Charlotte Phillips - The Plus-One Agreement

Dealing with her parents without him was something she hadn’t had to do in so long that she hadn’t realised how she’d come to rely on his calming presence. They might have only been helping each other out, but Dan had had her back where her family were concerned. And he’d never been remotely fazed by her overbearing mother and downtrodden father.

She wondered for the first time with a spike of doubt whether Alistair would be as supportive as that. Or would he let her family cloud his judgement of her? What was that saying? Look at the mother if you want to see your future wife. If that theory held up she might as well join a nunnery. Alistair would be out of her life before she could blink.

She couldn’t let herself think like that.

Calling a halt with Dan was clearly the right thing to do if she was so ridiculously dependent on him that she could no longer handle her family on her own. But she couldn’t ruin Adam’s excitement. Not tonight. She’d simply have to reschedule things.

And in the meantime at least she wasn’t handling her mother’s shock by herself. She took a new flute of champagne gratefully from Dan and braced herself with a big sip.

‘I’m sure it must just be a publicity stunt,’ her mother was saying.

Denial. Her mother’s stock reaction to news she didn’t want to hear.

‘It’s not a publicity stunt,’ Adam said. ‘We’re getting married.’

He beamed at Ernie, standing beside him in a slim-cut electric blue suit. He certainly looked the perfect match for Adam.

Her mother’s jaw didn’t even really drop. Disbelief was so ingrained in her.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling,’ she said, flicking an invisible speck of dirt from Adam’s lapel. ‘Of course you’re not.’

Adam’s face took on the stoic expression of one who knew he would need to press the point more than once in order to be heard. Possibly a few hundred times.

‘It’s the next logical step,’ he said.

‘In what?’ Her mother flapped a dismissive hand. ‘It’s just a phase. You’ll soon snap out of it once the right girl comes along. Bit like Emma with her vegetarian thing back in the day.’ She nodded at Emma. ‘Soon went back to normal after a couple of weeks when she fancied a bacon sandwich.’

‘Mum,’ Adam said patiently, ‘Emma was thirteen. I’m twenty-nine. Ernie and I have been together for nearly a year.’

‘I know. Sharing a flat. Couple of lads. No need to turn it into more than it is.’

Emma stared as Adam finally raised his voice enough to make her mother stop talking.

‘Mum, you’re in denial!’

As she stopped her protests and looked at him he took a deep breath and lowered his voice, speaking with the tired patience of someone who’d covered the same ground many times, only to end up where he’d started.

‘I’ve been out since I was eighteen. I know you’ve never wanted to accept it, but the right girl for me doesn’t exist. We’re having a civil partnership ceremony in six weeks’ time and I want you all to be there and be happy for me.’

‘I’m happy for you,’ Emma said, smiling tentatively.

Happiness she could do. Unfortunately being at the wedding might be a bit trickier. Her plans with Alistair lurked at the edge of her mind. She’d been so excited about going away with him. He’d showered her with gifts and attention, and for the first time in her life she was being blown away by being the sole focus of another person. And not just any person. Alistair Woods had to be one of the most eligible bachelors in the universe, with an army of female fans, and he had chosen to be with her. She still couldn’t quite believe her luck. Their trip was planned to the hilt. She would have to make Adam understand somehow.

He leaned in and gave her a hug. ‘Thanks, Em.’

She had grown up feeling overshadowed by Adam’s achievements. Just the look of him was attention-grabbing, with his perfectly chiselled features and foppish dress sense. And that was just now. She couldn’t forget the school years, where for every one of Emma’s hard-earned A grades there had been a matching two or three showered effortlessly on Adam. His flamboyant, outgoing personality charmed everyone he came into contact with, and her mother never ceased championing his successes to anyone who would listen.

It hadn’t been easy being her parents’ Plan B. Competing for their interest with someone as dazzling as Adam was an impossible, cold task.

‘I blame you for this, Donald,’ her mother snapped at her father. ‘Indulging his ridiculous obsession with musical theatre when he was in his teens.’

Sometimes Emma forgot that being her parents’ Plan A was probably no picnic either.

Adam held up his hands.

‘Please, Mum. It’s not up for discussion. It’s happening with or without your approval. Can’t you just be pleased for us?’

There was an extremely long pause and then her mother gave an enormous grudging sigh.

‘Well, I can kiss goodbye to grandchildren, I suppose,’ she grumbled. ‘We’ll have to count on you for that now, Emma. If you can ever manage to find a man who’ll commit.’

She glared pointedly at Dan, who totally ignored the jibe. Emma had been wondering how long it would be before her biological clock got a mention. Terrific. So now Adam could carve out the life he wanted without bearing the brunt of her parents’ wrath because they had Emma lined up as their biological backup plan to carry on their insane gene pool.

Going away with Alistair was beginning to feel like a lucky escape. She just needed to get her plans back on track.

* * *

Dan scanned an e-mail for the third time and realised he still hadn’t properly taken it in. His mind had been all over the place this last day or two.

Since the night of Adam’s exhibition, to be exact.

There was a gnawing feeling deep in his gut that work didn’t seem to be suppressing, and he finally threw in the towel on distracting himself, took his mind off work and applied it to the problem instead.

He was piqued because Emma had ended things with him. OK, so her plans to dump him publicly hadn’t come off, thankfully, but the end result was the same. She’d drawn a line under their relationship without so much as a moment’s pause and he hadn’t heard from her since. No discussion, no input from him.

He was even more piqued because now it was over with he really shouldn’t give a damn. They were friends, work colleagues, and that was all there was to it. Their romantic attachment existed only in the impression they’d given to the outside world, to work contacts and her family. It had always been a front.

His pique had absolutely nothing to do with any sudden realisation that Emma was attractive. He’d always known she was attractive. Dan Morgan wouldn’t be seen dating a moose, even for business reasons. That didn’t mean she was his type, though—not with her dark hair and minimal make-up, and her conservative taste in clothes. And that in turn had made it easy to pigeonhole her as friend. A proper relationship with someone like Emma would be complex, would need commitment, compromise, emotional investment. All things he wasn’t prepared to give another woman. Tried, tested and failed. Dan Morgan learned from his mistakes and never repeated his failures.

It had quickly become clear that Emma was far more useful to him in the role of friend than love interest, and all thoughts of attraction had been relegated from that moment onwards. It had been so long now that not noticing the way she looked was second nature.

But the gnawing feeling in his gut was there nonetheless. Their romantic relationship might have been counterfeit, but some element of it had obviously been real enough to make the dumping feel extremely uncomfortable.