty-something, was fastening an abseiling harness over the top of his dinner suit. He looked up and nodded, nervous but determined.
Nicole caught the eye of Kirk, the ex-army guy she’d used a few times for similar stunts. He was one of those wordless, beefy types, who Nicole had been worried would intimidate men preparing to be the most vulnerable they’d ever been in their life, but somehow he inspired laddish camaraderie, and even the most timid of clients seemed more ready to do something high-risk and daring under his guidance. He finished testing Warren’s harness then stepped back and nodded at Nicole.
Warren’s face paled.
Nicole stepped forward and handed him an earpiece, similar to the one she was wearing. She looked him in the eyes. ‘It’s going to be fine,’ she told him. ‘A minute from now you’re going to be face to face with the woman you love, and she’s worth all of this, isn’t she?’
He nodded and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.
Nicole stepped back as Warren jammed the earpiece into place. ‘Now you’ve got your very own piece of high-tech gadgetry—just like James Bond,’ she added, warming the ever-present smile up a notch.
Warren fidgeted with his harness a little. She guessed it was probably pinching in places she didn’t want to know about. ‘That’s the idea,’ he said. ‘Cheryl’s always had a bit of a thing for 007. I’m not under any grand illusions, but I thought if I could show her I could be the tiniest bit like him, it might improve the chance of her saying yes.’
Nicole looked across at his smooth receding forehead, his slightly chubby cheeks, the torso that suggested he’d spent more time at the kebab shop than at the gym. She wished she really could tell him he was the spitting image of Pierce or Roger or Sean. ‘You look extremely dashing,’ she said. ‘You’re going to blow Cheryl away.’
Warren smiled softly. ‘Like a real Bond film…Something always gets blown away—or up—in a Bond film.’
The thought of an explosion of any kind featuring in the proposal she spent the last month meticulously planning sent a shiver of fear down Nicole’s spine. However, she glued the smile in place and projected it back at Warren with even greater force. ‘As long as it’s an explosion of love, and love alone, everyone will be happy.’
Especially her.
She checked her watch. ‘Do you remember what to do?’
Warren went back to looking very serious. He nodded. ‘Abseil down slowly two floors, then wait for your signal before doing the last bit.’
‘You can do it,’ she said, handing him the sign he was going to clip to his harness and a single red rose. ‘Just remember…Kirk is here at the top if you need help and I’ll be waiting for you on the seventeenth floor.’
Warren nodded weakly and backed towards the edge. With Kirk’s help he started to lower himself down. Nicole stood, calm and serene, smiling as he went. Just before he vanished she did a little thumbs-up gesture, but as soon as his eyes disappeared below the parapet, and only the thinning fluff on the top of his head was left in view, she set off running like a greyhound towards the door that led to the fire escape.
Her heels clattered on the stairs as she raced down two flights. They weren’t really practical for this kind of thing, she knew, but she had a professional image to maintain.
She paused briefly outside the room where the action was due to take place and sucked in as much oxygen as she could. Five seconds was all she had, so five seconds would have to do. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she waited for her pulse to stop stampeding, then slipped gracefully through the fire-exit door and into the open-plan office. No one would ever have known she’d been a heaving mess only seconds earlier.
Cheryl, Warren’s fiancée-to-be, was tapping away on her keyboard right next to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Every now and then she glanced up at the large clock on the far wall and sighed. The rest of the office carried on with their business, as if it were the end of a normal Friday afternoon.
Nicole made eye contact with Felicity, Cheryl’s best friend, who’d been only too happy to be the office ‘mole’ for this part of the operation. Then she checked her watch. ‘Where are you, Warren?’ she mumbled into her Bluetooth earpiece.
She could hear panting and the wind whistling. ‘Just about there,’ he said in a high-pitched voice. ‘Passing the eighteenth floor now.’
She gave Felicity a nod, and Felicity turned and gave a signal to a large man sitting at a desk in the centre of the room. His name was Morris, and he had the most soulful voice Nicole had ever heard. He stood up, cleared his throat and started singing the opening bars to ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’.
A few of the other workers looked up, but most kept on about their work. One by one they joined in the song until the whole seventeenth floor was singing its heart out. Nicole grinned. Those endless choir practices at Hurstdean Academy had come in useful after all.
Warren might not be James Bond, but Nicole dearly hoped that Cheryl was going to say yes. Not only was he a really nice guy, but it said a lot about him that their workmates had spent hours perfecting the song in secret over the last fortnight.
Nicole crept a little further into the office so she could see Cheryl more clearly round the edge of a row of cubicles. She’d stopped typing now and was staring open-mouthed at her colleagues, who sang and smiled as they gathered round her. And, just as Morris took the song to its lungbursting climax, Warren lurched into view outside Cheryl’s window, fumbling to pull the red rose out of his lapel and holding it towards her.
For a moment Cheryl didn’t see him, but that sixth sense that comes when someone is looking over one’s shoulder must have kicked in, because she twisted round and screamed at the same time. She would have fled halfway across the office if Felicity hadn’t caught her and steered her back.
‘Warren!’ Cheryl shrieked, both hands pressed against her sternum, one on top of the other. ‘What the heck are you doing out there?’
Warren, bless his little cotton socks, managed to stop looking quite so nervous. He flashed her a truly 007-worthy smile, then swung the sign dangling from a short rope attached to his harness up into his hands with one swift move.
On it were written four words: Will you marry me?
He’d wanted to go with something Bond-themed, but Nicole had convinced him to keep it simple. When it came to this part of the proposal, no fuss, no frills were needed. That was all a woman needed to hear.
The hairs on the back of her neck lifted as a hush fell on the whole office. Cheryl covered her mouth with her hands then nodded slowly. Once. Twice. Then a flurry of bobbing as she pressed her hands against the glass and started crying.
Nicole smiled as she whispered into her headset, ‘We are go!’
Right on cue, fireworks erupted from the park opposite and Warren and Cheryl’s colleagues cheered and rushed to the windows to watch. Nicole waved at Warren to catch his attention and pointed downwards with an exaggerated action. He was just hanging there, a stupid grin plastered all over his chubby face. He’d completely forgotten the next part of the plan was to get him down and on this side of the glass ASAP.
She sighed and looked around at the mayhem. It was lovely. It really was. And romantic. But…
She shook her head and plucked her earpiece out of her ear. Maybe she was getting a little jaded. In the ten and a half months since she’d started Hopes & Dreams she’d helped numerous men pop the question, but maybe the daily diet of OTT was starting to wear on her.
It was lovely to see all these couples happily planning their futures, but it only seemed to emphasise that once they’d taken each other by the hand and waltzed off into the sunset, she was left standing there alone.
She’d come close—once—to being proposed to. Or so she’d thought. She shook her head to dislodge the memory of that night. She didn’t need to go back there. Life was all about moving forward, about making the future count, not about moping over things that should have been but weren’t.
Warren, who’d finally made it down to the balcony two floors below and unharnessed himself with Kirk’s help, appeared in the doorway to an almighty cheer from his colleagues. He marched over to Cheryl looking ten feet tall, a bit of a Bond swagger in his usual lolloping gait. His fiancée watched him approach, her eyes wide and moist, and Nicole couldn’t help but shake off the mood that had been troubling her a few moments earlier.
She caught Warren’s eye across the top of the crowd and he winked at her as he drew Cheryl into his arms then dipped her for a kiss. Nicole smiled back and tucked her earpiece in her pocket.
Her job was done here. Everything had gone according to her meticulous plan—as everything in her life always did. And she didn’t know why she was getting all maudlin about the lack of proposals in her own life. It was a moot point. She wasn’t even seeing anyone at the moment. There’d been no one since…
She mentally swatted that thought.
She wasn’t seeing anyone, and that was fine, because she was too busy getting a fledgling business off the ground in tough economic times. So right now she was perfectly content organising everyone else’s happy-ever-afters. As long as everything kept going to plan, hers would get here eventually.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_08b3c190-5107-53e4-ad77-ee7b560f6ae1)
Feeling a little windswept and definitely a lot tired, Nicole walked into the foyer of the Hamilton Grand Hotel and quickly disposed of her coat and bag in the cloakroom. She checked her watch. She was late. Just a little. But it didn’t sit well with her. She didn’t do late. Or unprofessional. Or disorganised.
Her outfit wasn’t perfect, either. But that was what happened when you had to go from the top of an office block to a party in one evening. She usually preferred a cocktail dress, but her pencil skirt and classic chiffon blouse would just have to do.
Since both Peggy and Mia had both invested money in Hopes & Dreams and were hoping to join Nicole in the business full-time when things took off, Nicole had invited both her friends to come along with her. She found them in the Terrace Bar with a view over the Thames, along with a hundred or so event planners, hoteliers and media bods. The Hamilton had recently undergone an extensive refurbishment and this was their ‘we’re back!’ party, designed to wow former clients who’d been less than impressed with gradually dilapidating facilities.
Nicole had to admit, they’d done a marvellous job. It was now chic and modern. Flat matt walls in both neutral and bold colours, textured fabrics, funky light fittings. No hint of the dated plasterwork, thank goodness. Nicole shuddered at the memory. She’d always had a hatred for that fussy eighties faux-Victorian look, ever since one of her posh boarding-school friends had come to stay, taken one look at Nicole’s mother’s stripy wallpaper under the glued-on dado rail and had wrinkled her nose a little.
None of the other girls at Hurstdean had homes like that. They’d had antiques instead of orange pine that had darkened to an almost radioactive tone, real oil paintings instead of Monet prints from IKEA. But that was what came from being the scholarship kid, she supposed.
But after that incident Nicole had decided it was better to go without if you couldn’t have the real thing, and she’d started building her furnishings, her wardrobe—and her life—according to that code. ‘Dress for the job you want…’ someone had once said. Well, Nicole dressed for the life she wanted, a fabulous one.
‘So, did Cheryl say yes to tubby old Warren?’ Peggy asked as Nicole approached.
Nicole nodded and the other two girls breathed out a sigh of relief. While a negative to a proposal really came down to the relationship in question, too many refusals could make the Hopes & Dreams look bad. So far, though, Nicole had a really good success rate. Only one ‘no’, and that had been right back at the beginning, a big-headed plonker whose ill-fated proposal idea had only convinced his girlfriend that he loved himself more than he did her.
That one blot on her otherwise perfect record still smarted. Still, she’d been on a huge learning curve since then and had come up with protective measures to stop herself falling into that kind of situation ever again.
Thankfully, her proposer tonight had been nothing like Mr Arrogant.
‘He got right into the part too,’ Nicole said. ‘Not sure what Cheryl’s going to do with him now he’s discovered his inner Bond.’
Peggy’s red lips stretched slowly into a smile. ‘I know what I’d do with a man who’d discovered his inner Bond…’
‘Oh, there you are, darlings! Doesn’t the Hamilton look super? I’m sure Minty and I are going to use it for one of our next parties.’
Nicole’s stomach sank, but she turned round, smiling—if not genuinely—widely. ‘Celeste…Araminta…How are you?’
The two women were both tall and had cascading, thick honey-coloured waves. They looked as if they’d blown in off the King’s Road after an afternoon’s shopping. The dresses were bang on trend, the make-up artfully suggesting a healthy glow, and the legs went on for centuries.
However, despite her irritation at their presence, Nicole couldn’t help taking a mental note of how their outfits were put together, noting details like designers, fabrics, cut…As much as she didn’t like them, Celeste and Minty always looked fabulous, and it was never good to be outshone by the competition.
It was a habit she’d picked up at school, when fitting in had been as necessary as breathing. She might have not had as much money as most of her school chums, but that hadn’t meant she’d wanted to stand out in cut-price highstreet polyester knock-offs. As a result, she’d developed a talent for breaking down an outfit into its component parts, working out how she could copy it on a shoestring or use what she already owned to pull off the look. It had helped her blend into the privileged world of Hurstdean Academy.
‘Marvellous!’ Celeste said, beaming. For some reason her smile reminded Nicole of a chihuahua baring its teeth. ‘And how’s your cute little boutique agency doing? I don’t seem to have heard much about it in ages. I Do, I Do, I Do is going great guns. Did you hear we just did the Patterson–Henley proposal? She said yes, of course. Who wouldn’t when daddy-in-law is a viscount?’
Celeste broke off so she and Minty could congratulate themselves with throaty, slightly horsey laughter.
Nicole kept smiling and gently put a hand on Peggy’s arm. She was sure she’d just heard a snarl from under her flatmate’s breath.
Minty sighed and flicked her hair in a manner that got the attention of all the men in a ten-foot radius. ‘They’ve asked us to do the engagement party as well, you know. Fabulous exposure.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ Mia said tightly. ‘Congratulations.’
Celeste started scanning the crowd. Obviously, they’d ceased to be entertaining now the gloating had finished, and she was looking for her next victim. ‘Ooh! There’s the new owner of the Hamilton, Jayce Ryder. He did say he wanted a word with us. Come on, Minty.’ She waved above the crowd. ‘Yoo-hoo, Jayce…!’
Both girls flashed identical smiles at Nicole, Peggy and Mia and then headed off into the crowd without bothering to air-kiss a farewell.
The name Peggy called them when they were out of earshot wasn’t nice.
Nicole shook her head. ‘We shouldn’t criticise the competition in public. It’s not professional.’
Peggy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Professional, schmessional. Sometimes I just can’t help myself, and I don’t know how you can be so calm, cool and collected about it, either. Not after they copied your idea and set up a rival proposal-planning agency right under your nose!’
Nicole sent a laser-targeted stare after the two disappearing willowy figures. ‘They only got that job because Minty’s daddy plays polo with Hugo Patterson’s daddy.’ Mia followed her gaze. ‘Oh, yes. I forgot you used to work with them at that big event-planning firm.’
‘Me and my big mouth,’ Nicole muttered, turning back to her friends and sighing. ‘I shouldn’t have bragged to them that I was branching out on my own.’
Mia nodded understandingly. ‘And have you seen a drop in business recently? I know you said you were worried about that when you started out.’
Nicole sighed again. She’d hoped for a fun, glitzy evening after a hard week with sleepless nights and ten-hour days. ‘A bit. I run a full range of services. The lowest tier is personalised proposal ideas that clients buy for a small fee and then they do the rest themselves—inspiration, if you like. Next is helping to find venues and vendors who match the client’s requirements, but the top tier is the no-holds-barred planning service, where I take care of everything. Not only are those the most fun to do, but they’re the ones I make most money on, and it’s interest in those kind of proposals that seems to have tailed off.’
She glanced over again at her rivals, who were busy fawning over the hotel tycoon who’d been responsible for the Hamilton’s upswing in fortune. ‘And I have a feeling I know who’s hoovering up all that kind of business.’
Peggy glared over at them. ‘Those two are toxic on so many levels it isn’t funny.’
Nicole angled her body away from Celeste and Minty. She didn’t even want to look at them. They didn’t count. She wasn’t going to let girls like that get the better of her ever again.
‘Ever since school I’ve had to deal with girls like that, girls whose lives are charmed, because someone waved a magic wand over them at birth, so they get everything their hearts desire. So life comes easy to them. So success drops easily into their laps because of their names or their connections, but it doesn’t mean they have to have it all, leaving nothing for us.’
Nicole was prepared to work for it. Work hard. She’d get there in the end.
‘It doesn’t matter how well they’re doing now,’ she said slowly. ‘Celeste was slapdash when we worked together at Elite Gatherings and I bet she’s slapdash now. She was always swanning around doing what she felt like doing and palming off the boring stuff on other people.’
‘Sounds about right,’ Peggy said grimly. ‘Look up “entitlement” in the dictionary and you’d see her ugly mug staring right back at you.’
Nicole nodded and smiled. ‘That was all fine and dandy while Celeste was working for a big event-planning firm, with plenty of victims to take up the slack, but now it’s just her and Minty, and Minty’s just as bad. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got the connections, access to the Old Boys’ Club through their fathers…They’ll trip themselves up eventually. What matters are drive and talent, and Hopes & Dreams has plenty of that, especially now Peggy has come on board part-time.’
All three women stared after their number one—well, their only—competitors.
‘Won’t matter if we go under and they continue to float around London like it’s their own personal garden party,’ Peggy muttered darkly.
Mia, ever the practical one, laid a hand on Nicole’s arm. ‘Well, if you ever want a hand with the books, just let me know. I might as well use all those fancy letters I got after my name for something I really care about.’
Nicole smiled and nodded. Mia hated her job as an accountant in a big city firm. If she could have joined her and Peggy at Hopes & Dreams, she’d have done so in a heartbeat. In fact, that was the plan if the business survived into next year.
Peggy hated any talk of boring things like numbers and spreadsheets. She let her head loll and pretended to snore softly, and when Mia poked her in the arm with a sharp fingernail she lifted her head and said, ‘Time for another drink.’ She handed her glass to Mia, who rolled her eyes but waved at the barman anyway.
‘I’d settle for a glass of fizz and change of subject,’ Nicole said. She’d been on a nice little high after Warren’s triumph that evening, but Celeste’s news about Hugo Patterson and Sarah Henley had thrown cold water all over it. Somehow, a draughty office building in Lambeth just didn’t have the same cachet. It was great having satisfied clients, but what she really needed was high-profile satisfied clients. Ones who would shell out a ton of money on a high-end proposal, then brag about it to all their friends and get Hopes & Dreams mentioned in Celebrity Life.
‘Change of subject? Oh, well in that case…Guess who dropped by our flat while you were out being a Bond girl?’ Peggy waggled her eyebrows and waited, smiling.
‘The Sultan of Brunei,’ Nicole replied, not missing a beat.
Peggy tutted. ‘It’s no fun if you don’t play along.’
‘It’s no fun for you, you mean…’
Mia leaned over and put a hand on Nicole’s arm. ‘Just humour her. You know she’ll bug you until she gets it out of her system one way or the other.’
Peggy grinned at Nicole. ‘Well, if you’re going to be boring, I’ll just tell you…Your dad came in to check that damp patch on the bathroom ceiling this afternoon, with hunky plumber Steve in tow. They were sad to have missed you—especially Steve.’
Nicole shrugged.
‘And when I say “sad”, I mean very sad. You ought to put him out of his misery and call him sometime, you know. I’m sure the only reason he keeps coming back to check the work he did on the boiler is because he wants an excuse to see you.’
‘Sorry, Peg. Steve just isn’t my type.’
‘Then find someone who is your type!’ Peggy said, flicking her artfully curled platinum locks. ‘It’s been too long since you’ve been out on a date. It’s making you very crabby.’
Nicole opened her mouth to say there was a difference between ‘crabby’ and ‘taking your life seriously’, but Mia jumped in ahead of her.
‘A woman can exist without a man in her life, you know, Peg. It’s not the 1950s any more, even though you dearly like to pretend it is. Sometimes it’s about the quality, not the quantity.’
Peggy gave Mia a well-worn look. ‘There’s not going to be any quality at all if the quantity is zero.’
‘Well, we all know you like to prove that point with a different man every week.’
Nicole could see where this was going. Mia and Peg were firm friends really, but sometimes they really could rub each other up the wrong way. ‘Calm down, children,’ she said in a soothing tone. ‘We’re supposed to be here to check out the Hamilton and schmooze for new clients, remember?’
Both women nodded reluctantly, but Peggy had to get the last word in, as always. ‘You can’t chip in anyway, Miss Mia, seeing as you’ve now got a ring on your finger, are sickeningly loved-up and can’t even remember what it’s like to be single.’
Mia suddenly stopped scowling and her whole face lit up in a beatific smile. ‘I am sickeningly loved-up, aren’t I? And who wouldn’t be with a man like Jonathan? He’s perfect, isn’t he? Tell me he’s perfect.’
Nicole laughed. It was true; Mia’s fiancé really was lovely. He’d been so nervous about popping the question that he’d asked Nicole for help and it was then she’d realised not only was there a gap in the market, but that proposal planning was only a sidestep from event and party planning. There was so much pressure on guys these days, not only asking the question but how they did it. Suddenly booking a table at a nice restaurant and buying a ring wasn’t enough. Jonathan had been very aware of all those YouTube videos out there of creative and romantic proposals. So that was where the idea to start Hopes & Dreams had been born.
‘He really is perfect,’ she reassured Mia. Perfect for Mia, at least. Not that Jonathan wasn’t a great guy, but Nicole had yet to meet the man who lived up to her idea of Mr Right, the man who was a perfect fit for the life she was dressing to have.
The only one who’d come close was Jasper.
He’d been one of her old school friend’s brothers. Their dad was head of an old and prestigious insurance company and his son had been not only rich, but gorgeous and charming. She’d fallen helplessly in love with him. Who wouldn’t have done?
She hadn’t been able to believe her luck. After all, his whole world was populated with girls like Minty and Celeste—confident, stylish, privileged. He’d told her he loved her. He’d said he liked spending time with her because she was spontaneous and unspoilt, such a refreshing change from all those rich girls who liked to dangle a chap from a piece of string just because they could. And she’d fallen completely under his spell, believing her own fairy tale had finally landed in her lap.
They’d been together for two years when Jasper had announced he had something important to discuss with her. It had come hot on the heels of a visit home to the rambling manor house his parents owned in the Berkshire countryside. He’d seemed nervous too, a look Nicole had seen more than once since then, in the faces of the men who knocked on the door of Hopes & Dreams.
So she’d gone out and bought a horribly expensive dress from one of the boutiques on Bond Street and had waited slightly breathlessly for him at the restaurant, with its imposing pillars and stern-faced waiters. And at the end of the meal he’d reached across the table and pulled her hand into his and had stared into her eyes.
She’d held her breath. And then her smile had melted from her face. She still hadn’t been able to breathe, but not because she was delirious with joy. Because Jasper had been telling her it was over between them, that he was at that age when he needed to think about getting serious and settling down. She’d known his father had been pressuring him about joining the family firm for some time, but he’d always resisted up until that point.
After the shock wore off, as she was being ferried home in the cab that Jasper had insisted paying for, the truth had hit her. Jasper wanted to settle down, but not with her. Because in his eyes she wasn’t what his family thought was the ‘right sort’. The daughter of a builder from South-East London just wasn’t good enough. And she’d hated him for being weak enough to give in to them.
Never in her whole life had she felt so small and worthless and insignificant.
Three months later she’d found out he was seeing a girl whose father owned half of Shropshire. Right there and then she’d realised she’d been fooling herself all along. She sighed. ‘Maybe if the perfect guy fell out of the sky tomorrow, I’d make time for romance, but it’s not a bad idea to concentrate on the business for the moment.’
Peggy just snorted. ‘It’s not a bad idea to be wrapped around a hot guy once in a while, either!’ She shook her head. ‘Your love life has been in drought since we started planning to open Hopes & Dreams, and the one time you did get close, you chickened out. I never understood why you didn’t call that total cutie of a cowboy you pinned down under the mistletoe on New Year’s Eve.’
Once again Peggy was playing fast and loose with the facts. ‘There was no mistletoe, and he was the back end of a pantomime horse, not a cowboy.’
Nicole went quiet then, assailed by a rather vivid flashback of that kiss—his arms pulling her close, the scent of his aftershave as she’d let her head fall back and he’d pressed his lips to that quivery little spot just under her ear.
She shuddered, then shook herself. Damn. She hadn’t had one of those for months.
‘That doesn’t count,’ she told Peggy. ‘I told you I lost his number. It was hardly surprising, seeing that under your influence, I got very…well…under the influence.’
Peggy shook her head. ‘Squiffy or no, it was very careless of you. That was one dreamy cowboy…’
Nicole sipped her drink, worried that she might incriminate herself if she said any more.
Peggy wasn’t the only one playing a little fast and loose with the facts this evening. Because Nicole knew exactly where that little scrap of paper he’d written his phone number on was. She’d known it all year.
She didn’t know why she’d lied when Peggy had asked about it the following day; she just had. She’d had too much of a hangover to have the energy to resist her flatmate’s insistence to call him and arrange a date. This year was very important. She couldn’t afford to lose focus. Besides, she didn’t do that kind of thing, not since Jasper. These days she played it cool and let the guy do all the running.
Okay, she didn’t usually go around kissing random strangers, either, but maybe one out-of-character action each year was allowed. One per year was certainly enough. She’d spent a long time grooming herself into the woman she was now. She wasn’t about to let go of all that because of one drunken kiss.
Even if it had been one seriously hot drunken kiss…
Another flashback hit. Instead of being a muted aftershock, it was double the intensity. Nicole’s ears grew warm and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She rubbed her hand over the spot to shoo the feeling away.
On a purely physical level the fizz of awareness was pleasant, but she didn’t welcome it. This was how Jasper had made her feel, as if she were one buzzing, whirling mass of sensation, churning her up so she couldn’t think straight, so she couldn’t see the truth or even remember who she was. She definitely didn’t need a man like that in her life.
So she hadn’t called the cowboy. She’d tucked the scribbled number into a little pocket inside her purse and had tried to forget about it. She probably should throw it away. In fact, she would. As soon as she got home that evening. When Peg wasn’t looking.
What she needed right now was a distraction, something to veer the subject away from her love life—or lack of it. She flashed her friends and business partners a smile, straightened her skirt and stood up tall.
‘Come on, ladies. I spy Jayce Ryder’s right-hand woman over there—and smart girls like us know that the real connection to make is the power behind the throne. Let’s go and wow her socks off before Celeste and Minty get to her.’
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_024ba163-4a00-5ef8-9ad1-285d06eada45)
The Hopes & Dreams office was east of Clerkenwell, a stone’s throw from the Golden Lane housing estate. While many of the old buildings of the area had been demolished during the Blitz, there were still little pockets of Victorian and Edwardian architecture. Tucked away from the main roads was a half-forgotten little courtyard that had once been home to tradesmen’s shops, like cobblers and ironmongers.
Nicole’s dad had come across the premises while repairing a leaky roof on a nearby shop. He had wandered down an alleyway in search of a decent cuppa and found a small, organic cafe in what had once been a hardware shop. There he’d spotted an old tailor’s and haberdasher’s shop, which he’d thought would be perfect.
Nicole hadn’t been quite so sure of the location when he’d shown it to her earlier that year, but she’d realised that while she could do a lot of the proposal organising at home, constantly having meetings in coffee shops wasn’t ideal. She’d really needed a base where she could meet clients discreetly and give the sense of an up-and-coming business, not a one-man-band affair.
Then her dad had taken her down the road to Clerkenwell and shown her how its regeneration meant that young and trendy businesses were flocking to the area: art galleries and bistros and independent bookshops. It would only be a matter of time before the effect rippled outwards. She should sign the lease while the rent was still within her reach.
Mr Chapman, the softly spoken, white-haired tailor who owned the shop, hadn’t used the upstairs of his premises for a while, on account of his arthritis. The haberdasher’s, which his wife had run and had occupied the ground floor of the premises, had been closed for years, so he’d moved his work downstairs and had put the upstairs space out for rent. Seeing as the late Mrs Chapman hadn’t wanted dirty great men who needed their suits altered tramping through her shop on a regular basis, they’d chosen a place with a separate entrance to the first-floor studio.
The rent had still been a stretch, especially as the whole place would need refitting to be the kind of office Nicole had envisioned, but when she’d brought Peggy back with her for a second opinion, Peggy had come up with a solution. She was a freelance graphic designer and shared office space with three other designers, all of whom were men. She’d said she’d just about had enough of the slightly smelly testosterone-filled air and the takeaway cartons that no one seemed to clear up after an all-nighter doing a rush job for a client, so she’d suggested she and Nicole share the studio above the shop. She could do her design work without having to breathe through her mouth half the day or listen to endless discussions about ‘World of Warcraft’, but since her job meant work often ebbed and flowed, she could also help Nicole with Hopes & Dreams during the downtimes.
Nicole’s dad had been an absolute star, doing any building work at cost, and Peggy and Nicole had got their hands dirty too, wielding paintbrushes and electric drills and sanding the original floorboards. They’d scoured salvage yards and boot fairs for pieces of furniture that went with the quirky vintage vibe of the shop and had managed to find two large desks in dark wood that had been sanded and re-stained. Nicole’s remained neat and tidy, with a few pencil pots and notepads, while Peggy’s was an explosion of photo frames and polka-dotted accessories.
One of the walls was filled with dark wooden shelves, probably home to thread and ribbons and buttons once upon a time, but now it housed photos of happy couples she’d helped on their way to matrimony, miniature wedding cakes, bouquets of silk flowers and just about anything heart-shaped Peggy could lay her hands on. Near the other window was a small purple velvet sofa with silver scatter cushions.
The crowning glory of their junk-shop treasures was a tailor’s dummy that Peggy had found and christened Gilda. She was now adorned with a wedding dress that was mostly corset and tulle skirt and stood in front of one of the two large sash windows, her headless body staring out across the courtyard, like a fairy-tale heroine waiting for her prince to come.
Nicole hadn’t been convinced about the design scheme when she and Peggy had discussed ideas, wanting something more classy and elegant, but Peggy was paying half the rent, so she’d had to compromise. They needed something fun, something different, Peggy had pointed out. Something that told Nicole’s potential clients she could deliver the impossible, not just the same old, same old. While the bright fuchsia paint on the one wall that hadn’t been stripped back to bare brick and the bejewelled chandelier that hung from the ceiling made Nicole wince a little every time she arrived for work in the morning, she had to agree that their little shop of Hopes & Dreams fulfilled that brief.
Behind the front studio was a small kitchenette and a toilet and they’d turned the small stockroom at the back into a cosy meeting space for Nicole to chat to her clients.
Peggy swept into the office on Monday morning and hung her coat on the old-fashioned hatstand in the corner with more force than was strictly necessary. ‘I don’t believe it! The Witches have gone and gazumped us again! You know the breakfast TV presenter Lottie Carlton? Well, her producer boyfriend proposed to her live on-air just before the credits rolled, and I’m sure that when a camera swung round I saw Celeste and Minty there in the background!’ She collapsed into her chair and sighed dramatically. ‘We’ll never hear the end of it.’
Nicole had got there early to work on ideas for a client she was meeting later that day and had just come back from the kitchenette, where she’d made herself a cup of coffee. When she’d first worked here she’d nipped across to the little coffee shop opposite for caffeine, but now she was counting her pennies and had to put up with instant.
Peggy threw her vintage crocodile-skin handbag down on her desk. ‘I know she only does the local London show, but that’s serious exposure for I Do, I Do, I Do.’
Nicole used a finger to smooth her hair back out of her face as she pulled her desk chair out and sat down. ‘We’re going to drive ourselves mad if we keep comparing Hopes & Dreams to them. I think we ought to have a Celeste-and-Minty jar in the office.’
Confusion crumpled Peggy’s features. ‘What?’
‘Like a swear jar,’ Nicole explained. ‘Every time we mention them or their agency, we have to put a pound in the pot. It’s about time we stopped focusing our energy on how well they’re doing and concentrate on our own success. We’ve had another two yeses since we saw them at the Hamilton last week.’
Peggy nodded, grudgingly. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ She tipped her collection of fluffy pens out of a polka-dotted tin that said ‘You don’t have to be a goddess to work here, but it helps’ on the side and plonked it on Nicole’s desk. ‘Here…and I vote we spend the proceeds on cocktails, to drown our sorrows when Detest and Squinty schmooze all the high-profile clients in London into their clutches.’
Nicole picked the pot up and held it in her direction, raising her eyebrows.
‘What?’ Peggy said. ‘I didn’t actually use their proper names…’
Nicole waggled the pot.
Peggy flounced over and dropped a coin in the bottom. ‘Fine.’
‘It still counts. We need some positive energy around here. I’ve spent my whole life trying to compete with girls like that, and I’ve decided I can’t be bothered with it any more. And you know why? Because we’re good. We’re really good. So the big-ticket clients will come. We’ve worked too hard for them not to. We deserve them, and I believe people sow what they reap. We don’t have to stress about those two—’ She noticed the tin in her hand, broke off and smiled serenely. ‘We don’t have to stress,’ she said again. ‘It’ll all work out.’
Peggy stopped looking quite so affronted and a naughty twinkle appeared in her eye. ‘You really think so?’
Nicole ignored the little wobble in her tummy at that thought of her much-loved company, the one she’d invested all her time and energy and even more of her money in, going down the drain. ‘I certainly do,’ she said, faking total and complete calmness. She was ninety per cent there. Fudging the final ten per cent really wasn’t lying.
And she was also sure she’d conquer this childish urge to push Celeste’s and Minty’s faces into the ground and stand triumphantly over them while they tasted the mud of defeat. She was talking the talk, doing her best to walk the walk. If she persevered, eventually her wayward thoughts would have to get into line with the rest of her. This was the method she’d used in upgrading the rest of her life, and she was sure it would work here too.
‘We’ll be okay in the end if we work hard,’ she told her business partner, most seriously. ‘We just mustn’t lose heart.’
Peggy snorted, but as she flumped into her office chair she looked a little less stressed. ‘You sound almost religious about it.’
‘Well, it is in the Bible, that sowing and reaping thing. Why shouldn’t we get rewarded for all our effort, while…other people…get what they deserve?’
Peggy shook her head. ‘Well, the last bit sounds wonderful to me. I’ve always been a fan of a bit of divine retribution. But are you saying that if we all just pray hard enough, a rich, young—preferably titled—stud is going to crash through that door on his steed and declare, “I want you to plan a proposal for me!”?’
Nicole sent her an angelic smile. ‘I’m sending up a little prayer right now,’ she replied and returned to her internet search for a glass slipper that one of their clients wanted to use as part of his proposal.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_1df5dd04-12cb-592d-a1c0-22a89aacaf84)
Later that afternoon, as the clouds hung heavy across the city, bringing a premature twilight, and the wind bounced itself off the windows at the front of the Hopes & Dreams office, the door crashed open.
Nicole looked up to find a tall, long-legged blonde wrapped stylishly in a cape, her tumbling golden waves teased slightly out of place by the wind. ‘Are you the proposal planners?’ she asked, bracing herself dramatically in the doorway.
Nicole and Peggy shot a look at each other across their desks, looked at their guest and nodded.
‘Then I want you to plan the best proposal ever for me,’ she said, a tinge of desperation in her cut-glass tone. ‘The best one you’ve ever done!’
Peggy mouthed across at Nicole, ‘You know who that is?’
Nicole nodded, ever so slightly, ever so discreetly. Either this was famous-for-being-famous socialite Saffron Wolden-Barnes or her double had just crashed her way into their office.
‘Flipping heck,’ Peggy muttered under her breath and shooting a look heavenwards. ‘It actually worked.’
‘God does indeed move in mysterious ways,’ Nicole mumbled back. In the ten and a half months since Hopes & Dreams had been in business, she’d not once had a woman walk through her door.
Peggy shrugged and added, ‘You prayed for her. You’d better take her.’
Nicole rose and walked towards their new client and held out a hand. ‘Lovely to meet you. I’m Nicole Harrison, founder of Hopes & Dreams Proposal Planning Agency. If it’s something unique you want, you’ve come to the right place.’
The blonde shook her hand back. ‘Saffron,’ she said, exhaling, and nodded towards the door, as Peggy scurried over to close it. ‘Sorry about that. People expect me to make an entrance when I’m out doing public appearances and what have you. Sometimes I just forget to switch it all off.’
‘Why don’t we sit down and talk through some ideas,’ Nicole said smoothly. She led Saffron down the narrow corridor and opened the door to the proposal-planning room.
Once inside she breathed a sigh of relief. Here, at least, she’d been allowed free hand to decorate, and it was an oasis of cream and off-white, clean lines and stripped wood. Black-and-white photos graced the walls and there was just enough room for a low glass coffee table and two oatmeal-coloured armchairs.
As they settled themselves down, Nicole took a closer look at their client. She’d seen pictures of her in Celebrity Life, of course, but had never laid eyes on her in person. That charisma that oozed from the glossy pages of the magazine was not exaggerated. There was something about her that made you want to look at her. Maybe it was the long, tumbling blonde waves. Maybe it was the designer jeans and boots, the way she’d slung her outfit together with a careless sophistication that Nicole had taken years to get down pat. Whatever that elusive X factor was, Saffron Wolden-Barnes had it in spades. It was as if someone had taken all the best bits of all ‘those girls’ Nicole had battled with all her life and rolled them into one perfect package.
A package that they sorely needed, if Nicole’s diminishing bank account was anything to go by. She couldn’t let that faze her, though. Pretending her heart wasn’t pounding a little harder, that this was any other, non-famous, non-make-or-break client, Nicole picked up a large notebook from the coffee table, which was adorned with folders full of different proposal ideas. She removed the lid of her fountain pen, poised it ready to write, then looked up.
What she saw took her by surprise. Saffron was looking back at her, leaning forward with her hands clasped. Her knees were pressed together, allowing her to rest her elbows on them, but her feet jutted out at odd angles, giving her long legs the appearance of those of a just-born foal who wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. She leaned forward, stared Nicole straight in the eye and sighed. Her eyebrows pulled upwards in the centre, creating a little arch-shaped wrinkle in the skin above her nose.
‘You think I’m bonkers, don’t you? Go on, say it. All my friends do. They think I should wait for him to pop the question.’
Nicole blinked. She’d expected Saffron to be the queen of ‘those girls’, full of confidence and easy words, but there was something about her…She reminded Nicole of the girl she’d been at school. On one hand, having everything going for her, but on the other, awkward, vulnerable, maybe a little too desperate to please. She put her pen down, stopped smiling her ‘client’ smile at the other woman and leaned forward. ‘There’s nothing bonkers—I mean, crazy—about wanting to ask the person you love to marry you.’
The rest of Saffron’s eyebrows lifted and her mouth opened a little. Then she smiled at Nicole. A big, glowing smile that lit up her face and made her blue eyes sparkle. Nicole couldn’t help smiling back. There was something very open and refreshing about Saffron Wolden-Barnes.
‘Why don’t you tell me about the man in your life,’ she asked gently. ‘We’re going to need to find out a little about him before we start planning in earnest.’
Saffron didn’t need to be asked twice. She launched instantly into a full description of the paragon she dearly wanted to marry. He was sexy. He was clever. He was cool and funny. He had the best smile in the world and made her feel safe and grounded in her crazy life.
‘He’s a bit publicity shy, though,’ she added, thoughtfully. ‘Doesn’t really like the limelight. So we’ve been dating not exactly in secret, but quietly.’
‘And you think he’s ready to make this step too?’ Nicole asked. Nobody—not her, not the client—wanted a ‘no’ after all the expense and planning, so it wasn’t a bad idea to make sure the proposer had really thought about it before they put the wheels in motion.
Saffron nodded vigorously. ‘I’m sure he does. At least…’ She frowned again. ‘No…I’m sure. I think so.’ She gave Nicole another blast of her famous smile. ‘There are no guarantees when you’re doing something like this, right?’
‘Right,’ Nicole said, heartily relieved Saffron wasn’t one of those clients she had to remind about this point. She was good, but she couldn’t achieve the impossible.
‘I mean…part of the point of the exercise is finding out the answer to that question, isn’t it? And I really want to know the answer. Now.’ Her shoulders drooped a little. ‘I just haven’t got time to wait for the next leap year.’
‘Well, what kind of proposal were you looking for?’ Nicole asked. ‘We can arrange just about anything you want. Intimate meetings in the midst of the city or an idyllic woodland trail with a Michelin-starred picnic at the end. Flash mobs or a romantic assignation at a castle or in a luxury penthouse. We can do big and dramatic or cosy and intimate. Obviously, we can’t do magic…’ she paused to smile softly, as she always did when she delivered the next bit ‘…but we’ll do our best to make your hopes and dreams come true.’
Cheesy line, she knew. But the clients loved it.
Saffron exhaled and her shoulders relaxed. ‘Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me.’
Nicole smiled again. She hadn’t expected to like Saffron, but she did. There was a lack of guile about her that was surprisingly disarming. Suddenly she understood why it was this girl and not the hundreds of other bright young things like her that the tabloids followed round.
‘I don’t even know where to start…’ Saffron said mournfully, flicking through one of the folders in front of her. ‘Just that I want it to be monumental, spectacular. And that I want to do it the weekend before Christmas, so it’s all done and dusted by the time I get together with my father, step-mother and step-sister on Christmas Eve.’
‘Well, I’ve got a questionnaire I can run through with you that will throw up some ideas, but we don’t have to decide anything right now,’ Nicole said.
‘I usually do a little homework on the fiancé-to-be when someone comes to me to plan a proposal. I also try to engineer a face-to-face meeting so that we can get a feel for their personality and tastes.’ After Mr Arrogant she wasn’t taking any chances.
It had turned out to be a genius idea. While a lot of the men who came to her knew their partners very well, she’d discovered that there were also things many women hadn’t communicated to their significant other, secret wishes that the man of their dreams should just instinctively know without being told. After her mock interview, Nicole was well placed to weave them into her proposal ideas and let the proposer take the credit.
Saffron looked a little panicked. ‘You won’t tip him off, will you?’
Nicole shook her head reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry. We’re very discreet. Usually, I pose as a journalist or a market researcher doing a questionnaire and ask them a few key questions about themselves, what they feel about love and romance. It’s all very quick and painless.’
She didn’t add that it was usually a bit easier when the target was a woman. It wasn’t hard to run into someone in a coffee shop or in a high street and start chatting about weddings and boyfriends. Saffron was spooked enough as it was. Nicole wasn’t going to scare her off by mentioning this would be her first girl-asks-boy proposal.
‘What we need from you is information on how we can informally “bump into” him. Preferably a public place where there’s an opportunity to chat, hopefully within the next week.’
Saffron thought hard for a moment. ‘I have the perfect event! Oh! It’s tonight…like, in a couple of hours. That’s not too soon, is it?’
Nicole shook her head. It wasn’t impossible, even if it wasn’t the way she liked to do things. Usually, she preferred a couple of days to do some homework before she met the ‘target’, as Mia jokingly called them. It would mean she’d have to meet the guy first and do her research later. She mentally leafed through her diary and rescheduled her gym session for the following morning. ‘No, tonight is fine.’
Saffron immediately brightened, clapping her hands together and bouncing a little on the sofa. ‘Oh, that’s amazing! I am so excited we can kick-start this straight away. I detest waiting for things.’ She pulled a scrap of paper from her handbag and scribbled down an address on it. ‘It’s a photography exhibition. I may well turn up at some point. That’s okay, isn’t it?’
Nicole nodded. ‘I might not speak to you when you do. It will be better if we’re not seen together at this stage, but I’ll chat to your man and come up with some personalised ideas from the information you’ve both given me. Then we can meet again in a few days to start setting something up.’
She rose and indicated that Saffron should follow her back down the little corridor.
‘Money’s no object,’ Saffron said loudly as they emerged into the office.
Nicole saw Peggy’s ears prick up, but she kept her head down, hiding her smile as she tinkered with a design on her computer.
‘I want the whole of London talking about this proposal for months. Years, even!’
Both Nicole and Peggy smiled broadly at the socialite. So did they.
‘I have one last question before you go…’ Nicole said. The whole time she’d been talking with Saffron, one big thing had been puzzling her.
Saffron raised her eyebrows. ‘Fire away.’
Nicole cleared her throat and asked the question she knew Peggy was also thinking. ‘Why did you choose Hopes & Dreams instead of…instead of another proposal-planning agency?’ She knew that Celeste and Minty ran in the same circles as Saffron and her buddies. Surely they would have been the natural choice.
For the first time since she’d entered their offices, Saffron dimmed a little. ‘Well, I won’t lie. I did hear of another agency first, but then I discovered who ran it and I kept searching using Google.’
Peggy shot a look at Nicole.
‘I hate to speak badly of anyone,’ Saffron continued, ‘but I wouldn’t trust Araminta Fossington as far as I could throw her.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Peggy piped up, before Nicole could stop her.
Saffron nodded vehemently. ‘She once stole a boyfriend right from under my nose. There’s no way I’d let her within fifty feet of my man.’
Nicole tried not to show it visibly, but inside she was jumping up and down. She sent a glance at Peggy that said, See? I told you stuff would come back and bite themin the butt some day. Peggy rolled her eyes and pretended she hadn’t understood.
‘Well, we’re very glad you chose us,’ Nicole said, shaking her hand. ‘And you’ll find us professional in the utmost, in every area of our service.’
Saffron gave her another of her light-up-the-city smiles. ‘I have a good feeling about this,’ she said as she hitched her handbag up onto her shoulder. ‘See you in a few days!’
And then she swept out of the office in a twirl of fur-trimmed camel cape and a waft of perfume. It seemed her exits were every bit as impressive as her entrances.
They waited until Saffron had disappeared out of the courtyard below before they started jumping up and down and hugging each other.
‘Take that, Celeste and Minty!’ Nicole said, punching the air.
Peggy picked up the swear jar and thrust it her direction. Nicole smiled and dropped a pound coin into the bottom. She didn’t care. That victory shout had been worth every penny.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_4e9a0acb-0020-5edb-95da-5ba2d375ea94)
When Saffron had mentioned an exhibition, Nicole had assumed it would be an upmarket gallery in Bloomsbury or Chelsea. She hadn’t expected a church, tucked away down a dusty side street in Blackfriars on the south bank of the Thames. Most of Saffron’s circle wouldn’t be seen dead in this postcode. She checked the slip of paper with her client’s large and looping scrawl once again. Trinity Arts Centre. Yep. This was the place.
She walked up the stone steps and pushed one of the glazed wooden doors open enough to slide through. She then stepped through a second set of doors and into a large, bright space.
The original beams and pillars of the large church remained, as did the parquet floor and the organ pipes on the far wall, but the interior had been cleared and everything was painted crisp white, making the stained-glass windows sing with colour.
Off to one side as she walked in was a bar and seating area, while the other held a small shop, and deeper into the church was the exhibition space, carved into different sections by slabs of white walls about seven feet high. Some were set at right angles to each other, arranged near other walls to make a large and open maze, where the artwork was displayed.
There was a small crowd wandering around, wine glasses in hands, perusing the large black-and-white prints that adorned the display space. Before joining them, Nicole checked her phone. Still nothing from Saffron. They’d chatted not long after she’d left the office and Saffron had promised she’d send a photo through of her intended. It had yet to arrive. Until it did, Nicole would just have to mingle and enjoy the exhibition until she found the man she was here to stalk—Alex Black.
She snagged a glass of wine from a passing waiter and headed deeper into the church. She stopped by the first wall and took a sip. The print was of a windswept Highland landscape. Nicole had always loved the rich, peaty colours of a Scottish winter—the mossy greens, slate greys, the ochre of the dying bracken—but there was something about seeing it in black and white that made it look even wilder and more lonely. She could almost feel the wind sweeping off the worn-down mountain tops and into the wide, flat valley below, could almost hear the frothy sea hiss as the gale tossed the waves with no mercy.
She carried on. They were all British landscapes—rugged Cornish beaches, tranquil forest glades, ancient stone circles—but each harnessed a wild and beautiful energy. It made something inside her ache. Just a little. And she didn’t know why.
She’d reached the far end of one of the maze-like avenues now, and she hesitated at which direction to go next. It was clever. There was no predetermined route between the walls. In fact, the layout seemed deliberately designed to make visitors wander and retrace their steps, to seek out the hidden nooks they hadn’t discovered yet. She glanced right, wondering if she’d been that way already, then left.
Just as she did, someone disappeared behind a wall. Nicole hadn’t seen them properly. It had only been a blur at the edges of her peripheral vision, but it was accompanied by a flash of something that was very much like a memory. Something that made her think of soft fur and dancing lights. Without asking herself why, she followed.
As she turned the corner she saw a man with his back to her, talking to a couple of older men in suits. They were discussing a piece halfway down the zig-zag of wall, about fifteen feet away. He was dressed all in black, from his battered biker boots, to his jeans and T-shirt. Even his hair was so dark it almost matched them. Just a hint of chestnut brought out by the overhead spotlights spoiled the effect. His stance was easy, relaxed, as he drank from an open beer bottle and gestured towards the photo in front of him.
Nicole knew she should turn, look at the print right in front of her, but she couldn’t help but linger. There was something about him. Something tickling the back of her brain. Had she met him before? She felt as if she had, but surely she hadn’t, because she’d definitely remember someone like him. Not her type at all, of course, but memorable all the same.
And then he turned and smiled at a woman who joined the group, and a delectable little dimple appeared at one corner of his mouth, apparent even beneath the short black stubble.
A charge shot through Nicole like electricity. So strong it reminded her of the time her pet hamster had chewed through the wire on her bedside light and she’d foolishly picked it up, thinking it wouldn’t hurt her. She’d found herself on the other side of the room a split second later, dazed and confused.
It couldn’t be, could it?
It couldn’t be him. The guy from New Year’s Eve.
For some reason she clutched her handbag closer to her, as if she was protecting that slip of paper folded into the pocket of her purse, as if it might jump out and cause trouble if she didn’t.
He’d been one hot cowboy, as Peggy had called him, when Nicole had been five cocktails to the wind, but the sober version was just as potent. It seemed her beer goggles had twenty-twenty vision. She knew she should feel happy about that, but she couldn’t. Not while her insides were unravelling in loops.
Why, after months of coexisting in the same city, did she have to bump into him now? On the night she had to be on top form if she was going to bag this job of Saffron’s and deliver the proposal of the century?
At least he hadn’t spotted her. She should just sneak back round that wall and…
Uh-oh.
As she was backing away he turned, noticed her. His eyebrows lifted momentarily in surprise and then his smile widened and he started to stroll towards her with that easy stride she hadn’t realised she’d noticed, let alone recalled. Nicole tried to move but her stilettos were glued to the floor. Her phone buzzed in her pocket but she ignored it.
‘Hey, Holly…’ he said, a mischievous glint lighting up his eyes. ‘Long time no see.’
Her mouth moved. Up and down, up and down. She must look like a gaping frog. ‘Holly?’ she finally managed as he stopped in front of her.
‘Holly Golightly,’ he said, brandishing a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘Of course, I realised that wasn’t your real name pretty quickly. One quick Google search put pay to that.’
She’d told him her name was Holly Golightly?
‘So why didn’t you?’ he asked.
Nicole blinked. ‘Why didn’t I what?’
He stepped forward. She started to feel more than a little claustrophobic. ‘Call me,’ he replied, and then he waited, a hint of a lopsided smile pulling at one corner of his mouth.
She swallowed. It was one thing fibbing to Peggy when she got too nosy, but it was another thing entirely to lie to the man himself. Her mouth felt dry, despite the fact she’d been sipping her wine and it was already half gone.
But she couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t tell him she’d been too much of a coward to call him, because something about him made her feel out of her depth, like she was a drowning woman trying to surface and gasp in some air. She didn’t want to ever feel that way again with a man.
It was happening now. She tried to come up with a smooth, polished answer, but the only things inside her head were jumbled syllables, like a multitude of jigsaw pieces, none of which seemed to connect to the rest. ‘Um…’ she said and looked away. When she looked back he was still smiling at her, a hint of satisfaction in his gaze.
That was when it hit her like a slap. He was playing with her. He was enjoying seeing her like this. That thought alone sobered her enough to thread a few of those syllables together.
‘I don’t know if you noticed…’ she began, finding it easier with every word that slid from between her lips, suddenly finding an excuse she might be able to use to her advantage, ‘…but I was a little bit tiddly that evening.’
The grin she got in return told her he knew exactly how tiddly she’d been and that he hadn’t minded one bit.
She closed her eyes momentarily, licked her lips.
Focus, Nicole.
She breathed in, turned her internal thermostat down a notch. She had to get a grip on herself. ‘I lost your number…and I didn’t know your name, either. There wasn’t much I could have done.’
There. Smooth. Silky. Giving him back as good as she got. That was the Nicole she knew and loved, not that gibbering idiot who’d look into a man’s eyes and believe every lie he told her.
He nodded. ‘True. But you didn’t seem too bothered about finding out before you pinned me up against that wall and had your wicked way with me.’
Although she tried not to, Nicole felt herself blush right down to her perfectly manicured toenails. She could feel heat radiating from him like a force field, and while one part of her—the sane part—was telling her to back away, excuse herself and get on with what she’d come here to do, she couldn’t deny that a completely separate part was telling her to launch herself onto him again.
And he knew it. Damn him. Payback was a bitch.
‘I tried to find you, you know…?’ he said, keeping his voice deliberately low, so she was tempted to sway closer.
‘You did?’ She’d aimed for cool and unaffected. Husky and mildly perturbed would just have to do.
He nodded. ‘When you didn’t call I talked to friends who were there that night, the bar staff…I even called a lookalike agency. But you didn’t leave me much to go on, just a naughty twinkle in your eyes and a fake name.’ He reached out and touched the end of her plait, which was draped over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t even know if this was your real hair. You could have been wearing a wig.’
Nicole flicked her braid out of his fingers by turning to look at the picture to her left. Peggy would say this was fate intervening, that she shouldn’t waste a second chance like this. Peggy was clearly a lunatic.
Yes, she was attracted to him. Yes, he knew it, the smug so-and-so…But that didn’t mean she had to do anything about it. Guys like this were definitely not part of the plan she had for her life.
There was only one thing she could do—she was going to have to blow him off a second time.
She glanced at the photograph. It was a dark and moody shot of one of the giant monoliths at Stonehenge. ‘Wonderful use of light, don’t you think?’ she said, trying to keep her tone breezy, searching for an ‘out’ so she could float off and talk to someone else. Anyone. As long as it wasn’t him.
He chuckled deep in his throat. ‘I think so, but I’m glad you do too.’
Nicole was too busy trying to spot a likely victim to analyse his reply. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she added and then focused on the picture properly. The shot had been taken slightly from below, making the huge lump of rock seem even more solid and ancient. Storm clouds hung low on the horizon, but a beam of light broke through, lighting up one side of the stone, revealing its pitted and lichen-covered surface in sharp detail. She found once she started looking at it, she couldn’t stop.
She’d said it was beautiful without thinking, and it really was. Almost too beautiful. But she didn’t tell him that. Somehow that felt as if she’d be giving something important away.
‘I waited four hours in the rain for that shot, but it was worth the week-long cold that followed.’
Forgetting she was supposed to be finding an exit ramp for this conversation, Nicole swung round sharply. ‘This is your exhibition?’
A wry smile played on his lips for a moment. ‘And there was me thinking you’d seen a flyer and come because you’d finally found me after all these months of tireless searching.’ The humour in his eyes told her he was still teasing, but had turned it on himself. She’d just about pigeonholed him as a strutting peacock, but his self-mockery shot a hole in that idea. Damn. She liked a little humility in a man. And if it came with a dry and self-deprecating sense of humour it was doubly as potent.
‘I…I…’
So it was back to this. Great.
His eyes sparkled with mischief as he looked down at her, inviting her to join him, to turn the joke back on herself and see the funny side. Unfortunately, Nicole couldn’t stand even the hint that someone might be laughing at her and she stiffened, feeling both superior and hypocritical at the same time.
Wow. This guy really brought out the best in her, didn’t he?
Which was why she was getting out before things deteriorated any further. She should have listened to her gut instinct and done it minutes ago. ‘I’m sure you’re far too busy and important to be standing around gassing to me,’ she said, a little snippily. ‘I should let you go and talk to some of your other guests.’
She moved to walk past him, pretending she was heading round the corner to a section of the exhibition she had yet to visit, but his hand shot out and his fingers lightly circled her wrist. ‘Not so fast, Holly.’
She stopped dead. His touch was light and she knew she could pull away easily if she wanted to, which she did, but for some reason she didn’t move a millimetre.
‘This time I need a name at least.’
Nicole blew out a shaky breath. That wouldn’t be a good idea. As gorgeous as he was, he wasn’t her type, and he probably had ‘drifter’ stamped all the way through him like Brighton rock. Still, she wasn’t rude enough to completely snub him. Her parents had brought her up better than that.
‘Nicole,’ she said, gently easing her wrist from his grasp and circling it with her own fingers. ‘Nicole Harrison.’
He nodded. ‘And what do you do, Nicole Harrison, when you’re not driving men crazy by disappearing into the night air never to be found again?’
Her stomach bottomed out. For the last ten minutes she’d completely forgotten why she was here. She’d forgotten all about Saffron and her fiancé-to-be. She’d forgotten all about Hopes & Dreams and why this job was so darn important. She needed to stop chit-chatting and find Alex Black. The easiest way was to stop sparring with this man and just roll over and answer his questions.
‘I’m a journalist,’ she said quickly, then frowned at herself. She didn’t know why she’d said that. It would have been okay to tell him the truth. But maybe, because she’d been all prepped to come out with a cover story this evening, that was what had left her mouth first.
‘And what are you working on now? Not covering the show, are you?’
She shook her head. ‘No, this is just for fun…’
Torture, more like.
‘Actually, I’m doing a piece on…a piece on…’
He raised his eyebrows again. And the smile was back. The one where she thought he might be laughing at her.
‘On weddings,’ she blurted out. It was all she’d been able to think of. ‘For Beautiful Weddings magazine.’
‘Really?’ he said and waited, clearly expecting her to elaborate.
Nicole’s brain flew in three directions at once, and none of them useful. See? This was why she didn’t like veering from her careful plans. Everything turned out messy and unpredictable.
She had to say something. Something that was easy to understand and wouldn’t require further interrogation. Something to do with weddings. Something that would work for a magazine feature.
She thought of all the weddings she’d planned when she’d worked at Elite Gatherings, when she’d been part of an army of worker bees who’d found the day anything but ethereal and magical.
She refocused on him. ‘I’m going to do a piece on the unsung heroes of the wedding industry, you know…all the people who work in the background to make the magic happen.’ She shot him a smile. Her brain was whirring now and she went with it. ‘Rather than just chatting to people on the phone and doing the superficial stuff, I want to follow each professional round for a couple of weeks, do different kinds of weddings, make it really in-depth. Then I can do an interest piece, but also with some really good tips about getting the most out of that professional when someone plans their own big day.’
He nodded. ‘So who would you follow round?’
She shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. People like caterers and waitresses, florists or bakers.’
The grin was back. ‘People like photographers?’
She could have sworn her insides turned to chocolate. Melting chocolate.
‘People like photographers,’ she echoed, a slight dryness in her voice.
‘Then you’ve come to the right guy,’ he said then waved an arm to encompass the photos on the walls. ‘This is what I really love to do, why I pick up my camera on a daily basis, but I earn my bread and butter doing weddings. At least for now.’
‘Oh,’ she said, forgetting to keep calm and collected, letting her eyes widen. She hadn’t expected him to say that. There was nothing about this guy that made her think of weddings and rings and happy-ever-afters.
‘So why don’t you follow me around for a couple of weeks?’ he asked, his dimple putting in another appearance. Nicole couldn’t quite tear her eyes from it.
He lowered his voice. ‘I could give you the low-down on slaves and f-stops?’
F-stops? She knew it was probably a technical term, but in that voice and with that smile it sounded kind of naughty.
‘So…are you interested?’ he said, leaning in close enough for her to get a whiff of his aftershave.
She swallowed again. The tiniest glimmer of interest in his eyes suggested he was asking about more than a professional opportunity. He didn’t want to just score a point; he wanted total defeat. Revenge for skipping out on him all those months ago.
So she would say no. To the offer to shadow him—because that wasn’t her real job anyway, and it would be a total waste of time—and to the offer to spend more time with him, because…because…
Although he’d moved back, she could still smell his scent, and it prompted one of those New Year flashbacks, a particularly potent one of his lips on the soft skin of her neck, his hands round her waist. Suddenly she was very tempted to say yes. To everything.
She knew she should walk away a second time, but something was sticking her feet to the floor like Velcro. Something was telling her to go with that wild feeling his photographs had stirred inside her, to tell the voice of caution inside her head to go to hell.
He was watching her, taking in the emotions, the thoughts, flitting across her features. The knowing expression told her he knew exactly what she was thinking, knew exactly what decision she was teetering on the edge of.
Nicole was about to open her mouth, suggest they go for a coffee after the exhibition to discuss his offer, when her phone buzzed in her pocket again.
It brought her back to reality with a bump.
Oh, heck. Saffron.
She glanced up at him as she pulled her phone out of her coat pocket. ‘I’m sorry…I really need to check this.’
He shrugged one shoulder carelessly as she swiped her phone screen to pull up the message.
‘Maybe we can discuss this shadowing thing after—’
The rest of the sentence never left her mouth. Because the message was indeed from Saffron. An hour later than they’d planned, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the picture message that accompanied the text.
She was staring down at a photo of a windswept photographer with a bewitching little dimple.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_c50dfd59-1aaf-5d66-a144-fb8997e068f0)
She seemed to have frozen looking at her phone. She was clutching it so hard her finger joints were going white. Alex coughed softly. ‘Nicole?’ Still she stared at the screen, not moving, not speaking. He started to regret teasing her quite so hard. What if it was horrific news, if someone had died or her house had burnt down? ‘Are you okay?’
She snapped upright then, shoving her phone back in her pocket, and bestowed a bright smile on him. ‘Fine.’ She blinked. ‘Absolutely fine. Nothing wrong at all.’
Okay, then…
He frowned a little. In his experience women often said ‘fine’ when they meant ‘my life is going down the toilet’. He had a feeling this might be one of those times, but he really didn’t know her well enough to push. He also didn’t know her well enough to read her correctly. She could be as fine as that fluorescent smile said she was.
Or she could be faking it just as hard as he was.
As much as he liked to think he’d been in control of the conversation up until now. He’d been doing what he always liked to do in a hairy situation—winging it and hoping it would turn out his way in the end—but he couldn’t ignore the chemistry popping between them any more than she could. Trying to get under her skin had backfired on him spectacularly.
He should have come up with a better plan. Or maybe any kind of plan at all.
He exhaled and swigged his beer.
Their timing stank. Why couldn’t he have met her nine months ago, when he’d still been free and single?
He hadn’t been lying. He’d looked for her for ages. Way longer than was sensible. Maybe that was why he’d listened to that little voice in his ear telling him to mess with her a little, because his ego had taken a knock when she hadn’t got back to him. He’d decided maybe he’d been wrong about New Year’s Eve, that she hadn’t felt the same way. However, she’d demonstrated very nicely with her stammering and blushing this evening that just wasn’t the case.
So why hadn’t she called? It was going to drive him crazy if he never found out. Even if he did, he couldn’t ask her out again. As much as he liked women, he liked them better one at a time. Not only was he not that much of a sleazeball, but it cut down on the inevitable drama. He didn’t like drama. A life that was free and easy and cool suited him much better.
She was fiddling with the stem of her wine glass. Somehow he knew what she was thinking about saying. It was as if he could see the subtitles, like watching a foreign film. And if these ones were printed out in stark white letters, hovering in the air below her face, they would say, ‘Find an excuse to get away. Now.’
He made up his mind to let her.
‘Well, it’s been lovely bumping into you again,’ she said, smiling her ‘fine’ smile again, ‘but I’ve really got to…’
He nodded. So did he.
This time he didn’t reach out and grab her hand, but watched her walk on to the next photograph, pretend to peruse it. He fully intended to head off in the opposite direction, but just as he was turning to go she let a little bit of that iron composure slip, closed her eyes and heaved out a weary sigh.
It was as if she’d slammed down a matching card in a game of ‘Snap’. An identical tug of war was going on inside him. There were reasons he should walk away. Good reasons. Not only Saffron, but the fact that he’d promised himself he was going to stick to women who knew what they wanted, who were as easy to read as a picture book.
But…
Something was telling him he’d been a fool to let her slip away a second time.
He found himself striding back to her. ‘When do you have to have this article thing done by?’
She looked mournfully at him, as if she was begging him for something. Finally she sighed and said, ‘The weekend before Christmas.’
‘I’ve got five weddings lined up between now and Christmas. Different types too—some small and quirky, a couple that have pulled out all the stops. It could be just what you need.’
This was insane. He knew it was insane. But he was still doing it.
He needed a chance to see her again, to find out if this was really something or whether he was just smarting because he wanted what he couldn’t have. He also wanted to see if the warm, funny, sexy girl he’d met on New Year’s Eve was hiding away somewhere inside this starchy suit. And this was a totally innocent way of being around her so he could find out. Nothing had to happen. And if he was wrong about her…Well, he’d be free and clear to walk away. No harm done.
She started shaking her head. ‘I don’t think…Maybe we should just…’
‘Have you got any better offers?’
She sighed. ‘No.’
‘I could do with the extra pair of hands,’ he said, sending her a begging look of his own. ‘At this time of year the weather always conspires to make things more complicated.’
She opened her mouth to brush him off, he could tell, but before she could get the words out she jumped and pulled her phone out of her pocket again. It must have been on vibrate.
Her eyes widened as she read the message then dropped her hand to hang by her side. ‘I’m sorry, Alex. I really have to go.’
She moved to push past him without making eye contact, but he stepped in front of her. ‘At least let me take your number this time. You might regret it if you don’t.’ He waited until she looked at him, tried to tease a smile out of her, but there was sadness in her expression that hadn’t been there before.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t…’
‘Not even prepared to suffer my company for your art?’
Her forehead crumpled into little lines. ‘Huh?’
‘Well, if not your art…your article,’ he said. ‘If you don’t find someone else to shadow—a cake maker or a florist or a dove trainer—you might regret not being my assistant for the next few weeks. Here…’ He picked up her hand, phone still in it, and deftly entered his number in her address book. ‘No excuses this time,’ he said, watching her flush a little bit pinker. ‘Use it.’
The look she gave him told him it was unlikely. ‘Bye, Alex,’ she almost whispered, and then she darted past him. He didn’t stop her, just watched as she straightened her spine and walked out the door without looking back.
He was still standing there, only half aware of the sparse traffic darting past the glazed doors, when someone clapped him on the shoulder. He turned round to find Tom grinning at him.
‘Who was that?’
Alex shook his head. ‘You’ll never guess.’
But that didn’t stop Tom trying. He’d gone through most of the minor royals and had started on the cast of TOWIE by the time Alex stopped him. He would have interrupted sooner, but his head had been swirling with thoughts of his mystery woman. He knew her name now, but somehow that hadn’t made her any less mysterious. It was as if he could see two versions of her superimposed on top of each other, mostly in sync, but occasionally the image jumped and he could see one more clearly than the other. He had no idea which was the real Nicole Harrison.
‘It was Holly Golightly. From New Year’s Eve.’
Tom let out an appreciative whistle. ‘Did you flirt with her?’
Alex opened his mouth to deny it. There was a difference between playing a bit of a game and actual flirting. However, Tom, as usual, didn’t stop to wait for anything as mundane as an answer.
‘Of course you did.’
Alex shook his head and tipped up his beer bottle, only to discover it empty. Damn.
‘You know, some people use flirting as part of the hunt, but you’re the only guy I know who uses it as a defence mechanism.’
Alex smiled, looked at the photo he’d taken of Tintagel, high on a stormy coast. ‘Seriously, mate, you’ve been spending too much time in LA. You’re starting to sound like a shrink yourself. Any more startling insights to wow me with?’
He glanced to his left and found Tom smirking at him. ‘Okay, I’ll bite. How long have you been going out with Saffron now?’
Alex pulled his mouth down at the corners while he thought about it. ‘What…? Five months? Maybe a little longer?’
Tom made a great show of looking at his watch. ‘Yup. Right on time.’
Alex knew he didn’t really want to ask him to elaborate, but he did it anyway. ‘For what?’
‘It’s always around the six-month mark in any relationship that you get the jitters, start questioning everything—especially why you’re with her and not some other wonderful creature you’ve just spotted—and ultimately end up backing out and breaking her heart.’
No. This wasn’t what this was. It wasn’t the same with Nicole. Besides, Tom was wrong about the six-month thing. He’d split up with Vicky after…Well, okay, maybe that one did fit. But then there had been Meg, who’d lasted…Damn. What about Rachel…?
He shoved his empty bottle in Tom’s direction. ‘Shut up and get me another beer.’
Tom grinned at him and headed off to the bar, whistling.
He’d just returned and handed Alex a fresh one, before scooting off to chat to one of their other climbing buddies who’d just arrived, when Alex saw a flash of honey-coloured hair by the front door. He heard the clop of her boots as she made her way towards him, carving a wake through the throng of entranced visitors.
‘Wonderful turnout,’ she said, before leaning in to air-kiss his cheek, prising his latest beer from his fingers, taking a swig and not giving it back to him.
He grunted. For some reason he was feeling ticked off with her. ‘Hi, Saffron. Nice of you to show up.’ And then he added, under his breath, ‘Finally.’
She gave him one of her saucy looks, the kind she must have given her doting daddy when she was little to make him shower her with dolls and sweeties and ponies. ‘I know I’m a tad late…’
He exhaled. Normally he didn’t mind that Saffron operated in her own time zone, but this evening had been important to him. He thought she could have at least made the effort for once. ‘One hour and twenty-five minutes to be exact.’
She rolled her eyes and gave him a who’s counting kind of expression as she leaned in and laced her fingers between those of his free hand. ‘Well, I’m here now. That’s what matters.’
He sighed. Well, at least she hadn’t given him some lame story. That was why he’d been attracted to Saffron in the first place—she was who she was, no apologies, no excuses, and he’d never once caught her lying about anything. Which was just as well. Because he’d had enough of women who pretended to be one thing and turned out to be something entirely different. That was a fast track to a broken heart, and he wasn’t buying tickets for a return visit any time soon.
Saffron slid her free arm in his and turned to a print of a picture he’d taken in Glen Coe. ‘Now…which bog exactly did you immerse yourself in to take this one…?’
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_9561a837-e975-54bb-9a69-93a8128b9dfc)
When Nicole got back to the flat she shared with Peggy, she didn’t stop walking until she crashed the door to her bedroom open. There she stepped out of her skirt, heels and blouse, pulled a soft pair of tattered tracksuit bottoms from a drawer and topped them off with a well-loved and well-stretched grey T-shirt. Leaving her clothes in a heap on the floor, she marched to the kitchen, buried her head inside the freezer, then emerged again with a carton of clotted-cream vanilla ice cream in her hand.
She grabbed a spoon and headed for the living room, where she dropped onto the neutral-coloured sofa that she’d chosen, snuggled up against the bright, psychedelic cushions that Peggy had bought and aimed the remote at the TV with more than a hint of fierceness. Sometimes the clash of hers and Peggy’s very different decorating styles made their flat seem a little schizophrenic.
It was only as the opening credits to Pretty in Pink, her favourite 1980s high-school movie, filled the screen that she exhaled and let her shoulders sag.
Peggy wandered into the room in her polka-dotted bathrobe, rubbing her damp hair with a towel. ‘Uh-oh,’ she said, as she spotted Nicole on the sofa, feet stretched out on the coffee table that normally was only allowed drinks on top if a coaster was involved. ‘What happened?’
Nicole kept staring at the screen as the credits rolled. A young Molly Ringwald was getting dressed in an explosion of pink lace and floral prints. ‘The cowboy happened.’
‘Oh?’ Peggy murmured, pretending she knew what Nicole was talking about as she dropped down onto the sofa next to her.
‘From New Year’s Eve…?’
Peggy kept frowning and then her eyes widened. ‘Oh!’
Nicole nodded. ‘Yes, oh!’
Peggy’s forehead bunched again. ‘But that’s good, isn’t it?’
Good. That was an interesting word. Not one Nicole knew if she’d apply to Alex Black, either. He looked good if you meant want to eat him up with a spoon, but not the wings-and-halo type of good, far from it, with that shaggy dark hair, perma-stubble and that infuriating little dimple.
An image of Saffron flashed through Nicole’s memory from the meeting they’d had at Hopes & Dreams that afternoon. Saffron had hesitated, hadn’t she, when she’d answered the question about whether her intended fiancé was having the same thoughts of happy-ever-after? Maybe their relationship wasn’t as solid as she assumed?
Get real, Nicole. You’re grasping at straws. It’s serious. Serious enough for Saffron to propose to him, anyway. Unless there was a ring on a finger, things didn’t get much more serious than that, and even if it wasn’t serious, he was taken.
‘Not good, then…’ Peggy said, answering her own question as she inched closer to Nicole and laid her head on her shoulder. They both watched the movie in silence for at least five minutes. ‘I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with this film. She should end up with Duckie, not the rich jerk.’
Nicole sighed. Part of her knew that. But another part of her knew what it was like to be the girl from the wrong side of the tracks and yearn for the perfect boy who would always be out of her league. It was nice to see the underdog triumph for once. Instead of like real life.
Peggy sat up and turned to Nicole. She prised the ice-cream carton out of her hand and stole a spoonful. ‘So…it’s obvious you don’t want to talk about the cowboy, so tell me about the meet with Saffron’s man instead.’
Nicole swiped the carton back off her friend and indulged in another spoonful of ice cream before she answered. ‘One and the same.’
Peggy opened her mouth and shut it again. ‘You don’t mean…?’
Nicole nodded again. ‘Yup.’
‘Wow…’ Peggy shook her head. ‘Talk about complicated.’ She shifted position to face Nicole fully. ‘But don’t give up. It’ll work itself out.’
Nicole stopped watching Molly moon over Andrew McCarthy for a few seconds. ‘How?’
Peggy shrugged. ‘I was just thinking about Pillow Talk or Move Over, Darling. Those were really tricky romantic situations, but it all turned out right for Doris in the end.’ The smile she gave Nicole was so sweet, so genuine, that Nicole didn’t have the heart to tell her that Doris Day films weren’t real life, something Peggy needed reminding of on a more and more regular basis.
And she thought Nicole’s John Hughes addiction was weird.
She lifted one corner of her mouth in her best attempt at a smile. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It was just a physical thing. I could do without the complication.’
Peggy smiled and nodded. She took the ice-cream carton from Nicole and headed back towards the little kitchenette. ‘I think ice-cream hour is over and wine time has begun.’ Nicole would have chased her all the way back to the freezer if she’d had the energy. Instead she turned back to the screen, but as much as she stared at it, the images floating through her head weren’t colour, but black and white, and instead of love-struck teens, she could see wild moors and heather and billowing clouds that filled the sky. It made her feel like running out into the night to feel the icy November wind on her cheeks or climbing a tall building to see how far she could see. There weren’t many mountains in the N1 postcode, so that would be the best she could do to exorcise this feeling whirling inside her.
Peggy returned and handed her a rather full glass of wine. Nicole accepted it gratefully. Usually she didn’t partake on weekdays, but— Ugh. Who cared? She took a large gulp and exhaled. Hard.
‘Can I take the job over?’ Peggy asked. ‘I am a proposal planner in training, after all.’
Nicole shook her head. ‘It’s fine. I can handle it. I told Saffron I’d be dealing with her proposal personally, and I don’t want to do anything to spook her.’ She looked Peggy meaningfully in the eye. ‘We need this job to go well if Hopes & Dreams is going to grow. In fact, if we’re not doing better by the new year I might have to go back to regular event planning and do Hopes & Dream part-time, and I really don’t want to do that.’
She couldn’t bear the thought of having to take a backwards step.
‘And then there’s the money both you and Mia have put in…’
‘No pressure, then,’ Peggy said.
Nicole shrugged. It was what it was. ‘All it boils down to is that we need a “yes”. I can’t let anything interfere with that.’
Peggy nodded sadly. ‘Fate is cruel,’ she said melodramatically, and Nicole couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
‘What?’ Peggy asked, wrinkling her nose and looking a little offended.
‘No, you’re right. Fate is cruel. But you’ve gotta laugh or you’ll cry, right? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…’
Peggy nodded, instantly joining in the game they liked to play when either of them was down—coming up with inane-sounding platitudes in the hope one of them would make sense. ‘You forgot “There are plenty more fish in the sea.”‘
‘So I did.’ Nicole toasted the screen with her glass and snuggled down into the sofa cushions. ‘Now, shut up and let’s watch this movie.’
Peggy slurped her Chardonnay. ‘I mean…thank goodness it’s her asking him and not the other way round. At least you won’t have to spend much time with him. Just see him on the night, that’s all. And we can make it so you direct things from afar, if you like, and I can do the hands-on stuff…’ She trailed off as she saw the look on Nicole’s face. ‘Oh, no. What have you done?’
Nicole jabbed the pause button and scowled. Then she explained about the fake magazine article, about Alex’s offer. When she’d finished Peggy stared at her. ‘Holy crap on a cracker,’ she said. ‘You can’t go through with it!’
‘I have to,’ Nicole said glumly. ‘I didn’t get any info from Alex this evening—I was too shocked. I know I did the questionnaire with Saffron, but she’s got one of those butterfly minds that leaps all over the place. I hardly got anything useful, partly because I don’t think she knows what she wants. That means I have to see him again or we can’t possibly tailor her proposal to him properly. I need to find out what he thinks about love and marriage and romance…’ She gave Peggy a morbid little smile while her insides churned. Maybe ice cream and wine hadn’t been the best way to go. ‘And what better place to do that than at a wedding?’
Peggy stared at her. ‘You’re insane. And that’s a lot, coming from me.’
Nicole turned away and let the movie off pause. They were just about to get to the bit when Duckie slides into the record store and sings ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ and she needed a bit of cheering up.
‘I’m only going to do the one week,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘and then I’ll find a reason to pull out—I’ll tell him my editor doesn’t like the angle or something, or that she wants it quicker and I need to investigate the other jobs instead. What else can I do?’
Peggy laid her head back on the sofa cushions and looked at the ceiling. ‘Nothing. You’re just going to have to go along to some horribly romantic winter wedding, spend all day up-close-and-personal with Mr Sex-on-a-Stick. What could possibly go wrong?’
Nicole jabbed her in the ribs, making her jump and slosh her wine on her favourite velvet cushion in a particularly violent shade of lime. ‘Hey!’ When she’d brushed the worst of it off, she looked Nicole in the eye. ‘Can you really do this? Can you resist temptation and control yourself?’
Nicole laughed softly. ‘Of course I can…I’m not you, Peg.’
Peggy knew her own weaknesses too well and just rolled her eyes instead of getting upset. Besides, if there was one thing Nicole excelled at, it was keeping in control.
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_54665919-4882-5432-bdf7-69d6de4cc5e5)
When Nicole turned up at the chic little oyster bar tucked away behind the theatres of the West End to meet Saffron, she made sure she looked flawless. There was no way she was going to come off as second best in the fashion department, even if she was a loser in every other arena comparisons were made. Especially in the romance department.
She’d dressed carefully that morning, choosing to echo Saffron’s high-end boho chic rather than her usual sophisticated office wear. She tried adding a chunky woollen scarf, carelessly wrapped around her neck, but instead of looking artsy and casual it just made her look as if she were a farmer about to go milking. Why could she never get this ultra-casual designer look right? It was driving her crazy.
When she reached the restaurant, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and pushed open the dark wood door and entered the cluttered space. There was a large horseshoeshaped bar topped with smooth grey marble in the centre of the room. A brass rail ran around the edge and deep leather-covered stools were tucked underneath. The waiter showed her to a little table beyond the bar.
It was empty, of course. She ordered a sparkling water and settled down to wait. Unlike Saffron, she didn’t have the luxury of turning up late. If she left a client waiting, even for a few minutes, it wouldn’t look good.
The minutes sloped by. The longer she sat there, the more her mind churned with the thought that had woken her up, making her sit bolt upright, at two-thirty that morning.
She should come clean.
It was a conflict of interest or…something. She should tell Saffron she’d met Alex before, tell her they’d been romantically involved.
Except they hadn’t.
It had only been a kiss, one that had lasted maybe three—possibly five—minutes. A drunken kiss that she really shouldn’t remember in quite such vivid detail. But every time she rehearsed in her head how she was going to broach it with Saffron, the conversation always went badly. It was the fact that the whole thing had been so difficult to categorise that made it harder.
If she could just say, ‘We went out for two months about five years ago, but we parted on good terms and I moved on and I’m madly in love with someone else now,’ then maybe everything would be fine. But she couldn’t say that. Even though what she’d done with Alex was way less intimate, somehow saying, ‘I walked up to him and snogged him senseless earlier this year’ just wasn’t going to put a skittish girlfriend at ease.
And that was where she’d been for almost the last twelve hours. Going backwards and forward between telling and not telling, and she wasn’t getting anywhere. She was always up front with her clients. Always. They trusted her to give an unbiased and sometimes not-easy-to-hear opinion when they needed one.
It was her own stupid fault. She’d known when she’d walked into the arts centre the other evening that she shouldn’t have let herself get sidetracked, but she’d done it anyway. If she’d kept professional, stuck to the plan, it would never have got to the stage where Alex Black was flirting with her and she was starting to like it.
It would never have got to the stage when she’d almost listened to Peggy’s advice about wrapping herself around a hot man, either…
Thank goodness Saffron’s text had arrived when it had. Otherwise she’d have committed professional suicide as well as romantic suicide, and that really would have been too much for one evening.
Saffron appeared half an hour later, with an armful of large, glossy shopping bags with string handles that seemed to contain more air than shopping—the sure sign of some really expensive purchases.
She let the bags drop at her feet with a rustle of tissue paper and greeted Nicole, who had risen and waited patiently while the waiters flapped around their celebrity patron, taking her coat and pulling out her chair so she could sit down.
‘Well,’ she said, leaning forward across the table, her eyes shining. ‘Did you meet him?’
Nicole nodded. ‘I certainly did. That was the plan.’
The only bit of the plan that had gone smoothly, it had to be said.
‘And isn’t he gorgeous? Isn’t he perfect?’
Nicole nodded again, but gently, giving nothing away. ‘He is.’ Not that Saffron would have noticed. She was in full-on gush mode and was only too happy to have someone to sing her fiancé-to-be’s praises to. Which she did, for at least ten minutes. Usually, Nicole enjoyed this bit—seeing that light in a client’s eyes when they talked about the person they wanted to marry—but the longer Saffron talked, the better Alex sounded, and the sicker Nicole felt.
She should tell her. Just spit it out and tell her.
But…
She remembered what Saffron had said about manstealing Minty. And Saffron could be temperamental and rash—she knew that much from the tabloids. And from the fact she wanted to propose to her boyfriend after five months, of course. If she caught Saffron in the wrong mood, she might flush this whole job down the toilet, and Mia and Peggy were depending on her to bring it in. It wasn’t only herself she’d be sabotaging, but her two best friends in the world, and the future of Hopes & Dreams, which she knew she could make a success—she just needed a little more time. And Saffron’s money and profile.
It’s ancient history, she reasoned with herself. Nothing. Less than nothing. And over before Saffron and Alex began. What good would it do to dredge it all up now?
Their drinks and appetisers arrived. Saffron had ordered a seafood platter, which was on a metal plate on a stand, lying on a bed of crushed ice. A large and rather pink prawn was facing in Nicole’s direction and it fixed her with its black, currant-like eyes. I know, it seemed to be saying. I know your secret…
It was at that point that Nicole decided she had to do something to protect her sanity. As much truth as she was able to tell might do it. She took the opportunity while Saffron sipped her wine to butt in. ‘Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite as much information from Alex as I’d like to have done the other evening. I thought I’d better let you know that I may need to meet with him again.’
Saffron threw her head back and tipped an oyster down her throat then shrugged. ‘Fine. Whatever you need to do to get the job done.’
Nicole let out a breath. She’d be honest about the present, even if the past was better left in the past. ‘I’m keeping up my cover story and attending a wedding posing as a journalist next Saturday,’ she told her client. ‘Hopefully, it’ll give me some really good ideas.’
Saffron grinned at her. ‘As long as those ideas are big and colourful and expensive, I’m all in. What have you come up with so far?’
Nicole smiled as she toyed with her dressed crab. At least now she was back in her comfort zone. They spent the rest of the time discussing the merits of different venues and proposal types and ended up with a shortlist of three basic outlines, which Nicole would tailor further to Saffron’s requirements when she had more of an idea of what made the wonderful Alex Black tick.
When they were finished, Saffron thanked her for lunch and swept off to another urgent appointment she was already an hour late for, and Nicole settled the bill.
It had started to rain while they’d been eating. She had a raincoat with her, but it didn’t have a hood, so she had to pull her collar up and jog down the alleyway that ran past a theatre and out onto St Martin’s Lane. She looked sideways as she ran past the row of posters advertising the latest play. The glass was just shiny enough to send back a reflection.
She slowed to a walking pace, still glancing at her image in the dark posters as she passed them. Her eyes were large and she looked younger. She was reminded of the night Jasper hadn’t proposed. She’d run away from the restaurant, down alleys like this, desperate to get to the main road and find a cab.
She’d thought she’d got rid of that woman, that only an echo of her had been left behind. It was a shock to see her staring back at her, the pale face superimposed on those of the actors in the posters.
She couldn’t be that person again. Not now. And definitely not for the next six weeks as they ran up to Christmas and Saffron’s big proposal. The clock couldn’t turn backwards. She wouldn’t let it.
She had this horrible feeling that if she didn’t finish the journey she’d started after Jasper left her, she’d always be stuck in some horrible limbo between being the girl she once was and the woman she wanted to be. And that wouldn’t do. She needed every bit of armour about her now.
Especially if she was going to survive a whole Saturday in the company of Alex Black.
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_6d9f1931-09a5-5254-a24a-e4ea537e8d0f)
It was bright and frosty that Saturday morning when Alex pulled up outside Nicole’s flat in his car. She didn’t wait for him to ring the doorbell. Instead she ran down the stairs, intending to intercept him on the pavement outside before he even got out of the car. The less he knew about her the better, because if Alex found out what she really did for a living before Saffron proposed, her whole life would be toast.
She’d formulated a plan while she’d been waiting. In lieu of anything better, today’s objective was to be the consummate professional—on two fronts: the real job and the fake job. She would not flirt. She would not stammer. She would forget all about how attractive he was and treat him the same as any other fiancé-to-be.
And he was, really. Despite what had happened on New Year’s Eve. There was no reason to feel as if she’d known him for years, no reason to believe they were part of a secret club of two, no matter how much the air seemed to close in around them every time they were within three feet of each other. It was just physical. She had to remember that. Chemicals firing off in her brain at the sight of a nice-looking man. Nothing more.
And she didn’t need to get to know him, either. At least no more than she needed to so she could do her job and provide Saffron with the proposal she’d hired her for.
He spotted her emerging from the door to the street as he stepped from his car, and one corner of his mouth lifted in greeting. Her disobedient heart went into overdrive, causing her pulse to bang in her ears. She took a deep breath and ignored it. Talk the talk, walk the walk, and the rest will follow.
‘Will this do?’ she said, opening her coat and showing him what she was wearing. He’d said she should dress smartly but practically and with a view to being as unobtrusive as possible.
It had taken a while to find something that would truly help her blend into the background. While she favoured understated elegance, she realised that she always dressed hoping others would notice the pared-down style, the subtle message that said, ‘I’m not trying to impress you’, even though she subconsciously was. In the end she’d plumped for a soft charcoal jumper over smart black trousers and boots with a heel that wouldn’t give her nosebleeds.
Alex was dressed in a dark suit with a thin black tie and a large and slightly scruffy overcoat thrown over the top. He should have looked smart, but somehow the overall effect, including the battered boots that still graced his feet, gave him the air of a rock star who was trying very badly to be on his best behaviour.
He gave her a wink. ‘It’ll do,’ he said.
She told herself the rush of heat to her face was down to the icy wind pinching her cheeks. She nodded and slid into the passenger seat of his Jeep while he rather gallantly held the door open for her. She wished he hadn’t. The only way she was going to make it through today was if she cast herself as lowly helper and packhorse. She didn’t want him to do the sort of thing he might have done if they were out on a date.
‘How long will it take us to get there?’ she asked, as he started up the engine and pulled away.
‘An hour to an hour and a half, depending on the traffic.’
She nodded and kept her focus straight ahead as they headed east, through the almost empty streets. She’d hoped it would be a local wedding, something at a nice hotel in London. Something she’d have been able to get the Tube to, then get away again as quickly as possible. But it had turned out they were heading across London and into deepest Kent, to a stately home called Elmhurst Hall. She’d heard of it, but had never been there before. All of a sudden, an hour and a half in a Jeep with him felt like an eternity.
‘Do you mind if I put some music on?’ he asked.
Nicole shook her head, and Alex prodded a couple of buttons on the stereo. Pretty soon a rock station was blaring into the car. She welcomed the noise, hoping it would fill the space between them, hoping it would stop her noticing each tiny movement of his arm near hers as he moved the gear stick.
It didn’t work.
It also didn’t remove the subtle scent of his aftershave from the confined space or stop her listening to the thrum of his voice as he hummed along with a favourite song. She decided the only way she would keep her sanity was if she did talk.
‘Tell me about the location,’ she said. Maybe, if she could keep herself in ‘work’ mode—even if her work wasn’t just being photographer’s dogsbody—then she’d survive this monster of a day.
‘It’s the home of Lord and Lady Radcliffe, but they open the house and gardens to the public and do a great wedding package,’ he told her, only flicking a glance in her direction as he weaved through the London traffic. ‘I’ve done a couple of weddings there before, so I didn’t need to go down and scout out the place beforehand. The ceremony is going to be in the church at the edge of the grounds and the reception will be held in the grand hall. It’s medieval, complete with a raised dais at one end and shields and swords on the wall. Lighting will be a bit of a nightmare, by the way, because it’s a bit gloomy in there this time of year…One of the reasons I could do with an assistant today.’
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