Mr. (Not Quite) Perfect

by Jessica Hart

  ‘What do you mean, no?’ Forgetting her determination to stay cool and focused, as per her own advice in the article, Allegra scowled at him. ‘You don’t know what I’m going to say yet!’

  ‘I know that wheedling tone of old,’ said Max. ‘You only use it when you want me to do something I’m not going to want to do.’

  ‘Like what?’ she said, affronted.

  ‘Like waste an entire hot bank holiday Monday sitting in traffic because you and Libby wanted to go to the sea.’

  ‘That was Libby’s idea, not mine.’

  ‘Same wheedle,’ said Max, still flicking channels. ‘And it was definitely your idea to have a New Year’s Eve party that time.’

  ‘It was a great party.’

  ‘And who had to help you clear up afterwards before my parents came home?’

  ‘You did, because you’re a really, really kind brother who likes to help his sister and his sister’s best mate out when they get into trouble.’

  Max lowered the remote and looked at Allegra in alarm.

  ‘Uh-oh. You’re being nice. That’s a bad sign.’

  ‘How can you say that? I’m often nice to you. Didn’t I make you a delicious curry last weekend?’

  ‘Only because you wanted some and didn’t want to admit that you’d broken your diet.’

  Sadly, too true.

  ‘And I said I’d go to that dinner and pretend to be your fiancée,’ she said. ‘How much nicer can I get?’

  Max pulled himself up to look at Allegra with suddenly narrowed eyes. ‘You’re not going to back out, are you? Is that what this is about? Now that Emma’s not around, I really need you.’

  ‘Aw, Max, that’s sweet!’

  ‘I’m serious, Legs. My career depends on this.’

  ‘I do think the whole thing is mad.’ Allegra wriggled into a more comfortable position, not entirely sorry to let the conversation drift while she worked out exactly how to persuade Max to agree to take part. ‘I mean, who cares nowadays if you’re married or not?’

  ‘Bob Laskovski does,’ said Max gloomily.

  At first he had welcomed the news that the specialist firm of consulting engineers he worked for was to be taken over by a large American company. An injection of capital, jobs secured, a new CEO with fantastic contacts with the Sultan of Shofrar and some major projects being developed there and elsewhere in the Middle East: it was all good news.

  The bad news was that the new CEO in question was a nut. Bob Laskovski allegedly had a bee in his bonnet about the steadying influence of women, of all things. If ever there was going to be unsettling going on, there was bound to be a female involved, in Max’s opinion. But Bob liked his project managers to be in settled relationships and, given the strict laws of Shofrar, that effectively meant that, male or female, they had to be married.

  ‘God knows what he thinks we’ll do if we don’t have a wife to come home to every night,’ Max had grumbled to Allegra. ‘Run amok and seduce local girls and offend the local customs, I suppose.’

  Allegra had just laughed. ‘I’d love to see you running amok,’ she’d said.

  Max had ignored that and ploughed on with his explanation. ‘If I don’t turn up with a likely-looking fiancée, Bob’s going to start humming and hawing about whether I’m suitable for the job or not.’

  It was ridiculous, he grumbled whenever given the opportunity. He had the skills, he had the experience, and he was unencumbered by ties. He should be the perfect candidate.

  There hadn’t been a problem when Bob had first said that he was coming over to London and wanted to meet the prospective project managers. That was another of Bob’s ‘things’, apparently: he liked to vet them personally over individual dinners. God knew how the man had had the time to build up a vast construction company.

  Max hadn’t thought about it too much when the invitation to dinner had arrived. He and Emma had been going to get married anyway, and she was bound to go down well with Bob. Max was all set for his big break.

  And then Emma had changed her mind.

  Max still couldn’t quite believe it. He might have lost his fiancée, but he was damned if he was going to lose the Shofrar job too. Still, at least Allegra had been quite willing to help when he broached the idea of her standing in for Emma. For all her silliness, she could be counted on when it mattered.

  ‘But just for an evening,’ she had warned. ‘I’m not going to marry you and go out to Shofrar just so you can be a project manager!’

  ‘Don’t worry, it won’t come to that,’ said Max, shuddering at the very thought of it.

  ‘There are plenty of examples of relationships busting up before and after engineers get out there, and once you’re actually doing the job and behaving yourself it’s not a problem. All I need to do is get Bob’s seal of approval. Everyone says it’s worth humouring him.

  ‘It’ll just be a dinner,’ he assured her. ‘All you need to do is smile and look pretty and pretend that you’re going to be the perfect engineer’s wife.’

  Of course, that was going to be the problem. He’d eyed Allegra critically. She’d been dressed in a short stretchy skirt that showed off her long legs, made even longer by precarious heels. ‘Maybe you’d better wear something a bit more...practical,’ he’d said. ‘You don’t really look like an engineer’s wife.’

  Allegra, of course, had taken that as a compliment.

  ‘I don’t mind going along to the dinner with you,’ she said now. ‘I may not be much of an actress, but I expect I can pretend to love you for an evening.’

  ‘Thanks, Legs,’ said Max. ‘It means a lot to me.’

  ‘But...’ she said, drawing out the word, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously; he never liked the sound of ‘but’. ‘...there is just one tiny thing you could do for me in return.’

  She smiled innocently at him and his wary look deepened. ‘What?’

  ‘No, your line is, Of course, Allegra, I’ll do whatever you want. Would you like to try it again?’

  ‘What?’ he repeated.

  Allegra sighed and squirmed round until she was facing him. She tucked her hair behind her ears, the way she did when she was trying to look serious, and fixed him with her big green eyes.

  ‘You know how hard it’s been for me to make my mark at Glitz?’

  Max did. He knew more than he wanted, in fact, about Allegra’s precarious foothold on the very lowest rung of the glossy magazine, where as far as he could make out, emotions ran at fever-pitch every day and huge dramas erupted over shoes or handbags or misplaced emery boards. Or something equally pointless.

  Allegra seemed to love it. She raced into the flat, all long legs and cheekbones and swingy, shiny hair, discarding scarves and shoes and earrings as she went, and whirled out again in an outfit that looked exactly the same, to Max’s untutored eye.

  She was always complaining, though, that no one at the magazine noticed her. Max thought that was extremely unlikely. Allegra might not be classically beautiful but she had a vivid face with dark hair, striking green eyes and a mobile expression. She wasn’t the kind of girl people didn’t notice.

  He’d known her since Libby had first brought her home for the holidays. Max, callous like most boys his age, had dismissed her at first as neurotic, clumsy and overweight. For a long time she’d just been Libby’s gawky friend, but she’d shed the weight one summer and, while it was too much to say that she’d emerged a butterfly from her chrysalis, she had certainly gained confidence. Now she was really quite attractive, Max thought, his gaze resting on her face and drifting, quite without him realising, to her mouth.

  He jerked his eyes away. The last time he’d found himself looking at her mouth, it had nearly ended in disaster. It had been before he’d met Emma, a moment of madness one night when all at once things seemed to have changed
. Max still didn’t know what had happened. One moment he and Allegra had been talking, and the next he’d been staring into her eyes, feeling as if he were teetering on the edge of a chasm. Scrabbling back, he’d dropped his gaze to her mouth instead, and that had been even worse.

  He’d nearly kissed Allegra.

  How weird would that have been? Luckily they’d both managed to look away at last, and they’d never referred to what had happened—or not happened—ever again. Max put it out of his mind. It was just one of those inexplicable moments that were best not analysed, and it was only occasionally, like now, when the memory hurtled back and caught him unawares, a sly punch under his ribs that interfered oddly with his breathing.

  Max forced his mind back to Allegra’s question. ‘So what’s changed?’ he asked her, and she drew a deep breath.

  ‘I’ve got my big break! I’ve got my own assignment.’

  ‘Well, great...good for you, Legs. What’s it going to be? A hard-hitting exposé of corruption in the world of shoes? Earth-shattering revelations on where the hemline is going to be next year?’

  ‘Like I’d need your help if it was either of those!’ said Allegra tartly. ‘The man who wouldn’t know fashion if it tied him up and slapped him around the face with a wet fish.’

  ‘So what do you need me for?’

  ‘Promise you’ll hear me out before you say anything?’

  Max swung his legs down and sat up as he eyed Allegra with foreboding. ‘Uh-oh, I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this!’

  ‘Please, Max! Just listen!’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ he grumbled, sitting back and folding his arms. ‘But this had better be good.’

  ‘Well...’ Allegra moistened her lips. ‘You know we have an editorial conference to plan features for the coming months?’

  Max didn’t, but he nodded anyway. The less he had to hear about the workings of Glitz, the better.

  ‘So the other day we were talking about one of the girls whose relationship has just fallen apart.’

  ‘This is work? Gossiping about relationships?’ It didn’t sound like any conference Max had ever been in.

  ‘Our readers are interested in relationships.’ Allegra’s straight, shiny hair had swung forward again. She flicked it back over her shoulder and fixed him with a stern eye. ‘You’re supposed to be just listening,’ she reminded him.

  ‘So, yes, we were talking about that and how her problem was that she had totally unrealistic expectations,’ she went on when Max subsided with a sigh. ‘She wanted some kind of fairy tale prince.’

  Princes. Fairy tales. Max shook his head. He thought about his own discussions at work: about environmental impact assessments and deliverables and bedrock depths. Sometimes it seemed to him that Allegra lived in a completely different world.

  ‘We had a long discussion about what women really want,’ she went on, ignoring him. ‘And we came to the conclusion that actually we want everything. We want a man who can fix a washing machine and plan the perfect date. Who’ll fight his way through a thicket if required but who can also dress well and talk intelligently at the theatre. Who can plan the perfect romantic date and sort out your tax and dance and communicate...’

  Max had been listening with growing incredulity. ‘Good luck finding a bloke who can do all that!’

  ‘Exactly!’ Allegra leant forward eagerly. ‘Exactly! That was what we all said. There isn’t anyone like that out there. So I started thinking: what if we could make a man like that? What if we could create a boyfriend who was everything women wanted?’

  ‘How on earth would you go about that?’ asked Max, not sure whether to laugh or groan in disbelief.

  ‘By teaching him what to do,’ said Allegra. ‘That’s what I pitched to Stella: a piece on whether it’s possible to take an ordinary bloke and transform him into the perfect man.’

  There was a silence. Max’s sense of foreboding was screaming a warning now.

  ‘Please tell me this isn’t the point where you say, And this is where you come in,’ he said in a hollow voice.

  ‘And this is where you come in, Max,’ said Allegra.

  He stared at her incredulously. She was smiling, and he hoped to God it was because she was winding him up. ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Think about it: you’re the ideal candidate. You haven’t got a girlfriend at the moment...and frankly,’ she added, unable to resist, ‘unless you get rid of that polo shirt, you won’t get another one.’

  Max scowled. ‘Stop going on about my shirt. Emma never minded it.’

  ‘Maybe she never said she minded it, but I bet she did.’ On a roll, Allegra pointed a finger at Max. ‘The thing is, Max, that shirt is symptomatic of a man who can’t be bothered to make an effort. I’m guessing Emma was just too nice to point that out.’

  Max ground his teeth. ‘For God’s sake, Allegra! It’s comfortable. Since when has comfort been an indictable offence?’

  ‘There are plenty of other new comfortable shirts out there that aren’t striped or buttoned too high at the collar, but you won’t buy them because that would mean changing, and changing is hard work,’ said Allegra. ‘And it’s not just a question of clothes. You need to change how you communicate, how you are. How much effort you put into thinking about your girlfriend and what will make her happy.’

  Closing his eyes briefly, Max drew a breath and let it out with exaggerated patience. ‘Allegra, I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said.

  ‘Why did Emma call off your engagement? I’ll bet it was because you weren’t prepared to make an effort, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Max, goaded at last. ‘If you must know, she met someone else. It’s not as if it’s a big secret,’ he went on, seeing Allegra’s awkward expression. It was obviously just as much a surprise to her as it had been to him. ‘I just don’t particularly feel like talking about it all the time.’

  ‘Emma seemed so nice,’ said Allegra hesitantly after a moment. ‘She didn’t seem like someone who’d cheat on you.’

  ‘She didn’t.’ Max blew out a breath, remembering how unprepared he had been for Emma’s revelation. ‘She was very honest. She said she’d met someone who works for one of our clients, and she didn’t want to sleep with him until she’d told me how he made her feel. He made her realise that we didn’t have any passion in our relationship any more.’

  ‘Eeuww.’

  That was exactly what Max had thought. ‘I mean, passion!’ He practically spat out the word. ‘What in God’s name does passion mean?’

  ‘Well, I suppose...sexual chemistry,’ Allegra offered. She hesitated. ‘So were things in the bedroom department...?’ She trailed off delicately.

  ‘They were fine! Or I thought they were fine,’ Max amended bitterly. ‘I loved Emma, and I thought she loved me. She was always talking about how compatible we were. We had the same interests. We were friends. It was her idea to get married in the first place, and I couldn’t see any reason not to. We’d been together three years and it was the obvious next step.

  ‘Then Emma meets this guy and suddenly it’s all about magic and chemistry and getting swept off her feet!’ Max’s mouth twisted. ‘I said to her, magic doesn’t last. Having things in common is more important than sparks, but she wouldn’t listen to reason.’ He sighed, remembering. ‘It was so unlike her. Emma used to be so sensible. It was one of the things I loved about her. She wasn’t silly like—’

  Like you.

  Max managed to bite the words back in time, but he might as well not have bothered because they hung in the air anyway.

  Allegra told herself she didn’t mind. She had more important things to worry about, like getting her assignment off the ground.

  ‘I don’t think you should give up on Emma, Max,’ she said persuasively. ‘You tw
o were good together. It sounds to me as if she was feeling taken for granted.’

  ‘You being the great relationship expert,’ said Max dourly.

  ‘I know what I’m talking about when it comes to failed relationships,’ Allegra pointed out, unfazed. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Emma is just looking for more attention from you. And that’s where I can help you,’ she added cunningly, gaining confidence from the fact that Max hadn’t scoffed yet. ‘If you really want her back, put yourself in my hands. It’s a win for all of us, Max. I get my article written, you get Emma back, and Emma gets the perfect man!’

  TWO

  There was a long silence. Max’s eyes were narrowed. He was definitely thinking about it, Allegra realised jubilantly, and she forced herself not to say any more. If he felt she was pressurising him, he would back away. Softly, softly, catchee monkey.

  ‘What exactly would be involved?’ he asked cautiously at last, and Allegra kept her eyes downcast so that he wouldn’t see the triumph in them. She didn’t want to spook him now.

  ‘The idea is for you to complete a series of tasks,’ she began. ‘Sort of like a knightly quest...’ She stopped as his face changed. Oops, looked like she’d lost him already with the knightly quest. Hurriedly, Allegra switched tactics. Practical details, that would appeal to Max.

  ‘So your first task would be to have cocktails—’

  ‘I can’t stand those poncy drinks,’ he started grumbling immediately. ‘I don’t know how you women can sit there sucking through straws and fighting your way through umbrellas and cherries.’

  ‘—with Darcy King,’ Allegra finished talking over the top of him.

  A pause. Max sat up straight. ‘What, not...?’

  ‘Yes, the Darcy King.’

  Idiot. She should have mentioned Darcy right at the start. Darcy was every red-blooded male’s fantasy, a lingerie model with a sweet face and a sinful body. Allegra could practically see Max drooling already. If Darcy wouldn’t win him round to the assignment, nothing would.