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‘You were head-hunted?’ said Cassie, trying to imagine a company going out of its way to recruit her. Cassandra Grey’s just the person we want for this job, they would say. How can we tempt her?
Nope, she couldn’t do it.
Jake obviously took the whole business for granted. ‘That’s how it works.’ He pulled up at a red light and glanced at Cassie. ‘What about you? How long have you been with Avalon?’
‘Just since the beginning of the year. Before that I was a receptionist,’ she said. ‘I did a couple of stints in retail, a bit of temping, a bit of waitressing…’
She sighed. ‘Not a very impressive career, as my father is always pointing out. I’m a huge disappointment to my parents. The others have all done really well. They all went to Cambridge. Liz is a doctor, Tom’s an architect and even Jack is a lawyer now. They’re all grown-ups, and I’m just the family problem.’
Cassie had intended the words to sound humorous, but was uneasily aware they had come out rather flat. Rather as if she didn’t think it was such a funny joke after all. ‘They’re always ringing each other up and wondering what to do about Cassie.’
But that was all going to change, she reminded herself. This could be the start of a whole new career. She was going to turn Portrevick Hall into a model venue. Celebrities would be queuing up to get married there. After a year or two, they wouldn’t even have to advertise. Just mentioning that a wedding would be at Portrevick Hall would mean that it would be the last word in style and elegance.
Cassandra Grey? they would say. Isn’t she the one who made Portrevick Hall a byword for chic and exclusive? She would get tired of calls from the head-hunters. Not again, she would sigh. When are you people going to get the message that I don’t want to commit to one job? Because, of course, by then she would be a consultant. She had always fancied the thought of being one of those.
Cassie settled herself more comfortably in her seat, liking the way this fantasy was going. All those smart hotels in London would be constantly ringing her up and begging her to come and sort out their events facilities—and probably not just in London, now she came to think of it. She would have an international reputation.
Yes, she’d get tired of jetting off to New York and Dubai and Sydney. Cassie smiled to herself. Liz, Tom and Jack would still be ringing each other up, but instead of worrying about her they would be complaining about how humdrum their sensible careers seemed in comparison with her glamorous life. I’m sick of Cassie telling me she’d really just like a few days at home doing nothing, Liz would grumble.
‘And what’s Cassie going to do about herself?’ asked Jake, breaking rudely into her dream.
‘I’m going to do what I’m doing,’ she told him firmly. ‘I love working for Joss at Avalon. It’s the best job I’ve ever had, and I’ll do anything to keep it.’
Even pretending to understand about project management, she added mentally.
‘What does a wedding planner do all day?’
‘It could be anything,’ she said. ‘I might book string quartets, or find exactly the right shade of ribbon, or source an unusual cake-topper. I love the variety. I can be helping a bride to choose her dress one minute, and sorting out accommodation for the wedding party the next. And then, of course, I get to go to all the weddings.’
Jake made a face. He couldn’t think of anything worse. ‘It sounds hellish,’ he said frankly. ‘Don’t you get bored?’
‘Never,’ said Cassie. ‘I love weddings. I cry every time—I do!’ she insisted when he looked at her in disbelief.
‘Why? These people are clients, not friends.’
‘They feel like friends by the time we’ve spent months together planning the wedding,’ she retorted. ‘But it doesn’t matter whether I know the bride and groom or not. I always want to cry when I walk past Chelsea register office and see people on the steps after they’ve got married. I love seeing everyone so happy. A wedding is such a hopeful occasion.’
‘In spite of all the evidence to the contrary,’ said Jake astringently. ‘How many of those weddings you’re snivelling at this year will end in divorce by the end of the next? Talk about the triumph of hope over experience!’
‘But that’s exactly why weddings are so moving,’ said Cassie. ‘They’re about people choosing to love each other. Lots of people get married more than once. They know how difficult marriage can be, but they still want to make that commitment. I think it’s wonderful,’ she added defiantly. ‘What have you got against marriage, anyway?’
‘I’ve got nothing against marriage,’ said Jake. ‘It’s all the expense and fuss of weddings that I find pointless. It seems to me that marriage is a serious business, and you should approach it in a serious way, not muddle it all up with big dresses, flowers, cakes and whatever else goes on at weddings these days.’
‘Weddings are meant to be a celebration,’ she reminded him. ‘What do you want the bride and groom to do instead—sit down and complete a checklist?’
‘At least then they would know they were compatible.’
Cassie rolled her eyes. ‘So what would be on your checklist?’
‘I’d want to know that the woman I was marrying was intelligent, and sensible…and confident,’ Jake decided. ‘More importantly, I’d need to be sure that we shared the same goals, that we both had the same attitude to success in our careers…and sex, of course…and to little things like tidiness that can put the kybosh on a relationship quicker than anything else.’
‘You don’t ask for much, do you?’ said Cassie tartly, reflecting that she wouldn’t get many ticks on Jake’s checklist. In fact, if he had set out to describe her exact opposite, he could hardly have done a better job. ‘Clever, confident, successful and tidy. Where are you going to find a paragon like that?’
‘I already have,’ said Jake.
Oh.
‘Oh,’ said Cassie, unaccountably put out. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Natasha. We’ve been together six months.’
‘So why haven’t you married her if she’s so perfect?’ Try as she might, Cassie couldn’t keep the snippiness from her voice.
‘We just haven’t got round to talking about it,’ said Jake. ‘I think it would be a good move, though. It makes sense.’
‘Makes sense?’ echoed Cassie in disbelief. ‘You should get married because you’re in love, not because it makes sense!’
‘In my book, committing yourself to someone for life because you’re in love is what doesn’t make sense,’ he retorted.
Crikey, whatever happened to romance? Cassie shook her head. ‘Well, if you ever decide that doing a checklist together isn’t quite enough, remember that Avalon can help you plan your wedding.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ he said. ‘I imagine Natasha would like a wedding of some kind, but she’s a very successful solicitor, so she wouldn’t have the time to organise much herself.’
Of course, Natasha would be a successful solicitor, Cassie thought, having taken a dislike to his perfect girlfriend without ever having met her. She was tempted to say that Natasha would no doubt be too busy being marvellous to have time to bother with anything as inconsequential as a wedding, but remembered in time that Avalon’s business relied on brides being too busy to do everything themselves.
Besides, it might sound as if she was jealous of Natasha.
Which was nonsense, of course.
‘I certainly wouldn’t know where to start,’ Jake went on. ‘Weddings are unfamiliar territory to me.’
‘You must have been to loads of weddings, mustn’t you?’
‘Very few,’ he said. ‘In fact, only a couple. I lived in the States until last year, so I missed out on various family weddings.’
‘I don’t know how you managed to avoid them,’ said Cassie. ‘All my friends seem have got married in the last year or so. There was a time when it felt as if I was going to a wedding every other weekend, and that was just people I knew! It was as if it was catching. Suddenly everyone was married.’
‘Everyone except you?’
‘That’s what it feels like, anyway,’ she said with little sigh.
‘Why not you? You’re obviously not averse to the idea of getting married.’
‘I just haven’t found the right guy, I suppose.’ Cassie sighed again. ‘I’ve had boyfriends, of course, but none of them have had that special something.’
Jake slanted a sardonic glance at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still holding out for Rupert Branscombe Fox?’
‘Of course not,’ she said, flushing with embarrassment at the memory of the massive crush she had had on Rupert.
Not that she could really blame herself. What seventeen-year-old girl could be expected to resist that lethal combination of good looks and glamour? And Rupert could be extraordinarily charming when he wanted to be. He wasn’t so charming when he didn’t, of course, as Cassie had discovered even before Jake had kissed her.
Whoops; she didn’t want to be thinking about that kiss, did she?
Too late.
Cassie tried the looking-out-of-the window thing again, but London was a blur, and she was back outside the Hall again, being yanked against Jake again. She could smell the leather of his jacket, feel the hardness of his body and the unforgiving steel of the motorbike.
In spite of Cassie’s increasingly desperate efforts to keep her eyes on the interminable houses lining the road, they kept sliding round to Jake’s profile. The traffic was heavy and he was concentrating on driving, so she gave in and let them skitter over the angular planes of his face to the corner of his mouth, at which point her heart started thumping and thudding alarmingly.
It was ten years later. Jake had changed completely. The leather jacket had gone, the bike had gone.
But that mouth was still exactly the same.
That mouth…She knew what it felt like. She knew how it tasted. She knew just how warm and sure those firm lips could be. Jake was an austere stranger beside her now, but she had kissed him. The memory was so vivid and so disorientating that Cassie felt quite giddy for a moment.
She swallowed. ‘I had a major crush on Rupert, but it was just a teenage thing. Remember what a gawk I was?’ she said, removing her gaze firmly back to the road. ‘I have this fantasy that if I bumped into Rupert now he wouldn’t recognise me.’
‘I recognised you,’ Jake pointed out unhelpfully.
‘Yes, well, that’s the thing about fantasies,’ Cassie retorted in a tart voice. ‘They’re not real. I’m never likely to meet Rupert again. He lives in a different world, and the closest I get to him is seeing his picture in a celebrity magazine with some incredibly beautiful woman on his arm. Even if by some remote chance I did meet him I know he wouldn’t even notice me, let along recognise me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, I’m much too ordinary for the likes of Rupert,’ said Cassie with a sigh. ‘You were right about that, anyway.’
Jake looked taken aback. ‘When did I ever say you were ordinary?’
‘You know when.’ She flashed him an accusing glance. ‘After the Allentide Ball.’ After you kissed me. ‘Before you punched Rupert on the nose. I gather you took it upon yourself to tell Rupert I wasn’t nearly sophisticated enough for him.’
It still rankled after all these years.
‘You weren’t,’ said Jake.
‘Then why were you fighting?’
‘Not because Rupert leapt to defend your sophistication and readiness to embark on a torrid affair, if that’s what you were thinking!’
‘He said you’d been offensive,’ said Cassie.
‘Did he?’ said Jake with a certain grimness.
It was typical of Rupert to have twisted the truth, he thought. He had been sitting at the bar, having a quiet drink, when Rupert had strolled in with his usual tame audience. Jake had found Rupert’s arrogance difficult to deal with at the best of times, and that night certainly hadn’t been one of those.
Jake often wondered how his life would have turned out if he hadn’t been in a particularly bad temper that night. The raw, piercing sweetness of Cassie’s kiss at the Allentide ball had caught him unawares, and it didn’t help that she had so patently been using him to attract Rupert’s attention. Jake had been left feeling edgy, and furious with himself for expecting that it could have been any different and caring one way or the other.
And then Rupert had been there, showing off as usual. He’d been boasting about having had the estate manager’s ungainly daughter, and making the others laugh. Jake’s hand had clenched around his glass. He might not have liked being used, but Cassie was very young. She hadn’t deserved to have her first experience of sex made the subject of pub banter.
Rupert had gone on and on, enjoying his audience, and Jake had finally had enough. He’d set down his glass very deliberately and risen to his feet to face Rupert. There had been a chorus of taunting, ‘Ooohs’ when he’d told him to leave Cassie alone, but he’d at least had the satisfaction of wiping the smirks off all their faces.
Especially Rupert’s. Jake smiled ferociously as he remembered how he had released years of pentup resentment. The moment his fist had connected with Rupert’s nose had been a sweet one, and worth being banned from the village pub for. If it hadn’t been for that fight, Rupert wouldn’t have talked about assault charges, news of the fight wouldn’t have reached Sir Ian’s ears, and he wouldn’t be where he was now.
Oh yes; it had definitely been worth it.
CHAPTER THREE
‘IT’S my word against Rupert’s, I suppose, but I can tell you, I was never offensive about you,’ he said to Cassie. ‘And being ordinary isn’t the same thing as not being sophisticated. Believe me, you’ve never struck me as ordinary!’
‘But I am,’ said Cassie glumly. ‘Or I am compared to Rupert, anyway. He’s just so glamorous. Even you’d have to admit that.’
Jake’s snort suggested he wasn’t prepared to admit anything of the kind.
Of course, he’d never had any time for Rupert. Cassie supposed she could understand it. Rupert might be handsome, but even at the height of her crush she had recognised that arrogance in him as well. At the time, she had thought that it just added to his air of glamour.
The truth was that she still had a soft spot for Rupert, so good-looking and so badly behaved. In another age, he would have been a rake, ravishing women left, right and centre. Cassie could just see him in breeches and ruffles, smiling that irresistible smile, and breaking hearts without a flicker of shame.
Not the kind of man you would want to marry, perhaps, but very attractive all the same.
Cassie sighed a little wistfully. ‘Rupert could be very charming,’ she tried to explain, not that Jake was likely to be convinced.
They had barely got going on the motorway, and already overhead gantries were flashing messages about queues ahead. Muttering in frustration, he eased his foot up from the accelerator.
‘What’s so charming about squandering an inheritance from your parents and then sponging off your uncle?’ he demanded irritably. ‘Sir Ian got tired of bailing him out in the end, but he did what he could to encourage Rupert to settle down. He left his fortune to Rupert in trust until he’s forty, in the hope that by then he’ll have come to his senses.’
‘Forty?’ Cassie gasped. Rupert was only in his early thirties, like Jake, and eight years would be an eternity to wait when you had a lifestyle like Rupert’s. ‘That’s awful,’ she said without thinking. ‘What’s he going to do?’
‘He could always try getting a job like the rest of us,’ said Jake astringently ‘Or, if he really can’t bring himself to do anything as sordid as earning his own living, he can always get married. Sir Ian specified that the trust money could be released if Rupert gets married and settles down. He can’t just marry anyone to get his hands on the money, though. He’ll have to convince me as trustee that it’s a real marriage and his wife a sensible woman before I’ll release the funds.’
‘Gosh, Rupert must have been livid when he found out!’
‘He wasn’t too happy,’ Jake agreed with masterly understatement. ‘He tried to contest the will, and when he didn’t get anywhere with that he suggested we try and discuss things in a “civilised” way—which I gather meant me ignoring Sir Ian’s wishes and handing the estate over to him to do with as he pleased.
‘I was prepared to be civilised, of course. I invited him round for a drink, and it was just like old times,’ he went on ironically. ‘Rupert was arrogant and patronising, and I wanted to break his nose again!’
‘You didn’t!’
‘No,’ admitted Jake. ‘But I don’t know what would have happened if Natasha hadn’t been there.’
‘What did she make of Rupert?’
‘She thought he was shallow.’
‘I bet she thought he was gorgeous too,’ said Cassie with a provocative look, and Jake pokered up and looked down his nose.
‘Natasha is much too sensible to judge people on their appearances,’ he said stiffly.
Of course she was. Cassie rolled her eyes as they overtook a van that was hogging the middle lane, startling the driver, who gave a grimace that was well out of Jake’s field of vision. The van moved smartly into the slow lane.
‘So how come she got involved with you if she’s so sensible?’ she asked, forgetting for a moment that Jake was an important client.
