Last-Minute Proposal

‘You don’t have a sister, then?’

‘No, it was just me and my brother growing up. Girls were an alien species for a long time.’

‘We’re not so different, you know,’ said Tilly. ‘You’d learn that soon enough if you had a daughter.’

The smile vanished abruptly. ‘God forbid!’ he said, horrified at the thought. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start dealing with a girl.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry. She would deal with you,’ Tilly reassured him. ‘She’d have you wrapped round her little finger in no time! It’s always the same with you macho men. You’re putty in the hands of a little girl.’

‘It’s just as well I never had any kids then,’ said Campbell dryly.

‘Did you ever think about having children when you were married?’

He shook his head. ‘No, babies weren’t part of Lisa’s plan, and I’ve never even considered it. I don’t think I would have been a good father.’

Tilly put down her glass with a frown. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I’m afraid I would have turned out like my own father.’ He straightened his cutlery without looking at her. ‘I suppose he loved us in his own way, but I never remember having fun with him, or doing the stuff other boys do with their fathers.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Tilly, remembering how her stepfather had been with Harry and Seb. ‘He missed out on a lot.’

‘We all did. I know you think I’m bad at expressing emotion, but you should have met my father. He was an army officer, a very moral man in lots of ways, but he had rigid standards that my brother and I never met. We used to try and outdo each other in a bid to please him but nothing we did was ever quite good enough. It didn’t matter how well we did, he never praised us. I think he thought it would spoil us or something.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She died when I was nine.’ Campbell sighed. ‘To be absolutely honest, I don’t remember her that well. Looking back, I wonder what kind of life she had, married to my father. I suspect that any spirit she may have had was crushed out of her early on. And after that we were packed off to boarding school, which sounds heartless, but we liked it more than being at home with our father.’

Poor little boys, Tilly thought, her heart twisting with pity. She had seen what losing their mother had done to her own brothers at not much older than Campbell had been. At least she had been there for them, but Campbell had had no such softening influence against his joyless, demanding father.

‘I see now why you’re so competitive,’ she said, as lightly as she could, and he gave her a crooked grin.

‘My brother is a barrister now. He’s worse than me!’

‘Your father must have been proud of you both, even if he didn’t show it. You’ve both been very successful.’

Campbell shrugged. ‘He died when I was in the Marines. Since trying to please him hadn’t got me anywhere, I’d started to rebel and I was heading off the rails. I was lucky the Marines took me,’ he confessed. ‘God knows where I would have ended up otherwise, but I was too much of a maverick to make a successful career in the forces like my father did. I’m not sure even that would have been enough for Dad.’ His mouth twisted in self-mockery. ‘Lisa used to tell me I was still trying to prove myself to him.’

You didn’t need to be married to him to guess that, Tilly thought waspishly. She wasn’t going to give Lisa any points for insight.

Absently, she crumbled a piece of bread, imagining Campbell as a boy, growing into a wild young man, his mother dead, his father distant, driven always by the need to succeed. No wonder he wasn’t good at talking about emotions. Being abandoned by his wife wouldn’t have helped either. Underneath that surface cool, was he as lost as the rest of them?

Her heart cracked for him, but she knew better than to offer pity.

‘My father is disappointed in me, too,’ she offered. ‘He doesn’t think making cakes is a proper job. It doesn’t make enough money, and that’s his only measure of success.’

Campbell wasn’t sorry to change the subject. ‘Have you seen him since your mother died?’

‘We keep in touch,’ said Tilly. ‘We have lunch every now and then, but it’s never very successful. I think it’s because we’re so different, but he thinks it’s because I’ve never forgiven him for leaving Mum. There may be some truth in that, although I know Mum was much happier with Jack than she would have been if Dad had stayed with us.’

‘How old were you when your parents divorced?’

‘Nearly seven,’ she said. ‘My mother kept telling me that my father still loved me, and that his leaving was nothing to do with me, but I didn’t believe her. If he’d loved me, he wouldn’t have left.’

She stopped and cocked her head, as if listening to what she had just said. ‘Hmm, that sounds bitter, doesn’t it? Maybe Dad’s right after all!’

Campbell wasn’t fooled by her bright smile. ‘You stayed with your mother, then?’

‘Yes, I had occasional weekends with Dad, but he was always busy. He got married again, and his new wife went perfectly with the smart, super-successful life he’d always wanted. Unfortunately a tubby little girl who reminded him of his old life just didn’t blend with his decor!

‘It was always a relief to go home,’ Tilly remembered. ‘I loved Jack. He was calm and steady and safe, and I was so happy when my mother married him. Once the twins arrived, it felt like the perfect family.’

She smiled wistfully. ‘I suppose I always hoped that I would meet someone like Jack myself. Instead, as Cleo is always pointing out, I seem drawn to men like Olivier, who are much more like my father. That’s all going to stop, though.’ She put on a resolute air. ‘From now on, I’m only interested in nice, kind men.’

Well, that ruled him out, Campbell thought. No one would ever describe him as nice or kind. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Tilly that she was much too exciting to be content with merely nice and that she would be bored rigid after a week, but he stopped himself just in time.

It wasn’t his business. He was leaving.

Focus on the new job, he told himself. Focus on Lisa and what it’s going to be like seeing her again. But all he could think about was Tilly-warm, desirable, messy Tilly, with the candlelight glowing in her dark blue eyes and the mouth that made his mind go blank.

Campbell had never met a woman so easy to talk to. He liked her spiky, self-deprecating wit and the animation in her face. He liked the smile that lit her up from inside, the glint in her eyes as she teased him. She was never still. She fiddled with the wax dribbling down the candles, or traced invisible patterns on the cloth with her glass. She sat back, and leant forward, folding her arms on the table and just about giving Campbell a heart attack as her cleavage deepened.

‘Let’s get you a taxi,’ he said gruffly when they at last came to leave. Not trusting himself to touch her, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and walked beside her to the taxi rank in silence.

At least they didn’t have to wait. Campbell wasn’t at all sure what that would have done to his self-control. He should have gone with Tilly to see her home himself, but there was no way he could manage sitting in the back seat in the dark without reaching for her.

He leant through the window of the taxi at the head of the rank and handed the driver a note that would more than cover Tilly’s fare. ‘Make sure she gets safely in,’ he said as the driver pocketed it quickly, unable to believe his luck.

‘There’s no need for that,’ Tilly protested. ‘I can get my own taxi.’

‘I know you can, but I’m getting this one.’

Tilly opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again. Campbell’s jaw was set at an angle that suggested she could argue all night and it still wouldn’t make any difference.

‘Well…thank you,’ she said awkwardly instead. ‘And thank you for dinner. It was lovely.’ At least she assumed it had been. Too fixated on trying to keep her gaze from crawling all over Campbell, she could barely remember what she had eaten. Never had she paid less attention to food.

‘I’ll see you soon then.’ Campbell’s voice was brisk, but when their eyes met, the air shortened alarmingly between them.

‘Yes,’ she managed on a gasp.

‘Goodnight, Tilly,’ he said.

‘Goodnight.’