Jessica Hart - Cinderella’s Wedding Wish

‘What the-? What are you doing ?’ he snarled, his face white with fury.

‘Just taking your advice,’ Miranda said. ‘And you know what? You were right. Now I’ve stopped being repressed and started doing what I want, I feel really happy! Thanks so much for the tip!’

Tugging the exquisite diamond ring from her finger, she dropped it deliberately into his fettuccine. ‘While I’m doing what I want, I’ll give you that back, too. You can send a cheque to me at Rosie’s.’

‘The hell I will!’

Belatedly becoming aware of the fascinated stares, Rafe grabbed Miranda’s arm and jerked her towards him so that no one else could hear. ‘We had an agreement,’ he reminded her in a savage voice.

‘And I’m keeping it,’ she said, so angry she could barely bite out the words. ‘You wanted me to be the one to end our engagement, and I’m ending it.’

‘Not like this! You’ve made me look a fool!’

‘I have, haven’t I? Oops,’ said Miranda coldly. ‘Never mind, they’ll all feel sorry for you now. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? They’ll be queuing up to console you for losing your boring, miserable, repressed fiancée!’

Wrenching her arm free, she snatched her bag off the back of her chair. There was a deathly hush at the surrounding tables, and she put up her chin and looked around at the faces, agog at the excitement of the scene.

‘I never liked that suit,’ she said, and walked out, leaving Rafe ridiculously and furiously alone in the middle of the restaurant, his hair clogged with sauce and spaghetti straggling from his shoulders.

Miranda set the ladder against the wall and tested it gingerly. It was very wobbly, and she bit her lip. She hated heights at the best of times, and climbing a rickety ladder set on uneven ground hardly counted as one of those. But she would have to get up there somehow. The gutter was blocked, and would have to be cleared, or the problem would just get worse. And there was no one else to do it.

There was no one else to do anything. She had been at Whitestones nearly a month. She had unpacked the hire car alone and carried everything across the field alone. She had made the house habitable alone. She had cleaned and cooked and tidied alone. She had pulled water and started the generator alone.

She walked on the beach alone.

She went to bed alone.

Still, it was beautiful, every bit as beautiful as she had dreamed all those years in London. Miranda woke up to the sound of the sea every morning. She walked along the cliff and breathed the clean air, and told herself that she was happy.

But she wasn’t. She was lonely.

There was silence and space and light, but there was no one to talk to, no one to laugh with, no one to exasperate her.

No one to make her heart jump just by walking into the room.

No Rafe.

You don’t know how to be happy. His words echoed endlessly in Miranda’s head, and her heart twisted with pain. She had been happy when she was with him, but it was too late to realise that now. Even if he hadn’t wanted such a different life from hers, there was no way Rafe would ever forgive her for that plate of spaghetti.

She shouldn’t have done it, Miranda knew, but she had been so angry and so hurt. And so bitter with herself for wilfully ignoring all those sensible warnings in her head that had kept telling her it could never have worked. Why hadn’t she listened to them? Rafe was too handsome, too charming, too desirable for a girl like her. She had known that he could never love her.

She had thought he liked her, though. Miranda couldn’t bear to remember the contempt in his voice that night. The truth had come out then. He thought she was boring, repressed, cowardly…Oh, God, here came the memories again, like a cruel fist grasping and tearing at her entrails.

Miranda took her hands from the ladder and covered her face with them instead. She tried to breathe through the pain, but still the hot tears came, squeezing out from beneath her lashes, no matter how desperately she willed herself to hold them in. She mustn’t cry. She mustn’t .

If she started, she would never stop.

Drawing a shuddering breath, she brushed the treacherous tears from her cheeks furiously. In the end, Rafe had sent her a cheque by express courier the very next day, and she had gone straight out to hire a car, ignoring Rosie’s pleas to wait and talk to Rafe when they had both calmed down. She had never been back to his house to collect her clothes. None of them really belonged to her, and she wouldn’t wear any of them again anyway. Instead, she packed up her few possessions and drove down to Whitestones, and she had been here ever since.

And now she was here, she would make the best of it. She would be happy.

Determinedly, Miranda grasped the ladder, and set her foot on the first rung. She would survive. She would be happy. She would unblock that gutter. She could do this.

She got as far as the sixth rung before the ladder lurched to one side and she froze with a whimper of fear. Her heart was hammering in her throat, and all she could do was grip the ladder and stare fixedly at the brickwork, too terrified to move in case she dislodged the ladder further.

Now what? She was either going to have to stay up this wretched ladder for ever, or fall off, in which case there would be no one to find her. It had been stupid to try and do this alone.

‘Are you on your way up, or your way down?’

The achingly familiar voice made Miranda start so violently that the ladder jerked away from the wall momentarily and she gasped with fear even as her heart leapt with incredulous joy.

Rafe. Rafe. He was here and suddenly the world was glorious again-or it would be if she dared look down to see him.

‘I’m stuck,’ she said.

‘No, you’re not,’ said Rafe. She felt him take hold of the ladder and steady it. ‘I’ve got you,’ he said. ‘Come on down.’

Biting her lip, Miranda inched her hands lower and forced her right foot to reach down for the rung below. Very gradually, she made it down to the next rung and then the next, and the next, and the last two were easy, although her knees were shaking when she finally had both feet back on the ground and she could turn and look at Rafe.

It might have been him that was making her knees weak. He was dressed like a million other guys in jeans, with a jacket over his shoulder and a long-sleeved cotton shirt pushed casually above his wrists, but he looked so gorgeous and vital and immediate that it was all she could do not to throw herself at him and shower him with kisses while she patted him all over to make sure that he was real.

He was real. ‘What on earth were you doing?’ asked Rafe conversationally, as if the last time they had spoken they hadn’t flayed each other with bitter, angry words.

‘Trying to unblock a gutter,’ said Miranda, trying desperately to steady her reeling senses. She was so happy to see him that she couldn’t think straight. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Trying to unblock my life,’ said Rafe. ‘And bringing you a present.’

‘A present?’ she echoed blankly. Perhaps this wasn’t real? Why, when she had dumped a plate of spaghetti on him, would he bring her a present ? Why would he come at all? Her heart was hammering again, but this time with frantic hope. ‘What sort of present?’

‘Wait here and close your eyes.’

It felt so surreal that Miranda simply did as he ordered. She sat down on the verandah steps and closed her eyes, tipping her face back to the sun and enjoying its dazzle behind her eyelids.

Please don’t let this be a dream. Please don’t let him be gone.