She was shaking her head.
‘We don’t want the same things, Dan. We’re fundamentally mismatched. If I’ve managed to salvage one thing from the stupid mess with Alistair it’s that I know I want to be with someone who puts our relationship first, above anything else. Above some stupid dream of a film career.’ She paused. ‘Above a crazy work ethic.’
‘I want us to be together.’
‘Back at the wedding...what you said about me and Adam...’ She looked down at her fingers. ‘You told me I liked living in Adam’s shadow. That I was wallowing in always being the one who didn’t measure up. And you were right. Knowing I’d be perceived as a failure was the perfect excuse for not trying things, for staying safe. All this time—right back since school, where it felt like nothing I did was right—I’ve been living in Adam’s shadow, and somewhere along the way I learned to prefer it. It made everything easier. Doomed not to measure up, so why bother trying?’
‘But you’ve done brilliantly at work. You’re sought after. You do a great job.’
She shook her head, a rueful smile touching her lips.
‘The one area I knew I could succeed at, yes. That was a safe bet, too. I made sure I picked a job that doesn’t depend on other people’s perception of you for success. And something as far removed from Adam’s work as possible. I don’t even think it was a conscious decision—it was more of an instinctive self-preservation thing that I’ve been cultivating since I was a stupid, oversensitive teenager.’
She looked up at him then and the look in her eyes wrenched at his heart.
‘I even deluded myself, Dan,’ she said. ‘I thought the single most essential thing, if I was to find someone, was for them to put me first for once. That was my bloody dating criteria, for Pete’s sake! Being important to someone. Anyone.’
She threw a hand up.
‘Alistair would’ve done. An idiot like him! If he’d carried on treating me like a princess I’d probably still be there with him, feeling smug and telling myself I was happy with that self-centred moron. I was missing the point completely. The person I really want to be important to is myself. I never thought I was worthwhile, but it was easier to put that on other people. I thought I could get self-esteem by keeping away from my parents, moving to London, fobbing them off with a fake life of the sort I thought I should have. But all along that was part of the problem. I liked my fake life better than my real one, too. I never really wanted to be me.’
‘I want you to be you,’ he said. ‘There’s not one single thing I’d change about you. Not even your obsessive overpacking for one weekend, which fills me with horror at what you might be like to actually live with—how much stuff you might bring into my life. I’ve never wanted anything more. I was scared. Too scared to give our relationship everything I’ve got because I didn’t want to risk losing it. My track record sucks. I couldn’t afford to buy into it completely because I couldn’t bear to lose you.’
He reached a hand out and tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. She reached for his hand, caught it and held it against her face. But her eyes were tortured, as if she were determined to stick to her decision regardless of how much it hurt.
‘What about kids?’ she said quietly, and his heart turned over softly. ‘What about your glass furniture and your bachelor pad and your determination never to have a family of your own? Because that stuff matters, Dan. I’m only just starting to find myself here, but what if I want to have kids in the future? Are you going to run for the horizon?’
A smile touched his lips at that, but her face was deadly serious. Inside his spirits soared.
‘I never thought I’d have another chance at family,’ he said. ‘I know I’ve built a life that reflects that, but it’s all window dressing—all peripheral stuff that I’ve built up to convince myself as much as anyone else that I’m living the bachelor dream. Truth is, the bachelor dream is pretty bloody lonely. I want to be with you—whatever that involves.’
The thought of a future with her by his side, the possibility of a family of his own with her, filled him with such bittersweet happiness that his throat constricted and he blinked hard and tried to swallow it away.
‘So what are you suggesting?’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘Another crack at the plus-one agreement, just with a few more terms and conditions? Maybe with me living in?’
He shook his head, looked into her eyes in the hope that he could convince her.
‘The agreement is dissolved,’ he said. ‘It’s over—just like it should have been after that weekend. Months before that, even. I was just looking for a way to keep seeing you that held something back.’ He paused. ‘But by doing that I’ve undervalued you. I didn’t know until I lost you that I’d taken that risk already. Trying to keep some distance couldn’t change that. I love you, Emma. I’m in love with you.’
Silence as she looked into his eyes, except for the faint sound as she caught her breath. The guarded expression didn’t lift.
‘That’s all very well, but you’ve got your business to think of. I’m going travelling. I’m doing something for me for a change. I want my life to go in a different direction. I don’t want to end up some bitter, twisted woman trying to live my kids’ lives for them because I’ve done such a crap job at living my own life that I’m totally dissatisfied with it. You can’t just expect me to throw in the towel on all my plans because you’ve decided you want to give our relationship a proper go. Not after everything that’s happened.’
‘I don’t expect you to back out of all your plans. I’ll come with you.’
She laughed out loud at that and he realised just how entrenched his work ethic had seemed to the outside world.
She shook her head. ‘That’s never going to work and we both know it. What would happen to your business? You can’t even leave it alone for a weekend without carting your laptop and your damn mobile office with you. You’re the biggest work control freak in the universe.’
She stood up then and his heart dropped through his chest.
‘I’ll do delegation for you!’ he blurted.
‘You’ll what?’
She looked back at him, her nose wrinkled, amusement lifting the corner of her mouth.
‘I’ll delegate. For you, I’ll delegate. Give me a few weeks to promote someone to manager and do a handover and then I’ll fly out and join you. Doesn’t matter where you are—you choose the itinerary. We’ll have a sabbatical together.’
A moment passed during which he was convinced he’d lost her, that there was nothing he could do or say that would persuade her.
He stood up next to her, took her hand in his, tugged her back down onto the seat beside him. The fact that she went willingly he took as a positive sign. At least she wasn’t running for the boat without hearing him out.
‘Please, Emma,’ he said. ‘I know how it sounds. I know I haven’t got a great track record when it comes to taking time off work. But this is different. This isn’t just some holiday. This is you. You’re more important to me than the business. You’re more important to me than anything.’
She looked down at his hand in hers, tentative happiness spreading slowly through her. He was ready to put her first. And she knew how much that must cost him after what had happened to him in the past. He’d spent the last decade not letting anyone or anything become important to him.
She laced her fingers through his, finally letting herself believe, and offered him a smile and a nod.
‘You realise that if you take me, you take my family, too?’ she said, and then he was kneeling in front of her.
‘Your mother can organise the wedding,’ he said, taking both her hands in his.
* * * * *
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ONE
‘What’s got Miles’s knickers in a twist?’ Natasha Gordon poured herself half a cup of coffee. Her first appointment had been at eight and she’d been on the run ever since. She had to grab any opportunity to top up her caffeine level. ‘I was on my way to a viewing at the St John’s Wood flat when I got a message to drop everything and come straight back here.’
Janine, Morgan and Black’s receptionist and always the first with any rumour, lifted her slender cashmere-clad shoulders in a don’t-ask-me shrug. ‘If that’s what he said, you’d better not keep him waiting,’ she said, but, shrug notwithstanding, the ghost of an I-know-something-you-don’t smile tugged at lips on which the lipstick was always perfectly applied.
Tash abandoned the untouched coffee and headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Miles Morgan, senior partner of Morgan and Black, first port of call for the wealthy flooding into London from all corners of the world to snap up high-end real estate, had been dropping heavy hints for weeks that the vacant ‘associate’ position was hers.
Damn right. She’d worked her socks off for the last three years and had earned that position with hard work and long hours and Janine, who liked everyone to know how ‘in’ she was with the boss, had casually let slip the news on Friday afternoon that he would be spending the weekend in the country with the semi-retired ‘Black’ to discuss the future of the firm.
‘Down, pulse, down,’ she muttered, pausing outside his office to scoop up a wayward handful of hair and anchor it in place with great-grandma’s silver clip.
She always started out the day looking like a career woman on the up, but haring about London all morning had left her more than a little dishevelled and things had begun to unravel. Her hair, her make-up, her shirt.
She tucked in her shirt and was checking the top button when the door opened.
‘Janine! Is she here yet?’ Miles shouted before he realised she was standing in front him. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘I had a viewing at the Chelsea house first thing,’ she said, used to his short fuse. ‘They played it very close to their chests, but the wife’s eyes were lit up like the Blackpool illuminations. I guarantee they’ll make an offer before the end of the day.’
The prospect of a high five-figure commission would normally be enough to change his mood but he merely grunted and the sparkle of anticipation went flat. Whatever Janine had been smiling about, it wasn’t the prospect of the office party Miles would throw to celebrate the appointment of the new associate.
‘It’s been non-stop since then,’ she added, and it wasn’t going to ease up this side of six. ‘Is this urgent, Miles? I’m showing Glencora Jarrett the St John’s Wood apartment in half an hour and the traffic is solid.’
‘You can forget that. I’ve sent Toby.’
‘Toby?’ Her occasionally significant other had been on a rugby tour in Australia and wasn’t due home until the end of the month. She shook her head. It wasn’t important, but Lady Glen... ‘No, she specifically asked—’
‘For you. I know, but a viewing isn’t a social engagement,’ he cut in before she could remind him that Lady Glencora was desperately nervous and would not go into an unoccupied apartment with a male negotiator.
‘But—’
‘Forget Her Ladyship,’ he said, thrusting the latest edition of the Country Chronicle into her hands. ‘Take a look at this.’
The magazine was open at the full-page advertisement for Hadley Chase, a historic country house that had just come on the market.
‘Oh, that came out really well...’ A low mist, caught by the rising sun, had lent the house a golden, soft-focus enchantment that hid its many shortcomings. Well worth the effort of getting up at the crack of dawn and driving into the depths of Berkshire on the one day in the week that she could have had a lie-in. ‘The phone will be ringing off the hook,’ she said, offering it back to him.
‘Read on,’ he said, not taking it.
‘I know what it says, Miles. I wrote it.’ The once grand house was suffering from age and neglect and she’d focused on the beauty and convenience of the location to tempt potential buyers to come and take a look. ‘You approved it,’ she reminded him.
‘I didn’t approve this.’
She frowned. Irritable might be his default mode but, even for Miles, this seemed excessive. Had some ghastly mistake slipped past them both? It happened, but this was an expensive full-page colour ad, and she’d gone over the proof with a fine-tooth comb. Confident that nothing could have gone wrong, she read out her carefully composed copy.
‘“A substantial seventeenth-century manor house in a sought-after location on the Berkshire Downs within easy reach of motorway links to London, the Midlands and the West. That’s the good news. The bad news...”’ She faltered. Bad news? What the...?
‘Don’t stop now.’
The words were spoken with a clear, crisp, don’t-argue-with-me certainty, but not by her boss, and she spun around as the owner of the voice rose from the high-backed leather armchair set in front of Miles Morgan’s desk and turned to face her.
Her first impression was of darkness. Dark hair, dark clothes, dark eyes in a mesmerising face that missed beauty by a hair’s breadth, although a smile might have done the business.
The second was of strength. There was no bulk, but his shoulders were wide beneath a crumpled linen jacket so old that the black had faded to grey, his abdomen slate-flat under a T-shirt that hung loosely over narrow hips.
His hand was resting on the back of the chair, long calloused fingers curled over the leather. They were the kind of fingers that she could imagine doing unspeakable things to her. Was imagining...
She looked up and met eyes that seemed to penetrate every crevice, every pore, and a hot blush, beginning somewhere low in her belly, spread like wildfire in every direction—
‘Natasha!’
Miles’s sharp interjection jolted her back to the page but it was a moment before she could catch her breath, gather her wits and focus on the words dancing in front of her.
...the bad news is the wet rot, woodworm, crumbling plasterwork and leaking roof. The vendor would no doubt have preferred to demolish the house and redevelop the land, but it’s a Grade II listed building in the heart of the Green Belt so he’s stuffed. There is a fine oak Tudor staircase but, bearing in mind the earlier reference to wet rot and woodworm, an early viewing is advised if you want to see the upper floors.
Her heart still pounding with the shock of a sexual attraction so powerful that she was trembling, she had to read it twice before it sank in. And when it did her pulse was still in a sorry state.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. Then, realising how feeble that sounded, ‘How did this happen?’
‘How, indeed?’
Her question had been directed at Miles, but the response came from Mr Tall, Dark and Deadly. Who was he?
‘Hadley,’ he said, apparently reading her mind. Or maybe she’d asked the question out loud. She needed to get a grip. She needed an ice bath...
She cleared her throat. ‘Hadley?’ His name still emerged as if spoken by a surprised frog, but that wasn’t simply because all her blood had apparently drained from her bra
in to the more excitable parts of her anatomy. The house was unoccupied and the sale was being handled by the estate’s executors and, since no one had mentioned a real-life, flesh-and-blood Hadley, she’d assumed the line had run dry.
‘Darius Hadley,’ he elaborated, clearly picking up on her doubt.
In her career she’d worked with everyone, from young first-time buyers scraping together a deposit, to billionaires investing in London apartments and town houses costing millions. She knew that appearances could be deceptive but Darius Hadley did not have the look of a man whose family had been living in the Chase since the seventeenth century, when a grateful Charles II had given the estate to one James Hadley, a rich merchant who’d funded him in exile.
With the glint of a single gold earring amongst the mass of black curls tumbling over his collar, the crumpled linen jacket faded from black to grey, jeans worn threadbare at the knees, he looked more like a gypsy, or a pirate. Perhaps that was where the Hadley fortune had come from—plundering the Spanish Main with the likes of Drake. Or, with the legacy now in the hands of a man bearing the name of a Persian king, it was possible that his ancestors had chosen to travel east overland, to trade in silk and spices.
This man certainly had the arrogance to go with his name but, unlike his forebears, it seemed that he had no interest in settling down to live the life of a country gentleman. Not that she blamed him for that.
Hadley Chase, with roses growing over its timbered Tudor heart, might look romantic in the misty haze of an early summer sunrise, but it was going to take a lot of time and a very deep purse to bring it up to modern expectations in plumbing, heating and weatherproofing. There was nothing romantic about nineteen-fifties plumbing and, from the neglected state of both house and grounds, it was evident that the fortune needed to maintain it was long gone.
On the bright side, even in these cash-strapped days, there were any number of sheikhs, pop stars and Russian oligarchs looking for the privacy of a country estate no more than a helicopter hop from the centre of London and she was looking forward to adding the Chase to her portfolio of sales in the very near future. She had big plans for the commission.
The Plus-One Agreement Page 16
