Among a Thousand Stars

by Jo Bartlett

  A tall dark-haired man got out of the lift and smiled briefly at Tom, before heading down the corridor and stopping outside Ashleigh’s room. He knocked and Tom watched, letting the lift doors in front of him close. As she opened the door, the man greeted her warmly, kissing her on both cheeks and offering her his arm. Whoever he was, he was playing the father of the bride role, and as they walked wordlessly past him towards the hotel’s Crystal Room, on the same floor, Tom couldn’t stop himself following them. The wedding was like rubbernecking a car crash, something that he didn’t want to happen, but couldn’t stop watching either way.

  The Crystal Room was almost over-whelming inside. The changing colours were beautiful but, at the same time, an assault on the senses. Tom sat at the back. It would only have accommodated about twelve guests, although he was the only one. He watched Ashleigh take a seat at the front of the room next to her mystery companion. The registrar, who had a long white beard like Gandalf’s, took his place at the front of the room and Tom shivered. Suddenly the strains of The Way You Look Tonight began and it was like someone was sitting on Tom’s chest. This was all wrong. Was Zac really going to be the one walking down the aisle? If Ashleigh married him, she was always going to be sidelined by his ego. He had to stop it! He jumped to his feet and opened his mouth to speak, just as the doors to The Crystal Room opened. Zac was there, but by his side was Stevie. Tom struggled to process it, for a moment he thought Stevie was taking the best man’s role, which made sense, but then he realised Zac was holding on to Stevie’s hand as though he never wanted to let it go.

  By the time the Gandalf lookalike had finished the ceremony and the grooms had exchanged platinum wedding bands and Rose Quartz crystals, which apparently represented love, Tom had just about got his head around it.

  If he’d believed in such things, it might even have looked like they were soulmates. Zac and Stevie didn’t take their eyes off each other and the vows they’d written left a lump in Tom’s throat. He felt strangely euphoric as the ceremony came to a close, it must have been the atmosphere. Then he saw Ashleigh’s companion slip an arm around her waist, as they walked back up the aisle towards him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He caught hold of her arm, as she walked past, following Stevie and Zac, who’d given him nothing more than a quick wink on the way back up the aisle.

  ‘Sorry, Marcus, can you give me a minute?’ Ashleigh turned to the dark-haired man, who raised an eyebrow and nodded. ‘It was up to Zac to give you the details. I assume he’d told you he was getting married, but left out the small detail of who to?’

  ‘He did, but you could have put me right.’

  ‘I could have, but I didn’t want you rugby tackling the registrar to the ground to stop it. If Zac earns less because of this, then I knew you’d do anything to stop it. It’s probably why he did what he did.’ She shot him a look that left him with no doubt about what she thought of his priorities. It was like she’d grown a protective shell since that last day on the beach, as if she wasn’t even the same person.

  ‘I wouldn’t have done that…’ He’d been about to say something, something he’d only just begun to realise for himself, when she’d cut him off.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ Ashleigh narrowed her eyes. ‘Zac was determined not to let you, or anyone else, question whether he was serious about Stevie; this was never going to be just another engagement. Either way, for you the damage is done, there’s an engagement photo they took days ago and uploaded just before the ceremony, so it will have gone viral by now.’

  ‘Do you really think that’s all I care about?’ Tom tried to look her in the eyes, but she was already staring past him.

  ‘It’s none of my business what you think.’ Ashleigh pressed a card into his hand. ‘Zac told me to invite you to the wedding breakfast when he spotted you on the way in; this is where it’s being held. Come or don’t, it’s up to you.’

  He watched her leave yet again and the card felt cold in his hand. He’d blown it, he knew that now, and the only place he was going was home.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The Le Cirque restaurant in the Bellagio was colourful and fun, the perfect place for Zac and Stevie’s wedding breakfast. Marcus had a prior engagement and hadn’t been able to make it. Predictably, Tom hadn’t shown up either. He’d sent Cristal champagne to the table, with a note saying he’d been called back to London and that the rest of the crate was waiting for Zac and Stevie in their suite. At least he’d done something to congratulate them and not made a scene at the wedding, although Ashleigh suspected he’d really headed back to start on the spin for Zac’s revelation or maybe even to arrange some sort of legal safeguarding for his client’s finances. Tom wouldn’t recognise love if it slapped him in the face and they were all better off without him.

  ****

  Ashleigh had taken a series of photographs after the wedding and over the course of the evening; the photographer in The Crystal Room had taken a few too. Zac and Stevie had dragged her back to their suite, insisting the honeymoon could wait for a couple of hours. At Zac’s say so she’d uploaded some of the photographs to his website, Instagram and his Twitter account when they got there. The engagement shot had already caused a sensation, but as soon as the wedding pictures went up the world had gone slightly mad.

  ‘Thanks babe.’ Zac squeezed her thigh as he sat down next to her on the sofa. There was none of the old letchiness and no attempt for his hand to creep any further up her thigh. Those days were well and truly over for good, now that his relationship with Stevie was finally out in the open.

  ‘Are you worried about the damage to your career? I thought that was the reason you were keeping quiet?’

  ‘Not a bit, babe, to be honest I couldn’t care less. I’ve got more money than I can ever spend and I want to be with Stevie instead of spending all my time working anyway. It just seemed like the right time and I wanted the rest of the world to know the truth about my feelings for him and the fact that there’s no you and me!’

  ‘I’ll try not to be insulted.’ They exchanged a smile.

  ‘Don’t be, if I was still into women, you’d be right up there.’ Zac winked.

  ‘Him and me both!’ Stevie walked across from the bar and sat on the other side of her.

  ‘And what about Tom, are you pleased he knows? Isn’t under any misapprehension about you and me?’ Zac gave her a knowing look. Only he and Stevie really understood how much she’d loved him.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference. He came here to protect your business interests, it was nothing to do with me, and now he’s gone back to London to sort them out.’ She sighed. ‘It’s not like he rocked up here to declare his love for me, is it?’

  ‘Okay, babe, you’ve made your point. Let’s stop talking about boring old Tom then shall we?’ Zac’s eyes lit up as Stevie passed them both another glass of champagne.

  ‘I think you’ve got the makings of a domestic goddess.’ Ashleigh squeezed his leg.

  ‘True enough and I love it. Although I’ve just seen some of the comments on my phone that have been left on Twitter and your role in our household is pivotal too, you know!’

  ‘Nothing horrible I hope?’ Ashleigh couldn’t stand the thought that the haters might make derogatory comments about her two best friends. If those people knew Zac and Stevie, and saw how they were together, they could never be anything but happy for them.

  ‘Well, there’s one or two of those, but most are nice. Although a number of them seem to think we’re in some kind of strange polygamous relationship.’ Stevie passed his phone to Zac.

  ‘God, yeah, this one says you’re the surrogate mother we’re using for our honeymoon baby!’ Zac started laughing and then his expression changed. ‘Actually that’s not a bad idea, we could do that! Mix mine and Stevie’s sperm together, get ourselves a turkey baster and Bob’s your uncle or rather Fanny’s your au
nt! Well, sort of.’

  ‘Lovely!’ She grimaced at the thought. ‘Although come back to me if I hit forty and there’s still nobody in my life, and we’ll talk.’

  ****

  Back in her own room, Ashleigh had fallen into bed in the early hours when her eyes had started to ache from reading the responses online. Despite the largely positive reaction, she’d woken up with a strange sense of melancholy, less than ready to face the day.

  She cleaned her teeth but ignored the state of her hair. She’d do something about that later, maybe when the Cristal headache started to subside. Grabbing some carbonated water from the minibar, she positioned herself cross-legged on the bed and switched on her iPad. Almost instantly a FaceTime request from Angus came through. He’d be beside himself at the news and suddenly, more than anything, she wanted to see a friendly face.

  ‘Angus?’ As she accepted the call a big, brown shape filled the screen and for a few seconds she couldn’t make out who or what it was. ‘Bertie!’ the iPad at the other end was drawn back slightly by a hand that presumably belonged to Angus and, at the sound of her voice, Bertie jumped to his feet, his head on one side. ‘I’ve missed you! I hope Uncle Angus has been giving you lots of bacon while Tom’s been away!’ The dog lurched towards the screen and all she could see was fur and what looked like some sort of tussle.

  ‘Okay, laddie, maybe not one of my best ideas.’ Angus beamed into the screen, one hand firmly clamped onto Bertie’s collar to calm him down. She could still hear the thud of his tail on the floor and the imprint of his wet nose had been left in the middle of the iPad that Angus was holding in his other hand. ‘Do you always have this effect on the men in your life?’

  ‘Not all of them.’ Her voice broke. It was no good, this trying to be like Tom. Putting work first and burying her emotions so deeply that she couldn’t say more than twenty words to him when he’d arrived at her hotel room. She should have said something to stop him going back, find out if there’d been more to why he’d really come all this way.

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’ Angus was still grinning and he hadn’t even mentioned the wedding. Something strange was going on. ‘What’s that Bertie, you’ve got a message from Tom?’

  ‘Angus, please, don’t…’ She was useless at this, scratch the surface and all the feelings were still there.

  ‘Bertie says Tom is really sorry and he just wants a chance to make it up to you.’ He raised his eyebrows and the dog’s tail continued its rhythmic thudding on the floor.

  ‘He’s got a funny way of showing it.’ The words were barely out of her mouth when someone knocked on the door and the iPad slipped out of her hands on to the bed. There wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of it being one of the happy couple, but she couldn’t let herself believe it might be Tom.

  ‘Can I come in this time?’ He looked like he hadn’t slept all night.

  ‘Okay.’ She moved almost robotically to let him into the room, scared to let herself react.

  ‘Bertie’s right. I’m sorry, I’ve been an idiot.’ Tom gave a half-hearted smile. ‘In fact I’ve got a voicemail from Zac to prove it.’ He held up his phone. ‘He told me last night that if I got on the effing plane back to London, as he put it, without doing what I came here to do, then I was an even bigger idiot than he’s been for the past ten years.’

  ‘And what was it you came to do?’ She still couldn’t look him in the eyes. It was almost as if they’d never been intimate. Her voice sounded monotone, even in her head.

  ‘To tell you not to marry Zac.’

  ‘And you did that, quite efficiently.’

  ‘Yes, but it was the reason why I didn’t want you to marry him that I never quite got out.’ Tom was pacing the room. ‘I wasn’t even sure myself when I got on the plane to come over, but I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last twenty-four hours and it had nothing to do with you not being in love with Zac and everything to do with me being in love with you.’ He stopped and for the first time she looked at him. The confident Tom who’d always been there was gone and he was desperately waiting for her to say something.

  ‘But, you don’t believe in love.’ She sat on the edge of her bed. She’d wanted him to say all this that day on the beach, but now she didn’t know how to react. They lived thousands of miles apart and he’d left it all too late.

  ‘You made me believe in it. Since Mum died and you left, I’ve been doing anything and everything to try and feel okay. I sacked Francine and stop representing Susie-Anne because I couldn’t stand being around either of them. I told myself it was a business decision, but it was all about you.’ Tom moved to sit next to her on the bed. ‘I’ve been cannoning from one thing to the other, desperately trying to fill the empty space you left behind. I even spent a night listening to Mum’s neighbour, Karen, crying about losing her soulmate when Graham left her. All the time not realising I’d let mine walk away. Then she texted me when I was waiting for my plane last night, to tell me that Graham wanted to come home and to ask what she should do.’

  ‘You’ve been giving marital advice?’ She tried to laugh, but it caught in her throat.

  ‘I said she obviously still loved him or she wouldn’t even be thinking about it.’ Tom had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. ‘When I used the word love and meant what I’d said, I realised it was because you’d taught me what it means. When I came here yesterday, I still couldn’t admit to myself why I’d done it. I was elated when I realised you weren’t marrying Zac, but the way you were after the wedding – I felt like you hated me. I’d deserve that if you did, but I need to know if I’ve lost my chance’

  ‘I’ve got a job here. I’ve done all the things you thought I should do, followed my career and pretended I had no feelings.’ Ashleigh was shaking. ‘And now you turn up and say you love me and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Forgive me for being an idiot. I spoke to Angus too last night and he told me Bertie had started to eat for the first time with me not there. I’m worse than useless without you, it was all my fault, even the dog knows that.’ He took her face in his hands and very gently kissed her.

  At that moment she realised it would never be too late; she could bury her feelings for Tom in concrete and toss them into the bottom of the Grand Canyon, but they’d still be there.

  ‘What about the job, I can’t just leave.’ She pulled away from him, panic rising in her chest.

  ‘We’ll work something out. Bertie and I have been thoroughly miserable without you. We could come here, I don’t care where we are and neither does he – as long as we’re with you. We’ve both only ever loved two women and we’re not about to let a little thing like the Atlantic or one of Calvin Welch’s iron clad contracts stand in our way.’ From the way he looked at her, she knew he meant every word. ‘But what about you, you still haven’t told me how you feel.’

  ‘You want me to tell you that I love you too?’ She couldn’t help smiling at the irony, those three little words she’d had to hold back for so long, which had come tumbling out in a rush of emotion on the beach. ‘You’ll do, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve created a monster!’ Tom laughed, his relief visible

  ‘Okay, the truth? I love you, always have, even when it wasn’t allowed, you know that and, despite my best efforts, I know now that I always will.’

  A disjointed Scottish accent rose from the iPad on the bed. ‘At last! I thought you two would never work out what was blindingly obvious to everyone else.’ Angus and Bertie had witnessed it all.

  ‘Thanks for the editorial input. We’ll call you both later.’ Tom reached across and ended the call. ‘Now where were we?’

  ‘You were just begging my forgiveness and explaining how you’re going to make things up to me.’ Ashleigh smiled as he took her into his arms again.

  ‘I promise to spend the rest of my life making it up to you, because I’ve final
ly realised all I need is the one thing everyone’s been going on about. Love, wasn’t it?’ He pulled her closer, until their lips were almost touching. ‘Perhaps you could just run me through the concept one more time…’

  Acknowledgements

  Firstly, I would like to thank the team at So Vain Books for their belief in the novel and for making the process of getting to publication as painless as possible, as well as for sharing their invaluable knowledge of the magazine industry and what stylists really do!

  I would also like to thank the readers from the Romantic Novelist Association’s New Writers’ Scheme for their input and being the first people with industry knowledge to tell me the story was good enough for publication.

  I’m sure I would have given up long before I reached this stage, if it hadn’t been for my wonderful writing family, The Write Romantics – Sharon Booth, Jackie Ladbury, Deirdre Palmer, Lynne Pardoe, Helen Phifer, Jessica Redland, Helen Rolfe, Rachael Thomas and Alys West – and particularly those who read the early drafts of AATS and encouraged me to keep going.

  Thanks too to my beta readers – Jennie Dunn, Toni Hazard and Alex Weston. And most especially, for this version of the story, to my alpha readers Julie Heslington and Paula Stroud, who were the first people I felt brave enough to get feedback from. I can’t thank them enough for their honest and supportive critiques.

  I also owe a debt to my friends and family for never minding if I was too busy writing to do other things. Especially to my mum for letting me spend hours reading whilst I was growing up, with my back pressed against a warm radiator and a book in my hands – heaven!

  Last, but not least, thank you to my husband and children who have taught me all I’ll ever need to know about love. From among a thousand stars, I’d always pick you.