get on to it.’ Then, as he opened the door, she called, ‘Oh, Tom! Wait! Before you go, I should warn you—’
‘Twenty minutes,’ he repeated, closing it behind him, then stood back as two men manhandled a large sheet of plywood through the hall and into the ballroom.
He’d been away for months; there wasn’t a thing that wouldn’t wait another twenty minutes.
He fetched his overnight bag from the car, then headed for the stairs.
His foot was on the first step when the sound of a woman’s voice drifting from the drawing room riveted him to the spot.
‘I like to start with the colours, Lucy.’
He dropped the bag, moved closer. Heard someone else say, ‘This is going to be a spring wedding, so … what? Primroses, daffodils … Yellow?’
‘No.’ The word was snapped out. Then, more gently, ‘Not yellow. April is getting late for daffodils. I did see violets as I drove in through the wood, though. Why don’t you take a tour of the exhibitors and bring me anything and everything you can find from deepest violet through to palest mauve? With just a touch of green, I think.’
‘Anything special?’
‘Ribbons, jewellery, accessories. Ask the florist what he’ll have available. And don’t forget to make a note of where everything came from …’
She had her back to him, standing shadowed by the deep embrasure of the door as she quietly absorbed everything that was going on but, long before she turned, stepped forward into the sunlight streaming in through front doors propped wide open for workmen carrying in a load of steel trestles, he knew exactly who that voice belonged to.
He’d spent an entire afternoon listening to it as they’d gone, item by item, through her account. Watching her unbutton her jacket. Moisten her lips.
All the time he’d been away it hadn’t been Candy’s last-minute change of heart that had kept him from sleeping.
It had been the flush on Sylvie Smith’s cheeks. The memory of long legs, a glimpse of lace.
Her hot body moulded to his.
Her pitiful tears.
Her tears had haunted him, plaguing him with guilt, but now he understand that her tears had not been for what he’d done to her, but because she’d just risked everything she had in a momentary rush of lust. No wonder she couldn’t wait to get away …
Sylvie smiled encouragingly at the youthful journalist, the advance guard from Celebrity whose job it was to research background and photo opportunities so that when the photographer arrived on Sunday there would be no waiting. And to encourage her to give her imagination free rein when it came to the fantasy wedding.
Full of enthusiasm, the girl immediately set about hunting down anything she could find in the chosen colour scheme.
Sylvie, not in the least bit enthusiastic, dropped the face-aching smile that seemed to have been fixed ever since she’d arrived at Longbourne Court and looked around at the chaos in what had once been her mother’s drawing room.
The furniture had been moved out, stored somewhere to leave room for the exhibitors. But it wasn’t the emptiness that tore at her. It was the unexpected discovery that, despite the passing of ten years, so little had changed. It was not the difference but the familiarity that caught at the back of her throat. Tugged at her heart.
The pictures that had once been part of her life were still hanging where they had always been. Velvet curtains, still blue in the deep folds but ever since she could remember faded to a silvery-grey where the light touched them, framed an unchanged view.
There was even a basket of logs in the hearth that might have been there on the day the creditors had seized the house and its contents nearly ten years ago, taking everything to cover the mess that her grandfather, in his attempt to recoup the family fortunes, had made of things.
But driving in the back way through the woods at the crack of dawn, walking in through the kitchen and seeing Mrs Kennedy standing at the sink, her little cry of surprised pleasure, the hug she’d given her while they’d both shed a tear, had been like stepping back in time.
She could almost imagine that her mother had just gone out for an hour or two, would at any moment walk through the door, dogs at her heels …
She swallowed, blinked, reminded herself what was at stake. Forced herself to focus on the job in hand.
She’d already decided that the only way to handle this was to treat herself as if she were one of her own clients. Just one more busy career woman without the time to research the endless details that would make her wedding an event to remember for the rest of her life.
Distancing herself from any emotional involvement.
It was, after all, her job. Something she did every day. Nothing to get excited about. Except, of course, that was just what it should be. Something to be over-the-moon excited about rather than just a going-through-the-motions chore.
She shook her head. The quicker she got on with it, the quicker it would be over. She had the colour scheme, which was a start.
‘I’ll be in the morning room,’ she called out to Lucy, already busily talking to exhibitors, searching out anything useful. It was time she was at work too, hunting down a theme to hang the whole thing on, something original that she hadn’t used before.
And the even bigger problem of the dress.
She turned to find her way blocked by six and half feet of broad-shouldered male and experienced a bewildering sense of déjà vu.
A feeling that this had happened before.
And then she looked up and realised that it was not an illusion. This had happened before, except on that occasion the male concerned had been wearing navy pin-stripe instead of grey cashmere.
‘Some billionaire …’ Laura had said, but hadn’t mentioned a name. And she hadn’t bothered to ask, pretending she didn’t care.
She cared now because it wasn’t just ‘some’ billionaire who’d bought her family home and was planning to turn it into a conference centre.
It was Tom McFarlane, the man with whom, just for a few moments, she’d totally lost it. Whose baby she was carrying. Who’d grabbed her offer to forget it had ever happened. She’d expected at least an acknowledgement …
‘Tell me, Miss Smith,’ he said while she was still struggling to get her mouth around a simple, Good morning, using exactly the same sardonic tone with which he’d queried every item on her invoice all those months ago. The same look with which he’d reduced her to a stuttering jangle of unrestrained hormones.
Despite everything, she hadn’t been able to get that voice, the heat of those eyes, his touch, the weight, heat of his body, out of her head for weeks afterwards.
Make that months.
Maybe not at all …
The man she most wanted to see in the entire world. The
