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‘It’s not as simple as that. Alistair’s covering another cycling race in a few weeks’ time. We’re meant to be having a break before it starts because it’s pretty full-on. I’m flying out to the States, meeting some of his friends and family, relaxing for a couple of weeks. It’s all been arranged.’
She looked down at her coffee cup because she couldn’t bear the disappointment on Adam’s face.
Adam had never made her feel insignificant. Any inability to measure up was her failing, not his. And she was the one who let it bother her.
‘Then there’s no problem! Bring Alistair to the wedding,’ Adam said, clapping his hands together excitedly. ‘You’ve already said he’s got time off from work. The guy’s probably got a private jet. You could zoom in and zoom out on the same day if you had to.’ He made a soaring aeroplane motion in the air with his hand.
She suppressed a mirthless laugh.
‘You mean introduce him to Mum and Dad? A whole new person for Mum to drive insane?’ She narrowed suspicious eyes at him. ‘It would certainly take the heat off you and Ernie.’
He held his hands up.
‘You’ll have to introduce him at some point anyway. OK, so you might travel with him for a while, maybe even settle in the States with him, but you’ll have to come home to visit, won’t you?’
She didn’t answer. Visiting wasn’t something she’d thought about much in her excitement about getting away. It hadn’t crossed her mind that she’d be missed that much.
‘Bloody hell, Em.’
She sighed. She couldn’t say no to Adam any more than the rest of the world could. He just had that gift.
‘It’ll be a nightmare if I bring Alistair,’ she said. ‘Mum will be all over him like a rash, demanding marriage and grandchildren and mentioning my biological clock. He’s a free spirit. He’ll run a bloody mile.’
Adam was on the comment like a shot.
‘Then you definitely should bring him. You’re talking about leaving your whole life behind to be with him—don’t you think he ought to prove himself a bit before you take that kind of plunge? If he’s really the guy you think he is—if he’s really going to put you first above everything else in his life—then he’ll love you no matter what crazy relative you introduce him to, right?’
She couldn’t help latching on to that thought—that desire for a level of regard where she would come absolutely first with someone for a change. Was that what this was really about? Was she afraid to bring Alistair to the wedding because of some stupid subconscious conviction that he might see through her? Might see that she really was a plain and inferior mousy girl, despite all the years she’d put in on breaking away from that persona?
‘He does love me,’ she insisted, mainly to bat away the prickle of unease that had begun in her stomach. It was all Adam’s fault for questioning her perfectly laid plans.
‘Great. Then put your man where your mouth is. Introduce him to Mum and watch him prove it.’
* * *
Dan clicked his phone off with ill-suppressed irritation.
Cancelling a working lunch at a moment’s notice was extremely bad form. Focused to a pinpoint on work performance himself, he found it difficult to tolerate lateness or bad planning in others. Especially when it meant he’d interrupted his day to turn up at a restaurant when he could have eaten lunch on the run or at his desk.
He gave the menu an uninterested glance and was on the point of calling for the bill for the two drinks he’d ordered while waiting for the no-show client when he saw Emma cross the restaurant. A waiter showed her to a table by the window and she sat down alone, so engrossed in scrolling through her phone that she didn’t even notice he was in the room.
The news that she was leaving seemed to have given him a new heightened perspective, and he picked up on tiny details about her that had simply passed him by before. He saw her objectively for once, as someone else might. Alistair Woods, for example. This time his gaze skimmed over her usual business dress when previously it would have stopped at observing the sharply cut grey suit. Instead he now noticed how slender she was. How had he never picked up before on the striking contrast of her double cream skin with her dark hair? The ripe fullness of her lower lip? When you had reason to look past the sensible work image she was unexpectedly cute. He’d been so busy taking her presence for granted he’d failed to notice any of those things.
Maybe this lunchtime wouldn’t be a total waste of time after all. Dealing with her on the phone had been a bad choice. A face-to-face meeting might be a better approach to talking sense into her.
He picked up his drink and crossed the room towards her. His stomach gave a sudden flutter that made him pause briefly en route to the table—then he remembered that it was lunchtime. He was obviously just hungry, and since he was here maybe he should take the chance to grab a sandwich as well as a drink and a smoothing-over session with her. Not that his appetite had been up to much this last week or so.
‘Dan!’
Her eyes widened in surprise as he slid into the seat opposite her and put his drink down on the table. She glanced quickly around the restaurant, presumably for a waiter.
‘Really glad I bumped into you,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to say no hard feelings about the other night.’
A smile touched the corner of her lips, drawing his eyes there. She was wearing a light pink lipstick that gave them a delectable soft sheen.
‘The other night?’ she said.
‘The charity ball.’
‘I hadn’t realised there could be hard feelings,’ she said, toying with her water glass. ‘It was just a work arrangement we had after all, right? Not like I broke off a date, is it?’
She held his gaze steadily and for the first time it occurred to him that it might take a bit more than sweet-talking for him to regain the advantage between them. His own fault, of course. He was judging her by the standards of his usual dates, who seemed to fall over themselves to hang on his every word. Emma was a different ball game altogether. Taking her for granted had been a mistake.
He gestured to the waiter for a menu.
‘How did it go, then?’ she said.
‘How did what go?’ he evaded.
‘The charity ball?’ she said. ‘No-expenses-spared Mayfair hotel, wasn’t it? Who did you take?’
‘Eloise,’ he said shortly.
She had to bring it up, didn’t she? When what he’d really like would be to erase the entire evening from history.
‘Which one’s that?’
She cranked her hand in a come-on gesture and looked at him expectantly until he elaborated.
‘She’s a leg model,’ he said. ‘You know—tights, stockings, that kind of thing.’
The woman had the best legs in the business. Unfortunately she was entirely defined by that one physical feature. Tact, sense and reliability didn’t come into it.
‘Did you make any new contacts?’ Emma said. ‘Normally charity bashes are great for networking, aren’t they? Perfect opportunity for a shared goal, loads of rich businessmen?’
‘Normally they are,’ he said. ‘But normally I have you with me, oozing tact and diplomacy and class.’
It had been kind of hard to hold a professional conversation with Eloise’s arms wound constantly around his neck like a long-legged monkey. The one time he had begun to make headway with a potential client she’d returned from the bar with two flutes of pink champagne and positioned herself between them by sitting on his lap.
He watched Emma carefully, to see if his compliment had hit its mark, and was rewarded with the lightest of rosy blushes touching her high cheekbones. Hah! Not so easily dismissed after all. A proper in-depth talk about her whirlwind plans and he was confident he could sow a few seeds of doubt. From there it would be a short step to convincing her to stay put, reinstating their working agreement, getting things back to normal.
He was giving her a quick follow-up smile when he realised her eyes were actually focused somewhere over his shoulder and the blush had nothing to do with him. A wide smile lit up her face and suddenly she was on her feet, being drawn into a kiss by a tall blond man with a deep golden tan and perfect white teeth. No matter that he was wearing a sharply cut designer suit and an open-necked silk shirt instead of clinging Lycra cycling shorts and a helmet. He was instantly recognisable—by Dan and by the room at large.
Alistair Woods was on the premises.
The surrounding tables suddenly appeared to be filled with rubberneckers. Clearly basking in the attention, he offered a wave and a nod of greeting to the tables either side of them before sitting down—as if he was a film star instead of a has-been athlete. Dan felt an irrational lurch of dislike for the guy, whom he’d never met before but who clearly made Emma brim with happiness.
Jealous? his mind whispered.
He dismissed the thought out of hand. This wasn’t about jealousy. Emma was clearly star-struck and on the brink of making a rash decision that could ruin her working life and her personal life before you could say yellow jersey. If anything, he would be doing her a favour by bringing her back down to earth.
‘Alistair, this is Dan,’ Emma said, taking her seat again, her hand entwined in Alistair’s. ‘Dan, this is Alistair Woods.’
She glanced pointedly at Dan.
‘Dan happened to be here meeting someone,’ she said. ‘He just came over to say hello.’
She didn’t want him to join them. It couldn’t be clearer.
‘Heard a lot about you, friend,’ Alistair said in a strong American accent, stretching in his seat. ‘You’re the platonic plus-one, right?’
Of all the qualities he possessed that Emma could choose to reference him by she’d chosen that. Just great.
‘Did you get my phone message?’ Emma asked Alistair eagerly. ‘I know it means rejigging our plans a little, but I just can’t let my brother down. It’s his wedding day. And it’ll be a good chance for you to meet my family.’
She was taking Alistair to Adam’s civil partnership ceremony?
Dan felt a deep and lurching stab of misplaced envy at the thought of this guy slotting neatly into his recently vacated place—fake though it might have been—in regard to Emma’s family. OK, so they were opinionated and mouthy, and in her mother’s case that translated as being downright bigoted at times, but he’d never felt anything but welcomed by them, and their simple mad chaos had been something he’d enjoyed.
An unhappy flash of his own childhood rose in his mind. His mother, hardly more than a child herself. No father—at least not in any way that mattered to a kid. Plenty of ‘uncles’, though. He hadn’t been short of those. And plenty of random babysitters—friends of his mother’s, neighbours, hardly the same person twice. What he wouldn’t have given for an interfering nosy mother at the age of thirteen, when babysitters had no longer been required and he’d been considered old enough to be left home alone.
He dismissed the thought. Things were different now. He’d learned to rely only on himself, without influence from anyone else. Maggie had been the one time he’d deviated from that course, and it had turned out to be an agonising mistake that he had no intention of repeating. He had no need for family. Past or future.
‘Got your message, baby, but there’s no way we’re going to be able to make the gay wedding,’ Alistair said.
Dan watched Emma’s smile falter and suppressed an unexpected urge to grab Woods by the scruff of the neck.
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I can’t miss Adam’s wedding. I promised him.’
Dan recognised her tone as carefully neutral. She was upset and trying to cover it up. Did this Alistair know her well enough to pick up that little nuance? Hardly.
* * *
Emma took a sip of her coffee in an effort to hide her disappointment. Had she really thought it would be that simple? That he would just agree to her every whim?
‘We’re spending that weekend in the Hamptons,’ Alistair was saying. ‘I’ve been in talks to land a movie role and one of the producers is having a garden party. Can’t miss it. Lots riding on it. I’m sure Arnold will understand. Career first, right?’ He leaned in towards her with a winning expression and squeezed her hand. ‘We agreed.’
His career first.
‘Adam,’ Emma corrected. She could hear the disappointment, cold and heavy, in her own voice. ‘His name is Adam. And I really can’t miss his wedding.’
Alistair sat back and released her hand, leaving it lying abandoned in the middle of the white tablecloth. His irritation was instant and palpable, and all the more of a shock because he’d never been anything but sweetness and light so far. But then, she hadn’t demanded anything from him so far, had she? She’d been only too eager to go along for the ride. His ride.
‘You do whatever you have to do, baby,’ he said dismissively. ‘You can fly out and join me afterwards.’
‘But I really wanted you to be there, to meet my family.’
‘Sorry, honey, no can do.’
Alistair turned to the waiter to order a drink. She noticed that Dan was looking at her with sympathy and she looked away. Everything was unravelling and it was a million times worse because he was here to witness it. She tried to muster up an attitude that might smother the churning disappointment in her stomach as her high hopes plummeted.
From the moment she’d met Alistair he had made her feel special, as if nothing was too much trouble for him. But it occurred to her that it had only related to peripheral things, like flowers and restaurants and which hotel they might stay in. Now it had come down to something that was truly important to her he hadn’t delivered the goods. It wasn’t even up for discussion. Because it clashed with his own plans.
Disappointment mingled hideously with exasperated disbelief. She felt like crashing her head down despairingly on the table. Would she ever, at any point in her life, meet someone who might actually put her first on their agenda? Or was this her lot? To make her way through life as some lower down priority?
‘Look, I don’t want to interfere,’ Dan said suddenly, leaning forward. ‘But how about I step in?’
* * *
‘What do you mean, step in?’ she asked, eyes narrowed.
Suspicion. Not a good sign, Dan thought. On the other hand Alistair was looking more than open to the suggestion.
Dispensing with Alistair to some swanky party on a different continent was far too good an opportunity to pass up. All he needed to do was step into Alistair’s shoes as Emma’s date and he’d have a whole weekend to make her rethink her actions and to get the situation working for him again.
‘I got my invitation to the wedding this morning,’ he said, thinking of the gaudy card that had arrived in the post, with ‘Groom & Groom!’ plastered across the front in bright yellow, very much in keeping with Adam’s usual in-your-face style.
‘You’ve been invited?’ she asked with obvious surprise, as if their interaction had been so fake that all the connections he’d made with her family were counterfeit, too. But he genuinely liked Adam—they’d always had a laugh.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So if Alistair is away working I can fill in if you like—escort you. It’s not as if I haven’t done it before. What do you think?’
She stared at him.
‘For old times’ sake?’ he pressed. ‘I’m sure Alistair won’t mind.’
He glanced at the ex-cyclist, who held his hands up.
‘Great idea!’ he said. ‘Problem solved.’
Emma’s face was inscrutable.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she snapped. ‘And actually, Dan, if you don’t mind, we could do with a bit of time to talk this over.’
She looked at him expectantly and when he didn’t move raised impatient eyebrows and nodded her head imperceptibly towards the door.
All was no longer peachy with her and Mr Perfect and that meant opportunity. He should be ecstatic. All he needed to do was leave them be and let the idiot drive a wedge between them, because one thing he knew about Emma was that her parents might drive her up the pole but Adam meant the world to her. Yet his triumph was somehow diluted by a surge of protectiveness towards Emma at Alistair’s easy dismissal of her. He had to force himself not to give the smug idiot a piece of his mind.
He made himself stand up and excused himself from the table.
Give the guy enough leeway and he would alienate Emma all by himself. Dan could call her up later in the role of concerned friend and reinstate their agreement on his own terms.
* * *
Bumped to make room for Alistair’s career?
Her mind insisted on recycling Adam’s comments from the day before. ‘Don’t you think he ought to prove himself before you take that kind of plunge?’ Was it really so much to ask?
The insistent ‘case closed’ way Alistair had refused her suggestion told her far more about him than just his words alone, and it occurred to her in a crushing blow of clarity. How had she ever thought she would come first with someone who had an ego the size of Alistair’s? An ego which was still growing, by the sound of it, if he was trying to break into the movies.
