Jessica Hart: Honeymoon with the Boss

Imogen had been standing as if rooted to the spot, but at that she turned to close the door and, without waiting to be invited, sat down across the desk.

‘Are you sure there hasn’t been some kind of mistake?’ she asked carefully. ‘Is it possible you’ve misunderstood what the problem is?’

Tom gave a harsh, mirthless laugh. ‘Oh, no, she was crystal clear. I misunderstood the whole situation, it turns out, but not what she wants to do now.’

He couldn’t bear to be pitied. Swinging his chair round so that he wouldn’t have to look at the sympathy in Imogen’s face, he stared out of the window at the bleak February morning. It suited his mood exactly.

‘All of Julia’s family and friends are over for the wedding, and she’d arranged to spend the evening with them, so I wasn’t expecting to see her. But she turned up at my door at ten o’clock and said that we had to talk,’ he told Imogen. ‘It wasn’t the easiest of scenes. She said that she was sorry, but she couldn’t marry me because she was going to marry Patrick.’

‘Patrick?’ Imogen felt completely lost. This was all so unexpected it was difficult to grasp what he was telling her. ‘Who’s Patrick?’

‘Patrick is Julia’s best friend, always has been, ever since they were at college together. I met him in New York, and knew they spent lots of time together, but Julia always said that they had decided long ago not to spoil their friendship by sleeping together. It was always a platonic relationship, and they both dated other people, like me. That was one of the reasons she was always so happy with a long-distance relationship,’ Tom remembered. ‘When I wasn’t there, she had plenty of time to spend with Patrick, just “goofing around”, as she called it.’

Imogen could practically hear the quotation marks around the phrase, and she could understand his baffled distaste. Tom probably didn’t even know what goofing around was.

‘It turns out that Julia was in love with Patrick all along,’ he went on. ‘She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to lose him as a friend, but she wasn’t getting any younger and she decided that if she wanted to get married and have a family, as she does, she would have to make a decision to commit to someone else. That’s when Muggins here came along.’

Tom couldn’t look at Imogen. He was burning with humiliation, furious with himself for not realising the truth, furious with Julia for making a fool of him. She had made such a fuss about the wedding, and invited half the world, so everyone would know that he was the man too stupid to realise his fiancée was in love with someone else, too weak to convince her to stay, too inept to build a successful relationship.

Now they would all know he was a failure.

They would know he hadn’t been able to control his own life.

His jaw was clenched, but he couldn’t stop the betraying muscle jumping frantically in his cheek. He wanted to bellow with rage, to punch his fist into a wall, but he couldn’t do that. Imogen would think he was upset and feel even sorrier for him.

‘When I asked her to marry me, she thought it was a good chance to get away from New York and Patrick, and start afresh,’ he went on after a moment. ‘She liked me, she said, and she liked sleeping with me. She thought we had a lot in common and would make a good team. I did, too,’ he remembered with bitterness. ‘Once she’d made that decision, she threw herself into the whole idea of getting married.’

‘To compensate for the fact that she really wanted to be marrying someone else?’ Imogen said numbly. The feverish edge to Julia’s planning was beginning to make more sense now. She must have been desperate to get married while she could still convince herself that she was making the right decision. No wonder she had been keen to have the wedding in England and so soon.

‘She certainly fooled me.’ Tom’s mouth twisted as he swung round to face Imogen once more. He would show her that he was in control. ‘I had no idea I wasn’t the one she really wanted to marry.’

‘So what changed?’

‘Apparently the prospect of losing her was too much for Patrick and he came to his senses. He realised that he was in love with her, too, and probably always had been. It’s quite a touching story, when you think about it.’

Tom smiled without humour. ‘Patrick came over for the wedding, but when he saw Julia he told her how he felt, and then of course she realised she couldn’t go through with marrying me. She said she was sorry,’ he added expressionlessly.

The look in his eyes made Imogen want to cry. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry,’ she said helplessly.

‘It’s probably all for the best,’ said Tom briskly. ‘Better for Julia to realise that she was making a mistake now than after the wedding. At least it’s saved us the hassle-and cost!-of a divorce.’

That would have been an admission of failure too. Either way, Julia would have made him look a loser.

And Tom was a winner. He didn’t like losing. He never had.

He picked up his pen, almost as if he intended to get on with some work, but put it down again after a moment. The truth was, he didn’t know how to deal with this. He was too angry and humiliated to work, but what else could he do?

Imogen swallowed. Tom wasn’t the kind of man who went in for emotional displays but she knew how hard he must be hurting. He had tried so hard to be what Julia wanted.

‘What can I do?’ she asked.

‘I’d be grateful if you would deal with telling everyone who needs to know.’ The curtness in Tom’s voice didn’t quite disguise his gratitude that she was going to stick to practicalities.

‘Of course.’

‘Here’s the key to Julia’s apartment. She left it with me last night.’

He pushed a key across the desk. Imogen recognised it from when she had arranged the short-term lease of the flat. Julia had wanted somewhere to stay where she could keep her wedding dress secret from Tom.

At the time, Imogen had rolled her eyes at the extravagance, which seemed to be taking tradition to extremes, but now she marvelled that she hadn’t seen the separate apartment as a warning sign. If Julia had been really in love with Tom, she wouldn’t have been able to wait to move in with him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have the space. Imogen had been to his penthouse flat in the Docklands to collect some papers once, and there had been more than enough room to hide a dozen wedding dresses if necessary.

‘The flat is full of presents that will need to be returned. Presumably you’ve got a list of guests?’

Imogen nodded. ‘I’ll make sure they all know the wedding has been cancelled.’

‘You’d better deal with Stavely Castle first.’

‘I’ll do that.’ She got to her feet and hesitated, looking at him with concern. With anyone else, she would have offered the comfort of a hug, but she didn’t think Tom would welcome a gesture like that. He wasn’t a tactile man.

Still, this would be a devastating blow for a man of his pride. Imogen wished she could do something to help him, but she sensed the best thing she could do was deal with the practicalities and make as little fuss as possible.

She couldn’t go without saying something, though. ‘Will you be all right?’ she asked after a moment.

‘Of course,’ he said, as brusque as ever. ‘I’ve got plenty to do.’

‘You’re not really going to work, are you?’

‘What else is there to do?’ he said and even he could hear the bleakness in his voice.

Imogen came back a little while later with coffee and a couple of biscuits.

‘I never eat biscuits,’ said Tom, glancing up from his computer screen as she set them solicitously at his elbow.