Jessica Hart - The Billionaire's Blind Date

February is the traditional month of love, when Cupid gets busy. So here is a timely short Valentine's treat. Curl up on the sofa, make a mug of something soothing, maybe have just a little chocolate nearby and take a break with one of our favourite writers, Jessica Hart!

The Billionaire’s Blind Date

Jessica Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

‘COME on , Mum … we’re going to be late!’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming …’ Nell scrabbled feverishly through her bag, checking to see that she had everything she needed. She had been so forgetful recently, and it had all been such a rush this morning that if she wasn’t careful she would have to go to the meeting this afternoon without any make-up on, and that was the last thing her confidence needed right now.

Ah, there was her comb. At least she’d be able to do something about her hair when she got to the office. Now, where was her cosmetic bag? Had she left it in the bathroom after all?

‘Mu-um …’ sighed Clara.

‘I’ve got to get myself a decent bag,’ Nell muttered to herself. ‘I can’t find anything in here … Oh!’

She broke off in consternation as the bag slipped from her grasp and landed with a splat on the doorstep, spilling keys and pens and tissues and lipsticks and the odd coins that always seemed to be lurking in its depths onto the path.

Clara bent to help pick them all up. ‘Mum, what is the matter with you at the moment?’ she asked, ten going on forty-five. Anyone would think that she was the mother, and Nell her awkward child. ‘You’re not usually this muddled.’

‘I’m not that bad, am I?’ asked Nell absently, shoving everything back into her bag. There was that compact mirror she had been looking for everywhere.

‘You lost your keys the other day.’

‘That could happen to anybody,’ Nell protested as they headed down the pavement at last.

‘And when you came to pick me up at Charlotte’s the other day, you went to the wrong house although you’ve been there millions of times.’

‘The doors were the same colour.’ Nell tried to defend herself, but Clara hadn’t finished.

‘ And you forgot that Sophie was coming last Saturday.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised before Clara could come up with any more examples of what a bad mother she was.

Her daughter was right, though. She wasn’t usually this vague. ‘There just seems to be a lot to think about at the moment,’ she tried to explain. ‘I’m not really settled into my new job yet.’

It was true that moving jobs had been more stressful than she had imagined, but that wasn’t the real reason she was so unsettled at the moment, was it? Deep down, Nell knew that what had really thrown her was being reminded about P.J. after all these years.

It was all Thea’s fault. Nothing had been the same since she had got in touch with P.J.’s sister on some internet site. There was no need for people to go contacting old school friends, Nell thought crossly as she waited with Clara at the lights. It just made you remember all the things you had tried so hard to forget for the last sixteen years.

P.J. was part of her past. He had gone to the States, she had stayed here. They had both moved on. She hadn’t thought of him for years. Well, not very often, anyway.

Sometimes she didn’t think of him for weeks at a time.

But now he was back.

‘Guess who’s back in town?’ Thea had said, bursting with news, and Nell had been taken aback at the way her heart had clenched at the sound of his name.

‘Janey says he’s been incredibly successful,’ Thea told her. ‘Something to do with electronics. We should have known. He always was a bit geeky, wasn’t he?’

‘He wasn’t geeky ,’ Nell objected, annoyed. ‘People just used to say that because he was clever.’ She defended him, just as she had all those years ago.

‘I wish we’d known just how clever,’ said Thea. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t stick with him, Nell. According to Janey, he’s practically a billionaire now.’

P.J., a billionaire? Nell couldn’t get her head round the idea. In her mind he was still the P.J. she had loved, a bit gawky, very young and very lanky, with that thin, intelligent face and the unexpected smile. The thought of him as a thrusting tycoon was vaguely unsettling. It didn’t fit with her image of him at all. She had always pictured him as a scientist rather than a businessman.

But then, she had never imagined that she would become a struggling single mother, either.

‘Janey says that he’s not with anyone at the moment,’ Thea went on, oh so casually. ‘You should get in touch.’

‘That would look subtle, wouldn’t it?’ Nell said sarcastically. ‘Hi, P.J., I haven’t been in touch for sixteen years, but I’ve just heard that you’re incredibly rich, so I wondered if you fancied meeting up?’

‘You could say that you’d just heard that he was back in London,’ Thea suggested. ‘You wouldn’t need to mention the rich bit.’

‘No, and of course P.J. would never guess that I knew that he had all that money, him being so stupid and all!’

Thea sighed. ‘It wouldn’t be like that with P.J. It’s not as if you’d be a remote acquaintance coming out of the woodwork. You were engaged once, after all.’

‘That just makes it worse!’ said Nell, recoiling from the very idea.

Her sister looked at her speculatively. ‘It’s a shame. You two were always good together. Still, maybe Janey will tell him that you’re divorced, and he’ll get in touch with you.’

Nell doubted it very much. P.J. had been nicer about Simon than she deserved, but no one liked being rejected, and presumably now that he had made his millions he had no trouble finding a girlfriend.

Good luck to him, she thought. He deserved his success, but his life and hers were worlds apart now. It was nice to know that he was well and successful, but there was no point in thinking about him anymore, she decided. She would put him out of her mind completely.

Absorbed in her thoughts, Nell didn’t realise that the green man was beeping at the lights until Clara dug her in the ribs. ‘Wake up, Mum!’

Nell started, and let her daughter bustle her across the road. Really, she must pull herself together. She was supposed to be looking after Clara, not the other way round.

Clara was eyeing her thoughtfully as they turned down a side street. They had walked to school so many times now that they followed the route automatically. Nell was sure that she could do it in her sleep.

‘Are you nervous about your date tonight?’

Nell sighed. She had been so busy thinking about P.J. that she had forgotten all about her blind date. ‘I wish I’d never agreed to go,’ she grumbled. ‘I don’t know why I let you and Thea bully me into these things!’

‘It would be nice for you to have a boyfriend.’

‘Clara, I’m thirty-seven! I’m too old for boyfriends.’

‘You’re not,’ said Clara loyally. ‘You’re not much older than Thea, and she’s just got married.’

That was unarguable. Her sister had been thirty-four when she’d met Rhys, and ready to give up on ever finding the right man for her.

‘Sometimes you just have to wait for fate to put the right person your way,’ said Nell, thinking that fate had done the best it could twenty-one years ago. It wasn’t fate’s fault that she had been too young and too silly to recognise the right person for her.