by Fiona Harper
Noah was looking pretty stunning himself. She totally agreed with the mad shopping lady’s James Bond comparison, although she didn’t think he looked like Pierce Brosnan at all. He had dark hair and matching charisma, but facially they were totally different.
The driver opened the door on her side. She looked down at her legs, wondering if she could remember the way to get out of a car in a dress without showing her knickers. It was something to do with keeping her knees together—or should it be her ankles? She scanned his face carefully as she took his hand and swivelled out of the car. His expression didn’t change in the slightest and she thanked heaven that she must have got the manoeuvre right after all.
As she walked onto the red carpet, she felt like a trespasser, her strappy high sandals making little pock marks in the pile. Noah’s strong hand clasped hers and tugged her into his side. Grace pulled herself straight and prepared herself to walk without making an idiot of herself.
While the event wasn’t in the league of the film premieres in Leicester Square, there was a smattering of photographers and journalists and a small crowd had gathered. Noah walked over to the railing and shook hands and signed a couple of autograph books, all the time making sure she was by his side. People stared at her.
She tried to smile, but it felt so unnatural. A little muscle at the corner of one of her eyes kept twitching.
Oh, Lord. What was she doing here?
She was just a spare part. Window dressing. All fluff and no substance.
Noah signed the last autograph and slid his hand back into hers. She grasped it greedily and he leaned across to whisper something in her ear.
‘You have no idea how much I hate this bit. I always feel such a fraud.’
They smiled at each other, just for a few seconds, before moving on.
Grace tried to ignore the crowd, the paparazzi, the fans pushing themselves at the barriers hoping to see a TV star or two. The women, both on and off the red carpet, were looking at Noah as if they’d like to serve him up for supper on a bed of chocolate, garnished with a sprig of mint in his belly button.
If there was anyone fake here, it wasn’t him. She’d sneaked into Martin’s book shop during the week and bought his first book. It had left her yawning—not because it was bad; far from it! She’d been yawning because she’d stayed up to two in the morning three nights in a row, totally caught up in the clever plot and life-and-death situations. It had left her feeling as if she had discovered a whole extra level to him.
Just a few days ago he’d been Noah Smith, the nice-looking man who came into her café and ate cake. Now he was Noah Frost, the celebrity author, general superstar and stud-muffin. Suddenly, she was a little in awe of him.
He gently tugged on her hand and they were moving again, towards the liveried doormen who were guarding the hotel’s front entrance. Grace let him pull her forwards and soon she was carefully placing her sandals on each step of a sweeping staircase, heading for the ballroom where the awards ceremony was being held.
When they reached the threshold to the room, Grace stopped, her eyes wide.
It was like something out of a fairy tale. A very modern fairy tale with glitz and glamour and celebrities instead of kings and nobles. She could see a few TV comedians and a couple of newsreaders just from where she was standing.
Huge marble columns lined the room and vast crystal chandeliers dripped from every part of the ornate plaster ceiling. Flowers were everywhere—enough to give the population of Vinehurst buttonholes three times over.
Wow.
Noah squeezed her hand and she looked up at him. The smile for the cameras was gone now and his beautiful pale green eyes held such honesty. Her heart did a little pirouette.
‘Thank you, Grace,’ he said and placed a delicate kiss on her cheek, just in front of her ear. ‘I really appreciate you doing this for me.’
Was he kidding? Most women would sell their own shoe collections to be at an event like this, with a man like him. She straightened her spine. She would just have to think of good old Audrey in My Fair Lady—without the OTT cut glass accent, of course—and she’d be fine.
It struck her that this was New Grace’s first public outing, her ‘coming out’ ball, if you liked. She squeezed his hand in return.
‘Okay, Mr Frost,’ she said, winking her mascara-laden eyelashes at him. ‘Let’s go get ’em!’
‘Sorry you didn’t get the gong, Noah.’
Noah turned to find one of the other authors from his publishing house standing beside him. Rebecca was the hot new thing in women’s fiction at the moment and had won the award for Best Newcomer.
‘Ah, you can’t get too worked up about these things, can you?’ He nodded at Rebecca’s award, which she was clutching with one hand while she balanced a glass of champagne in the other. ‘Congratulations to you, though.’
‘Thanks.’ She sipped her drink for a moment and looked across the room.
‘And are congratulations supposed to be coming in your direction too?’
Noah laughed. ‘Not unless I go and “relieve” Frankie of his award and run very fast indeed.’
Rebecca rolled her eyes. ‘Not the award, dummy. Her.’ She gestured in Grace’s direction with her glass. The liquid sloshed around and glinted under the chandeliers. Rebecca focused on it slowly and then took another glug.
‘Grace?’
‘There’s much crying in the Ladies tonight, now everyone thinks you might be off the market.’
Noah tried to remain the picture of composure. ‘And why would they think I might be “off the market” as you so eloquently put it?’
Rebecca licked her lips, blinked and swayed slightly. ‘’Cos you’ve hardly taken your eyes off her all evening. She must be pretty amazing if she’s finally caught the attention of publishing’s most eligible bachelor.’
Noah opened his mouth to pooh-pooh the whole ‘eligible bachelor’ thing, but suddenly the group around Grace erupted into laughter and he got caught up in watching her smiling and talking. ‘She is pretty amazing, isn’t she?’
Rebecca, however, was downing the rest of her glass and had obviously lost track of what they were talking about. ‘I think it’s time I held off the champers, Noah me old darling,’ she said and let out a tiny burp.
‘I think you’re right, Becca.’
Noah ushered her in the direction of the lobby, where she said her boyfriend was waiting for her. Once he’d safely handed her over, he went looking for Grace. They’d got separated a while ago and every time he tried to reach her, someone—
‘Noah, me old mate!’
Here we go again, he thought, as he fixed a smile on his face and turned round. He stood chatting to the group for a while, but after the first ten minutes he found it easy enough to just sip his drink and nod. At literary parties, you were never short of someone who was ready to hold court. It just so happened that, this time, it was coming in rather handy.
Noah stood back and just watched Grace sparkle. She was talking to a group from his publishers and they were hanging on her every word. He was so glad she wasn’t a carbon copy of everybody else here, that he had gone with his gut instinct.
He exhaled. There was only so much watching from the sidelines that a man could do. He extracted himself from the conversation he’d been having on autopilot and made a beeline for Grace. When he reached her side, he stood close and wrapped an arm around her waist. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even scowl. She just finished what she was saying and flicked a glance in his direction, smiling. That smile was his undoing.
It wasn’t one of her sassy smiles, or even one of her wide grins. This smile was soft, almost…shy.
His inner Rottweiler, who’d been sleeping nicely all evening, suddenly decided to go in for the kill.
He didn’t want to look for anyone else. He didn’t want to spend any more time scouring Blinddatebrides.com. He wanted Grace. He wanted to marry her.
As Noah handed Grace her coat, she sighed
. ‘What a great night!’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.’
She gave him a look of sheer disbelief. ‘Enjoyed myself? Did you see him? That guy who was in the latest Sunday night costume drama on telly? He kissed my hand. Twice!’
And Noah would like to punch him. Just once.
Grace put her hand over her mouth to smother a yawn. ‘I’m so glad you decided to book hotel rooms for tonight.’ It had been one of the sweeteners he’d come up with when trying to persuade her that this was a good idea. ‘My feet are killing me and I couldn’t face the drive back, not at—oh, my goodness! Is that really the time?’
He nodded. ‘Cinderella left quite some time ago.’
She yawned again and set him off.
‘Come on, Sleeping Beauty. Time to get a cab. The hotel we’re going to is a little bit quieter than this one, thank goodness.’
‘And I’ve got my own room?’
‘Yes, for the third time tonight, you’ve got your own room! What do you think I am?’
The limousine nipped down side streets and darted round corners until Grace was hopelessly disoriented. She yawned again. She’d drunk just enough champagne to leave her feeling slightly fuzzy. Only about three glasses over the course of the evening, but she didn’t get the opportunity to drink anything but cheap plonk from the local supermarket, and the real thing had gone straight to her head.
A head that was feeling rather heavy at present. And there was a nice warm chest close by, perfect to loll against.
The car swung round another corner and Grace let gravity take the blame as she landed on Noah. He didn’t seem to mind, prising his arm from his side and resting it round her shoulders. A delicious bubbly feeling, which had nothing to do with champagne, started in her toes and worked its way up to her ear lobes.
She breathed out, long and steady. This was nice, leaning against Noah, feeling the warmth of his chest against her back and the pads of his fingers lightly brushing her upper arm. He smelled so good…
But they were here as friends, and it really wouldn’t do to turn her head and bury her face in his shirt as she was tempted to do.
The sounds of hooting horns, revving engines and sirens were just starting to come from far, far away when the car stopped and Grace found herself being gently shaken. Everything seemed slightly unreal as she yawned and walked and yawned and walked, following Noah into lifts and along corridors.
A bellboy opened the door and she just stared at a fabulous room, all in cream and gold and ivory.
‘There’s no bed,’ she said, frowning slightly. ‘A room this nice and there’s no bed?’
Noah put an arm around her back and ushered her into the room. ‘It’s a suite. Your room is this way.’
Grace didn’t notice much about the room but the vast, squashy-looking bed. She twisted herself around and just fell onto it, her feet lifting off the floor with the force of impact. Heaven. If she could live in this bed for the rest of her life, she would.
Her shoes were being taken off and she wiggled her toes and let out a giant sigh that grew and stretched until it became yet another yawn. A pair of warm lips kissed her temple.
‘Goodnight, Grace. Sweet dreams.’
Grace woke from a delicious sleep and stretched, long and hard, right down to the muscles in her toes and right up to the fingertips above her head. She was naked, having peeled off her dress some time in the night and climbed under the covers.
The clock by the bed showed it was eight. A fairly respectable time to rise after such a late night. She snuggled back into the goosedown pillow. It all seemed so decadent, lying in—on Egyptian cotton, no less—and not going into work today.
She had one last stretch and headed for the shower. When she’d finished, she pulled her pyjamas from her bag, which had miraculously appeared in her room, and then wrapped the soft white towelling robe from the back of the door over the top. She opened the door to the sitting room part of the suite and peered out. Noah was sitting at a desk near the window, working away on his laptop and looking as if he’d been conscious for hours.
He finished a series of taps, hit the enter key, then turned in her direction. ‘Good morning. How did you sleep?’
Grace stepped into the room. ‘Wonderfully, thank you…And thank you for such a great night last ni—oh, bother!’ She pulled up the sleeve of her bathrobe and inspected her right hand. ‘I wasn’t going to wash the hand that Randolph Marks kissed, but I forgot all about that and gave it a good scrub in the shower.’
‘Too bad,’ Noah said, a smug smile twitching at his lips. ‘How about some breakfast?’
He motioned to an open set of French windows and Grace gasped. Outside, on a small terrace that she hadn’t even known existed, was a table laden with rolls and croissants, orange juice and fresh fruit platters.
She ran outside to look at it all. And then she leaned over the balcony. They were at least ten storeys up, and big red buses, taxis and cyclists all jostled far away on the street below. People in dark suits carrying briefcases hurried in straight lines. It was a beautiful morning, with the sky so blue it was almost too perfect. The trees lining the street below shimmered in the breeze and the sun was warm on her face and bare feet.
She sat in one of the wrought iron chairs circling the table, her bottom welcomed by a cushion at least five inches thick.
‘This looks fabulous! Thank you so much, Noah—for all of this, last night…I feel like I’m on holiday!’
Noah joined her at the table and poured them both cups of coffee from the silver pot.
‘No. Thank you. Your presence was very effective in keeping the undesirables at bay. I didn’t get asked to autograph a cleavage once last night, so I count it a success.’
Grace grinned at him and reached for a croissant and loaded her plate with strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. ‘You’re welcome.’ She broke off a piece of croissant and popped it in her mouth.
Oh, my. She’d died and gone to heaven. It was light, flaky and buttery all at the same time. As she rested in her chair, she idly thought about infiltrating the kitchens to see how the chef did it.
Breakfast was long and leisurely, with gentle banter and plentiful cups of coffee. When Grace was confident she wouldn’t need to eat another thing until at least next Thursday, she propped her feet up on one of the spare chairs, closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun.
‘I could get used to this.’
Off in the distance, the traffic roared and the wind lifted the fine hair at the edge of her temples. She sighed.
‘Could you? Why don’t you, then?’
Grace turned her head and lifted one eyelid. Noah was leaning forward, his chin on one of his fists, giving her a very serious look. A sudden shiver ran up her spine and she tugged her robe tighter around her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean…’
Grace dropped her feet to the floor and sat up straight. Noah gulped in a breath, not looking at all like a sexy spy for once.
‘I mean, you could live like this all the time…if you married me.’
A sudden wave of vertigo hit her. A delayed reaction from hanging over the balcony, probably.
‘What did you just say?’
Noah stood up, circled the table and sat down in the chair she had just had her feet on. He took one of her hands in his and looked into her eyes.
‘Marry me, Grace?’
The first time in her life, Grace didn’t have a witty comeback, a smart reply. ‘But…but…we’re just friends…you don’t love me.’
‘I think you’re wonderful, Grace. I have a great deal of respect for you. And I have fun when I’m with you. Fun I’d forgotten how to have.’
‘But…’
‘And there’s plenty of chemistry between us.’
She looked down at their intertwined fingers, then back up at Noah. ‘Yes, there is…’ A little too much chemistry on occasion. ‘But…’
‘You said yourself that you weren’
t looking for Romeo and Juliet. I’m proposing a partnership based on the mutual respect, compatibility—’ a small smile kicked the corners of his mouth up ‘—chemistry…’
Suddenly, he leaned in. She could feel his breath on her lips and, without warning, her heart rate doubled and her eyes slid closed. The kiss that followed was as soft and slow and balmy as the spring sunshine.
Noah pulled back and held her face in his hands, his eyes searching hers, asking questions, finding answers.
She’d missed this.
Not just the kissing—although it was pretty spectacular—but connecting with someone. She knew Noah was telling the truth. They were compatible. And he’d meant what he’d said, how he felt about her. No one had said those kinds of things about her for a very long time. Tears clogged the back of her throat.
But it wasn’t love.
Could she agree to a marriage on the foundations that Noah had outlined? A couple of months ago she’d have laughed herself silly at the idea, but now…
No more lonely days. No more struggling to do everything on her own. Someone to talk to when she was down. Someone to laugh with when she was happy. Suddenly her soul ached for those things.
She pulled away from him and stood up, pressing trembling fingers to her lips.
‘I…I don’t know, Noah. I need to think about this. I’d like to go home, please.’
Her heart was pounding so fast that Grace considered collapsing onto the top step and resting against the front door to her flat for a moment before she went inside. In fact, that was a fabulous idea. She turned and slumped against the door, letting gravity pull her into an untidy heap on the landing.
The ride home had been excruciating. She just hadn’t known what to say. How could she have chit-chatted after a proposal of marriage? A proposal she hadn’t actually turned down. Was she mad?
When the car had pulled up in the alley behind The Coffee Bean, where the back entrance to her flat was, she’d grabbed her overnight bag and bolted. And now she was sitting here, her heart rate returning to normal, and she still didn’t know what to do.
