by Fiona Harper
‘I think I got that,’ he replied gruffly, ‘from the constant apologising ever since it happened.’
‘But I really am s—’
‘Nicole, stop!’
Oh, flip. It was worse than she’d thought.
She stared down at her hands in her lap, seeing their paleness against her dark trousers, but after a while she could feel him looking at her. She kept her focus down until she could bear it no longer. When she turned her head to see him his expression was sombre. If she hadn’t known that single dimple could appear, she’d have never believed it was there. She took a deep breath.
‘Stop beating yourself up about it,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We all make mistakes.’
Nicole frowned and stared at him. Surely she’d heard that wrong?
He let out a deep sigh and reached into the back seat. She hadn’t noticed he’d stored his main camera bag there, but he must have done, because he pulled both camera bodies out of it and started flicking through the images on the spare she’d been using. ‘You were taking shots all through that patch. There might be something we can use.’
She didn’t answer. Mainly because she was frozen to the spot. ‘B-but I ruined your wedding shoot!’
One side of his mouth hitched up. ‘Are you always this dramatic? I must admit it comes as a bit of a surprise after the ice-princess routine.’
Ice princess?
‘Or maybe it shouldn’t. I can’t seem to work you out. Especially as I know there’s another side to you.’
She knew what he was talking about. New Year’s Eve. But he couldn’t be more wrong. ‘That wasn’t really me,’ she blurted out. ‘It was an aberration…Too many cocktails…!’ The other corner of his mouth kicked up, but the smile was reluctant. ‘I’ve never been called an aberration before.’ And then he seemed to realise that maybe he shouldn’t have said that, because the dimple disappeared and he went back to looking at his camera, flicking through images in rapid succession.
After a minute or so he said, ‘Here…’ and thrust it in her direction.
She took it from him, careful not to let their fingers touch. The image on the back display was one she’d taken of Lynette and Charles having their first dance.
‘It’s too dark and very grainy…not to mention lopsided,’ she said quietly.
‘I might be able to do something with it in my photoediting software.’ He shrugged the shoulder nearest her. ‘You know, put an effect on it, clean it up a little. In black and white, grainy can look retro and romantic.’
She forgot she really ought not to look straight into those big blue eyes. ‘You can do that?’
His lips pursed momentarily. ‘Maybe. And I have a friend who’s good with techie stuff. I haven’t completely given up hope on that memory card yet.’
‘Have you had a look?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s still a bit sticky and I don’t want to mess up the contacts inside the camera by putting it in.’
She nodded. That was understandable.
He reached out and put a hand on her arm. They both looked at it, and then he drew it away. She heard him let out a weary breath. The atmosphere in the car thawed a good few degrees.
‘I meant what I said. Don’t beat yourself up about it. If I said I hadn’t goofed at plenty of the weddings I’ve covered I’d be lying. Photography is like that. Sometimes you don’t get the perfect shot. Sometimes you have to take something less than perfect, find its unique qualities and make the best of them. And you worked really hard today.’
She shook her head, very gently. ‘Does that mean you aren’t firing me?’
He just about smiled. ‘You wanted the full wedding-photography experience, and you’re well on your way to getting it. Besides, next week’s wedding is a bit different. I really need an extra pair of hands.’
When she didn’t reply he pretended to bat his lashes. ‘Please?’ On anyone else that would have looked ridiculous, but somehow Alex managed to make it both funny and charming.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, but she could feel herself weakening. ‘I need time to think.’
‘How about I call you in a few days? Say, Tuesday?’
She shook her head. ‘Maybe I won’t answer.’
He shrugged, then gave her one of his full-wattage smiles. She felt it down in the pit of her stomach. ‘Well, if you don’t, I’ll just have to call the magazine and let them know how much I need you, how great the article will be, because—of course—you’re following me around.’
She started to laugh at his outrageous arrogance, but then she stopped. He’d call the magazine?
No way could she let him do that. If he found out she didn’t actually work there, he’d start wondering where she did work, and she couldn’t let him start down that path.
‘And you really want my inept and disastrous help?’
‘I really do.’
They stared at each other a moment more and then Nicole smiled back at him. A big, goofy smile that showed all of her teeth. Something she never usually did these days.
‘Okay,’ he said, and she could see a soft warmth appear in his eyes, even in the dark of the car. She should go. Before she did something else monumentally stupid.
‘Okay,’ she whispered back, and then she climbed out of the car and made her way to her front door. She could feel him watching her from the car, hear the dull thrum of its engine as he waited for her to disappear inside. She forbade herself to look back.
When she’d shut the door behind her and leaned against it, she heard the engine rumble into life, then get quieter as he drove down the street and merged with the rest of the late-night traffic.
It was then, and only then, that she realised what an idiot she’d been.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Peggy stumbled into the living room at around ten on Sunday morning and found Nicole curled up on the sofa. She took one look at the tracksuit bottoms and the pile of biscuit wrappers and said, ‘That bad, huh?’
Nicole kept staring at the screen. ‘Worse’ was all she said.
She’d avoided Pretty in Pink this morning. Mainly because she’d had a convoluted dream all night that had cast her as unlucky-in-love Duckie, Saffron as the rich girl who got the boy and Alex as Molly Ringwald. It had been a little bizarre and a lot disturbing. Instead she’d plumped for Some Kind of Wonderful, but the story of one boy caught between two girls wasn’t helping any.
Peggy snatched the remote from her hand and froze the image on the screen. Nicole looked sideways at her.
‘Oh, God. You kissed him again, didn’t you?’
Nicole gave her a scornful look.
Peggy started striding round the living room, doing a circuit round the sofa. ‘I know he was cute and all, but really, Nicole? You’ve been on and on that this is your shot to take Hopes & Dreams to the next level and you got off with the groom-to-be?’
‘No, I didn’t kiss him.’
Peggy’s ire deflated with a large sigh and she flopped down beside Nicole. ‘Then what’s the problem?’
‘I wanted to.’
‘But you didn’t…’
Nicole shook her head.
‘Again, what’s the problem?’
Nicole buried her face in her hands and spoke through her fingers. Just thinking about it was giving her a hot flush. ‘I think he wanted to kiss me too.’
Peggy didn’t say anything for a while. ‘Oh,’ she finally managed.
Nicole nodded. When Peggy was reduced to monosyllables things were pretty serious.
‘But nothing happened?’
She slowly let her hands drop and looked at Peggy. The look of sympathy on her friend’s face was almost worse than the anger had been. ‘No,’ she replied heavily.
‘And did you find out enough about him to start planning Saffron’s proposal?’
She nodded again. More than enough. That had been the problem. The more she found out about Alex, the more she liked him. And it had nothing to do with the charm and
swagger that had had the bridesmaids swooning and everything to do with the silent, serious man who hid beneath that.
Peggy, who’d been leaning forward more and more as she’d been interrogating Nicole, sank back into the squashy sofa cushions. ‘Mission accomplished, then. Good. Problem solved. Now we can get going with the proposal and you won’t have to see him again.’
When Nicole didn’t answer, Peggy bounced back onto her bunny-slippered feet again. ‘What did you do?’ she asked, more than a little desperately.
Nicole stared at the screen, where a suitably pained Eric Stoltz was leaning against a locker, dreaming about a bright and perky Lea Thompson. ‘Remember how he offered to let me shadow him for a few weddings and I said I was going to back out after this one?’
Peggy nodded.
Nicole scrunched her face up so she didn’t have to look at her friend properly. ‘Well, I kind of forgot to.’
Peg threw her hands in the air. ‘How did you manage to do that?’
Nicole motioned for her to sit again. She couldn’t explain with Peggy towering over her like that. Her own conscience was doing pretty much the same thing, and that was bad enough.
When Peggy had sat down again, Nicole launched into the whole story, from the moment in the corridor outside the bride’s dressing room right through to when Alex had dropped her home again. ‘And I was just so stupidly pleased he didn’t think I was a waste of space, that he actually appreciated all the hard work I’d put in, that I waltzed out of the car and completely forgot the plan.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ Peggy said as she fished one of the biscuit packets off the floor and searched it for contents. She found a Hobnob and took a bite. ‘You never lose focus like that. It’s not like you at all.’
‘I know!’ Nicole wailed. ‘I don’t feel like myself at all when I’m with him and it’s…it’s…’ She’d been going to say ‘horrible’, but she realised it hadn’t felt horrible at all at the time. In fact, it had been rather nice. ‘…unsettling.’ That was the best she could manage.
Peggy sighed. ‘Maybe so, but he’s right about one thing.’
Nicole turned sharply to look at her. ‘What?’
‘You are too hard on yourself.’
Nicole stared at her. Never in a million years had she expected Peggy to say something like that.
‘I mean, when I look at you I see this amazing businesswoman who’s brave enough to put everything on the line and go after her dreams, and all you can see are things that you still need to work on.’
Peggy offered her the biscuit packet. There was one last Hobnob hiding in the bottom. The packet rustled loudly as Nicole dug her way down to it.
‘So…’ Peggy said softly, ‘you’ll just have to phone him and put him off.’
The biscuit stopped halfway to Nicole’s mouth. ‘I don’t think I can. That’s the point!’ She told Peggy what Alex had said about phoning Beautiful Weddings. ‘I can’t blow my stupid cover. The one thing our clients rely on us for above all else is not to give the game away before they’ve popped the question. We can’t risk that…’ She sighed. ‘So I’m going to have to go.’
Peggy sighed too. ‘Sheesh! And I thought my life was complicated.’
‘I know.’ It seemed as if everything had turned upside down since that day when Saffron had swept into the shop. Nicole realised she really ought to be careful what she wished—or prayed—for.
‘So what are you going to do?’
Nicole shrugged. She was just going to have to try extra hard to be the person she knew she could be. Nothing got to that woman. Nothing made her lose her cool. Not even a sexy photographer with a killer dimple. She could do it. She knew she could. She’d made harder and more lasting changes to herself before.
‘It’ll be easier this time,’ she muttered, more to herself rather than to her flatmate. ‘It’s not a big fairy-tale do—no castles, no moonlit battlements, no candles and roses. From what Alex has told me, the next one is going to be a little…different.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Alex met Saffron at Arch, one of her favourite restaurants to see and be seen in. To be honest, it really wasn’t his kind of place. He liked a place with a good buzz, didn’t mind a crowd occasionally, but Arch seemed to attract a certain type, the sort who liked to wallow in their own fabulousness. He really didn’t have time for it, but this was Saffron’s crowd, and a lot of her so-called friends came here. She saw it more as popping down to the local pub to catch up with her mates than going to a thriving hot spot.
But instead of flitting between different groups of friends before sitting down at her favourite table, Saffron went straight to it. She sat, her arms folded across her middle, bottom lip slightly protruding.
‘Hey,’ he said softly, when he found her gazing out across the restaurant, unusually quiet. He reached over and placed his hand over hers and she jumped. ‘What’s up?’
She sighed heavily. ‘I don’t suppose you saw the article in this week’s Buzz?’
He shook his head. That trash was only good for lining budgie cages, but Saffron had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the publication, in that she loved it when they loved her and published the tidbits she fed them and hated it when they dished the dirt instead.
‘It was horrible. They did this split-page thingy—”A Tale of Two Sisters”, they called it. And there was Michelle on one side and me on the other.’ She trailed off. ‘They listed all her marvellous accomplishments, along with photos of her looking elegant and gracious, and then all my little indiscretions. Let me tell you, the photos weren’t as nice.’
Alex swallowed. He could imagine. Saffron was calming down now she’d reached her mid-twenties, but she’d been more than a little wild as a teenager, and there’d been plenty of paparazzi only too willing to catch her every fall from grace.
She looked across at him, her eyes large and full of hurt. ‘I’ve been trying really hard to create a new image for myself. I haven’t been photographed drunk outside a club in more than a year, but nobody seems to notice! They just want to keep rehashing the past…’
He gave a sympathetic look. ‘It takes time for people’s perceptions to change, but you’ll do it if you don’t give up, if you just stay below the radar for a while.’
Saffron looked at him as if ‘staying below the radar’ was a foreign concept. ‘I’m not giving up,’ she said rather determinedly. ‘In fact, I’ve got a plan that should…Never mind.’ She looked away. ‘I’ll tell you about it another time.’
Alex frowned. That was most unlike her. She usually spilled every bit of news about herself the moment it happened, every thought from her head. Maybe she was starting to mature a little, just as her father had hoped?
Her expression turned from distant to sad. ‘She’s pregnant, you know…That breaking news is what prompted them to run the story.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Who’s pregnant?’
‘Wonder-sister Michelle. My father’s fit to pop with pride.’
Oh, hell. That was bad. Not for Michelle, obviously, who seemed like a perfectly nice and together woman, but for Saffron, who was already suffering under the weight of all the comparisons between them, especially since Michelle’s wedding to a man due to be the next Viscount Hadley had catapulted her into the same spheres as Saffron.
Saffron shook her head and she stared at somewhere just over his shoulder. ‘I heard it, you know, at the wedding…That little catch in his voice as he finished his toast to the bride. I saw the way he used his napkin to dab his eye when he sat down, and I just thought, Will he ever stand up at my wedding one day and almost burst with pride?’
Alex reached across and took her hand. ‘Of course he will. When that day comes…’
He hoped he was telling the truth. Godfrey Wolden-Barnes adored his little girl. It was just that recently he’d realised what a monster he’d created by spoiling her, and he was—too late—trying to take a tougher approach. Unfortunately, his timi
ng was terrible. But Alex had no doubt her father would give her away just as proudly as he’d done his step-daughter. He just needed to calm down a bit first, and it wasn’t as if Saffron was about to tie the knot any time soon, was it?
He looked at her as she worried her napkin and fiddled with the cutlery. Ever since he’d known Saffron, her world had fallen apart on an almost weekly basis—or at least she’d thought it had. But those dramas usually had to do with not being the first one to own a particular designer handbag or her favourite table in a restaurant not being available. This was different.
Which made the whole situation right now that much more difficult.
Their relationship had started in a blaze of passion and excitement, but now it had settled down to a more pedestrian pace. Despite the crazy nature of Saffron’s life, what they had together was easy, comfortable. He’d been quite happy drifting along, not really thinking about where it all was going. He’d thought that was a good thing, but now he was starting to wonder.
Tom was right about one thing—he had avoided serious relationships in the four years since he’d split from Vanessa, but who wouldn’t have? However, he didn’t like this feeling that he was just drifting aimlessly, being pushed where the current of his life took him. Usually he was a pretty ‘take charge’ kind of guy. He supposed he should be thinking of wanting something more serious.
And Saffron was the obvious candidate. She didn’t make him feel as if he were living on shifting sand, but…
An image of Nicole, her eyes large, her face unreadable, drifted into his mind. He felt a surge of adrenalin hit, but he squashed it down again. This was not the time. Saffron needed him at the moment. Even if he’d decided that this…thing…that simmered between them was not a commitment-phobic mirage, he wasn’t that much of a cad that he’d dump Saffron when she was at her lowest ebb.
And, thinking of Saffron being a bit low, he decided to talk about something that would cheer her up, which would have the added bonus of distracting him from his own thoughts as well.
