by Jill Mansell
Merde, thought Sebastian as he turned and headed for the parking lot. I’m making the kind of excuses used by married men and I don’t even have a wife…
Frozen by fear and uncertainty into briefly suspended animation, Natalie waited too long at her table inside the café. By the time she got outside, her quarry had disappeared from sight. Then she noticed a sign indicating an underground parking lot adjacent to the bank and realized that to have vanished so quickly, he must have gone to retrieve his car.
What goes in must come out, she thought, dragging her dark glasses out of the pocket of her scarlet denim jacket and realizing as she ran toward the exit that her palms were damp. This was it. Any moment now, she would be talking for the first time to her father. That was, if he didn’t run over her first.
* * *
Sebastian swore again—in German this time—and had to brake sharply to avoid the young girl who had stepped into the path of his Mercedes. Half these kids were on drugs nowadays. What the hell was the matter with her? She was standing right in front of him, staring intently through the tinted windshield as if it were all his fault she had nearly been hit.
Irritably, he lowered his window. “You’re asking for trouble, young lady, wearing those ridiculous glasses in this weather. Now move out of my way; I’m in a hurry.”
Since he had addressed her in German, Natalie didn’t understand a word, although his abrupt tone was less than encouraging. Feeling her heart thumping at a heavy, funereal pace, she said in English, “Are you Sebastian Adams?”
“Why?” he demanded suspiciously.
She flinched, shifting from one foot to the other as she struggled to remember what she had planned to say next. “I’m sorry I jumped in front of your car, but I have to see you, speak to you. It’s very important.”
For a wild moment, Sebastian had wondered if she were some kind of terrorist. Now, somewhat reassured, he peered more closely at this clearly apprehensive, olive-skinned girl who spoke with a north-country English accent and who was wearing a cheap jacket, torn jeans, and a red-and-white baseball cap. At the same time, however, he was pretty sure her white silk shirt was from Dior and that her very dark glasses were also extremely expensive. She looked faintly familiar too. Maybe, despite her scruffy teenage appearance, she was a client of the bank.
“I can’t possibly see you now, and the bank is closed,” he explained with slightly less abruptness. “Why don’t you phone my secretary tomorrow morning and make an appointment. If it really is urgent, I could probably fit you in after lunch.”
He was very good-looking in a chiseled, elegant way. Natalie, devouring every detail, realized that he must be very fit; not an ounce of fat contaminated his lean, muscular frame. The sports bag on the passenger seat bore witness to that fact. But his gray eyes and forbidding expression still terrified her.
She took a deep breath and tried again. “It isn’t about business. This is a very personal matter. Please, it’s raining. Couldn’t I sit in your car?”
Now he looked frankly startled. Then, for the first time, she saw a ghost of a smile hover around his mouth. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you,” he said slowly, “not to sit in cars with strange men?”
Emboldened by the oh-so-faint smile and the unwitting perfection of his cue, Natalie took the plunge. Removing the dark glasses that she had borrowed from Roz, she grinned engagingly back at him.
“My mother is Roz Vallender,” she told Sebastian. “And you aren’t a strange man; you’re my father. So I think under the circumstances it would be OK, don’t you?”
Chapter Fifty-One
“Just look at the two of you,” cried Loulou, bursting into the sitting room and finding Camilla and Rocky sitting disconsolately at opposite ends of the sofa. Rocky, his liquid brown eyes piteously mournful, thumped his tail against one of the silk cushions. Camilla didn’t even turn around.
“Has Rocky done something terrible?” said Loulou, glaring at him.
Finally, Camilla shook her head. “I’m being depressed. He’s just keeping me company, that’s all.”
“Well, don’t expect me to,” declared Loulou, then put her arms around Camilla. “But you can tell me what’s made you depressed, if it’ll help. It isn’t Roz, is it?”
“No.” Camilla managed a faint smile. She wasn’t going to confess her confused feelings for Nico to Loulou, whose ability to keep secrets was on par with her recent choice in men. No, this particular secret was one she had to keep entirely to herself, but Roz’s revelation earlier had hit her hard. Everything that had passed between her and Nico seemed cheapened now; it was probably his standard patter for persuading women into bed. Her fragile ego had been cruelly battered, and with that had come a renewal of all her old insecurities. This afternoon, she had felt lonely and horribly alone. The coming-to-terms with that sensation, which she had hoped she was finally beginning to master, was clearly not yet complete. The situation wasn’t helped either by the fact that she was no longer working. When Matt had died and she had retreated to Scotland to come to terms with her grief, Zoë had taken over the day-to-day running of Sheridan’s on a purely temporary basis. Upon returning to London, however, Camilla had realized that she was no longer needed. The agency was continuing to flourish. And having already decided that she wanted to be able to spend more time with her children—and Marty—it had been with some relief that she had passed her share of the business over to Zoë.
The arrangement had suited both of them, and Camilla had reveled in her newfound freedom, but on days like today, she almost wished she still had something concrete upon which to concentrate. Anything would be better than this awful, endless self-recrimination…
* * *
“I know,” said Loulou sympathetically, assuming that Camilla was upset about Matt, and waving at Lili as she waddled into the room wearing nothing but a smile and one blue sock. “You don’t have to tell me. But I can try to cheer you up, can’t I? Christo and Laura are getting engaged tomorrow night, and it’s Laura’s twenty-first birthday. Her family is holding a massive party at their home in Bath. I’ve just phoned Roz at the studios and she doesn’t want to go—she’s too wound up about Nat at the moment—but she suggested that we stay at her cottage that night. Good idea?” She gazed challengingly at Camilla, daring her to refuse.
“Well…”
“It’ll cheer you up,” wheedled Loulou, lifting Lili onto her lap and kissing her bare shoulders.
Camilla thought about it. Refusing Loulou was going to be far more difficult than giving in gracefully, she realized. And parties one didn’t want to go to were almost always better than those to which one looked forward. “OK,” she agreed with reluctance. “It’ll be a change of scenery, anyway.”
“And lots of new, uncharted men,” said Loulou serenely. “What more could two desperate, single old women possibly wish for?”
* * *
Sebastian Adams had always led an immaculately controlled life. He was the most organized person he knew, and he took great pride in that fact. His body, his career, his home, and his social life were just as he liked them, just as he had made them, and when a woman had once told him he was chasing perfection, he had taken it as a compliment. Imperfection, in Sebastian’s logical eyes, was quite simply an unforgivable waste of time.
Which was why he was so totally thrown by the sudden appearance in his ordered world of Natalie.
To say that this was a situation he wasn’t prepared for had to be the understatement of the century. And simply as a defense mechanism at first, he had refused to even contemplate the idea that what this young girl was telling him might be true. Fixing her with his most imperious glare, then gunning the engine of his car with quite uncharacteristic ferocity, his immediate instinct had been to pretend that she hadn’t even spoken and to simply drive off and leave her.
As if guessing his intention, Natalie had stepped calml
y once more in front of the car. Unable to believe the incredible nerve of the girl, Sebastian had jammed his foot down on the accelerator, revving wildly but moving forward only a couple of inches. Despite his panic—engendered by the fact that what was happening now was something over which he did not have total control—he had been forced to register admiration for her steadfastness. She wasn’t going to move, not even if he did run her over. And there was no fear in her eyes at all. All he had seen there was that astonishing, nerve-racking likeness to Roz.
And now here she was, he thought, still wary but at the same time curious. She had appeared in his life just a couple of hours ago, and he still didn’t have a clue why he had allowed her to do so.
Although appeared wasn’t the right word, he considered as he sipped his iced Perrier and watched her gnawing the end of a chicken bone. She had erupted rather than appeared, and even in this short space of time, the evidence of that eruption was all around him—the gold canvas bag spilling its contents onto the dark-blue carpet, dark glasses rakishly adorning a prized Art Deco figurine. Yet, strangely, their presence bothered him less than he would have imagined, just as Natalie’s own incongruous appearance irritated him marginally less now than when he had first seen her. That spiky, wet-gelled hair suited her elfin looks, and her jeans, although faded and torn, were actually very clean. Really, he considered as if from a great distance, she looked perfectly OK. But then maybe, he amended with habitual care, he was still in deep shock.
“Look, this has to be some kind of mistake,” he said for the second time.
Unperturbed, Natalie grinned. “Of course it was a mistake. Roz didn’t get pregnant on purpose, did she? No fifteen-year-old would.”
Irritated by the way she was deliberately twisting his words, Sebastian glared at her. “You know precisely what I mean. It’s obvious that you’re Roz’s daughter, but why should I believe you when you tell me that I’m the father?”
“My father,” corrected Natalie, more seriously now. “I’ve explained all that as well. You really aren’t paying attention. Roz didn’t tell me; she hedged and prevaricated and kept changing the subject. I only found out because I overheard her talking to Camilla.”
Sebastian, though loathe to admit it even to himself, had to concede that Natalie’s reasoning was entirely logical. “But she could have been lying even then,” he persisted, clinging to the vestiges of his organized bachelor existence like a convict on death row praying for a reprieve. In his heart, he knew already that it was all over. “She might have been lying to her friend.”
“Now you listen,” said Natalie firmly, and he realized afresh that she wasn’t even afraid that he would refuse to acknowledge her. “And I mean really listen to me. If you aren’t my father, can you think of any reason on earth why she has never ever even told you that she gave birth to me? She knew you didn’t want children so she kept it a secret from you, but if I had been anyone else’s child, it wouldn’t have made any difference to you, at all. So you’re my father—you know it and I know it and it’s about time you bloody well accepted the idea.”
Sebastian stared at her in amazement. Several seconds ticked by. He couldn’t find the words, so he nodded. She was right. The game of hide-and-seek was up. And maybe it wasn’t quite as disastrous as he had thought it was going to be, after all.
“Why don’t you have a proper drink?” suggested Natalie kindly, nodding at his glass of Perrier as if she could read his mind. “And I’ll have a Malibu and pineapple juice, if you’ve got it.”
It was then, quite unexpectedly, that Sebastian started to laugh. The women he entertained in his elegant apartment invariably drank chilled dry wine and were careful not to crease their clothes. Suddenly, the utter absurdity of the contrast between them and this scruffy, untidy urchin struck him as incredibly funny.
It crossed his mind that he really should phone Danielle and tell her that their dinner date was canceled, but with uncharacteristic carelessness, he dismissed the thought, rose from his seat, and disappeared into the kitchen.
When he returned, he was carrying a dark-green bottle upon which was balanced the red-and-white baseball cap.
“You really recognized me today from a photograph taken when I was seventeen?” he asked.
Natalie nodded earnestly and continued to chew the last remnants of her chicken leg. “Really. You don’t look all that different, only…well, older. But not much,” she amended at great speed, anxious not to offend her father. “In fact, hardly any older at all.”
“Thank you,” said Sebastian, his voice grave as he flung the baseball cap onto the table and expertly uncorked the Bollinger. “I don’t normally drink champagne on a Friday, but since you’re here, I think maybe we ought to be doing a bit of celebrating…”
* * *
Laura Scott’s parents lived in a far grander house than either Camilla or Loulou had imagined. As their taxi snaked along the wide, tree-lined drive, they saw a vast Georgian mansion glittering with lights loom ahead of them. Dozens of cars littered the graveled driveway, and plenty of people were milling to and from a massive blue-and-white-striped tent set up on the lawn to one side of the house.
“Christo didn’t say it would be like this,” whispered Loulou as they paid off the cab. “Bloody hell, some of them are in dinner jackets. And to think I almost wore my jeans.”
“To think that we were going to bring a couple of bottles,” exclaimed Camilla, trying not to laugh.
As they made their way through the hall, toward a vast room crammed with people they didn’t know, they overheard one very done-up blond say to her friend, “The very worst thing any woman can do when she gets married is let herself go. She should always dress up, wear makeup and perfume—then her husband won’t be suspicious when she has an affair. Suddenly, splurging on silk underwear after spending months in nylon knickers and thermal shirts is the very worst giveaway.”
“Which is why I never wear knickers at all,” said Loulou clearly, gliding serenely past with her head held high. Then she winked at Camilla. “It’s going to be that kind of party, by the sound of it.”
Eventually, they located Christo and Laura. Never having seen her before in anything more exotic than tracksuit trousers and one of Christo’s enormous Fair Isle sweaters, Laura was a shock. Encased in white chiffon with her brown hair swept up she looked, whispered Loulou, “very High Society, very Tatler.” Christo, who had clearly been coaxed with extreme reluctance into a dinner jacket, looked decidedly shell-shocked by comparison.
Loulou hugged him with such enthusiasm that the silver combs holding her long hair in a precarious topknot loosened and slipped to the floor. “You look beautiful,” she assured him.
Christo pulled a wry face. “You’ll hate me when I tell you what I’ve done. Mac dropped into Vampires yesterday evening. He offered to do our wedding photos. I had to invite him here tonight, darlin’. After all, he has been a good friend to me over the years. You both have.”
Loulou’s face dropped. “He’s here with Cecilia?”
“Cecilia’s in Paris. Mac’s coming here alone.” Christo shrugged helplessly at the mass of people around them. “Or he may already have arrived—I had no idea it was going to be like this. When Laura told me that her father had always worked in factories, I didn’t realize that he owned the damn things…”
Camilla watched Loulou metamorphose before her very eyes. Never one of life’s moths, and already striking in a Russian-style black-and-white embossed leather dress by Fendi, fitted jacket, black stockings, and high heels, she seemed now to grow a couple of inches. Her gray eyes grew large and brighter, her cheeks suffused with color, and her shoulders straightened. Even the scent of her perfume appeared to become stronger as adrenaline coursed through her bloodstream.
“I hope Mac’s being here won’t spoil the party for you,” continued Christo, his Irish accent becoming more pronounced with anxiety
, “but I couldn’t not invite him, could I now?”
“I’ll be fine,” Loulou assured him, bending to retrieve her silver combs from the polished parquet floor. “I’d better go to the loo and sort my hair out. Back in two minutes, Cami. See if you can find us some drinks, OK?”
Straight-faced, they watched her disappear up the winding staircase. Camilla gazed at Christo for several long seconds.
Christo cracked first. “Oh, OK,” he said with a huge smile. “Maybe Mac told me that Cecilia had gone to Paris before I invited him down here.”
“It might be a disaster,” warned Camilla, trying to control her own rising laughter. “It’s very brave of you to risk it.”
Hugging Laura to his side, he shrugged once more. “But it may just work out, you know. They’re crazy about each other—any fool can see that.”
“Except themselves,” said Camilla.
“We’re so happy together,” explained Laura, touching Christo’s cheek with tender fingers, “that we want everyone else to be happy too. And a little collusion doesn’t go amiss, sometimes. Christo would have run a mile when he first met me, if I’d told him about Daddy’s money. Sometimes you have to fib a bit to get what you really want in life.”
“And it’s about time you had a bit of happiness yourself,” Christo told Camilla with mock severity. “Since I’m at present sorting out the troubles of the world, we’ll have to see if we can’t find a handsome gentleman to lift your own spirits. When I’ve done my duty meeting everyone I’m supposed to meet tonight, I’ll introduce you to a few likely candidates.”
