A Whirlwind Engagement

by Jessica Hart

  'I know you've been in loads of dangerous situations,' she went on, 'but those are physical risks. Have you ever taken any other kind of risk?'

  'It was risky setting up my own company,' said Josh, sounding a bit huffy.

  Bella was unimpressed. 'That was a financial risk. I'm talking about emotional risks.'

  Josh hunched a shoulder. 'You have to approach all risks the same way. Look at the situation logically, not emotionally, and balance the likelihood of possible outcomes.'

  When he went all logical on her like that, Bella always wondered how on earth they had come to be friends. Mentally, she raised her eyes to heaven.

  'It just so happens that as far as relationships are concerned I've never been convinced that the risk was worth taking,' he was saying, 'but it's not a question of being scared.'

  The scared thing had obviously rankled.

  'We're not all like you,' he accused her, 'investing everything in a relationship five minutes after you've met a man. You'd think experience would have taught you to keep something back, but no! You're barely over one disastrous affair before you plunge into another one!'

  'Better that than dithering around on the edge for ever, wondering if you might just have missed the chance of a perfect relationship,' Bella retorted.

  'And that's what you've got with Will, is it?' Josh asked sceptically.

  She lifted her chin defiantly. 'I think so, yes.'

  'So why not live together?'

  'Because we're both happy as we are. We've each got our own place to live and that means we can give each other some space. We all need that.'

  Josh didn't bother to hide his disbelief. 'You? You're the most sociable person I know! I can't see you hankering after your own space.'

  'Perhaps you don't know me as well as you think you do,' said Bella crossly. 'As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to living on my own. I've been getting gradually used to it since Kate has been spending so much time with Finn and Alex, so it won't be that different now. I might go back to sharing eventually,' she conceded, 'but it wouldn't be the same. Where would I find someone I'd get on with as well as Phoebe and Kate?'

  'What about Aisling?' said Josh casually.

  Bella looked wary. What about Aisling?

  'She's looking for somewhere to live at the moment,' he explained. 'And you'd be bound to get on. I'd have thought she'd be perfect for you.'

  What planet was he living on? Bella stared at him in disbelief. He didn't really see her and Aisling as bosom buddies, did he? Didn't he know her at all?

  'I'm not sure we've got that much in common,' she said carefully.

  Josh looked surprised. 'Don't you? I think you're very alike. Aisling's in marketing and you're in PR-they're not that different as careers go, are they? And she's a bit of a social butterfly, too.'

  'I thought she spent her whole time climbing mountains or knocking up rafts out of a couple of tin cans and a piece of string?' said Bella a little sourly.

  'She's got a lot of expedition experience,' Josh agreed, 'but she's a good-time girl like you on the side as well.'

  Oh, right. So Aisling swung both ways. She could hack her way through a rainforest and wear lipstick. Bully for her. Bella took another slurp of champagne.

  'She's not quite such a princess as you, though,' Josh was adding with something less than his usual tact. 'She doesn't actually require somewhere to plug in her hairdryer when she's camping!'

  Bella eyed him with some hostility. Josh had once insisted on taking her camping in the Yorkshire Dales, and had been appalled when he discovered that not only had she taken a hair-dryer with her but she had actually used it. He had never let her forget it. Bella was quite sure that Aisling had heard that story and laughed prettily at the idea that anyone could be quite that much of a city girl.

  'I'm not sure Tooting would be very convenient for Aisling,' she said. 'It's not exactly handy for your office, is it?'

  'Aisling's been trekking across the Sahara,' Josh pointed out. 'I don't think she would find changing tubes a problem!'

  Well, that put her in her place, thought Bella grumpily.

  'Yes, well, I'll talk to Phoebe,' she said without enthusiasm. 'It's her house, so it's her decision really.'

  'Great,' said Josh. 'I'm sure Phoebe won't mind.'

  'Where is Aisling, anyway?' said Bella. She had to get to Phoebe before Josh did. There was no way she was going to share a house with Aisling.

  Josh looked around the marquee, and pointed. 'Over there, talking to Finn's sister.'

  As if she had heard him, Aisling looked over, and beckoned imperatively. In spite of being anxious to get rid of him so she could go and find Phoebe, Bella couldn't believe it when Josh just went. He ought to have more pride, she thought crossly.

  Still, now was her chance to grab Phoebe.

  'So you will say no, won't you?' she begged when she had dragged Phoebe away from Gib and poured the whole story into her ears.

  'If you want,' said Phoebe, 'but I don't know what I'm going to say to Josh. I can't think of any reason to object to Aisling. She seems very nice.'

  'I don't like her,' said Bella.

  'Why not?'

  'I just don't,' she said a little sulkily. 'There's a little too much of that bubbly Irish charm if you ask me. And I don't think she's right for Josh.'

  Phoebe looked at her narrowly. 'Are you sure you're not just jealous?'

  'Jealous? Jealous?' spluttered Bella, spilling most of the champagne in her outrage. 'Don't be ridiculous! I have never been jealous of Josh, you know that. I've always got on really well with all his girlfriends.'

  'Mmnn, but then none of them were at all like you.'

  'Nor is Aisling!'

  'Yes, she is. I'm sure that's why you don't like her. You've only got to look at her!'

  Bella turned to stare across the marquee to where Aisling was snuggling up to Josh. She obviously couldn't keep her hands off him. Josh would hate that, Bella thought disapprovingly. He was definitely a behind-closed-doors sort of man.

  On the other hand, he wasn't exactly fighting Aisling off, was he?

  She looked away. 'I'm nothing like Aisling,' she told Phoebe. 'She's got red hair, for a start!'

  'OK, but change the colour of her hair and eyes, and what have you got? She's ridiculously pretty, has legs up to her armpits, and that glamorous look that is just so different from Josh's previous girlfriends. Admit it, Bella, she's practically a clone!'

  Bella wasn't prepared to admit anything of the kind. 'What, apart from looking completely different and having completely different personalities? I'd say all Aisling and I had in common was our gender! Josh is always telling me how practical she is and how she likes doing hearty things like climbing and camping.'

  Phoebe shrugged. 'Have it your own way.'

  'Anyway,' Bella went on, a defensive edge to her voice, 'Josh and I agreed a long time ago that we would just be friends. There's no question of jealousy.'

  'Didn't you ever find him attractive?' asked Phoebe curiously, and try as she might, Bella couldn't quite make herself meet her friend's eyes.

  'He wasn't my type,' she said.

  'Do you think you were ever his?'

  Had she been? For the first time Bella found herself wondering.

  'He never said, and anyway, he always seemed to have some outdoorsy girl who didn't fuss about her hair or wear make-up or mind getting up at six to go potholing or whatever it was they used to do at weekends. Josh and I used to make each other laugh, and we had a great time doing that. We didn't want to spoil it by sleeping together.

  'Besides,' she added honestly, 'he wasn't at all attractive then. He was a bit thin and nerdy.'

  Phoebe glanced across the marquee. 'He's changed,' she said.

  'Yes,' said Bella, following her gaze. Through the crowds, she could just glimpse Josh. The lean, compact figure was at once alien and utterly familiar.

  He was talking to someone out of sight, but as she watched he threw
back his head and laughed, and her stomach abruptly disappeared, as if she had stumbled unawares off the edge of an abyss. The sensation of falling was so intense that Bella had to close her eyes against a sickening wave of vertigo, and when she opened them again she felt dizzy and hollow inside.

  'Yes,' she said again. 'He has.'

  There was a silence. Frightened by the strength of her physical response, Bella drank her champagne shakily, and it was some time before she realised that Phoebe was watching her expectantly.

  'What?' she demanded, and Phoebe held up her hands, one still clutching her champagne glass.

  'I didn't say anything!'

  That was the worst thing about friends who knew you really well. They didn't need to say anything for you to know exactly what they were thinking!

  'I'm not jealous, all right?'

  'All right,' said Phoebe equably. 'So what is the problem?'

  'Who says there's a problem?'

  Phoebe sighed. 'Come on, Bella, it's obvious! Is it Will?'

  'No… Yes…sort of,' Bella admitted with a sigh.

  'What happened?'

  'Nothing, that's just it.' Bella stared miserably down into her glass. 'It's just that I've been feeling…I don't know…restless, I suppose, for a while. We haven't had an argument or anything. It was Will who suggested that we give each other some space, and I think that's all I need. I mean, Will's fantastic, isn't he?' She hated the doubtful note in her voice.

  'He certainly seems very nice,' said Phoebe noncommittally.

  'And drop-dead gorgeous and intelligent and solvent and not screwed up… What more could I ask for? He would have come today if I'd asked him,' she went on with a sigh. 'I need my head examined to let him go off to Hong Kong! What's wrong with me?'

  'There's nothing wrong with you. Will just isn't the right man for you, that's all.'

  'But if someone like Will isn't the right man, who is?'

  'I don't know,' said Phoebe, 'but you will when you find him.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bella wished she had Phoebe's confidence. She was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with her. It wasn't that she was particularly vain, but she knew she was pretty, and there was never any shortage of men wanting to go out with her. Somehow, though, it never came to anything. She fell headlong into love and just as quickly out of it.

  She might never find that special man, Bella thought glumly as she helped herself to a canapé, and now she might not even have Josh to fall back on. They had once agreed that if they both reached forty without finding anyone they would marry each other.

  Bella actually remembered laughing at the time. The truth was that it had never occurred to her then that Josh might marry someone else. He was so self-contained that it was hard to imagine him sharing his life with anyone. None of his girlfriends had ever moved in with him.

  Looking for him now, her eyes found him instinctively in the crowded marquee. There he was, Aisling clinging as usual to his arm, and no matter how much she wanted to think that he looked irritated by her possessiveness, she just couldn't do it.

  Bella drifted around the edge of the marquee to get a better view. That was better. Now she could see Josh quite clearly, talking to Gib. He was wearing a morning suit, and the crisp white shirt made his skin, weathered from so much time spent in the tropics, look even browner than usual.

  He looked surprisingly good in formal clothes, she thought. Even now, dressed identically to most of the other men in the marquee, he had the tough, competent air of a man who should be hacking his way through a jungle or bumping along a dusty track in faded khakis, not sipping champagne and eating canapés in an English garden.

  Bella's gaze rested on him. Really, it was amazing that it had taken her so many years to realise what a great body he had, lean and hard and tautly muscled in an intriguingly restrained way. If she had walked into the marquee as a stranger, she would definitely have clocked him.

  His face wasn't that bad either. Not jaw-droppingly handsome like Will, of course, but still, there was nothing actually wrong with it. He had nice eyes, creased around the edges from too much squinting at the sun, and they held a lurking smile sometimes that might be really quite disturbing if you weren't used to it, the way she was.

  Nice mouth too, Bella thought judiciously. Not the kind of mouth you noticed at first, maybe-it was too quiet and cool for that-but if you looked at it for too long, something about it made you squirm suddenly.

  Like that. A strange feeling shuddered down Bella's spine, and she jerked her eyes away.

  It felt all wrong to be thinking about Josh like this. He was her friend, the one person she could talk to about anything at all.

  Except this.

  Bella imagined herself strolling over and saying, 'Hey, Josh, I was just thinking what a great body you have and wondering what it would be like to kiss you,' and she winced, picturing already his appalled expression. She couldn't do that to Josh.

  More to the point, she couldn't do it to herself! Honesty was one thing, humiliation quite another.

  Gib's attention had been claimed by another guest and, as Bella watched, Josh tightened his arm around Aisling and gave her a quick private kiss. The pain that sliced through her at the sight was so unexpected that it took Bella's breath away, and the champagne spilt from her glass as she flinched instinctively.

  Bella turned abruptly away. This wouldn't do! She was the life and soul of a party, not someone who mooned around on the edges feeling left out. It was time to circulate and exert some of that charm she was so famous for.

  She succeeded so well that one of Kate's young brothers informed her owlishly at the end of the reception that he had been in love with her since he was fourteen, and asked her to marry him. Touched and amused, Bella let him down kindly but secretly she couldn't help feeling a bit better. She might be tottering on the verge of thirty-three and she wasn't a camping queen like Aisling, but some men wanted her, even if they were only twenty-one and had been imbibing freely of their father's champagne.

  She seemed to have developed a sudden attraction for very young men. At the ceilidh in the marquee that evening Bella found herself the centre of a group of besotted boys. Their undisguised admiration was very flattering of course, but she wasn't entirely sure that it was a good sign. Did she really look old enough to be in the market for a toy boy? Bella wondered.

  Still, it was nice to feel wanted for a change, and she glanced across the marquee to where Josh had Aisling entwined around him as usual.

  Determined to show Josh, should he happen to look in her direction, that she was having a wonderful time, Bella let one of her admirers after another swing her eagerly on the dance floor. Her partners appeared deaf to the bellowed instructions of the member of the band who was desperately trying to tell everyone the moves to the Scottish dances, but what they lacked in skill, they more than made up for in enthusiasm. More than once Bella found herself being spun out of control so that she ended up cannoning breathlessly into other couples. Fortunately few of them seemed to have a clue what they were doing either.

  Bella told herself she was having a fantastic time, and laughed as she shook back her hair over her shoulders.

  From another set, Josh watched her dazzle the boy she was dancing with. He couldn't be more than sixteen and obviously could hardly believe his luck, Josh thought indulgently. He had seen how effortlessly Bella had cast her spell over every man she came across. Even Kate's famously grumpy great-uncle had not been immune to the old Stevenson charm.

  It had been the same ever since he had met her. Josh remembered the first time he had seen her. She had walked into the seminar room, blonde, beautiful and impossibly glamorous amongst all the other scruffy students, and when she smiled and sat down next to him, he had gulped like the schoolboy she was dancing with now.

  There had been a starry quality about Bella, even then, he thought. For the first few weeks, he had gawked at her from a distance. She was so clearly out of his le
ague, that it never occurred to him that they could ever be friends, but when he did get to know her properly, he was bowled over by the charm that made him feel as if she had been waiting all this time just to meet him, plain Josh Kingston. He had been amazed to discover how friendly and natural she was, and how funny. She might look like a princess, but she had an infectiously dirty laugh.

  Not that Josh ever tried to take advantage of the closeness that grew up between them. His role was as a friend, the one constant male in the dizzying ups and downs of her romantic life.

  And Josh didn't mind, or he told himself he didn't, anyway. At least that way he saw Bella, and he kept on seeing her in a way the men she fell in and out of love with didn't. None of them ever lasted very long. Bella might look sophisticated, but beneath her glossy veneer beat the heart of a true romantic, determined not to settle for anyone less than Mr Perfect.

  Maybe she had found him in Will. He seemed an unlikely Mr Perfect to Josh, but he had never understood Bella's taste in men. He had wondered if things had run their course with Will earlier, when she had seemed tense and unhappy, but there was no sign of that now.

  Josh's mouth curled affectionately as he watched Bella dancing up and down the line in the other set, laughing that laugh of hers. She was being swung around and around between each couple, her hair shimmering as it flew around her vivid face and her skirt swirling around those spectacular legs.

  'Josh!' Aisling hissed at him, and he started as he realised that he was supposed to be joining hands and going down the set with her, not watching what was going on elsewhere.

  He didn't get a chance to dance with Bella herself until much later in the evening.

  'I'm tired,' she said when he held out his hand to pull her onto the dance floor.

  'Tired? You? Never!'

  'I am,' she protested. 'I've been dancing all night.'

  She fanned her hot face, unwilling to let him know reluctant she was to take his hand. 'Ask Aisling.'