Jessica Hart - Loving Our Heroes

Tilly was hardly aware of what she ordered. The wine waiter appeared as soon as the waitress had gone and tried to discuss wine with Campbell, who simply closed the wine list and handed it back. ‘Whatever’s good,’ he said brusquely. ‘And whatever you can find most quickly.’

‘You’ll probably get the most expensive wine in the restaurant,’ Tilly warned him as the wine waiter, disappointed, took himself off.

Campbell shrugged. ‘I’d rather pay for it than endure a lot of poncey talk about it.’

Olivier had been a wine buff. He had spent ages perusing the wine list before every meal, and Tilly couldn’t help thinking that it would be a nice change to have a meal out that wasn’t punctuated with exhaustive lectures on grapes and vineyards and bouquets and aromas.

The wine waiter took Campbell at his word and came back almost immediately with a bottle. Evidently deciding they weren’t worth any flourishes, he opened the bottle, poured two glasses and left.

Tilly lifted her glass. ‘Here’s to you surviving your latest dangerous mission!’

‘All those giggling girls?’ Campbell’s laugh was rueful. ‘I’d rather do just about anything than face a gaggle like that again!’

‘My hero!’

‘You mock,’ he said severely, although there was a hint of a smile about his mouth, ‘but I’m not used to girls—or not twelve-year-old ones anyway.’

‘You don’t have a sister, then?’

‘No, it was just me and my brother growing up. Girls were an alien species for a long time.’

‘We’re not so different, you know,’ said Tilly. ‘You’d learn that soon enough if you had a daughter.’

The smile vanished abruptly. ‘God forbid!’ he said, horrified at the thought. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start dealing with a girl.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry. She would deal with you,’ Tilly reassured him. ‘She’d have you wrapped round her little finger in no time! It’s always the same with you macho men. You’re putty in the hands of a little girl.’

‘It’s just as well I never had any kids then,’ said Campbell dryly.

‘Did you ever think about having children when you were married?’

He shook his head. ‘No, babies weren’t part of Lisa’s plan, and I’ve never even considered it. I don’t think I would have been a good father.’

Tilly put down her glass with a frown. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I’m afraid I would have turned out like my own father.’ He straightened his cutlery without looking at her. ‘I suppose he loved us in his own way, but I never remember having fun with him, or doing the stuff other boys do with their fathers.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Tilly, remembering how her stepfather had been with Harry and Seb. ‘He missed out on a lot.’

‘We all did. I know you think I’m bad at expressing emotion, but you should have met my father. He was an army officer, a very moral man in lots of ways, but he had rigid standards that my brother and I never met. We used to try and outdo each other in a bid to please him but nothing we did was ever quite good enough. It didn’t matter how well we did, he never praised us. I think he thought it would spoil us or something.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She died when I was nine.’ Campbell sighed. ‘To be absolutely honest, I don’t remember her that well. Looking back, I wonder what kind of life she had, married to my father. I suspect that any spirit she may have had was crushed out of her early on. And after that we were packed off to boarding school, which sounds heartless, but we liked it more than being at home with our father.’

Poor little boys, Tilly thought, her heart twisting with pity. She had seen what losing their mother had done to her own brothers at not much older than Campbell had been. At least she had been there for them, but Campbell had had no such softening influence against his joyless, demanding father.

‘I see now why you’re so competitive,’ she said, as lightly as she could, and he gave her a crooked grin.

‘My brother is a barrister now. He’s worse than me!’

‘Your father must have been proud of you both, even if he didn’t show it. You’ve both been very successful.’

Campbell shrugged. ‘He died when I was in the Marines. Since trying to please him hadn’t got me anywhere, I’d started to rebel and I was heading off the rails. I was lucky the Marines took me,’ he confessed. ‘God knows where I would have ended up otherwise, but I was too much of a maverick to make a successful career in the forces like my father did. I’m not sure even that would have been enough for Dad.’ His mouth twisted in self-mockery. ‘Lisa used to tell me I was still trying to prove myself to him.’

You didn’t need to be married to him to guess that, Tilly thought waspishly. She wasn’t going to give Lisa any points for insight.

Absently, she crumbled a piece of bread, imagining Campbell as a boy, growing into a wild young man, his mother dead, his father distant, driven always by the need to succeed. No wonder he wasn’t good at talking about emotions. Being abandoned by his wife wouldn’t have helped either. Underneath that surface cool, was he as lost as the rest of them?

Her heart cracked for him, but she knew better than to offer pity.

‘My father is disappointed in me, too,’ she offered. ‘He doesn’t think making cakes is a proper job. It doesn’t make enough money, and that’s his only measure of success.’

Campbell wasn’t sorry to change the subject. ‘Have you seen him since your mother died?’

‘We keep in touch,’ said Tilly. ‘We have lunch every now and then, but it’s never very successful. I think it’s because we’re so different, but he thinks it’s because I’ve never forgiven him for leaving Mum. There may be some truth in that, although I know Mum was much happier with Jack than she would have been if Dad had stayed with us.’

‘How old were you when your parents divorced?’

‘Nearly seven,’ she said. ‘My mother kept telling me that my father still loved me, and that his leaving was nothing to do with me, but I didn’t believe her. If he’d loved me, he wouldn’t have left.’

She stopped and cocked her head, as if listening to what she had just said. ‘Hmm, that sounds bitter, doesn’t it? Maybe Dad’s right after all!’

Campbell wasn’t fooled by her bright smile. ‘You stayed with your mother, then?’

‘Yes, I had occasional weekends with Dad, but he was always busy. He got married again, and his new wife went perfectly with the smart, super-successful life he’d always wanted. Unfortunately a tubby little girl who reminded him of his old life just didn’t blend with his décor!

‘It was always a relief to go home,’ Tilly remembered. ‘I loved Jack. He was calm and steady and safe, and I was so happy when my mother married him. Once the twins arrived, it felt like the perfect family.’

She smiled wistfully. ‘I suppose I always hoped that I would meet someone like Jack myself. Instead, as Cleo is always pointing out, I seem drawn to men like Olivier, who are much more like my father. That’s all going to stop, though.’ She put on a resolute air. ‘From now on, I’m only interested in nice, kind men.’

Well, that ruled him out, Campbell thought. No one would ever describe him as nice or kind. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Tilly that she was much too exciting to be content with merely nice and that she would be bored rigid after a week, but he stopped himself just in time.

It wasn’t his business. He was leaving.

Focus on the new job, he told himself. Focus on Lisa and what it’s going to be like seeing her again. But all he could think about was Tilly—warm, desirable, messy Tilly, with the candlelight glowing in her dark blue eyes and the mouth that made his mind go blank.