should write a cheque now. Get her out of his office. Instead, he dropped his eyes to the invoice in front of him and snapped, ‘What in the name of blazes is a confetti cannon?’
‘A c-confetti c-cannon?’
Sylvie’s mind spun like a disengaged gear. Going nowhere. She’d thought this afternoon couldn’t get any worse; she’d been wrong. Time to get a grip, she warned herself. Take it one thing at a time. And remember to breathe.
Maybe lighten things up a little. ‘Actually, it does what it says on the tin,’ she said.
His eyebrows rose the merest fraction. ‘Which is?’
Or maybe not.
‘It fires a cannonade of c-confetti,’ she stuttered. Dammit, she hadn’t stuttered in years and she wasn’t about to start again now just because Tom McFarlane was having a bad day. Slow, slow…‘In all shapes and sizes,’ she finished carefully.
He said nothing.
‘With a c-coloured flame projector,’ she added, unnerved by the silence. ‘It’s really quite…’ she faltered ‘…spectacular.’
He was regarding her as if she were mad. Actually, she thought with a tiny shiver, he might just be right. What sane person spent her time scouring the Internet looking for an elephant to hire by the day?
Whose career highs involved delivering the perfect party for a pop star?
Easy. The kind of person who’d been doing it practically from her cradle. Whose mother had done it before her—although she’d done it out of love for family members or a sense of duty when it was for community events, rather than for money. The kind of person who, like Candy, hadn’t planned for a day job but who’d fallen into it by chance and had been grateful to find something she could do without thinking, or the need for any specialist training.
‘And a “field of light”?’ he prompted, having apparently got the bit between his teeth.
‘Thousands of strands of fibre optic lights that ripple in the breeze,’ she answered, deciding this time to take the safe option and go for the straight answer. Then, since he seemed to require more, ‘Changing colour as they move.’
She rippled her fingers to give him the effect.
He stared at them for a moment, then, snapping his gaze back to her face, said, ‘What happens if there isn’t a breeze?’
Did it matter? It wasn’t going to happen…
Just answer the question, Sylvie, she told herself. ‘The c-contractor uses fans.’
‘You are joking.’
Describing the effect to someone who was anticipating a thrilling spectacle on her wedding day was a world away from explaining it to a man who thought the whole thing was some ghastly joke.
‘Didn’t you discuss any of this with Candy?’ she asked.
His broad forehead creased in a frown. Another stupid question, obviously. You didn’t become a billionaire by wasting time on trivialities like confetti cannons.
Tom McFarlane had signed the equivalent of a blank cheque and left his bride-to-be to organise the wedding of her dreams while he’d concentrated on making the money to pay for it.
No doubt, from Candy’s point of view, it had been the perfect division of labour. She’d certainly thrown herself into her role with enthusiasm and there wasn’t a single ‘effect’ that had gone unexplored. It was only the constraints of time and imagination—if she’d thought of an elephant, she’d have insisted on having one, insisted on having the whole damn circus—that had limited her self-indulgence. As it was, there had been more than enough to turn her dream into what was now proving to be Tom McFarlane’s—and her—nightmare.
A six-figure nightmare, much of it provided by the small specialist companies Sylvie regularly did business with—people who trusted her to settle promptly. Which was why she was going to sit here until Tom McFarlane had worked through his anger and written her a cheque. Even if it took all night.
Having briefly recovered her equilibrium, she felt herself begin to heat up again, from the inside, as he continued to look at her and she began to think that, actually, all night wouldn’t be a problem…
She ducked her head, as if to check the invoice, tucking a non-existent strand of hair behind her ear with a hand that was shaking slightly.
Tidying away what was a totally inappropriate thought.
Quentin wasn’t the only one in danger of losing his head.
The office was oddly silent. His phone did not ring. No one put their head around the door with some query.
The only sound for what seemed like minutes—but was probably only seconds—was the pounding beat of her pulse in her ears.
Then she heard the rustle of paper as Tom McFarlane returned to the stack of invoices in front of him and started going through them, one by one.
The choir.
‘They didn’t sing,’ he objected. ‘They didn’t even have to turn up.’
‘They’re booked for months in advance,’ she explained. ‘I had to call in several favours to get them for Candy but the cancellation came too late to offload them to another booking…’
Her voice trailed off. He knew how it was, for heaven’s sake; she shouldn’t have to explain!
As if he could read her mind, he placed a tick against the list to approve payment without another word.
The bell-ringers.
For a moment she thought he was going to repeat his objection and held her breath. He glanced up, as if waiting for her to breathe out. Finally, when she was beginning to feel light-headed for lack of oxygen, he placed another tick.
As they moved steadily through the list, she began to relax. She hadn’t doubted that he was going to settle; he wouldn’t waste this amount of time unless he was going to pay.
The 1936 Rolls-Royce to carry Candy to the church. Tick.
It was just that he was angry and, since his runaway bride wasn’t around to take the flak in person, she was being put through the wringer in her place.
If that was what it took, she thought, absent-mindedly fanning herself with one of her invoices, let him wring away. She could take it. Probably.
The carriage and pair to transport the newly-weds from the church to their reception. Tick.
The singing waiters…
Enough. Tom raked his fingers through his hair. He’d had enough. But, on the point of calling it quits, writing the cheque and drawing a line under the whole sorry experience, he looked up and was distracted by Sylvie Smith, her cheeks flushed a delicate pink, fanning herself with one of her outrageous invoices.
‘Is it too warm in here for you, Miss Smith?’ he enquired.
