JESSICA HART - Last-Minute Proposal

Brought by a gorgeous lover. Tilly did remember, and the fact that he did, too, made her heart turn over.

‘Look,’ said Campbell as he laid the tray on the bed. ‘The sun’s even shining.’

There was a ridiculous lump in her throat. Tilly swallowed. ‘So it is.’ Leaning forward, she made a big deal of breathing in the smell of coffee. ‘Mmm,’ she murmured appreciatively and unfolded a tea towel to find the promised croissants. They were even warm.

She lifted her eyes to his green ones and wondered how she could ever have thought of them as cold.

‘Where did you find these?’

‘At the shop on the corner. You were dead to the world so I thought it would be worth a trip.’ He nodded down at the tray. ‘I realise the orange juice wasn’t specified in your fantasy. That’s my own innovation.’

Tilly was overwhelmed. Nobody had ever done anything like this for her before.

Last night, he had made her feel beautiful and desirable; this morning, instead of being desperate to leave, as she had half expected, he had gone to all this trouble to make her a special breakfast. He had remembered something she had once said and acted on it to make her feel special.

He made her feel loved.

If you were talking fantasies, this one was hard to beat.

‘Hey, stop that!’ she said, deciding that her only option was to make a joke of it. It was that or cry. ‘It’s not fair to start being thoughtful and perfect now you’re about to go!’

‘You could come with me.’

‘What, to the States?’ she asked, keeping the smile fixed on her face and assuming that he was joking as well.

‘Why not?’

Her smile faded as they looked at each other. He couldn’t mean it.

Tilly didn’t want to think that making love had been a mistake, but she was afraid that it probably had been. Now she was going to have to live with the memory of the heart-stopping rapture, of the consuming pleasure and the heady delight of touching and being touched, of the fierceness of the passion they had discovered together. Night after night, she would have to lie in this bed and remember and know that she would never feel that again. She would never hold him again, never kiss him again.

She would have to say goodbye and it would hurt.

She was a fool, in fact, but Tilly couldn’t regret it. Just one night, they had agreed, and what a night it had been.

And now Campbell was suggesting-seriously?-that she wouldn’t need to say goodbye after all.

There was no point in denying that she was tempted, but deep down Tilly knew this was just another fantasy. Maybe fantasies could come true for a night, even for a morning, but how could they endure day after day, in the harsh realities of life?

She couldn’t go to the States with Campbell. Her business was here, her friends were here. And what would he do with her over there? He was a high-powered businessman, she was a homely cake-maker. Their lives would barely coincide. Tilly had seen what different aspirations had done to her parents’ marriage.

No, she had ignored her sensible side long enough. This was no time to believe in fantasies. It could never work. Campbell was driven by the need to win. His priorities were different, his life was different.

And he had an ex-wife to get out of his system.

Tilly had forgotten Lisa for a while, but now she remembered the way Campbell had talked about her. He might not love Lisa any more, but there was definitely some unresolved business there, and Tilly had no intention of being a distraction until he found out what he really wanted. She had been that for Olivier, and she wasn’t doing it again.

‘I don’t think that would work,’ she told Campbell, choosing her words carefully.

‘Because…?’

‘Because we’re too different. Last night was wonderful, but perhaps it was wonderful because it was just one night,’ she tried to explain. ‘We both got what we needed without having to think about the consequences.’

Campbell eyed her thoughtfully. ‘Did we? What did you get?’

‘I got Olivier out of my system,’ she told him, lifting her chin slightly. It was the truth, but not the whole truth, as they said. ‘My friends have had this theory that I’d never get over him properly until I had a fling with someone to restore my confidence. And I’ve done that now,’ she finished.

There was a tiny pause. ‘I’m glad I was able to help,’ said Campbell with a touch of acid.

‘You know what I mean,’ said Tilly. ‘I mean, come on, Campbell, you know I’m right. You’re leaving the country, we’ve got completely different lives. How could it ever be more than a night?’

All right, maybe she was right, thought Campbell. The trouble was that it didn’t feel right. It felt all wrong.

But what could he do? He could hardly force her to go with him. He wasn’t sure where the idea that she could go to the States with him had come from. The truth was that he had been almost as surprised by his suggestion as Tilly had been. The words seemed to have come from nowhere, and yet once they were out, they made perfect sense and Campbell had been taken aback by how badly he’d wanted Tilly to agree, how disappointed he had been when she’d said no.

Of course she was right. There was no way it could work. It was madness to even think about it. He would leave here and go to his new life in the States, and he would be grateful then that she had saved them both a lot of awkwardness by rejecting his impulsive offer.

‘OK,’ he admitted, ‘you’re right. It was just a night, but it was a great one.’

Smiling, Tilly relaxed back against the pillows. ‘Yes, it was,’ she said softly, ‘and now you’ve brought breakfast, it’s a wonderful morning.’

‘Then let’s make the most of it,’ said Campbell, leaning across the tray to kiss her. ‘It’s not over yet.’

That had been a mistake, too, he realised much later as he watched the taxi draw up outside the house.

Had they really thought making love again would make it easier to say goodbye? Breakfast had been ruined, of course, but neither of them had cared. They had made fresh coffee eventually and reheated the croissants and ate them together, neither of them wanting to think about the minutes ticking away.

Now the moment they had both been dreading all morning had arrived.

Tilly came outside to the taxi with him. She watched as he threw his bag into the back and then turned to her.

‘Well, I guess this is it,’ he said.

‘Yes.’ Her throat tightened painfully. ‘But I’ll see you at the ceremony when they announce the winners. You are coming back for that, aren’t you?’

‘Of course,’ he said, thinking that was not for another three months.

Once he would have been impatient to find out whether he had won. Now all he could think was that it meant three months without Tilly.

And, after that, the rest of his life without her.

It would be fine, he told himself. Once he was in New York, there would be so much to do, he wouldn’t have time to miss her. He would be making a new life, being even more successful than before. He would be relieved that Tilly had been sensible.

He wouldn’t feel the way he did now.

He looked for the last time into Tilly’s dark, beautiful blue eyes, knowing that he could never tell her how he felt. So he reached for her instead, and she melted into him and they kissed, a bittersweet kiss that went on and on because neither could bear to let the other go.

‘I’m glad Keith pushed me into taking part in this stupid programme,’ Campbell confessed against her hair at last. ‘I’m glad Greg broke his leg.’

‘I’m glad you were the one who got to push me down that cliff,’ said Tilly.