A Whirlwind Engagement

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‘No,’ said Bella, moistening her lips. ‘Just meeting a friend.’

A friend. That was all he was. She must remember that. Never mind that she couldn’t even say his name without her insides twisting themselves into a knot.

She arrived at the bar ten minutes early, unheard of for her. It was a standing joke that her watch ran twenty-five minutes slower than Josh’s. She got herself a drink and sat down at a table, twisting the glass nervously between her hands.

This was awful! She didn’t know whether she longed for Josh to arrive or dreaded it.

When he did, bang on time as usual, he didn’t even bother to look for her, but glanced at his watch, assumed she would be late and went straight to the bar.

Bella’s heart jerked painfully at the sight of him and stuck, hammering frantically, in her throat. It was lucky that he hadn’t seen her and come straight over, as she couldn’t have spoken if she had tried. So much for her hope that she would turn out not to be in love with him after all.

Her eyes rested on him hungrily as he stood at the bar, wearing chinos and a battered old jacket. She had spent years rolling her eyes at his complete absence of any sense of style at all, and the boring way he insisted on having his hair cut. Now just looking at the back of his neck was like a hand squeezing hard inside her.

Josh might not be the sharpest of dressers but he exuded a kind of tough competence, and he wasn’t a man who got ignored by bar staff. He was served far more quickly than Bella had been, and turned with a beer in his hand to look for a table.

Swallowing hard, Bella waved to attract his attention, and his searching expression changed ludicrously to one of surprise.

‘Bella!’ He put his beer down on the table and bent to kiss her cheek. ‘You’re on time! Did I slip into a parallel universe without noticing? What’s come over you?’

I’m in love with you.

Her face tingled where his lips had brushed against her skin. She felt absurdly shy.

‘Things were quiet at work so I left early,’ she said.

‘Things quiet in the PR world?’ said Josh as he sat down opposite her. ‘This is a parallel universe!’

He picked up his beer. ‘Cheers,’ he said and they chinked glasses. Taking a sip he set the glass down again and smiled at Bella. ‘So,’ he said. ‘You’re looking good.’

‘So are you.’

He looked more than good. He looked wonderful. Bella couldn’t take her eyes off him. She wanted to crawl over to him, sit in his lap and run her hand up his arm and along his shoulder, to kiss his throat and then work her way along his jaw to his mouth…

Appalled at the sheer grip of lust, she gulped her wine shakily. All those years she had taken Josh for granted, and now she could hardly keep her hands off him! Thank God he was sitting opposite and hadn’t chosen the seat beside her. Even so, she tightened both hands around the stem of the glass where she could see them on top of the table and keep them under control.

‘How are things with you?’ she managed.

‘Great. And you?’

‘Yes, fine.’

This was ghastly. Bella felt close to tears. It had always been so easy with Josh before. They would get their drinks and spend the rest of the evening talking and laughing and teasing each other, and now they were sitting here being polite to each other.

‘Are you still going off to the Seychelles?’

Josh nodded. He was obviously picking up on the awkward atmosphere. ‘In a couple of weeks,’ he said.

‘Lucky you. I wish I could go away in November. It’s always so dark and miserable then.’

God, now they were reduced to the weather!

Josh didn’t even try and pick up on that particular conversational gambit. He drank his beer instead and an uncomfortable silence fell.

Bella concentrated on making patterns with the condensation on the bottom of her glass. She was supposed to be telling him about Will but she wasn’t sure how to do it without explaining how her feelings had changed, and if Josh probed too far in that direction it wouldn’t take him long to realise that she had changed, and then he would want to know why and…oh, God, perhaps it would be better not to say anything?

‘So,’ said Josh again, sounding rather strained. ‘What’s new with you? You said you had a lot to tell me.’

‘You go first,’ she said quickly. ‘You said you had news too.’

‘Yes…yes, I do.’

He sounded almost as hesitant as she felt. He obviously didn’t know where to begin either. A tiny chill crept into Bella’s stomach.

‘Is it good or bad?’ she asked, trying to make light of it.

‘Good,’ said Josh after another tiny hesitation.

‘You don’t sound very sure!’

He didn’t. Josh could hear it himself. ‘No, it is good. Definitely good,’ he said.

The best, in fact. So why didn’t it feel fantastic? Josh wondered. It had seemed such a good idea when Aisling suggested it. More than that, it had made perfect sense. He should be standing on the table, shouting his luck to the world.

He just hadn’t expected it to be so difficult to tell Bella, that was all.

She was looking at him curiously across the table. ‘Is it something to do with work?’

‘No, no, nothing like that.’ Josh took another desperate drink of his beer.

Bella pursed her lips, rolled her eyes and shook back her long, blonde hair in an achingly familiar gesture of exasperation. ‘Well?’ she demanded, sounding like the old Bella, and not the strange new, shy, prompt Bella who had been sitting opposite him a moment ago. ‘Do I have to guess, or are you going to tell me?’

‘Aisling and I are getting married.’

Josh winced as he heard how he blurted out the words as if he felt guilty or something. He had meant to lead up to it more gently.

He looked at Bella, unsure of how she would react. She seemed to have frozen, and for a second or two her expression was completely blank. Then the blue eyes dropped to her wine and she stared at it for a few moments, until Josh began to wonder if she had heard him.

‘Bella?’ he asked, but she had already lifted her gaze and there was a bright smile on her face.

‘Well…congratulations!’ she said in a voice that matched her smile, and she half stood to lean across the table and kiss him on the cheek.

Her hair swung against Josh’s face, and he could smell her perfume. She always wore exactly the same one. ‘Allure,’ she had told him when he asked once what it was, and she had grinned at him. ‘Feel free to buy me a huge bottle whenever you want!’ Sometimes when she had been in his flat, he could sniff the fragrance still lingering in the air. It always made him think of her.

What perfume did Aisling wear? Wasn’t that the kind of thing a fiancé should know?

‘When did all this happen?’ she asked, sitting back down with the same bright smile that for some reason intensified Josh’s feeling of unease. But she looked just the same, the same blue eyes, the same tilting lashes, the same swing of spun gold around her face as she shook her hair out of the way.

It was just the smile that was wrong, but Josh couldn’t put his finger on why.

‘Last week,’ he said.

They had just won a big contract, and the whole company had been out celebrating that evening. When they got home, Josh had tried to tell Aisling how much he appreciated what she had done. There was no doubt that she had made a huge difference. She had finely honed marketing skills, and with her background knowledge of clients like C.B.C. she had been able to steer the company in a new direction which was paying dividends already. This had been an important contract to win, and if they could get the C.B.C. deal as well, the future would be assured.

‘We couldn’t have done it without you,’ he had told her, still high on the relief and euphoria of the staff. They had all worked hard but Aisling’s input had been key and they all knew it. ‘We make a fantastic team.’