yes.’
‘He won’t. Anyway, he doesn’t know how to contact me.’
‘That’s not going to be much of a challenge to an intelligent man like P.J., is it? He just needs to ring Janey, who’ll ring me.’
Nell sat up straight in alarm. ‘Thea, you’re not to give her my phone number!’
‘I most certainly will!’ said Thea in her most uncompromising voice. ‘You may want to throw away the chance of getting back together with a wonderful man who’d solve all your problems, but I’m not going to help you do it!’
‘Anyway, he won’t call,’ said Nell perversely. ‘I made it very clear I didn’t want to see him again.’
‘Oh, well, it seems a pity.’
Rather to Nell’s surprise, Thea left it there. ‘Now, what are you wearing tonight?’
‘Oh, I don’t know… My black trousers?’
‘You’re not wearing those trousers again, Nell,’ said Thea bossily. ‘You can wear that dress you bought for my wedding. You look wonderful in that.’
Nell sighed. ‘Do I have to go?’ she asked, thinking that if she hadn’t had this blind date Thea had set her up on, she wouldn’t have had to refuse P.J. that morning. She could have been thinking about looking wonderful for him instead. She would have let herself be persuaded. Just so as not to be rude.
‘It’ll be awful,’ she grumbled. ‘We’ll just end up talking about how wonderful cars are, or about our divorces the way I have with every other man I’ve been out with since Simon.’
‘Well, there haven’t been many of those,’ Thea pointed out reasonably. ‘Not enough to form a pattern, anyway.’
‘I’ve been on four blind dates this year,’ Nell objected, ‘and every single one has been ghastly.’
‘That’s because they were strangers from the lonely hearts column,’ Thea explained patiently. ‘It’ll be different tonight. Why would I set you up with someone awful? I know this guy tonight, and I think he’s great. He’s perfect for you.’
‘Then why won’t you tell me anything about him? Knowing his name is John and that he’ll be sitting in Bar Barabbas with a Swahili dictionary tonight isn’t much to go on!’
‘That’s because I don’t want you going with any preconceptions,’ said Thea. ‘You know what you’re like. You’ll make up your mind about him before you even meet him, and then you’ll get nervous and go all prickly on him.’
The way she had with P.J. that morning, thought Nell guiltily as Thea talked on. She wished she hadn’t been quite so short. It wasn’t his fault that she had felt so flustered, but if only he hadn’t been quite so…overwhelming. She could recall everything about him in vivid detail-his hands on the steering wheel, the twitch at the corner of his mouth, the warmth and humour in his eyes as he’d turned to look at her.
And the way she had longed to reach out and touch him. That was what had really made her uneasy. You couldn’t go around throwing yourself at ex-boyfriends, especially when they had turned into billionaires overnight… well, over sixteen years, anyway.
Thea broke off, suddenly suspicious. ‘Are you listening to me?’ she demanded and Nell caught herself up.
‘Of course I am,’ she lied.
‘I’ve just got a good feeling about today,’ said Thea. ‘You know how you used to tell me that one day I’d wake up, and not know that that was the day I was going to meet the man who would change my life forever? Well, you were right. One day I had no idea about Rhys’s existence, and the next, he was part of my life. All it takes is one day, and your whole life can change.
‘I think today is your day,’ she finished portentously, ‘so all you have to do is go out tonight, relax and be yourself.’
‘There’s no chance of me relaxing until this meeting is over.’ Nell lowered her voice. ‘Eve’s driving us all nuts about it. I’m so wound up now, I’ll be a gibbering wreck by the time we actually get there.’
‘Well, you would go for this high-powered job,’ said Thea unsympathetically. ‘It’s more important that you’re not a gibbering wreck tonight, so don’t be late back. I’ll come over early to make sure you don’t get those black trousers out.’
P.J.’s assistant opened her mouth to pass on a notebook full of messages but he waved her aside. ‘In a minute,’ he said. ‘Can you get my sister on the line first?’
‘P.J.!’ Janey was surprised to hear from him. ‘You don’t usually ring at this time… Nothing’s wrong is it?’
‘Far from it,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Guess who I knocked over this morning?’
‘You knocked someone over?’ Janey was horrified.
‘Not really, but it was pretty close.’ P.J. put on his best Humphrey Bogart accent. ‘But of all the pedestrians on all the pavements in London,’ he paraphrased, ‘I had to knock over Nell Martindale!’
There was a stunned silence at the other end of the phone. ‘
‘No, I’m not.’ P.J. grinned. ‘And because I know sisters always like to be right, I thought I’d say it before you had a chance to say, “I told you so.” I’ve changed my mind and I do want to see her again. Can you get her number for me from Thea?’
There was another pause. P.J. could practically hear his sister thinking. ‘Why didn’t you just ask Nell out when you saw her?’
‘I did, but she turned me down. She said she had a date tonight.’
‘So do you,’ said Janey in a dry voice.
The smile was wiped from P.J.’s face. ‘Oh, God, I’d forgotten all about that!’ he said, clutching his hair.
‘Don’t even
‘But, Janey, you’re the one who wanted me to get in touch with Nell!’ said P.J., baffled as ever by his sister’s perverted logic. ‘I’ve admitted that you were right and I was wrong. I do need to get Nell out of my system. Don’t you think it’s a bit unfair on what’s-her-name to pretend I’m looking for another relationship when I’m really only interested in another woman?’
‘Her name’s Helen,’ said Janey coldly, ‘and I don’t think it’s as unfair as standing her up at such short notice. She’s a lovely person, and she wasn’t that keen on being set up on a blind date with you either, to be honest. It would be awful for her if you didn’t turn up.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of leaving her sitting there,’ said P.J. defensively. ‘I thought you could ring her and explain-’
‘Explain what? That my brother is totally perverse? You said you didn’t want to see Nell again, P.J. You said you didn’t want to rake up the past, and that you were perfectly ready to move on to another relationship. And when I suggested introducing you to Helen, you said you’d like to meet her.’
‘I know I did,’ said P.J. through gritted teeth, ‘but that was before I saw Nell again. Everything’s changed now.’
‘So you’ve changed your mind! Who’s to say you wouldn’t change it again when you meet Helen?’ asked Janey. ‘Your trouble, P.J., is that you’re spoilt. You’re too used to getting your own way. You think that because you’ve got all that money you can snap your fingers and have whatever you want. Well, you can’t just dump your date with Helen just because it doesn’t suit you to meet her tonight anymore. I’m not one of your flunkies who’ll say, “Yes, sir, no, sir,” and do your dirty work for you.’
‘You know, Janey,’ said P.J. thinly, ‘if one of my directors spoke to me the way you do, there would be a spare place on the board!’
Janey snorted, unimpressed. ‘You go tonight, and you be at your most charming. If you give Helen so much as an
‘All right.’ P.J. swallowed his wrath with some difficulty. ‘I’ll stick to the arrangement, but will you get Nell’s number for me? I really want to see her again.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Janey, enjoying having her brother on the run for once. ‘That rather depends on what Helen tells me tomorrow, doesn’t it? If she’s happy about the way the date went, then I’ll give Thea a call.’
‘Thank you,’ said P.J., his jaw gritted.
If he’d known Janey would carry on like this, he’d have found out Nell’s number some other way. He could have asked one of his ‘flunkies,’ as Janey called them, to track Nell down, but he’d thought she would be delighted to
