slipped away while the others were still debriefing themselves, using the excuse that I had to go and pack up the clothes that were no longer needed.
Izzi had been generous enough to offer the clothes she’d bought to their owners, and most of the guests had elected to keep their outfits. I collected the evening wear that wasn’t in use and made sure it was hung up or packed properly for their journey home. Once that was done I still had the ‘spares’ to deal with. The extra clothes would return with me to Coreen’s Closet, where they’d go back on the rails.
I was hanging up the wonderful red velvet dress when I heard a soft knock at my bedroom door.
People in love are supposed to thrill at the thought of their sweethearts, aren’t they? So why did the adrenaline surge that hit me incite the fight-or-flight reflex? I looked across to the window. Unless I wanted to shimmy down a two-hundred-year-old drainpipe I only had one choice.
Rather than shouting an invitation to come in, I walked across the room and opened the door a crack, keeping most of myself behind its protective bulk. My eyes widened. It wasn’t Adam standing there, but Nicholas.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked, looking very serious indeed.
I stepped back, way back, and opened the door wide. He walked through and, after a second of hesitation, closed it behind him.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.
Nicholas stopped looking grim and his face broke into possibly the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen on a man. The sort of smile that undoubtedly turned the knees of countless society darlings to custard. All the more devastating because it was one hundred percent genuine. My knees, however, remained decidedly un-custard-like.
‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said, and when he spotted my raised eyebrows added, ‘for all you’ve done this weekend.’
I frowned. ‘I didn’t do much, and besides Izzi’s paying me. It’s work, really.’
‘No, not just that,’ he said earnestly. ‘For being so great to Izzi.’ He paused and glanced towards the closed door, and lowered his voice. ‘I know she gives the impression she’s indestructible…’
One side of my mouth lifted. It was obvious, despite her loopiness, that he clearly loved his sister.
‘Izzi has a lot of “friends”—I think parasites might be a more appropriate word—who hang around for what they can get out of her.’ He looked down at his shoes. ‘I’m ashamed to say that when I first met you I thought you were one of those people who’d take advantage of my sister’s gregariousness and generosity. I was wrong.’
Now it was my turn to look at my shoes. I had been guilty of that, or at least it had been that way in the beginning. I looked up again, to find him regarding me carefully.
‘You proved me wrong, went the extra mile.’
I’m not usually in the habit of stopping someone layering on the compliments, but this girl he was talking about? I’m ashamed to say she was nothing like me. I shook my head. I was the girl who thought of herself first and others second.
‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘I don’t think you understand.’
Nicholas was smiling again now. ‘I think I understand well enough.’
I turned back to the bed, where I’d flung the red dress, and picked it up. It was something to do to hide the heat creeping up my cheeks.
‘That’s a beautiful dress,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
I fetched a garment bag and began putting it inside.
‘Perhaps you’d consider wearing it out one evening…if you’d like to have dinner with me, that is?’
I literally had no words. Nicholas Chatterton-Jones was asking me out? Really?
‘Why me?’ I blurted out. ‘I’ve seen the world you live in, the people you mix with. I wouldn’t fit in.’
He considered that for a moment. ‘I know…but perhaps that’s the key. I always seem to go for the same type of girl…’
Didn’t I know it? I listed it out for him. ‘Beautiful, rich, thin—’
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said plainly.
Before, I would have lapped that comment up, demanded more, but I took his compliment with the same simplicity it had been given. ‘Thank you.’
He walked over to the bed, so we were standing either side of it. ‘You shouldn’t put yourself down.’
I laughed out loud as I walked over to the hanging rail and deposited the red dress in its protective cover there. He really didn’t know me at all, did he?
‘Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that!’ I said, still giggling as I walked back to the bed. ‘But if it makes you feel any better I will add one more thing to the list. One thing I’m definitely not.’
He pressed his lips together in an amused grin and raised an eyebrow.
‘Duck-faced,’ I said, and then wondered if I’d taken things too far again.
Nicholas chewed this over. ‘You know,’ he said finally, a look of surprise lifting his features, ‘I hadn’t realised it, but I think you’re right!’
We both laughed then. He really was even more good-looking when he laughed. What a pity that his cheeks were missing a pair of roguish dimples, that his eyes weren’t chestnut brown, and that the sparkle that should’ve been there in them just wasn’t.
‘I’ve decided everything on that list is decidedly dull, anyway,’ he added. ‘I’ve certainly seen the attraction of a woman who has a little more to her.’
If he was talking pounds and inches he’d better duck, because a right hook was coming his way.
Thankfully, he saved himself with his next words. ‘A woman with pizzazz and sparkle.’
Ah, despite the show of loyalty to his sister he was still talking about the minx, and she certainly had all of that. Problem was…I wasn’t sure that girl existed in her pure, undiluted state any more. She seemed to have been watered down with some truly awful qualities—like compassion and bravery and honesty. Really, what was I going to do with her?
‘So how about it?’ Right now Nicholas looked the least stuffy and laced-up I’d ever seen him. He nodded towards the clothing rail. ‘You, me, the red dress and a table for two next Saturday?’
There was an awkward silence, and he must have read the confusion on my face—I’m really going to have to do something about that—because he gave a resigned smile.
‘I’m too late, aren’t I?’
I bit my lip and picked up the next item of clothing, but I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t quite ready to face what I felt for Adam yet, let alone admit it to anyone
