Here Comes The Bride

‘I probably would have done,’ she conceded reluctantly, ‘but at least it might have saved me making a colossal fool of myself! I’m going to kill Thea when I see her! You must have thought I was an idiot, pretending that I’d found the perfect man in John!’

‘I’m just relieved that he’s turned out to be me, to be honest,’ said P.J. with a crooked smile. ‘The thought of him gave me some bad moments! I was pretty jealous of him.’

Nell put down her glass in surprise. ‘Surely you guessed that he wasn’t real?’

‘Only after I saw the phrase book. He sounded so perfect, so exactly what you wanted. I had no reason to believe that he wasn’t real.’

She flushed, remembering the fibs she had told. ‘I don’t know why I made up all that about him,’ she said, twisting the stem of the glass between her fingers. ‘I suppose I didn’t want you to think that I was just a sad divorcee.’

It was P.J.’s turn to look surprised. ‘There was no chance of that, Nell! Why on earth would I think that? There you were, with a lovely daughter, a good job and-it seemed-a great man. It looked to me as if you had your life under perfect control.’

‘Whereas in fact I’m chaotic and clumsy, with daughter who bosses me around and an imaginary lover,’ said Nell, amused at the very idea of her having her life under control. If only!

‘I know better now,’ P.J. agreed solemnly. ‘I’ll admit it was a relief to discover that you weren’t quite as perfect as you seemed at first.’ Smiling, he lifted his hand to trace the line of her cheek with infinite tenderness. ‘Although you’ll always be pretty perfect to me,’ he said softly.

‘Oh, P.J…’ Sudden tears trembled on Nell’s lashes. ‘How can you say that when I hurt you so much? I was so stupid about Simon,’ she told him. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I hurt you, too,’ he pointed out gently. ‘I should have paid you more attention when you needed it. I was too busy thinking about the future when I should have been listening to you and what you wanted in the present.’

Reaching for her hand, he closed his fingers around hers firmly. ‘That’s the thing about relationships. It takes two to make it, two to break it. It wasn’t just you, Nell. At least you were honest with me. You told me as soon as you realised that you were attracted to Simon, and that must have taken guts. It didn’t help that I went off the deep end. If I’d been older, I might have stuck it out, and given you some space to think about things instead of ending it all there and then.’

‘I was such a fool. I had no idea how lucky I was.’ A single tear wobbled over Nell’s lashes and trickled down the side of her nose until P.J. wiped it away tenderly with his thumb.

‘Nell, it was a long time ago.’

‘I just wish I could do it all again better.’

‘But then you wouldn’t have Clara, and I wouldn’t have my company. The last sixteen years haven’t been all bad, have they?’

‘No,’ Nell had to agree, thinking of her daughter.

‘I have missed you, though,’ P.J. confessed.

‘For sixteen years?’ She smiled, still a little tearfully. ‘I don’t believe you’ve been pining all that time!’

‘I wouldn’t say I’d been pining exactly,’ he admitted. ‘I haven’t been unhappy, and there have been women, yes. But none of them were you, Nell. Another of Janey’s theories is that all my girlfriends looked like you, and that I spent my time trying to find a substitute for you. She thinks that’s why my relationships never came to anything. I wanted them to, but subconsciously maybe I was comparing them to you.’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘The crazy thing is that if you’d told me yesterday that that was what I felt-as Janey always did-I would have insisted that it wasn’t true, but all I had to do was look at you this morning, in your old jogging suit and trainers, and I knew that I had loved you all along.

‘I went straight into work and rang Janey and tried to get out of the date she’d set me up on tonight, but she wouldn’t let me. I should have guessed what she was up to, but I didn’t. I thought I was going to have to spend the evening making polite small talk with a divorcee when all I wanted was to be with you.

‘Janey was right.’ Still holding her hand, P.J. looked deep into Nell’s grey eyes. ‘It’s only ever been you, Nell. You’re my one and only, just like they used to say. Being near you again was like coming home for me. I was so desperate to see you again, and it was a real blow when you said you didn’t want to see me.’

Nell tightened her fingers around his. ‘I was afraid,’ she said honestly, and his brows drew together slightly.

‘Of me?’

‘Of the way you made me feel,’ she said. ‘I’m like you. I’ve spent sixteen years telling myself I’d forgotten you, and then a couple of weeks ago Thea mentioned your name… Since then I’ve been remembering, and regretting, and just wanting something I knew couldn’t have.’ Her smile twisted. ‘I’m not sure what it was. I think probably I just wanted to be that confident and certain again. I wanted to be loved the way you used to love me.’

‘Then why not have dinner with me when I asked you this morning?’

Nell sighed. ‘I don’t know… It all just seemed too difficult somehow. We were different people, and I thought everything had changed, but the more I saw of you today, the more it seemed that nothing had changed at all, and that made it even worse!

‘I told myself that it would be easier if I didn’t get involved, that it would be better to draw a line under the past again, all of that. I did my best to resist,’ she told him as if he had accused her of not making enough of an effort to forget him. ‘It didn’t do any good, but I couldn’t admit that deep down I wanted to see you again desperately. I was afraid you would think that I only loved you for your money now.’

‘Do you?’ asked P.J. urgently.

‘Of course not!’

His grip on her hands tightened. ‘No…I mean, do you love me?’

Nell let her eyes rest on the familiar, exciting lines of his face, seeing there the boy who had loved her, the man who loved her still, and her heart swelled with happiness.

‘Yes, I do.’ It was such a relief to be able to say it at last. ‘I know it’s crazy when we’ve only been back together a day, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Not loving you, letting myself forget you… It was like losing part of me, and, this morning, it seemed as if I had found it again.’

‘That’s how I feel, too.’ The smile that had started in P.J.’s eyes when she’d told him that she loved him spread over his face, and the strength of his feeling seemed to reverberate through the touch of his hands all the way up Nell’s arm. ‘I love you, too, Nell. I’ve always loved you. There’s been a bit missing from me, ever since we’ve been apart, and you’re the only person who can put it back.’

‘P.J…’ At the look in his eyes, the air evaporated from Nell’s lungs.

‘Come here,’ he said softly, leaning forward and pulling her towards him so that he could kiss her across the table.

The touch of his lips unlocked a torrent of emotion in Nell. It cascaded through her, a joyous blend of relief and release, of pleasure and promise, of excitement and the sheer exhilaration of loving and being loved. She had forgotten what a wonderful feeling that was, and she kissed him back with a kind of desperation, needing to show him how he made her feel.

‘Let’s go.’ P.J.’s voice was ragged as they broke the kiss at last. ‘I can’t kiss you properly here.’

Nell’s bones were liquid with desire, but somehow she got to her feet, belatedly remembering her bag and the phrase book. ‘My wine…’ she said, groping for some money.

‘Here.’ Too impatient to bother about change, P.J. tucked a ten-pound note under her glass. Picking up his dictionary, he took a firm hold of Nell with his other hand and they practically ran for the door.

They could hardly wait until they were outside. P.J. pulled her into the nearest doorway and they kissed hungrily.

This time there was no table between them, and it felt so good to be able to put her arms round him at last, to cling to the glorious granite strength of his body, to hold him and touch him and smell the deliciously clean male scent of his skin. Nell couldn’t kiss him long enough, hold him close enough, and it was only the need to breathe that made her break away at last and rest her face against his throat with a long, shuddering sigh of contentment.

P.J. smiled into her hair as he held her. ‘We could do without all these bags and books,’ he pretended to grumble. ‘They’re hampering my style!’

‘It would be nice to have two hands,’ Nell agreed, laughing. ‘Let’s find somewhere to sit.’