Before You Say I Do

by Clare Lydon

  “Only, when I’m just about to get married, that’s a problem, isn’t it?”

  Jordan didn’t reply.

  She didn’t need to.

  Chapter 22

  Abby walked through the door of her first-floor flat, then shut it hard. The only sound was her breathing, along with her neighbour’s TV below. They were an old couple whose TV was always blaring. She was so used to it now, she tuned it out. However, she wasn’t going to miss it when she moved in with Marcus after they got married.

  Her heart stuttered at the thought.

  Not now.

  Her flat had that not-lived-in smell about it, even though she’d only been gone four days. Her empty coffee cups from before she left were still on the side, as were two small plates. She walked over to her grey couch and grabbed the cushions, plumping them up. Then she arranged her three remote controls on the coffee table, and tidied her copies of BBC Good Food into a pile next to them. Abby had taken out a subscription in the hope of following some of the recipes. That hadn’t quite happened yet, but the magazine made for great aspirational reading.

  She strolled over to her kitchen at one end of the all-in-one room, wiping up a couple of stray crumbs from the side. She put the kettle on, then checked the fridge. No milk. She’d have to have a black coffee. Pretend she was from Italy. She could do that.

  Ten minutes later, she was slumped on her sofa, her coffee going cold. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want anything. Well, apart from one particular thing. She put her head in her hands, then rubbed her face.

  She could still smell Jordan faintly on her fingers. Still remembered what it felt like to be inside her.

  Exciting. Sexy. Glorious.

  She shook her head.

  All the way home in the cab, she’d been wondering what to do next. She’d got her phone out a few times, stared at Jordan’s number, then put it away. What was she going to write? ‘Fantastic to fuck you on the plane. Now, about those flowers for my wedding…’ It didn’t really work, did it?

  Nothing did, that was the problem.

  Her mind kept shying away from calling Marcus and asking him to come round for a chat. Even the thought of calling him felt weird. They were so not Taran and Ryan.

  Perhaps they could postpone the wedding, give her some time to think. But he’d be hurt. He’d want to know why. She couldn’t possibly tell him. “Because I’m falling for my professional bridesmaid, the one you hired?”

  No, it would kill him. It would kill her, too. Then she’d have to deal with Marjorie. And everyone else.

  She blew out a long breath. What a mess. She was supposed to be meeting Jordan tomorrow about her speech. But could she? If they met, it’d have to be about business. But would that happen? Could she trust herself? She’d never considered herself an untrustworthy person. Somebody who couldn’t control her actions. But that’s what had happened.

  It’s what Jordan did to her.

  She’d made her see the world differently. This weekend, they’d bonded. She’d spoken about stuff she hadn’t spoken about in years. Things she’d forgotten she’d wanted in her busy life. Like working for a charity. Like making a difference. Like not being caught up in the corporate world. When had her life run away from her?

  She picked up her work phone and checked her emails. She had 152. Not bad for four days away. One at the top in particular caught her notice. It was from her boss. When she clicked on it, she saw he was asking for a meeting about ‘something important’ tomorrow lunchtime. Maybe it was about the project she was hoping to take the lead on.

  She sat up straight. Tomorrow? When she was meant to be meeting Jordan?

  Damn it.

  Before Jordan, Abby would have been so excited to get this email. Now, not so much. She’d have to see if Jordan could meet her in the evening instead. She missed her so much already.

  A knock on her door made her jump.

  When she opened it, her heart dropped. She was well aware that wasn’t meant to be her reaction to seeing her fiancé. Marcus’s head was barely visible behind the bouquet of red roses he held in one hand. He clutched a gift bag in the other. Abby’s heart slumped a little more. Shit, had he brought her a gift from his stag do? She’d brought him nothing apart from a truckload of guilt.

  She was a terrible person.

  Marcus stepped forward and hugged her, giving her the flowers with a kiss on the cheek. “Hello future Mrs Montgomery.” He grinned, walked past her and grabbed a vase from the kitchen counter. He filled it with water, then took the flowers from her to arrange. Marcus was the better flower arranger in the relationship. This had been established very early on. Hence Delta’s jibes about Marcus’s sexuality. He wasn’t gay, though. Just creative.

  Abby, on the other hand…

  “How was it? Isn’t the villa spectacular?”

  Abby nodded, slapping on a fake smile. Flashes of kissing Jordan kept popping into her head, but she pushed them aside. She had to if she was going to survive. “It was amazing. Everyone had a great time, and Jordan made sure it went off without a hitch.” Very nearly true. She placed a hand on his arm as he began trimming the rose leaves and snipping the bottom of the stems.

  Precise. That was Marcus.

  “How about you? How was your weekend?”

  Marcus shrugged, not quite looking her in the eye. “You know, the usual. Too much booze, and bawdy behaviour. And…” He paused, eyeing her, before dropping the flowers on the kitchen bench and taking a deep breath. “They got me a stripper, too. I told them not to, but you know what Philip’s like when he gets something in his head. Johnny, too. There were pictures taken, so just in case they surface, I wanted you to know. I feel terrible about it.” He stopped, and held out the gift bag. “I bought you a gift. It’s not a guilt offering. I was going to buy you one anyway.”

  Abby swallowed, rooted to the spot. Marcus was worried about having a stripper?

  She opened the gift box. Inside was a gorgeous silver bracelet with what looked like diamonds studded in the band. She didn’t deserve it, but she couldn’t let him see that.

  She glanced up at his face. “It’s gorgeous, but you didn’t need to.” She was a very bad person.

  “I know, but I wanted to. Even though I was on my stag do, I missed you. Is that corny?” He threw up his hands, and gave her a grin “I don’t care if it’s corny, it’s how I feel. Plus, if you can’t be corny when you’re just about to get married to your best friend, when can you be?”

  Abby grinned despite the sinking feeling in her stomach. It was no easy task. Like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time.

  “The other reason I bought it, as well as to say I love you, was because I have a favour to ask. My parents want to have us over for dinner tomorrow night. No agenda, just a dinner to spend some time together, to get to know their future daughter-in-law. I’ve said yes already, because I assumed that a Tuesday would be okay for you. Is it okay?”

  Her spirits dropped to a new low for the day. “Tomorrow night?” She’d hoped to see Jordan, but now she wasn’t free at lunch or in the evening.

  She couldn’t say no to this, could she? Not when Marcus was looking at her like a puppydog. She sucked her top lip between her teeth. “Sure, tomorrow is fine.”

  Marcus studied her face. “Good acting. You’re getting better at this.” He grinned. “Thank you.”

  Her phone beeped, and she walked over to the couch, as Marcus resumed his flower arranging. It was a message from Jordan.

  Abby gulped. Should she cover it with her hand, or take it in the bedroom?

  She was being stupid. She clicked on it.

  Hope you got home okay. We still on for lunch tomorrow? To talk about your speech and everything else?

  She ground her teeth together. Jordan was going to think she was fobbing her off, but there was nothing she could do.

  Really sorry, but something’s come up. I’ll text you in the week to rearrange. She studied the message. Di
d it sound cold? She deleted what she’d written, looked up at Marcus, then wrote it again. She didn’t have time to worry. She’d explain it to Jordan when she saw her. She clicked send, a feeling of foreboding settling in her stomach. She’d just postponed seeing her, and now she was going to have to sit through a dinner with Marcus and his parents.

  “Everything okay?” Marcus asked. He walked over and kissed her lips.

  It took everything Abby had to hold it together in that moment. “Fine.”

  But now she knew.

  She didn’t want to be kissed by anyone but Jordan.

  Chapter 23

  Jordan didn’t ever recall running so hard or so fast, but today she needed it. Karen was lagging behind as Jordan ripped up Brighton seafront. Even the circling seagulls avoided her, knowing she meant business. The June weather was hitting the late 20s, but the seafront still held a pleasant breeze for running. However, even the sun on her face couldn’t change her mood. She was running to forget.

  It was only when she stopped that her body remembered she wasn’t a natural runner, and she began wheezing for Britain. That was how Karen found her moments later: doubled over and gasping for breath. Her flatmate guided her to one of the weathered benches overlooking the sea. They sat, until Jordan got her breath back.

  Only then did Karen speak. “What’s going on? I don’t see you for five days. Then when I do, you demand we go for a run and then you take off like you’re Paula Radcliffe. Which we both know you are not. So what gives? Why have you come back from your weekend away trying to break world speed records?” Karen shaded her eyes with her hand. “I take it this has something to do with a certain hot bride-to-be.”

  Jordan frowned. “Don’t call her that.”

  “What should I call her?”

  Jordan thought for a moment. “Trouble.”

  “Oh dear.” Karen sat forward and fixed Jordan with her stare. “Tell me.”

  “We kissed.” Jordan’s tone was matter-of-fact. As if this was nothing at all.

  It was the opposite of that. Before Karen could reply, Jordan continued.

  “Then she fucked me in the plane toilet.” Her body reacted as she’d known it would. As if Abby was right there, her fingers inside her all over again. It was too recent. Too exciting. Too much. “And now she’s cancelling arrangements and I don’t know if I have a job or a business anymore because I might just have buggered it all up. And for what?” Jordan sat forward, and put her head in her hands.

  She’d spent last night alone, trying to convince herself the situation wasn’t as bad as she thought it was. But when she said it out loud, it sounded a whole lot worse.

  “Holy shit,” Karen replied. “If I clamber over the whole ‘you kissed the bride’ vibe, the thing I’m stuck on is she fucked you in the toilet? She fucked you?” Karen couldn’t sound any more surprised if she tried. “Is Little Miss Sunshine not so straight?”

  It had taken Jordan by surprise, too. “It seems like she’s not.” She sighed. “But that’s beside the point. The upshot is, I now have a bride who’s getting married in,” she held up her right hand and splayed her fingers, “five days. Someone I’m contracted to work for. Plus, I’ve added to my tally of one-night stands. With someone I really didn’t want to have a one-night stand with. It’s not ideal.”

  Karen shook her head. “It’s not. I know we joked about this before you went, but I didn’t expect anything to happen. What’s different about her?”

  Jordan had been asking herself that constantly since she’d left Abby at the airport. All the way home. All night long, lying in her bed, willing sleep. Why had she kissed her in the kitchen? And yes, Abby had been the aggressor on the plane, but she could have said no. She could have stopped her. But she hadn’t wanted to.

  She’d wanted Abby just as much as Abby had wanted her.

  She still wanted Abby.

  But she had to stop thinking that.

  “I don’t know. We had such a great time together over the weekend, really getting to know each other. She got under my skin. There was an attraction there. I could feel it, but I didn’t know if it was reciprocated. Until we were in the hot tub together. We nearly kissed then. I thought we’d managed to avoid it. To stay professional. Until the night we left when we kissed. And then the plane… I can’t explain it. It just happened.”

  She sounded like a cliché. She didn’t need to see Karen’s face to know that. Jordan had heard enough ‘I just landed in her vagina’ defences to know exactly what they sounded like. Made up. But it really had just spiralled out of control right at the end, and she had no idea how.

  “But now we’re back and we have business to attend to. Wedding business. But she says something’s come up, and we can’t meet up. So I don’t know what’s going on.” She shook her head, squinting as she looked up at the sky. “It’s a mess. That’s what I know for sure.”

  “Wow.” Karen stretched her arms above her head, giving Jordan a look. “I mean, you’ve really buggered this up good and proper.”

  She could always count on Karen to be blunt.

  “Kissing the bride is one thing. Not a good thing. Joining the mile-high club with her is quite another.”

  Jordan got up. Sitting and talking about this was turning up the noise in her head. She liked it better when she’d been running. Then, she’d just focused on the sun on her skin, and the wind in her hair. Nature could be comforting at times.

  “Let’s walk and talk. Or maybe run and talk.”

  Karen nodded, as they both began pumping their arms, taking long strides along the promenade. In front of them, a woman was struggling to contain a husky. To their right, a small boy in a red T-shirt was elated with his ice cream, which he proceeded to face plant into.

  “Look on the bright side. At least you got laid.”

  That made Jordan smile. “You’d think I would be feeling a bit more positive about that, wouldn’t you? I can normally cope with one-night stands. I’m prepared. I control them. Not this one. Plus, when my business and reputation are hanging in the balance, getting a shag isn’t top priority.” She picked up the pace and began to run. There was too much thinking going on. She needed distraction.

  “How did you leave it with Abby?” Karen kept up with Jordan this time around.

  It was a good question. Images flashed through Jordan’s mind. Stroking Abby in the hot tub. Her own orgasm on the plane, head falling back as she came hard. Abby’s lips pressed to hers.

  The electricity sparked inside her. It was still there. Abby was still there. Jordan could feel it. Or had the near desperation of the plane been Abby’s version of a last hurrah before she signed on the dotted line with Marcus? Had she been using Jordan to get something out of her system? It hadn’t felt like that at the time, but looking back, the truth was staring her in the face.

  She stopped running abruptly, hands on her thighs, trying to catch her breath. Her heart was beating so fast, it almost caught in her throat.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  She glanced up at Karen. It was hopeless, wasn’t it?

  “I don’t know how we left it. She said we’d meet for lunch. Carry on working together. But now she’s pulling back, changing things around.”

  Karen stroked her back. It was soothing. Jordan needed it. The world didn’t make sense right now. It was swirling around her, and it was out of control.

  Jordan was out of control. She hated that feeling.

  “Can I do anything to help?”

  Jordan shook her head. This was her mess, and she had to work out how to get out of it.

  “Then here’s my advice before I race you home. You ready?”

  Jordan brought herself up to standing. “I’m all ears.”

  “You need to see her and talk to her. You need to find out what she’s thinking, and work out a proper plan of action. Whether you carry on working with her or not. If you carry on, you figure out some boundaries and an exit strategy. If you decide to stop work
ing with her, you agree on an excuse — a family emergency or something. It happens. But the main thing is that you need clarity. So does she, come to that. She’s the one getting married.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s run home and then you can call her and arrange to see her. If she doesn’t answer, go to London anyway. She’s not calling the shots here. You’ve got a lot on the line, too. So take control. Okay?”

  Karen was right.

  Jordan needed to get this back on track.

  She needed to start project managing her bride once again, rather than the other way around.

  Chapter 24

  Abby sat in her firm’s green meeting room, opposite her boss, Neil. He was smiling at her in a strange manner she couldn’t quite pin down. He was wearing too much aftershave again, along with a cerise-pink tie that should be illegal. What did Neil do for fun? She’d love to know.

  There was nothing wrong with him. He wasn’t nasty. He didn’t talk over her or steal her credit for work. However, the past year or so, Abby had resented him just for asking her to come into work every day and do the job she was paid to do. She thought back to her chats with Jordan, where Jordan had told her not to forget her dreams. To go after what she’d wanted to do when she was eight and they were friends. In their fake childhood.

  Their childhood might have been fake, but their present was very much real. In fact, for the first time in a long time, Abby had been positively glad to come to work and be distracted by it.

  It’d been a whole day since they’d got back, and she’d been avoiding Jordan’s calls and texts. Avoiding thinking about her or processing anything that had happened.

  Neil was talking, but she wasn’t listening. Did he really think that tie was okay? Had he looked at himself in the mirror this morning and thought, “looking good!” She glanced at his ring finger. Neil wasn’t married. He wasn’t dating. He needed to date someone to get a second opinion on his clothing choices. Although him not getting married was the smart choice from where she was sitting. You needed to be sure you wanted to marry the person you were marrying. You needed to be sure he didn’t then hire a bridesmaid who you were attracted to. And you needed to be doubly sure that you didn’t accidentally have sex with the bridesmaid on the plane home.