Barbara Hannay - Borrowed Bachelor

At last she saw the scourer right at the back of the cupboard. As she reached for it, her phone chose to ring and Maddy automatically straightened. Her head hit the drainpipe. ‘Ouch!’ she wailed as she staggered backwards and fell against Rick’s legs.

‘Whoa,’ he chuckled, and his wet, soapy hands grasped her shoulders. ‘Are you OK?’

Maddy nodded and he helped her up while the phone continued its insistent ringing. ‘I should get that,’ she muttered. But she was too late. As she headed across the kitchen, her answering machine cut in and her caller’s voice was broadcast through the small flat.

‘Hello, Madeline. Surprise, surprise. It’s Byron.’

Maddy froze mid-step. Her heart thumped frantically and her chest tightened as if her childhood asthma had returned. She wanted to run to the phone and snatch it up, but her feet wouldn’t carry her quickly. She staggered across the kitchen as if she were fighting her way through dense forest. Byron? What on earth did he want?

She didn’t want to know.

But his message continued, his voice sounding a little thinner than she remembered. ‘I understand Cynthia has told you our news, Maddy. About our engagement. We’d really love you to do all the flowers for our wedding. Please give us a call. Same number. Bye.’

How long she stood there, staring at the answering machine, her hands clasped as if in prayer while her heart galloped a chaotic route around her rib cage, she couldn’t tell.

A discreet cough disturbed her wretched thoughts. Rick stood beside her.

‘You’re finished?’ she whispered.

‘I could well ask you the same question,’ he replied. ‘You look as if you’ve been totally finished—done in, done over. I take it that wasn’t good news?’

‘No.’ She tried to smile but somehow the muscles around her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. ‘It was—I mean—it—it’s just another job.’

‘Of course it isn’t just another job,’ he said, his voice all deep and gravelly. ‘You’re a really shocking shade of pale. You look like you’ve just had a close encounter with a vampire.’

She stared at him for a long moment. ‘In a way I have,’ she whispered, the aftershock of Byron’s bombshell still sending sickening waves shooting through her.

He guided her towards the sofa. ‘You need to sit down.’

Maddy slumped onto the sofa and Rick sat beside her, watching her carefully. ‘You don’t have to tell me about the vampire if you don’t want to,’ he said. ‘You should probably save it for your boyfriend. What time does he get back?’

‘Oh—um—not till late,’ she mumbled. She managed a weak smile. ‘Don’t worry about me, Rick. I know you don’t want to get embroiled in my personal problems.’

Rick eyed her shrewdly. ‘There’s no such animal, is there?’

‘What?’

‘This boyfriend. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but there’s absolutely no evidence of a bloke in this flat. If he does exist, he must be the neatest fellow who ever walked this planet—and be very clever at slipping in and out of this place when no one’s around. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him in a week.’

Maddy plucked at a loose thread in the fabric on her sofa. There was absolutely no point in trying to cover up any longer. ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘There’s no new boyfriend.’ Then she hastily added, ‘At the moment.’

‘You just wanted to shut up that woman in the shop the other day,’ Rick conceded. ‘She was one nasty piece of work.’

Maddy could have kissed Rick. It felt so good to realise he understood. He had read Cynthia like a book. ‘It was all I could think of on the spur of the moment,’ she admitted.

With lazy nonchalance, Rick settled himself lower on the sofa. ‘This Byron fellow who rang tonight is your ex-fiancè. Right?’

Maddy nodded. ‘He—well, he called our engagement off just six weeks ago. And now—he’s engaged again!’ As a fresh wave of anger surfaced, Maddy clenched her fists. ‘And he has the gall to ring up and ask me to do the flowers for his—for crying out loud—his new wedding! But the worst thing is, he’s marrying Cynthia Graham!’

Rick’s eyes widened and Maddy couldn’t help noticing that up close, and when he wasn’t scowling, they were very nice eyes—grey with unusual little flecks of vivid blue. ‘The woman in the shop?’

She nodded.

‘So you know the bride quite well?’

Bride? The word brought sudden, stinging tears to her eyes. Six weeks ago she had been dreaming of being a bride. They hadn’t quite set a date. Byron hadn’t wanted to commit himself to a definite time frame. There were so many things to consider, he’d said. But still she’d been dreaming of an elegant white gown and a happy country-style wedding at home on her parents’ farm.

‘Yes.’ Maddy hugged her folded arms across her chest and drew in an angry breath, which emerged seconds later as a long, frustrated sigh. ‘Since the eighth grade when I arrived at boarding school. I really don’t know why I hadn’t already expected this. Cynthia has always wanted everything I ever wanted.’ She outlined for Rick a potted history of Cynthia’s competitive endeavours over the past decade.

Rick slanted her a sardonic half-smile. ‘She sounds like a real honey.’

His sarcasm was like balm to her smarting wounds. ‘Oh, she’s a sweetie,’ Maddy agreed. ‘The only area where she couldn’t compete with me was music.’ Maddy couldn’t resist a tiny grin. ‘I’m no singing star, but Cynthia didn’t have a musical bone in her body. At university she auditioned for our college choir—after I was accepted, of course. But the conductor told her she should confine her vocal talents to the bathroom, but to ensure that it had been soundproofed first.’

Rick grinned back at her. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Just keep thinking nice warm and fuzzy thoughts about the two of them and then you’ll be able to pull it off.’

Maddy raised startled eyes to his. ‘Pull what off?’

‘Why, providing the flowers for their wedding, of course.’

Maddy shrank away from him as if he’d been going to strike her. ‘What? You’ve got to be joking! There’s no way I would even dream of going near that wedding. I don’t even want to organise for anyone else to do it!’

Rick grunted his disapproval and slid lower on the sofa, stretching his long legs before him. ‘That’s a pity.’

Maddy jumped up, angrily tossing her curls. ‘A pity?’ she cried. ‘What would you know about this? Have you any idea what’s involved in organising all the flowers for someone’s wedding?’

‘Tell me.’

She threw her arms wide open to try to convey the enormity of the task. ‘First of all I’d have to have them both—possibly a bridesmaid or two or even Cynthia’s mother as well—here at my flat for a consultation. Normally people come to the shop, but Byron knows I always bring special friends in here and make a little social occasion of it, so that’s what he’d expect. And while I showed them albums of examples and discussed all the different bouquet choices they would be billing and cooing all over each other! Then there’d be endless phone calls and—and decorating the church and the reception venue on the day!’ Maddy shuddered. ‘No one would expect me to do all that. Not for them!’

‘Obviously Byron does.’

His casual reply infuriated her. She clenched her fists. How could she expect this stranger to understand or care about her finer feelings?

‘But I don’t owe Byron anything!’

Rick’s puzzled gaze rested on her and Maddy felt the colour rise and fall in her cheeks. ‘No, you don’t owe him anything,’ he reassured her. ‘This Byron fellow is obviously a first-class fool. But you look like you’ve got plenty of spunk. I’m sure you can hold your own in love and war, Maddy.’