Liz Fielding - The Bride's Baby

‘Oh, he was offered a transfer abroad by his company.’

‘That would be Hillyer’s Bank?’

‘It would.’

‘Convenient. I imagine he was shipped out of harm’s way so that the relationship could die a natural death.’

‘Cynic.’

‘But right.’

Money and land marrying money and land. He suspected that the only one who had been totally innocent was Sylvie-much too young to cope with a world of hurt. Without thinking, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around hers.

Startled, she looked up and he saw her swallow, blink back tears that she’d let flow in the aftermath of lovemaking. And, just as he had been then, he was overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness. ‘I’m sorry, Sylvie,’ he said, removing his hand from hers, picking up his glass, although he didn’t drink from it.

‘Don’t be.’

No. She’d got her happy ending. Ten years late, but it had all come right in the end for her. So why were her eyes still shining with unshed tears?

How many had she wasted already on a man who was so clearly not worth a single one?

‘Marriage is for better or worse and we were far too young, too immature, to handle the “worse”,’ she said, as if she had to explain. ‘At least this way we didn’t become just another statistic.’

‘There’s an up side to everything,’ he said. ‘So they say.’ Even the cruellest wounds scarred over with time and Jeremy Hillyer, newly elevated to his earldom, had finally returned to claim his childhood sweetheart. And, before he could stop himself, Tom found himself saying, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘Excuse me?’

She might well look surprised. He’d hardly been the most welcoming of hosts.

But then, having always considered love to be just another four-letter word, he appeared to have been sideswiped by feelings that wouldn’t go away. That just got deeper, more intense the more he’d tried to evade them.

It seemed that the man with a reputation for never letting an opportunity slip his grasp had, in the biggest deal of his life, missed his chance.

‘With the wedding?’ he said.

‘You’re kidding?’ And, out of the blue, she laughed. A full-bodied, joyful laugh that lit up her eyes as the sun lit the summer sky. Then, ‘Oh, right, I get it. You think if you can hurry things along I’ll be out of your hair all the quicker.’

‘You’ve got me,’ he said, even though it had, in fact, been the furthest thing from his mind. Sitting here with her, sharing a meal, talking about nothing very much, was an experience he thought he would be happy to repeat three times a day for the rest of his life.

Well, that was never going to happen. But he had today, this week and, despite everything, he found that he was laughing too.

‘So? The dress-’ and she’d wanted an updated version of the original dress, he now realized ‘-is taken care of. What’s next?’

She looked confused, uncertain, as well she might.

‘It’s therapy,’ he assured her. ‘Confronting what you fear most.’

‘Oh, right.’

Was that disappointment? Not the explanation she’d been looking for? Hoping for?

‘Food,’ she said, accepting it. ‘Something a man so wonderfully gifted with a potato masher must surely know all about.’

‘A man who lives alone needs to know how to cook.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought that was a problem. Surely women are fighting over the chance to feed you, prove themselves worthy.’

‘Not the kind of women I date,’ he said.

And she blushed. He loved how she did that.

‘This should be right up your street, then,’ she said, ducking her head as she pushed the glossy menu brochure across the table to him. Then, holding on to it, she asked, ‘What would be your perfect wedding breakfast?’

There had been something intense about the way she’d said that, about the look she gave him. As if there was some deeper meaning. As if she was trying to tell him something.

‘Probably nothing in here,’ he admitted, waiting-although what for he could not have said.

She shrugged as she finally released it. ‘Surprise me.’

He picked it up, but couldn’t take his eyes off her. She wasn’t glamorous in the way that Candy had been glamorous. But she had some quality that called to him. A curious mixture of strength and vulnerability. She was a woman to match him, a woman he wanted to protect. A combination that both confused him and yet seemed to make everything seem so simple.

Except for the fact that she was carrying another man’s child. A man who’d run out on her when she’d needed him most. And apparently had to do nothing more than turn up to pick up the threads and carry on as if nothing had happened.

‘The deal is that I check out the menu, you eat,’ he said.

For a moment he thought she was going to argue, but then she picked up her fork, using the food as a shield to disguise the fact that she was blushing again. Something she seemed to do all the time, even though she’d responded to him like a tiger. The woman was a paradox. One he couldn’t begin to understand. Didn’t even try. Just waited until he was sure that she was eating, rather than just pushing the food around her plate, before he gave his full attention to the simpler task of choosing a menu for her wedding, just as, twelve months ago, she’d been choosing one for his.

Sylvie, watching Tom flicking through the sample menus, rediscovered her appetite. Somehow, talking to him, she’d finally managed to bury every last remnant of the hurt that Jeremy had caused her.

Learning that he’d met someone else in America, was getting married, the arrival of each of his children, had been a repetition of the knife plunge to her heart, each as painful as that first wound inflicted on the day he’d told her that they needed ‘a little space’. That he was going away for a while just when she’d needed him most.

Maybe if he hadn’t been her first love, her only love, she’d have got over it sooner. As it was, no one had touched her until Tom McFarlane had walked into her office and, with just one look, had jump-started her back into life, just as the garage jump-started her car when the battery was flat.

There would be no more tears over Jeremy Hillyer. Tom McFarlane had erased every thought of him; she’d scarcely recognised him when he’d turned up at that reception. Not because he’d aged badly, far from it. But because it was so easy to see him for the shallow man he’d always been.

No more tears for the girl she’d been either.

They’d threatened for a moment, but Tom had been there and they’d dried off like a summer mist.

The trick now would be to avoid shedding any over him.

He looked up from the brochure and, with an expression of disgust, said, ‘Is this really what people are expected to eat at weddings? Fiddly bits of fish. Girl food. We’ve got to be able to do better than that.’

We. The word conjured up a rare warmth but she mustn’t read too much into it. Or this.

‘The idea is that it’s supposed to look pretty on a plate,’ she said.

‘For Celebrity or for you?’

‘Is there a difference?’

‘Whose wedding is this?’ he demanded, disgusted. ‘What would you really choose? If you didn’t have to pander to the whims of a gossip magazine?’

Whoa…Where had that come from? It wasn’t just irritation, it was anger. As if it really mattered.

‘They are paying a lot of money to have their whims pandered to,’ she reminded him. ‘Besides, there are the Wedding Fayre exhibitors to think of. This is their big chance.’

‘It’s your wedding. You should have what you want.’

That did make her laugh. ‘If only, but I don’t think ten minutes with the registrar in front of two witnesses, followed by a fish and chip supper would quite fill the “fantasy” bill, do you?’