The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams

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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.’