Here Comes The Bride

managed a laugh as if the very idea of her going on a blind date was absurd. ‘She said we’d be perfect for each other, and we are.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re happy,’ P.J. made himself say, although privately he couldn’t help thinking that her precious John sounded too perfect to be real. He just hoped Nell wasn’t setting herself up for another bitter disappointment. He hated the thought of her being hurt again.

‘I am,’ said Nell, lifting her chin defiantly, and spotting a familiar row of shops with relief. She didn’t want P.J. interrogating her about her supposedly wonderful relationship with John. She wasn’t cut out for elaborate fibs.

‘Oh, that’s the dry-cleaner!’ She pointed gratefully. ‘Could you possibly drop me there, P.J.? I need to pick up my suit.’

P.J. pulled over obligingly, and turned in his seat to watch her as she gathered up her bag. ‘Shall I wait for you?’

‘There’s no need. I just work down there.’ Nell gestured in the direction of some office blocks along the road. ‘I’ll walk from here.’

To P.J. it was as if she were deliberately being vague so that he wouldn’t be able to note where she worked. Obviously she had moved on, he thought with a trace of bitterness. There was no place for him in her life anymore, and if he had any sense he would leave it there, but somehow the thought of saying goodbye and losing her as soon as he had found her again was unendurable.

‘What about another evening?’ he asked, and she paused with her hand on the door.

‘For dinner,’ he said as she looked at him uncertainly. ‘I wouldn’t want to come between you and your hot date, of course, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t meet as old friends, is there?’

Only that it was too hard to think of him as an old friend now that he had thickened out and grown into a disturbingly attractive man. But how could she say that?

‘I…don’t think so, P.J.,’ she managed after a moment. ‘We can’t go back. It was good to see you again, and I’m really grateful for the lift, but the past is the past, and I think we’d better leave it that way.’

She opened her car door, and got out, leaning back in to give him a final word of thanks before she shut it firmly on his hopes and turned quickly away.

A taxi swung past, blaring its horn at P.J. for blocking the road, but he hardly noticed. He just sat there and watched as Nell walked away from him all over again.

CHAPTER FIVE

AS SOON as she could, Nell rang Thea. ‘Guess who I ran into this morning?’

‘Um…Hugh Grant?’

‘No.’

‘Brad Pitt?’

‘No.’

‘More or less exciting?’

Nell hesitated.

‘P.J.,’ said Thea, and it wasn’t even a question.

Nell held the receiver away from her and gaped at it. Sometimes her sister astounded her. ‘How on earth did you guess?’

‘Let’s face it, Nell, most of the men we know aren’t exactly up there with Brad Pitt when it comes to exciting!’ said Thea. ‘P.J. is the only one I can think of who’d give you a moment’s pause if you had to compare him.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of him being exciting,’ said Nell, still more than a little unnerved by her sister’s perspicacity. ‘I was just going to say that meeting him was just as unlikely as meeting Brad Pitt… I can’t believe you guessed it was him!’

‘I suppose it’s just because we’ve been talking about him recently,’ said Thea soothingly. ‘I knew he was back in London and it would be a surprise to run into him, that’s all. Tell me what happened.’

‘It was so weird, Thea,’ Nell said. ‘I still can’t really take it in. One minute I was walking along with Clara, and the next he was there.’ She told Thea about falling off the kerb into P.J.’s car. ‘I thought I was imagining things at first. I thought it was the shock of the accident, but it really was him.’

Thea was delighted. ‘Ooh, Nell, you know what this means, don’t you? It’s fate, literally throwing you together again!’

Nell sighed. She might have known Thea would start on that line. ‘It was a coincidence, Thea, that’s all.’

‘A pretty amazing one, though! Well, go on, what’s he like now?’

‘He’s just the same…’ P.J.’s image rose before Nell with startling clarity. Those blue, blue eyes with their lurking laughter, the strong nose and jaw and the humorous mouth that seemed constantly about to quirk into a smile, and something clenched inside her. ‘But he’s…well, he’s different, too,’ she finished lamely. ‘He’s sixteen years older, for a start.’

‘Has he grown into his looks, then?’ asked Thea, straightforward as ever. ‘I always thought he would look better when he was older.’

‘Well…’

‘Oh, Nell, he was gorgeous, wasn’t he? I can hear it in your voice!’

‘Not gorgeous exactly,’ Nell protested, before her sister got too carried away. ‘But, yes, he’s quite attractive,’ she added, rather proud of her cool and casual manner.

Sadly, it didn’t fool her sister. ‘Gorgeous, then,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Are you going to see him again?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Nell, trying to sound as if she didn’t care one way or another. ‘He asked me to have dinner with him but…’

‘But what?’ demanded Thea ominously.

‘But I said I didn’t think it was a good idea.’

There was a pause while Thea made an audible attempt to contain her exasperation. ‘Why not?’

‘Thea, there’s no point,’ said Nell.

‘No point in meeting a single, straight, attractive billionaire who just happens to have been in love with you?’

‘He’s certainly not in love with me now,’ said Nell, alarmed to hear, too late, the unconsciously wistful note in her voice.

She made an effort to sound more casual and upbeat. ‘You should see him now, Thea. He wears a suit and tie now, drives an incredibly flash car. He’s very…assured.’

‘P.J. was always like that,’ said Thea to her surprise. ‘Even when he was a teenager, and all legs and nose, he always seemed quietly confident and at ease in his own skin. You don’t meet many people like that, especially not at school!’

‘Well, he’s even more like that now,’ Nell admitted. ‘It was so…odd. I felt as if I knew him, but at the same time it was obvious that I didn’t know him at all. Maybe it was just that I’d changed too much.’

‘You haven’t changed at all.’

‘Yes, I have. I used to be so young and so confident…’ She trailed off a little sadly. ‘I haven’t felt like that for a long time.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Thea conceded thoughtfully. ‘Back then, it was P.J. who seemed to be the lucky one, wasn’t it? Everyone liked him, but he was a bit of a nerd, wasn’t he? And you were always the pretty one with all the boys after you.’

‘He used to say that he couldn’t believe I would even look at him,’ Nell confessed. ‘He made me feel like I was some kind of goddess…and then, this morning… Oh. Thea, I just felt so dowdy and inadequate and a failure compared to him!’

‘I don’t suppose he’d ask you out if he thought that,’ said Thea.

‘I expect he just felt sorry for me,’ said Nell gloomily.

Thea clicked her tongue in exasperation. ‘Nell, you’re still gorgeous! If he asks you out again, you’re to say