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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?’
