by Jill Mansell
“You’re only his sister. How can you possibly understand?” Linda was sticking obstinately to her guns. The other evening with Sean had been one of the most wonderful of her life. “He made me feel so alive, so special…”
“It’s a gift he has.” Cleo knew she had to be brutal. “Some people can play the piano, some can do card tricks. Sean’s talent is for making girls feel special.”
“Ahem,” coughed the nervous organizer behind her. “Miss Mandeville, we’re ready for you in the dressing room if you’d like to come with me?”
Linda, who was trying to be assertive, was finding it hard going. “OK, so maybe lots of girls are mad about him,” she blurted out in desperation, “but he has to fall in love and settle down some time. Why not with me?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Exasperated beyond belief, Cleo shouted, “What’s he done, brainwashed you or something? What about Pandora?”
“Who?” Linda began to shake. “Who’s Pandora?”
“Oh, come on! The girl Sean lives with.” Cleo glared at the cringing organizer, then returned her attention to Linda. “The one who’s about to have his baby.”
“No,” Linda whimpered, violet eyes wide with disbelief. “You aren’t serious.”
“You mean you don’t know? It’s been in all the papers!”
Linda, before her, was deflating like an old balloon. The taffeta frock crackled once more as she sank into a chair at the side of the stage.
“I don’t read the papers. Only Vogue and Harper’s.”
This was true. Cleo, kicking herself for not having realized that Linda hadn’t known about Pandora, put her arms around her.
“I’m sorry I shouted. This is all bloody Sean’s fault. This time, I’m really going to kill him.”
Linda’s mascara was running freely down her face. Cleo hugged her again.
“Cheer up. At least you haven’t had time to get properly involved.”
Linda gave her a mournful look. “Haven’t I?”
Cleo sighed. “Oh dear. Did he seduce you?”
“We went out to dinner. That’s all.” Hiccupping, Linda took the handful of tissues thrust at her by the agitated organizer. “Nothing else happened. Sean didn’t seduce me.”
Maybe not physically, thought Cleo, but mentally, he did. “I tried to warn you about him.”
Linda nodded. “What’s she like, this Pandora? Who is she?”
“Pandora’s…nobody.” Cleo didn’t mean to be cruel; she was simply stating a fact. “She’s just very, very nice. And she made the mistake of getting involved with my brother.”
Chapter 34
Unable to kill Sean, who was—luckily for him—working in Scotland, Cleo decided to visit Pandora instead. Feeling guilty on her appalling brother’s behalf, she popped into Harrods beforehand and spent an hour choosing a silk dressing gown in glorious sunset shades of Venetian red and saffron yellow for Pandora to wear when she went into the hospital. It was a poor substitute for a faithful partner, but it might just lift her spirits. And, thought Cleo, it was a damn sight better than that terrible gray-blue terry thing she had spotted hanging up in the bathroom the last time she’d called around.
“It’s beautiful,” sighed Pandora, who wasn’t overfond herself of the blue dressing gown Joel had given her for Christmas two years ago. It had never recovered from being chucked by him into the washing machine on a ferociously hot wash along with four sets of oily mechanics’ overalls.
“Those colors really suit you.” Cleo was pleased with her final choice.
“You shouldn’t have bought it.” Surreptitiously glancing at the label, Pandora tried not to think how much this new robe must have cost.
Of course I should, thought Cleo. It’s to make up for my brother being a shit.
Aloud, she said brightly, “You have to have something decent to wear in the hospital. Why are you breathing like that?”
“Like what?”
“Pulling a funny face and kind of holding your breath.”
“Oh hell, is that what I’m doing?” As Pandora spoke, it began to happen again. With a sinking heart, she realized why.
Awestruck, Cleo gasped. “Is this…it? Is this…labor?”
“Looks like it. Typical, just when Sean isn’t here. Oh, help—”
“Don’t panic. I’m here.” Cleo, who hadn’t the faintest idea what giving birth entailed, assumed an expression of importance and guided Pandora into a chair. “Shall I start boiling saucepans of water?”
“Stick some spaghetti in.” Pandora’s breathing eased as the contraction receded.
Cleo looked alarmed. “In where?”
“The water, silly.” Smiling, Pandora nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “In my how-to-have-a-baby book, it says you’re supposed to eat lots of pasta when you go into labor. To give you energy.”
Cleo, who wasn’t domesticated, said, “I could phone our local Italian restaurant and ask Luigi to send something around.” She wrinkled her nose. “Just think, all that puffing and panting on top of all that garlic. You’ll have the doctors dropping like flies.”
* * *
Joel hadn’t the faintest idea what to expect either when he arrived at the hospital three hours later. Having run red lights, cursed every other driver on the road, and abandoned the Bentley in a loading zone when he couldn’t find a parking space, it came as something of an anticlimax to find Pandora alone, sitting up in bed, flipping through a pile of magazines, and watching MTV on a portable color television.
“Hi,” said Joel, kissing her anyway and trying to hide his disappointment. “I thought women having babies clung to the headboards, swore nonstop, and bit chunks out of people’s hands, and here you are looking perfectly normal.” He peered at the copy of Cosmopolitan lying open across her lap. The article was titled “Sixteen New Positions for Sizzling Summer Sex.” “Should you be reading that?”
Pandora closed the magazine—well, she could dream, couldn’t she?—and put it to one side.
“I haven’t bitten any hands yet. It only hurts every few minutes. In between contractions,” she said with a look of apology, “I’m fine.”
“And what’s this, some new kind of hospital robe?” Joel rubbed the silk sleeve experimentally between thumb and forefinger. He frowned. “Why aren’t you wearing your own dressing gown?”
Pandora, bracing herself as another contraction began to take hold, didn’t have the energy to fib.
“This one was a present from Cleo. She came around to the house at lunchtime.”
“Oh well, fine.” Joel, who had been just about to admire the design, said tightly, “You may as well throw your old one away then…if Cleo’s given you something better.”
Beads of perspiration sprang out on Pandora’s forehead. Trying to breathe through the swelling wave of pain, she gasped, “Don’t be childish. Cleo was the one who brought me to the hospital. She’ll be back in a minute. She’s just gone to the cafeteria for a coffee.”
“I’m here.”
Cleo, standing in the open doorway, gazed across at Joel.
Joel stared back.
“Phew,” Pandora sighed as the contraction died away. That had been a strong one. Now all she had to do was introduce Joel and Cleo. Or rather, reintroduce them.
“I know who you are,” Cleo suddenly announced. As if she could forget. It had been one of the most interminable evenings of her life.
“I know who you are too.”
“But…you’re Pandora’s brother?”
“Such powers of deduction,” Joel murmured beneath his breath. “Look out, Sherlock.”
He was sitting on the edge of the bed. Pandora kicked him, hard.
“Look, I’m sorry. This is my fault.” She turned to Cleo. “I didn’t quite have the nerve to tell you.”
“I can’t believe it,�
� said Cleo, still looking at Joel. “You…”
“OK, let’s get one thing straight.”
Joel stood up. Pandora, watching them both, thought, This is like the gunfight at the OK Corral.
“I wasn’t trying to chat you up that night,” Joel said heavily. “I know you thought I was, but I wasn’t. Damien Maxwell-Horne is a liar and a crook. I felt you should be warned off him.”
“I knew what he was.” Cleo’s brown eyes glittered. “He was cheating on the mother of a friend of mine. My job was to prove it, which I did.” With a shudder, she added, “I was never…involved with him. Ugh, credit me with some taste.”
When she looked again at Joel Grant, Cleo saw the cautious beginnings of a smile hovering around his mouth.
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“He told us he’d had to dump you,” said Joel, “because you were frigid.”
“He what? The lying weasel!”
“Um,” said Pandora hesitantly, “could someone please call a nurse?”
Joel shrugged. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t try to warn you.”
“He really said that?” howled Cleo, beside herself with rage. “And you believed him, I suppose.”
“Could someone call a nurse please?”
“Damn right I believed him.” Joel was grinning now. “He said you were an uptight, frigid bitch, and—”
“Shut up!” Pandora yelled, realizing that the time had come to start cursing and biting hands. “Get a nurse in here now! Tell them my water broke—”
“Yeeuurgh,” Cleo squealed.
“Oh dear.” Joel tried not to laugh. “All over your new dressing gown too.”
* * *
Banished from the delivery suite by both Pandora and the senior midwife—“Now, now, you two, how on earth is the poor girl supposed to concentrate with all this bickering going on?”—Joel and Cleo retreated to the hospital cafeteria.
Nurses, doctors, and technicians came and went, gossiping over shepherd’s pie and mugs of thick Indian tea, snatching a few minutes of much-needed sleep, or sipping from cans of Coke and eating salad sandwiches while poring over textbooks to help them through the next exam.
But if most of the hospital staff noticed and instantly recognized Cleo Mandeville, with her distinctive crop of short, bright-blond hair, glittering, dark eyes, and Slavic cheekbones, Cleo didn’t notice them. All she could concentrate on was Joel, Pandora’s brother, the man who had so annoyed her all those months ago and whom she had never been able to successfully put out of her mind since.
He had been wearing a faded green rugby shirt last time and battered jeans. Now, having come to the hospital straight from work, he wore a well-cut dark-blue suit over a blue-and-white-striped shirt. Nice tie, thought Cleo. Good shoes too. Nice hair, good body…great body…
Discovering that her initial impression of Joel Grant had been so entirely off took some adjusting to.
“I can’t get used to this,” Cleo told him when he returned to their table with two cups of coffee. “I thought you were such a pig that night.” Severely, she added, “Although I still don’t approve of the fact that you were happy enough to let Damien buy the drinks. If you hate someone that much, you shouldn’t accept drinks from them.”
“Happy? I was ecstatic,” Joel retorted. “That man is forever pushing himself into conversations, getting himself included in big rounds, then disappearing before there’s any danger of having to buy one back. He’d never been known to open his wallet before. His meanness is legendary. Damn right we were going to let him buy us a drink!”
Cleo sighed. “I didn’t know that. I just despised you. I’m sorry.”
“That’s OK.” Grinning, Joel stirred three teaspoons of sugar into his coffee. “I felt just the same about you. You didn’t help much either, with that fairy godmother act the other week.”
“What fairy godmother act?”
“Buying up most of Harrods.” The time had come, Joel realized, to be frank. “All those lacy, frilly, hand-embroidered baby things. Way too much stuff—and most of it dry-clean only. I know how much that little spree must have set you back. I decided you’d done it deliberately, to show us just how much we couldn’t afford.”
Cleo’s eyes blazed with indignation. “Well, excuse me for being rich! Can I help it if I make silly money? And choose to spend it on people I like?”
“No, but—”
“Anyway,” said Cleo, “think how you’d have reacted if I’d turned up with a couple of lousy sleepers. I can just imagine the kind of names you’d have called me then.”
Of course he would. The coffee was disgusting. Joel pushed it to one side.
“OK, so you aren’t as horrible as I thought you were.” He pulled a face. “Unlike this coffee.”
Cleo sighed. “I suppose you aren’t either.”
For several seconds, they gazed at each other in silence. Cleo, never normally at a loss for words, could feel something strange happening in her chest. It was like a giant moth battering frantically against her ribs.
She looked away first, shocked to realize how violently attracted she was to Joel Grant. He wasn’t in the least her type; years of modeling meant she was used to chiseled, physically perfect men with bodies like panthers and—far too often—the brains of a six-year-old. None of them had ever made Cleo’s insides feel like this.
It was a shock feeling it now. Joel might be good-looking in his own big, blond way, but he was never likely to be mistaken for a model. The hair needed a cut, he could probably do with losing a few pounds around the middle, and those shoulders were too broad even for someone of his great height.
But none of these minor faults mattered in the least. Cleo liked them because they were part of Joel, just as she liked his broken nose and the way the bags under his eyes were accentuated by that crooked, irreverent smile.
All the attraction she had been unable to summon up for gorgeous, eminently fanciable Dino Carlisle had been saving itself, she now realized, for a different kind of man altogether.
Her mind was wandering so happily in this new and unexpected direction that Cleo had almost forgotten where she was. Bringing her back to earth with a thump, Joel said, “So what will happen, do you suppose, when this baby’s born?”
“It’ll scream a lot. And look like a fried tomato.”
“I’m talking about Sean. Be honest with me now. Is your brother messing my sister around?”
Cleo sighed. “Probably. Although he is trying not to. Some people are naturally…good, I suppose. And some aren’t.”
“If he hurts Pandora,” said Joel, “I’ll kill him.”
“I’ve already told him that.” Cleo thought unhappily of Linda, who had had the narrowest of escapes. The only truly effective answer seemed to be to put Sean into permanent quarantine.
“Maybe actually having the baby will settle him down.” Joel didn’t sound convinced.
“Maybe.” Cleo glanced at her watch. “Speaking of actually having the baby, perhaps we should go and see how Pandora’s getting along.”
Joel looked squeamish. “How long do these things normally take?”
“How long’s a piece of umbilical cord?” said Cleo.
Chapter 35
Not at all sure he wanted to be there for the actual coming-out but feeling morally obliged to pretend he did, Sean had responded to Cleo’s phone call earlier by canceling that evening’s show and dutifully catching the Edinburgh-to-London shuttle.
Having rather hoped the whole messy business would be over and done with by the time he reached the hospital, he was horrified to find himself being seized and catapulted through the doors of the delivery suite by Cleo, Joel, and an alarmingly burly midwife.
“Just in time,” gasped Cleo, who appeared to have picked up a tremendous amount of jargon in the last few
hours. “She’s into the second stage now…fully dilated and bearing down nicely.”
“Here, you’ll need the sponge.” Joel pushed it into Sean’s hand.
“What am I supposed to mop up? Blood?” Sean went white. “And what the hell’s the second stage when it’s at home?”
“It means the baby’s about to arrive.” The midwife, almost as big as Joel and twice as disapproving, marched Sean through a second swing door. “As you would know, young man, if you’d bothered to attend a single prenatal class. Now get yourself in there, and start making yourself useful. Mop that poor girl’s brow.”
It was half past midnight when Sean staggered into the waiting room.
“Well?” Cleo and Joel demanded in unison when he didn’t speak.
“It’s a girl.” Sean was shell-shocked. “Seven pounds five ounces. All the bits in the right places…”
“A girl!” Beaming like an idiot, Cleo leapt up and hugged him. “Oh, that’s fantastic. What’s her name?”
“Hell, I forgot to ask,” murmured Sean.
Joel stared at him in disbelief. “What?”
But Sean had already fainted into the nearest chair.
* * *
“This is so weird,” Cleo sighed. “Look at us. Whoever would have thought it?”
They were back at his apartment now. Joel obligingly looked at her, stretched across the sofa with her bare feet resting in his lap. Her blond hair was slicked back from her unmade-up face, the black cashmere sweater she wore had holes in both elbows, and her well-worn jeans were splattered with dried mud, yet she was still the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Whoever would have thought it indeed? Joel still found the events of the past week hard to believe. It was more than weird as far as he was concerned. It was downright scary.
The fact that Cleo didn’t seem to have had so much as a moment’s doubt about the situation was the scariest aspect of all.
Could she really feel this way, Joel kept asking himself, about someone like him? OK, maybe it wasn’t exactly Beauty and the Beast—he wasn’t that awful—but it was still the Supermodel and the Used-Car Salesman.
