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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.
