‘Years ago, when I was young and stupid, the last thing I wanted was a girlfriend, but then, when Ruby got with Nick, I realised I was just a man in his thirties going out to bars, refusing to grow up. Is there anything sadder?’
‘You essentially picked me up in a bar,’ I remind him.
‘I saw you sitting there alone and I felt sorry for you,’ he says. ‘Then, after we chatted for a bit, I realised that, not only did I like chatting to you, but you seemed like a bit of a loner too. OK, sure, I noticed you because you were beautiful, but can you honestly tell me you’ve seen this playboy Millsy you keep banging on about?’
‘You thought I was beautiful and yet you immediately got me to change my hair colour,’ I say.
‘That’s not true,’ he insists. ‘You wanted to change. I wanted to make you happy.’
‘Don’t think I didn’t notice that the colour you picked out for me was the same colour hair your ex had.’
‘She was blonde the last time I saw her – I told you at the time I almost didn’t recognise her. You’re really going to have to try a lot harder than this if you want to avoid falling in love so desperately.’
I smile.
‘OK, last shot,’ I start. ‘When we were at my bosses’ wedding, and I told you that you could flirt with whoever you wanted, and you immediately went off and hit on the bride…’
‘You were so adamant that you wanted me to chat-up other women,’ he tells me. ‘So, I was walking to the toilets, and there was a girl walking past me, so I asked her if I could buy her a drink. My plan was to bring her back to you and hope that you realised that you didn’t like me talking to other women. In hindsight, it was a crap idea, and I should have chosen someone other than the bride…’
‘So when we slept together…’
‘I thought that was it,’ he replies. ‘I thought that was us finally getting together. You thought it was just us hooking up?’
‘I did,’ I confess.
‘Cara, for months now, it’s been all about you. I haven’t looked at other girls. I’ve stopped going out. I just want to spend my days with you, and my nights with you. I want you to go everywhere with me. I want you to stop me killing dogs. I want you ruining all my family parties – it will be nice to have someone to hate Jay with. Just think how much fun it will be when there’s two of us. We could have framed him for the gender-reveal balloon thing!’
I laugh.
‘Do you really think the two of us can be together?’ I ask.
My usual hopeful feeling is bubbling up inside me but I’m too scared to let it take hold. I want to be with Millsy more than anything but… can we really be together?
‘We are together,’ he tells me. ‘It just takes a while to realise sometimes.’
I’ve heard it said before that you finally find the one for you when you stop looking, or that you usually find your perfect person right under your nose all along. I feel as if Millsy ticks both these boxes. I wasn’t looking for love with him when I met him, and I certainly didn't think I was going to find it. I don’t think he did either though. Perhaps that’s how you know when things are right. When they just effortlessly click into place.
‘Does your face hurt too much to kiss me?’ I ask him.
‘My face will never hurt too much to kiss you,’ he replies. ‘Come here.’
Millsy picks me up, lifting me high in the air. As we kiss I wrap my legs around his waist and squeeze him tightly. You know when something just feels right? This feels right.
‘Let’s head back in,’ Millsy says. ‘I don’t want to sound hysterical but, if my face is red, I might need to put some ice on it.’
‘What happens next?’ I ask him. ‘With us, not with your face.’
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘We just carry on as we were, I guess, maybe we share a bed more often.’
‘Just… life as normal?’ I say. ‘Sounds kind of boring for us.’
‘Well, you know Fran’s baby is going to be born any day, so there’s going to be a christening soon.’
‘And it will be Christmas before we know it – that usually involves a lot of parties,’ I add with a smile.
‘Imagine if I get the part in the movie and we get to go to the premiere – just think of the havoc we could wreak there.’
‘Sounds great,’ I reply.
‘See,’ Millsy says. ‘We’re going to be just fine.’
As we turn a corner Millsy grabs me and kisses me again, this time pinning me up against the wall.
‘Oh, I’ve just put my hand in something wet,’ he says, taking a step back.
We both glance next to us to see a large white wedding cake with a big, man-sized handprint pressed into the side of it.
‘Oh, God, here we go,’ Millsy says.
‘Don’t worry,’ I reassure him. ‘I have a plan…’
Acknowledgments
Massive thanks to Nia and Amanda for being such a dream to work with. The entire Boldwood team is absolutely fantastic. I know how fortunate I am to be on board.
As always, thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and review my books, it means so much to me that you enjoy them. It’s been so much fun revisiting Millsy, Ruby and Nick, who I first wrote about in my novel Truth or Date.
Thank you to my amazing family. Kim and Aud, you're both incredible. Joey and James, thank you so much for all your support. Thanks to my fiancé, Joe, as always, for absolutely everything. I love you all so much and I couldn't do any of it without you.
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Chapter One
My Wedding Day
Your wedding day is the start of a life-long journey, and, like any other journey, it requires a lot of planning.
First, and most importantly, you need to know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Are you on a one-track path to growing old together or are you planning on making stops at pets, babies or house moves?
On a real trip you’re going to want insurance, but on the life-long journey of marriage, assurance is what you need. Are you doing this with the right person? Will they stand by you for better, for worse? For richer, for poorer? In sickness and in health?
When your plans are all in place and it’s time to set off on this wonderful, wild adventure, the only thing left to do is pack – but pack light.
Unfortunately, on this non-stop flight to a happy ever after, ex-boyfriends will not fit in the overhead storage, no matter how much you dissected the relationship. All baggage must be destroyed before boarding – you absolutely cannot bring your baggage into a marriage.
Before you tie the knot, customs will confiscate any and all contraband still on your person, not limited to, but including flirtatious WhatsApp threads and other miscellaneous weaponry.
I’m travelling light today. All I have with me is my something old (a necklace my grandma left me in her will), my something new (the sapphire studs in my ears), and my something borrowed (a handkerchief from my mum, which I’m going to keep in the pocket of my wedding dress, because you’d better believe I had my wedding dress made with sneaky pockets). My something blue is (apparently) my best friend, Ali, who is currently lying on the chaise longue at the bottom of my bed in my hotel room.
‘Oh, Lila,’ she says dramatically. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
I smile at myself in the mirror. Most best friends are supportive, attentive maids of honour. Ali is showing me her love and support by constantly questioning whether or not this is the right thing to do. I wouldn’t have
her any other way though.
‘I’m pretty sure,’ I tell her. ‘I made sure I was sure before I spent thousands of pounds on a wedding and a honeymoon.’
‘Well, yeah, I figured,’ she replies. ‘But… I don’t know, I don’t think I thought you’d go through with it.’
I laugh.
‘And yet here we are,’ I say, smiling at her.
‘Daniel is… you know, he’s fine,’ she says.
‘Fine,’ I repeat back to her. Just what a bride wants to hear on her wedding day.
‘Yeah, he’s fine… he’s maybe just fine though?’
My best friend hasn’t waited until my wedding day to say this, she’s been telling me for years that Daniel was just too boring to settle down with. I think this is a ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ type conversation, not that the latter sounds remotely like something Ali would do.
‘I know you think he’s boring,’ I tell her. ‘But, maybe “boring guys” are the ones you settle down with? Take that playboy banker you met last weekend – you wouldn’t marry him, would you?’
‘Well, someone clearly did,’ she points out. ‘There was a wedding ring in his hotel bathroom.’
‘Was?’ I dare to ask.
‘Yeah, I flushed it down the lav,’ she says casually. ‘I really don’t appreciate being lied to.’
Ali is a real force to be reckoned with.
‘I know you’re only being semi-serious with the whole talking me out of getting married thing,’ I start. ‘But honestly, I’ve thought this through. I love him, we’re happy together – OK, things might not be wild, but I know in my heart that it’s time to put sexy playboy bankers behind me.’
‘Well, that’s what I do with them,’ Ali says with a wiggle of her eyebrows.
I know that Ali just wants me to be happy, but I did consider all of this before agreeing to marry my fiancé, Daniel Tyler, and when I say I considered it before agreeing, I mean I literally asked him for a moment, before I gave him my answer. The reason for this is because marriage is something I take seriously. My parents, both sixty-five years of age, have been married since they were nineteen. I might be thirty-one, but I want to marry once, and for life. I had a blast in my twenties, Daniel and I moved in together when I was twenty-nine and now, comfortably accepting of the fact I am in my thirties, I finally feel ready to tie the knot.
When some women say they have been planning their wedding for years, what they really mean is they’ve been dressing up in net curtains as kids and trolling Pinterest for flower arrangements as adults. Well, I really have been planning weddings for years… sort of. Not my own wedding and I’m certainly not a wedding planner.
I’m a rom-com author and although the weddings I work with may be fictional, I haven’t just planned a lot of them – I’ve ruined a lot of them too. I’ve written ten books now, so it’s pretty safe to say I’ve considered every possible triumph, every little hiccup and every epic fail my romantic yet devious mind can conjure up.
So, yes, while I have researched flowers, cakes and dresses, and tweaked them accordingly (pockets! Honestly, this is going to be a game changer), I don’t just know what this wedding needs, I know what it doesn’t need too. Obsessing over what flavour frosting to have is rather silly – that’s just the icing on the cake. What you should be worrying about are the things that are out of your control.
I have essentially reverse-engineered every single wedding I’ve ever written, to make sure that my real wedding is perfect. It’s kind of a genius move.
I know for a fact that Daniel’s Auntie Susan and his Auntie Carole hate each other – and I mean hate each other. I also know that Ali would flip out if she knew that Alex, her ex-boyfriend, had been invited to the wedding. But thanks to my choice of venue – and, more specifically, room – they’ll probably never see each other. I know that neither of his aunties likes to dance and I’ve put them at opposite ends of the room, with multiple pillars blocking their view of each other. The same strategy will work for Ali and Alex, although I have had to get a little creative with some balloons to keep him out of her sight. So, he might not have the best view of the speeches, but he’d thank me if he knew it was saving him from having to pick pieces of his jaw out of his salmon. And then it’s only a matter of time. Once Ali has had enough to drink, and my girl drinks, she won’t even recognise him – hell, she’ll probably try and flirt with him.
There’s a knock on the hotel door. I glance over at Ali, who looks back at me expectantly.
‘Erm, can you open it?’ I ask her.
She pulls a face, like a lazy teenager who doesn’t want to tidy their room. You’d never know she was a hugely successful literary agent (although not mine, I hasten to add).
‘I’m in my underwear still,’ I point out.
I’ve had my hair and make-up done, now I’m just waiting for my mum to turn up with my dress. Ali is completely ready; she isn’t going to flash anyone if she answers the door. Although I suspect she might if they were hot.
‘Fine, fine,’ she replies, carefully pulling herself to her feet in her bridesmaid dress. She looks absolutely smoking in the bright red dress she selected for herself to wear today. Her long blonde hair extensions cost more than my mobile phone, but I can’t help but marvel at how real they look. My own real long blonde hair definitely looks real, but not in the way you’d want it to – it’s more like the kind of real where a little sunshine or rain will make it fizz up like a bath bomb, which is why I’ve opted for one sleek-looking fishtail plait today.
During the wedding planning stage there was this whole conversation, involving some of our friends, about whether or not it was appropriate to wear a bright red dress to a wedding – especially if you were a bridesmaid. I just wanted my bridesmaids to be happy and if Ali wanted to wear a red dress, then I wanted her to wear a red dress too. I’m sure I should be in tears, worrying about my wedding aesthetic, or that my friend might upstage me, but I’m not. I’m just happy.
Ali reluctantly opens the door. She lets in my mum and my sister, Mandy. They both look as if they’ve just stepped off a roller coaster.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, turning around on my dressing-table stool.
‘Something has happened,’ my mum says solemnly.
‘What?’ I prompt. A dramatic build-up is a plot device, not an appropriate way of delivering bad news in real life.
Mandy steps to one side, to reveal my three-year-old niece, Ruby, standing behind her.
Ruby is my flower girl. She also insisted she wanted an up-do like her mum, so I had her golden blonde curls wrapped around a flower crown. I say ‘had’ because her crown appears to have vanished and her curls look so wild, I don’t know how we tamed them in the first place.
‘Oh, my God,’ I shriek, before placing one hand on my chest and the other over my mouth.
‘Sis, I’m so sorry,’ Mandy starts. ‘I left her in the gardens with June, but I suppose she was too busy swiping on bloody Tinder to keep an eye on her, and she got attacked by a bloody bee!’
‘It was on my head,’ Ruby explains sheepishly.
June is our nineteen-year-old cousin. I don’t think she’s looked up from her iPhone since she was fourteen. A terrible choice for a babysitter, for sure.
‘You all need to relax,’ I say, giving up my faux-devastated act. ‘It’s fine, Ruby looks beautiful as she is. I don’t care if she has a flower crown – she’s a kid, I’m surprised she kept it on this long.’
‘Lila Rose, what have I told you about being sarcastic?’ my mum ticks me off as she recovers from the fright.
I keep telling them all not to worry so much. I have all the bases covered. Nothing is going to go wrong today. I’m certainly not going to have a meltdown because a three-year-old can’t keep flowers in her hair.
‘Don’t you mean Lila Tyler?’ my sister says.
‘Lila Tyler,’ Ali says mockingly. ‘Lila Tyler, Lila Tyler.’
OK, I admit, it isn’t an ideal
married name, and I’ve always been so fond of Lila Rose because it’s not only a beautiful name, but it sounds as if I was born to be a romance writer. But if Lila Tyler is what my new name is going to be, then that’s what it’s going to be. I may as well get used to it.
‘Well, crisis averted,’ I say. ‘Is it time to put my dress on yet?’
I am so excited to finally be able to wear my dress. Other than a few times trying it on, putting my hands in the pockets, dancing around in front of the mirror, I really don’t feel as if I’ve been able to enjoy it yet.
‘Yes,’ my mum replies. ‘Sorry, it’s in my room. I’ll go fetch it.’
‘And I’ll break a brush in this one’s hair,’ Mandy says, nodding towards Ruby.
‘I want my flowers,’ Ruby says.
‘You get them for the ceremony,’ her mum tells her.
‘No, my hair flowers. I want my hair flowers.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have taken them off and left them in the garden,’ Mandy replies.
Ruby pouts.
‘Well, I can’t have a moody flower girl, can I?’ I say playfully. ‘I’ll go get them for her.’
‘You’re getting ready,’ Mandy says. ‘Don’t be crazy.’
‘It’s fine,’ I insist. ‘She wants them.’
And I want everything to be fine, so if Ruby wants her flowers, I’ll go get them, and if it’s easier if I do it myself, then I’ll do it. There really, really isn’t any need for things to go wrong today.
‘Thanks,’ my sister says. ‘She was by the fountain.’
I grab my black tracksuit from on top of my bed, hop into my trackies, zip up my hoodie and head downstairs to retrieve Ruby’s crown from the large angry bee that allegedly coerced her out of it.
I chose the Victoria Hotel for my wedding – a stunning, (unsurprisingly) Victorian building, tucked away in its own private woodland – because it was close to London, but easily accessible from the north of the country, with lots of rooms so Daniel’s family and friends could travel down from Yorkshire and stay the night. Seriously, I am leaving no room for complaints, from either side of the family.
The Plus One Pact Page 24
