The Bride's Baby
Would have attained everything that the angry youth he’d once been had sworn would one day be his.
The good clothes, expensive cars, beautiful women had come swiftly, but this had been something else.
He hadn’t been foolish enough to believe that Candy had fallen in love with him—love caused nothing but heartache and pain, as he knew to his cost—but it had seemed like the perfect match. She’d had everything except money; he had more than enough of that to indulge her wildest dreams.
It had been while he was away securing the biggest of those—guilt, perhaps for the fact that he’d been unable to get her wedding planner out of his head—that she’d taken to her heels with the chinless wonder who was reduced to working as an events assistant to keep a roof over his head. How ironic was that?
But then he was an aristocratic chinless wonder.
The coronet always cancelled out the billions.
When it came down to it, class won. Sylvie Smith had, after all, been chosen to coordinate the wedding for no better reason than that she’d been to school with Candy.
That exclusive old boy network worked just as well for women, it seemed.
Sylvie Smith. He’d spent six months trying not to think about her. An hour trying to make himself send her away without seeing her.
As he appeared to concentrate on the papers in front of him, she slipped the buttons on her jacket to reveal something skimpy in dark brown silk barely skimming breasts that needed no silicone to enhance them, nervously pushed back a loose strand of dark blonde hair that was, he had no doubt, the colour she’d been born with.
She crossed her legs in order to prop up the folder she had on her knee and for a moment he found himself distracted by a classy ankle, a long slender foot encased in a dark brown suede peep-toe shoe that was decorated with a saucy bow.
And, without warning, she wasn’t the only one feeling the heat.
He should write a cheque now. Get her out of his office. Instead, he dropped his eyes to the invoice in front of him and snapped, ‘What in the name of blazes is a confetti cannon?’
‘A c-confetti c-cannon?’
Sylvie’s mind spun like a disengaged gear. Going nowhere. She’d thought this afternoon couldn’t get any worse; she’d been wrong. Time to get a grip, she warned herself. Take it one thing at a time. And remember to breathe.
Maybe lighten things up a little. ‘Actually, it does what it says on the tin,’ she said.
His eyebrows rose the merest fraction. ‘Which is?’
Or maybe not.
‘It fires a cannonade of c-confetti,’ she stuttered. Dammit, she hadn’t stuttered in years and she wasn’t about to start again now just because Tom McFarlane was having a bad day. Slow, slow…‘In all shapes and sizes,’ she finished carefully.
He said nothing.
‘With a c-coloured flame projector,’ she added, unnerved by the silence. ‘It’s really quite…’ she faltered ‘…spectacular.’
He was regarding her as if she were mad. Actually, she thought with a tiny shiver, he might just be right. What sane person spent her time scouring the Internet looking for an elephant to hire by the day?
Whose career highs involved delivering the perfect party for a pop star?
Easy. The kind of person who’d been doing it practically from her cradle. Whose mother had done it before her—although she’d done it out of love for family members or a sense of duty when it was for community events, rather than for money. The kind of person who, like Candy, hadn’t planned for a day job but who’d fallen into it by chance and had been grateful to find something she could do without thinking, or the need for any specialist training.
‘And a “field of light”?’ he prompted, having apparently got the bit between his teeth.
‘Thousands of strands of fibre optic lights that ripple in the breeze,’ she answered, deciding this time to take the safe option and go for the straight answer. Then, since he seemed to require more, ‘Changing colour as they move.’
She rippled her fingers to give him the effect.
He stared at them for a moment, then, snapping his gaze back to her face, said, ‘What happens if there isn’t a breeze?’
Did it matter? It wasn’t going to happen…
Just answer the question, Sylvie, she told herself. ‘The c-contractor uses fans.’
‘You are joking.’
Describing the effect to someone who was anticipating a thrilling spectacle on her wedding day was a world away from explaining it to a man who thought the whole thing was some ghastly joke.
‘Didn’t you discuss any of this with Candy?’ she asked.
His broad forehead creased in a frown. Another stupid question, obviously. You didn’t become a billionaire by wasting time on trivialities like confetti cannons.
Tom McFarlane had signed the equivalent of a blank cheque and left his bride-to-be to organise the wedding of her dreams while he’d concentrated on making the money to pay for it.
No doubt, from Candy’s point of view, it had been the perfect division of labour. She’d certainly thrown herself into her role with enthusiasm and there wasn’t a single ‘effect’ that had gone unexplored. It was only the constraints of time and imagination—if she’d thought of an elephant, she’d have insisted on having one, insisted on having the whole damn circus—that had limited her self-indulgence. As it was, there had been more than enough to turn her dream into what was now proving to be Tom McFarlane’s—and her—nightmare.
A six-figure nightmare, much of it provided by the small specialist companies Sylvie regularly did business with—people who trusted her to settle promptly. Which was why she was going to sit here until Tom McFarlane had worked through his anger and written her a cheque. Even if it took all night.
Having briefly recovered her equilibrium, she felt herself begin to heat up again, from the inside, as he continued to look at her and she began to think that, actually, all night wouldn’t be a problem…
She ducked her head, as if to check the invoice, tucking a non-existent strand of hair behind her ear with a hand that was shaking slightly.
Tidying away what was a totally inappropriate thought.
Quentin wasn’t the only one in danger of losing his head.
The office was oddly silent. His phone did not ring. No one put their head around the door with some query.
The only sound for what seemed like minutes—but was probably only seconds—was the pounding beat of her pulse in her ears.
Then she heard the rustle of paper as Tom McFarlane returned to the stack of invoices in front of him and started going through them, one by one.
The choir.
‘They didn’t sing,’ he objected. ‘They didn’t even have to turn up.’
‘They’re booked for months in advance,’ she explained. ‘I had to call in several favours to get them for Candy but the cancellation came too late to offload them to another booking…’
Her voice trailed off. He knew how it was, for heaven’s sake; she shouldn’t have to explain!
As if he could read her mind, he placed a tick against the list to approve payment without another word.
The bell-ringers.
For a moment she thought he was going to repeat his objection and held her breath. He glanced up, as if waiting for her to breathe out. Finally, when she was beginning to feel light-headed for lack of oxygen, he placed another tick.
As they moved steadily through the list, she began to relax. She hadn’t doubted that he was going to settle; he wouldn’t waste this amount of time unless he was going to pay.
The 1936 Rolls-Royce to carry Candy to the church. Tick.
It was just that he was angry and, since his runaway bride wasn’t around to take the flak in person, she was being put through the wringer in her place.
If that was what it took, she thought, absent-mindedly fanning herself with one of her invoices, let him wring away. She could take it. Probably.
The carriage and pair to transport the newly-weds from the church to their reception. Tick.
The singing waiters…
Enough. Tom raked his fingers through his hair. He’d had enough. But, on the point of calling it quits, writing the cheque and drawing a line under the whole sorry experience, he looked up and was distracted by Sylvie Smith, her cheeks flushed a delicate pink, fanning herself with one of her outrageous invoices.
‘Is it too warm in here for you, Miss Smith?’ he enquired.
‘No, I’m fine,’ she said, quickly tucking the invoice away as she shifted the folder on her knees, tugging at her narrow skirt before re-crossing her long legs. Keeping her head down so that she wouldn’t have to look at him. Waiting for him to get on with it so that she could escape.
Not yet, he thought, standing up, crossing to the water-cooler to fill a glass with iced water. Not yet…
Sylvie heard the creak of his leather chair as Tom McFarlane stood up. Then, moments later, the gurgle of water. Unable to help herself, she pushed her tongue between her dry lips, then looked up. For a moment he didn’t move.
With the light behind him, she couldn’t see his face, but his dark hair, perfectly groomed on that morning six months ago when he’d come to her office, never less than perfectly groomed in the photographs she’d seen of him before or since, looked as if he’d spent the last few days dragging his fingers through it.
Her fingers itched to smooth it back into place. To ease the tension from his wide shoulders and make the world right for him again. But the atmosphere in the silent office, cut off, high above London, was super-charged with suppressed emotion. Instead, she forced herself to look away, concentrate on the papers in front of her, well aware that all it would take would be a wrong word, move, look, to detonate an explosion.
‘Here. Maybe this will help.’
She’d been working so hard at not looking at him that she hadn’t heard him cross the thick carpet. Now she looked up with a start to find him offering her a glass of water, presenting her with the added difficulty of taking it from his fingers without actually touching them.
A difficulty which something in his expression suggested he understood only too well. Maybe she should just ask him to do them both a favour and tip it over her…
‘Thank you,’ she said, reaching for it and to hell with the consequences. His were rock-steady—well, he was granite. Hers shook and she spilt a few drops on her skirt. She probably just imagined the steam as it soaked through the linen to her thighs as he folded himself down to her level and put his hand round hers to steady it.
Someone should warn him that it didn’t actually help. But then she suspected he knew that too and right now she was having enough trouble simply breathing.
‘I’ve got it,’ she managed finally. He didn’t appear to be convinced and she looked up, straight into his eyes, at which point the last thing she wanted was for him to let go. ‘Really,’ she assured him and instantly regretted it as he stood up and returned to his chair, lean and lithe as a panther.
And twice as dangerous, she thought as she gratefully took a sip of the water. Touched the glass to her heated forehead. Told herself to get a grip….
CHAPTER TWO
‘SHALL we get on?’ Tom McFarlane prompted as he returned to his desk.
Sylvie silently fumed.
Why on earth was he putting himself through this? Putting her through it?
It couldn’t be about the money. The amount involved, though admittedly large, had to be peanuts to a man of his wealth.
It was almost, she thought, as if with each tick approving payment he was underlining the lesson he’d just been handed—the one about never trusting the word of someone just because they said they loved you. Presumably Candy had told him that she loved him. Or maybe, like Candy, he thought of marriage as a business deal, a mutually satisfying partnership arrangement. That love was just a lot of sentimental nonsense.
Maybe it wasn’t his heart that was lying in shreds, but his pride. Or was it always pride that suffered most from this most public declaration that you weren’t quite good enough?
‘The singing waiters?’ he repeated, making sure they were on the same page.
‘I’m with you,’ she said, putting the glass down. There was a dangerously long pause and she looked up, anticipating some sarcastic comment. But he shook his head as if he’d thought better of it and placed a tick alongside the figure.
Her sigh of relief came a little too soon.
‘Doves? Are they in such demand too?’ he enquired a few moments later, but politely, as if making an effort. He couldn’t possibly be interested.
‘I’m afraid so. And corn is not cheap,’ she added, earning herself another of those long looks. She really needed to resist the snappy remarks. Especially as the gifts for the bridesmaids came next.
Candy had chosen bracelets for each of them from London’s premier jeweller. No expense spared.
The nib of his pen hovered beside the item for a moment, then he said, ‘Send them back.’
‘What? No, wait.’ He looked up. ‘I can’t do that!’
‘You can’t? Why not?’
Was he serious? Hadn’t he taken the slightest interest in his own wedding?
‘Because they’re engraved with your names and the date.’ This was cruel, she thought. One of his staff should be dealing with this. Pride was a killer… ‘They were supposed to be a keepsake,’ she added.
‘Is that a fact?’ Then, ‘So? Where are they? These keepsakes.’
Could it get any worse? Oh, yes.
‘Candy has them,’ she admitted. ‘She was having them gift-wrapped so that you could give them to the bridesmaids at the pre-wedding dinner.’ He frowned. ‘You did know about the pre-wedding dinner?’
‘It was in my diary. As was the wedding,’ he added. Caught by something in his voice, she looked up. For a moment she was trapped, held prisoner by his eyes, and it was all she could do to stop herself from reaching out to squeeze his hand. Tell him that it would get better.
As if he saw it coming, he gathered himself, putting himself mentally beyond reach.
She tried to speak and discovered that she had to clear her throat before she could continue.
‘There are cufflinks for the ushers too,’ she said, deciding it would be as well to get the whole jewellery thing over at once. ‘And for you.’
‘Were they engraved with our names too?’
‘Just the date,’ she replied.
‘Useful in case I ever manage to forget it,’ he said and, without warning, something happened to his mouth. She thought it might be a smile. Not much of one. Little more than a distortion of the lower lip, but Sylvie reached for the glass and took another sip of water.
It sizzled a little on her tongue, turning from ice-cold to lukewarm as it trickled down her throat. If he could do that with something so minimal, what on earth could he achieve when he was actually trying?
No. She didn’t want to know. It didn’t bear thinking about.
‘I’m sure she’ll return them,’ she said in an effort to reassure him. Once she came back from wherever she was hiding out. She’d be eager to negotiate the sale of her story to whichever gossip magazine offered her the most to spill the beans on the break-up and the new man in her life before the story went cold.
Billionaireless, she would need the money.
‘How sure?’ he asked, holding the look for a full thirty seconds. ‘And, even if she did, what would I do with them? Sell them on eBay?’ She opened her mouth but, before she could speak, he said, ‘Forget it.’
And, placing a tick against the item, he moved swiftly on.
It was only when they reached the cake that the cracks began to show in his icy self-control.
Candy, to her surprise, hadn’t gone for some modern confection in white chocolate, or the witty little individual cakes that were suddenly all the fashion, but an honest-to-goodness traditional three-tier solid fruit cake, exquisitely iced by a master confectioner with the Harcourt coat of arms and Tom McFarlane’s company logo in full colour on each layer.
The kind of cake where the top tier was traditionally put aside to be used as the christening cake for the first-born.
Until that point she’d almost felt as if Candy had been playing at weddings, more like a little girl let loose with the dressing-up box and her mother’s make-up—or in this case a billionaire’s bank account—than a woman embarking on the most important stage of her life. But that cake had suggested she’d been serious.
Maybe she’d just been trying to convince herself.
‘Where is this monstrous confection?’ Tom McFarlane asked.
‘The cake?’
‘Of course the damn cake!’ he said, finally snapping, proving that he was made of more than stone. ‘Did she take that with her too? Or has it already been foisted on some other unsuspecting male?’
‘That’s an outrageous thing to say, Mr McFarlane. The people I deal with are honest, hard-working businessmen and women.’ She should have stopped then. ‘Besides, no one wants a secondhand wedding cake.’ Particularly one with someone else’s coat of arms emblazoned on it.
‘They don’t? What a pity the same can’t be said about brides.’ For a moment she thought he was going to let it go. But not this time. ‘So?’ he demanded, glaring at her. ‘What will happen to it?’
Desperate to get this over with, she was once more tempted to ask him if it mattered.
The words were on the tip of her tongue but then, for a split second, she caught a glimpse of the man beneath. A man who’d worked himself up from labouring in the markets to the top floor of a prestigious office building but had never forgotten how hard it had been or where he’d come from and was just plain horrified by such profligate waste and realised that, yes, to him it did matter.
‘That’s for you to decide,’ she said.
‘Then call the baker. He can deliver it to my apartment this evening.’
This was her cue to suggest that he was joking.
Had he any idea how big it was?
She restrained herself, but when she hesitated he sat back in his chair and gestured for her to get on with it.
‘Do it now, Miss Smith.’
About to ask him what he’d do with ten pounds plus of the richest fruit cake—not including the almond paste and icing—she thought better of it. Maybe he liked fruit cake.
And when he got tired of it he could always feed the rest to the ducks.
It was all downhill from there with a mass of personalized stuff—all of it now just so much landfill. Menus, seating cards, table confetti in their entwined initials, candles, crackers with their names and the date on them, filled with little silver gifts for the guests—she’d managed to negotiate the return of the gifts. Every kind of personalized nonsense, each imprinted with their names and the date of the wedding that never was.
There wasn’t a single thing that Candy had overlooked in her quest for the most extravagant, the most talked-about wedding of the season.
The list went on and on but the only other invoice to provoke a reaction was the one for the bon-bonnière.
‘Well, here’s something different,’ he said, stretching for a touch of wry humour. ‘A French tradition for wasting money instead of a British one.’
Seeing light at the end of the tunnel, she was prepared to risk a smile of her own but instead she caught her breath as, his guard momentarily down, she caught a glimpse of the grey hollows beneath his eyes, at his temple.
Maybe he heard because he looked up, a slight frown puckering his brow.
‘What?’ he demanded.
She shook her head, managed some kind of meaningless response that appeared to satisfy him, but after that she kept her head down and finally it was all done but for the last invoice. The one for her own fee, which she’d reduced by twenty per cent, even though the cancellation had caused nearly as much work as the actual day would have done.
‘It’s as well you don’t offer a money back guarantee,’ he said.
‘My company’s services carry a guarantee,’ she assured him.
‘But not one that covers parts replacement.’
Which was almost a joke but this time she didn’t even think about smiling. ‘I’m afraid not, Mr McFarlane. The bride is entirely your responsibility.’
‘True,’ he said, surprising her. ‘But maybe you’re missing out on a business opportunity,’ he continued as, finally, he wrote the cheque. ‘It would be so much simpler if one could pick and choose from a list of required qualities and place an order for the perfect wife.’
‘Like a washing machine? Or a car?’ she asked, wondering what, exactly, had been his specification for a wife. And whether he’d adjust it in the light of recent events.
Go for something less glamorous, more hard-wearing.
‘Performance, style, finish…’ She had been dangerously close to sarcasm but he appeared to take her analogy seriously. ‘That sounds about right.’ Then, as he tore the cheque from the book, ‘But forget economy. Fast women and fast cars have that in common. They’re both expensive to run. And you take a hit on the trade-in.’ He didn’t hand her the cheque but continued to look at it. ‘Good business for you, though.’
‘I’m not that cynical, Mr McFarlane,’ she assured him as, refusing to sit there like a dummy while he made her wait for him to hand it over, she set about gathering her papers.
She tucked them back into the file and stowed them in her case, taking all the time in the world over it, just to prove that she was cool.
That nothing was further from her mind than a speedy exit from his office so that she could regain control over her breathing and her hormones, both of which had been doing their own thing ever since she’d been confronted at close quarters by whatever it was that Tom McFarlane had in such abundance. And she wasn’t thinking about his money.
When everything was done she looked up and said, ‘No one, no matter who they are, gets more than one SDS wedding.’
‘Speaking personally, that’s not going to be a problem.’
And he folded the cheque in two and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
No…
‘Once has been more than enough.’
He stood up and hooked his jacket from the back of the chair before heading for the door.
No… Wait…
‘Shall we go, Miss Smith?’ he prompted, opening it, waiting for her.
‘Go?’ She stood up very slowly. ‘Go where?’
‘To pick up all this expensive but completely useless junk that I’m about to pay for.’
Oh. No. Really. That was just pointless. Besides the fact that she was now, seriously, running out of time as well as breath. Her staff didn’t need her to hold their hands, but the pop diva was paying for that kind of service.
Sylvie was really annoyed with herself about that. Not the time—that was all down to Tom McFarlane. But the breath bit.
It wasn’t even as if he’d tried. Done a single thing to account for her raised pulse rate or the pitifully twisted state of her hormones.
Apart from looking at her.
It was, apparently, enough.
‘I’m qu-quite happy to dispose of it for you,’ she said quickly. She could at least spare him the indignity of having to haul it to the recycling centre. Then, when that offer wasn’t leapt on with grateful thanks, ‘Or I can arrange to have it delivered.’
It wasn’t as if he could be in a hurry for any of it.
‘If that’s more convenient for you,’ he said. Her relief was short-lived. ‘I assume you’re not planning to charge me for storage?’
‘Er, no…’
He nodded. ‘I’m leaving the country tonight—my diary has been cleared, the honeymoon villa paid for—but I can hold on to the cheque until I get back next month and we can finish this then.’
What?
‘I’ll give you a call when I get back, shall I?’
Give her a call…?
Everyone had their snapping point. His had been the wedding cake. This was hers.
‘You have got to be joking! I’ve already rearranged my afternoon for you and been kept waiting nearly an hour for my trouble. And I’ve got a party this evening.’