Bad Company

by PJ Adams

  I was nervous, in a crowd of mostly strangers and distant acquaintances.

  I was feeling flustered after a difficult journey and finally arriving at this little chapel in the middle of nowhere later than I’d intended – I hate not being in control.

  I was unsettled by the rush of mixed emotions in my head. I was about to see my big brother again after far too long; despite following him across the Atlantic to England we’d drifted ever farther apart over the last couple of years.

  I was thrown by the realization that his best man was Charlie, the ex who could still wrap me around his posh little English finger after all this time.

  Under these circumstances a girl can surely be forgiven a lapse into cliché. No?

  §

  I’d driven for nearly four hours to reach this remote little Norfolk chapel. It had taken far too long to escape the tangle of London traffic, and even longer driving through the winding East Anglian lanes trying to find the place.

  Deep breath, Trudy. I was here. I’d made it on time.

  I stood outside the chapel and straightened my three-quarter length Anoushka G dress. Deep cornflower blue, with scooped neck-line and a lily fascinator pinned to my long auburn hair, even I’d admit that I felt good in my wedding outfit.

  I realized I was falling back on coping strategies I’d developed in my teens: a constant interior monologue of commentary and pep talks.

  You look good, Trude.

  That dress will make up for all sorts, and you can get away with those sucky-in Magic Knickers you bought in desperation, because you just know you’re the only one who’s ever going to see them.

  Nice shoes, by the way.

  Whatever it takes.

  I recognized a few of the faces of the guests milling around in the churchyard. They were Cambridge buddies of Ethan’s. When I’d first come over from New Haven, I’d hung out with him in his college halls for a few weeks before landing my temporary job at Ellison and Coles, a wonderfully quaint traditional publisher with offices just off Covent Garden, right in the heart of London.

  As we waited to enter the chapel, people smiled at me and nodded, but they were all in their own little groups and no one seemed particularly interested in me. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t in any mood for small talk, just yet. Instead, I checked my cell phone, only to find that there was no signal. I opened my mail just the same, and glanced through emails I’d already downloaded.

  “You’ve got signal? Or are you just bluffing so you look busy even though you’re here on your own and nobody’s talking to you?”

  I didn’t look round. I didn’t have to.

  “Bastard,” I said softly.

  “But a good-looking bastard, right? You always did say that I scrubbed up rather well.”

  I turned. Honey-blond hair, sharp blue eyes, and the way the tuxedo and neatly pressed pants hung on his lean body... I took a deep breath and tried not to find him attractive.

  Charlie didn’t look a day older than when I’d last seen him over a year before, ducking a flying ash tray as he backed out of the Islington apartment we’d shared back then.

  “Last time I saw you–”

  “You were a lousy shot. I only ducked to make you feel better about your aim. See? Even then I was looking out for you, babe.”

  “I only missed because I didn’t want blood on the carpet. It was deliberate.”

  “You preferred that dent in the door?” The ash tray had made a nasty gouge in the wood-panel door on impact. I’d never got round to fixing it: my little memento of the year with Charlie.

  “Okay, so I misjudged that one. I should have hit you with it.”

  “You look good, Trude.”

  “Too damned right I do. You think I’d come to my brother’s wedding and look like shit?”

  I was smiling by then. Our arguments went like that: they either got more and more intense or we’d end up laughing and wondering what we’d been fighting about.

  “It’s been a long time, Trude.”

  I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. He smelt of Issey Miyake and cigarettes.

  “Shouldn’t you be inside with Ethan? I assume he’s turned up?”

  “Fresh air break,” said Charlie, tapping the cigarette-box-shaped bulge in the breast pocket of his tuxedo. “You know how it is.”

  “Haven’t you given that stuff up yet?”

  “Everyone’s got their vices, Trudy. Even you.”

  I raised one eyebrow and fixed him with a hard stare until he was forced to look away. If the occasional vodka and tonic too many and a tendency to over-stretch my credit cards on Karen Millen and Jimmy Choo were vices, then yes, Charlie had a point, but he was pushing it.

  I looked around again. The chapel was set in a stand of pine trees, a short distance from a sprawling country house, all tall windows and mock classical columns. The landscape was so flat here: fields stretching away to another line of dark pine trees, and the sea beyond. I don’t think I’d ever seen a landscape so haunting, so weighted down with sadness.

  “I need a drink,” I muttered. I don’t know why I was so tense. There was no bad feeling between me and Ethan; we just hadn’t seen each other for a while. A bit of awkwardness, that was all.

  “Later, Trude. Later.”

  “So how did my brother end up getting married in a place like this? Does all this belong to her family? Is that it?”

  One further element of embarrassment was that I’d never actually met Ethan’s fiancée, Eleanor.

  I didn’t know much about her at all. Very English, was how Ethan had described her on the phone, way back when they’d just started to realize they were getting serious. An English rose, Trudy. Can you believe that? Me, with my very own English rose?

  I thought he was a bit scared then, feeling out of his depth with this girl and her landed family and their English ways.

  “Family with money,” said Charlie. “It’s all about who you know. Connections.”

  That was when it happened. My Jane Austen moment. My cliché.

  My attention was snagged by movement in the chapel doorway and I turned, thinking Ethan must be emerging and now was the time for me to go and hug him and sweep away the distance that had grown between us.

  Instead, it was a guy I’d never seen before.

  He was in a tux, this newcomer. He was about six foot, and his shoulders were square, almost as if he was wearing a quarterback’s shoulder pads. He was either an athlete or he spent far too much time looking after himself in the gym.

  So: first impression was okay, but nothing to write home about.

  And then... that Jane Austen moment.

  He peered around, as if lost, and then his eyes fell upon me. It was almost as if he recognized me, as if he’d been waiting all his life for me... but then realized he was mistaken, he didn’t know me at all – exactly that kind of double take.

  He looked away, and then glanced back.

  His eyes were dark, but when they settled on you it was as if you’d been fixed by a hawk. A raptor, eyeing his prey.

  I shook myself, made myself look away. I couldn’t believe I was actually blushing.

  Eyes meeting across a crowded gathering.

  It was a cliché. I was flustered by my late arrival and by the tense undercurrents of the occasion.

  That’s all it was.

  Nothing more.

  And yes, perhaps I protest too much.

  (continues...)

  More information and purchasing links for The Object of His Desire are available from the author's website.

  Four Temptations

  Four inter-locking story lines in one short novel: three women... one pivotal night... four temptations...

  1. The Tipping Point: Rebecca's husband has walked out, leaving his best friend Simon to pick up the pieces. Rebecca has never seen Simon as anything other than a friend until now; certainly not as a lover. But now the seed of possibility has been sown, should she? Shouldn't she? And can she even re
sist?

  2. Words of Love: Is Rebecca's friend Maggie really considering getting back together with her old flame two years after a vitriolic break-up? Does even a small part of her believe that they can make it work this time round?

  3. The Other Woman: Ellie is in her early twenties. She's slim and blonde, she has perfect cheekbones, big blue eyes, perfect shape, legs to die for. She's Rebecca?s worst nightmare and her husband?s wet dream.

  4. A Woman Scorned: They say revenge is best served up cold. Maybe. In Rebecca Swaine's experience revenge is best served up in a public place with a large glass of Pinot Gris. A steamy, passionate story of love and revenge.

  Three women... one pivotal night: Four Temptations.

  Stories of passion, risk and love. Explicit erotic romance from the bestselling author of The Object of His Desire and The Wings of Desire.

  More information and purchasing links for Four Temptations are available from the author's website.

  © PJ Adams 2014

  Published by James Grieve Press

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  Cover image © Konrad Bak