thing’ as she did. Then, obviously not wanting to pursue the matter, he said, ‘How are your wedding plans coming along? Did the dress do the trick?’
‘Geena is happy,’ she said, not elaborating.
‘What about you?’
She lifted her shoulders. ‘It’s her show and I’m sure the result will be stunning. To be honest, I’m getting to the point where I just want the whole thing over with.’
Tom regarded her steadily. ‘Isn’t this supposed to be the happiest day of a woman’s life? Every fantasy she ever dreamed of?’
‘Yes, well, right now, Tom, my fantasy would be to have someone else arranging all the details. I suddenly see the attraction of hiring a wedding planner; I really should have left this to my assistant.’ Josie would have been great. ‘Unfortunately, she’s already handling both our jobs.’
Tom regarded Sylvie with a touch of real concern. There were dark hollows beneath her eyes, at her temples and, despite her assertion that she was starving, she was doing little more than push her food around the plate.
This was all too much for her.
She should be resting, not racing about trying to organise a wedding at a moment’s notice when she had a demanding job, a company to run. Where the devil was her ‘groom’? The father of her baby? Why wasn’t he taking on some of the burden of this?
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Sylvie, you don’t appear to be enjoying this very much.’
‘Believe me, only the fact that I’m supporting a very worthwhile charity induced me to put myself through this.’
He frowned. There was something not quite right about all this, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. ‘How much did
‘Nowhere near enough,’ she said, finally breaking into a laugh. ‘It doesn’t help that it’s all at such short notice.’ He was staring at her. ‘Because of the Wedding Fayre?’ she prompted.
Was that it?
Did her Earl, so recently freed from one marriage, think he was being rushed, pressured into another, not just by her pregnancy but to support her charity?
It would take a brave man to ask a soon-to-be bride that particular question and he confined himself to, ‘Above and beyond the call of duty, no doubt, but with your experience it must be little more than going through the motions.’
She sighed. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ she said, toying with the mash so that he wanted to scoop it up, forkful by forkful, and feed it to her in small comforting bites. ‘I’ve done it hundreds of times for other people. The problem is that I have a reputation to maintain. My “wedding” has got to have that special wow factor,’ she said, looking about as ‘wowed’ as a post-party balloon. ‘It’s got to be imaginative, different, original.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘I need a theme. Normally I have a bride to drive that enthusiasm, feed me with ideas. Too many ideas, sometimes.’
‘And you don’t have any ideas about what you want for your own wedding?’
‘Sad, isn’t it?’ she said, pulling a face. ‘The problem is that I’ve done all this before. Spent months planning every last detail.’
‘Not everyone gets a second chance to get it right.’
‘Maybe that’s the problem. It was perfect the first time.’ She smiled a little sadly. ‘Too perfect. I drive Josie crazy demanding she find some tiny flaw, something that went wrong…’
‘The Arabs weave tiny mistakes into their carpets in the belief that only God can make things perfect.’
She looked at him, her eyes lit up. ‘That’s it. That’s exactly it…When Jeremy was five and I was in my cradle, our families were already planning a dynastic marriage and like well-behaved children we did the decent thing and fell in love.’
‘How convenient.’
‘You think we were just talked into it?’ she asked, less than amused. ‘In love with the idea?’
‘I may think that but I wouldn’t dare make the mistake of saying so,’ Tom hurriedly assured her.
‘Of course you would. You just did. But honestly, it couldn’t have been more perfect. Then my grandfather died, the creditors moved in and the wedding was put on hold.’
Then her mother had died too. While she was behaving like a bratty teen because she’d been dumped by the man she’d loved-his entire family-because they didn’t want to be connected to the disaster.
‘And Jeremy?’ he asked. ‘What happened to him?’ Because something evidently had.
‘Oh, he was offered a transfer abroad by his company.’
‘That would be Hillyer’s Bank?’
‘It would.’
‘Convenient. I imagine he was shipped out of harm’s way so that the relationship could die a natural death.’
‘Cynic.’
‘But right.’
Money and land marrying money and land. He suspected that the only one who had been totally innocent was Sylvie-much too young to cope with a world of hurt. Without thinking, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around hers.
Startled, she looked up and he saw her swallow, blink back tears that she’d let flow in the aftermath of lovemaking. And, just as he had been then, he was overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness. ‘I’m sorry, Sylvie,’ he said, removing his hand from hers, picking up his glass, although he didn’t drink from it.
‘Don’t be.’
No. She’d got her happy ending. Ten years late, but it had all come right in the end for her. So why were her eyes still shining with unshed tears?
How many had she wasted already on a man who was so clearly not worth a single one?
‘Marriage is for better or worse and we were far too young, too immature, to handle the “worse”,’ she said, as if she had to explain. ‘At least this way we didn’t become just another statistic.’
‘There’s an up side to everything,’ he said. ‘So they say.’ Even the cruellest wounds scarred over with time and Jeremy Hillyer, newly elevated to his earldom, had finally returned to claim his childhood sweetheart. And, before he could stop himself, Tom found himself saying, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘Excuse me?’
She might well look surprised. He’d hardly been the most welcoming of hosts.
But then, having always considered love to be just another four-letter word, he appeared to have been sideswiped by feelings that wouldn’t go away. That just got deeper, more intense the more he’d tried to evade them.
It seemed that the man with a reputation for never letting an opportunity slip his grasp had, in the biggest deal of his life, missed his chance.
‘With the wedding?’ he said.
‘You’re kidding?’ And, out of the blue, she laughed. A full-bodied, joyful laugh that lit up her eyes as the sun lit the summer sky. Then, ‘Oh, right, I get it. You think if you can hurry things along I’ll be out of your hair all the quicker.’
‘You’ve got me,’ he said, even though it had, in fact, been the furthest thing from his mind. Sitting here with her, sharing a meal, talking about nothing very much, was an experience he thought he would be happy to repeat three times a day for the rest of his life.
Well, that was never going to happen. But he had today, this week and, despite everything, he found that he was laughing too.
‘So? The dress-’ and she’d wanted an updated version of the original dress, he now realized ‘-is taken care of. What’s next?’
She looked confused, uncertain, as well she might.
‘It’s therapy,’ he assured her. ‘Confronting what you fear most.’
‘Oh, right.’
