Bombshell For The Boss: The Bride's Baby

CHAPTER FOUR

TOM parked his Aston in the coach house, alongside Pam’s zippy BMW coupé and a black and silver Mini that he didn’t recognise, but which presumably belonged to one of her staff. Inside the house it was all noise and chaos as the owners of the vehicles milled about, apparently in the process of setting up shop in his house.

He didn’t pause to enquire what the devil they thought they were doing, instead hunting down the person responsible. The woman he’d left to keep his company ticking over while he put as much distance between himself and London as possible.

He found her sitting behind an antique desk in the library, looking for all the world like the lady of the manor.

‘What the hell is going on?’ he asked.

She peered over the top of her spectacles. ‘Nice tan,’ she said. ‘Shame about the manners.’

‘Pink ribbons,’ he countered, refusing to be diverted.

‘Maybe coffee would help. Or would you prefer tea? Better make it camomile.’

He placed his hands on the desk, leaned forward and, when he was within six inches of her face, he said, ‘Tell me about the ribbons, Pam.’

‘You are supposed to grovel, you wretch,’ she said. ‘Six months! You’ve been away six months! I had to cancel my trip to South Africa and I’ve totally missed the skiing season—’

‘What’s to miss about breaking something vital?’

She almost smiled.

‘Come on, Pam, you’re the one who made the point that the honeymoon was booked so I might as well give myself a break.’

‘What I had in mind was a couple of weeks chilling out on a beach. Or raising hell if that’s what it took. As I recall, you weren’t that keen.’

‘I wasn’t and I didn’t. When I got to the airport I traded in my ticket for the first flight out.’

‘And didn’t tell a soul where you were. You did a six-month disappearing act!’

‘I wish. You can’t hide from email.’

She shrugged. ‘I kept it to the minimum.’

‘You’re not fooling me, Pam Baxter. You’ve had absolute control while I’ve been away and you’ve loved every minute of it.’

‘That’s not the point! Have you any idea how worried I’ve been?’ Then, presumably to distract him from the fact that she’d backed down before he’d apologised, she said, ‘And, as for the ribbons on the gate, I don’t know anything about them. But if I had to make a guess I’d suggest that the Pink Ribbon Club put them there.’

Okay.

He was distracted.

‘What the hell is the Pink Ribbon Club when it’s at home?’ he asked, but easing back. He’d known she’d worry, but hanging around to offer explanations hadn’t been appealing. ‘And, more to the point, why are they hanging the damn things from my gate?’

She offered him a brochure from a stack on the desk. ‘I’ve given them permission to hold a Wedding Fayre here—that’s Fayre with a y and an e—so I imagine they’re advertising the fact to passing traffic. That’s why I’m here this week,’ she explained. ‘The couple who are caretakers of the place do a good job, but I can’t expect them to be responsible for the house and its contents with so many people coming and going.’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Why did I give the PRC permission to stage the Fayre here? It’s a local charity,’ she said. ‘Founded by Lady Annika Duchamp Smith?’

He stared at the wedding bell and horseshoe bedecked brochure for a moment before dropping it and subsiding into an ancient leather armchair.

‘The Duchamp family owned the house for generations,’ she prompted when he didn’t respond. ‘It’s their coat of arms on the gate.’

‘Really. Well, that covers the Duchamps. What’s the story on the Smiths?’ he asked, remembering a Smith with that hallmark English aristocratic cool and a voice that told the world everything they needed to know about her class, background.

A Smith with silvery-blue eyes that not only looked as if they could cause chaos if they had a mind to, but had gone ahead and done it.

Pam shrugged. ‘Presumably Lady Annika married a Mr Smith.’

‘For his money rather than his name, apparently, since she chose not to relinquish her own.’

For a moment there, when the word charity had been invoked, he’d found himself on the back foot but he quickly rallied. These people stood for everything he loathed.

Privilege, inherited wealth, a belief in their own innate superiority.

People for whom charity meant nothing more than another social event.

For a while he’d been dazzled too. Then completely blinded. But he had both feet firmly back on the ground now.

‘It’ll take more than playing charity queen to get Lady Annika back inside Longbourne Court,’ he said.

‘Well, actually Lady Annika—’

‘I mean it,’ he cut in, not interested in her ladyship. ‘Give the Ribbon mob a donation if you think they’re doing a good job, but get rid of her. And her Fayre with a y and an e.’ He snorted with disgust. ‘Why do they spell it like that?’

‘Beats me,’ she replied, ‘but I’m afraid you’re stuck with it. Even if it wasn’t far too late to ungive permission, I wouldn’t. Celebrity magazine are covering the event—which is why we need a dress rehearsal so that they can get photographs. Your conference centre is about to get the kind of publicity that money just can’t buy.’

‘You didn’t know I was planning a conference centre.’

‘Oh, please! What else are you going to do with it? Live here? On your own? Besides, our favourite architect, Mark Hilliard, sent me a sheaf of forms from the Planning Department.’

‘He didn’t waste any time!’ Then, realising that Pam was looking at him a little oddly, ‘Which is good. I stressed the need to get on with it when I spoke to him.’

‘Oh? You managed to find time to speak to your architect.’

‘It was a matter of priorities. The sooner we get started on this, the better.’

‘In that case, the publicity is good news.’

‘You think? This may come as a surprise to you, Pam, but the people—the women—who read gossip magazines, who go to Wedding Fayres, spelled with a y and an e, do not organise conferences.’

‘I arrange conferences,’ she pointed out.

‘You are different.’

‘Of course I’m not. And I never miss an edition of Celebrity.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘Am I?’ She didn’t bother to reassure him, just said, ‘You’re nothing but an old-fashioned misogynist at heart, aren’t you, Tom?’

‘You can’t get around me with compliments—’

‘And maybe the teeniest bit of a snob?’

‘A snob!’ On the contrary, he was the self-made man whose bride-to-be had decided that, once spending his money—egged on by her old school chum, Miss Smith—had lost its novelty, and the mists of lust had cleared, he wasn’t good enough to marry.

‘An inverted one,’ she elaborated, as if that was any better.

‘I’m a realist, Pam.’

‘Oh, right, that would be the realist who fell off the edge of the earth six months ago, leaving me to hold the fort?’

‘Which disproves your misogynist theory. If I disliked women, why would I leave you in charge while I took some much needed time out? Unlike you, I don’t take three holidays a year. And why would I have appointed you as my CEO in the first place? Besides, I kept in touch.’

‘Because I’m damn good at my job,’ she said, answering the first two parts of his question. ‘But, for your information, the occasional email to keep me up to date with the real estate you’ve been vacuuming up on whichever continent you happened to be at the time so that I could deal with the paperwork, is not keeping in touch.’

‘I’m sure I sent you a postcard from Rio,’ he said. The only one he really remembered was the one he hadn’t sent.

‘“Wish you were here”? Chance would have been a fine thing. Besides, I wanted to know how you were.’ Then, ‘You’ve lost weight.’

‘I’m fine, okay!’ She didn’t look convinced. ‘Truly. But I decided that since I was taking a break I might usefully expand my empire while I was about it.’

‘That’s not expanding your empire, it’s called displacement activity,’ Pam said, giving him what his grandmother would have described as an old-fashioned look. ‘If you were a woman, you’d have bought shoes.’

‘Which proves my point about women,’ he said. ‘Real estate is a much better investment.’

‘And, assuming you were thinking at all, which I take leave to doubt,’ Pam continued, ignoring that and returning to the third part of his question, ‘I’d suggest it’s because you don’t think of me as a woman at all.’

‘Which is the highest compliment I could pay you.’

‘Is that right? And you’re surprised that Candy Harcourt dumped you?’

Surprised was not actually the first word that had come to mind. Relieved … Evading the question, he said, ‘So, is this Wedding Fayre your idea of payback for leaving you to do your job?’

‘Well, if I’d known you were going to be here, that would definitely have been a bonus. As it is, like you, I was being realistic. This is business. I am doing my job. Looking after your interests in your absence.’ She gave him a long, hard look. ‘And, as my last word on that subject, I suggest you go down on your knees and thank Candida Harcourt—or should I say The Honourable Mrs Quentin Turner Lyall—for letting you off the hook.’

‘She actually married him?’

‘It’s true love, according to Celebrity.’ Then, when he scowled at the mention of the magazine, ‘Be grateful,’ she said, misunderstanding his reaction. ‘Divorce would have cost you a lot more than the fancy wedding she ran out on.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ He dragged his hair back from his forehead. It immediately flopped over his forehead again. It needed cutting …

‘It’s not you that I doubt.’ She shrugged. ‘Impoverished aristocracy are always a risk. Marrying for money goes with the territory. In the old days they had no choice but to stick with the deal, but these days divorce is just as profitable. Not that I’m suggesting your only attraction was fiscal.’

‘In other words, she was just amusing herself with a bit of rough? Got carried away for a moment …’

Something else she had in common with her old school chum, Sylvie Smith. No wonder she’d cried. He’d only lost Candy while her indiscretion could have lost her the ermine and the guaranteed seat at the next coronation …

Pam raised her hands in a gesture that could have meant anything but, taking the opportunity to change the subject, he indicated the noises off in the entrance hall.

‘I appear to have no choice but to accept that this is a done deal. How long is it going to last?’

‘The Fayre? It’ll all be over by Monday.’

‘A week? I’ve got to put up with pink ribbons on my gates for a week?’ he demanded.

‘Be glad this isn’t Italy—everyone would be congratulating you on the birth of a daughter.’

‘That’s not remotely funny,’ he declared. Anything but.

‘For heaven’s sake, Tom, lighten up.’ Then, more gently, ‘If you’d given me some indication that you were coming home I’d have warned you what was happening. Why don’t you go back to London? Catch up with everyone. Longbourne Court will still be here next week.’

‘Nice idea, but I’ve arranged to meet Mark Hilliard here this morning.’

‘I could put him off until next week.’

‘No,’ he said, hauling himself out of the chair and heading for the door. ‘I want to get started.’ He wanted to subject the house to his will; making it entirely his would draw a line under the whole affair. ‘Give me twenty minutes to take a shower and you can bring me up to date. There is hot water, I take it?’

‘Plenty. I’ll get Mrs Kennedy to make up the bed in the master suite.’

‘Thanks. And if you were serious about the coffee, that would be good too.’

‘I’ll get on to it.’ Then, as he opened the door, she called, ‘Oh, Tom! Wait! Before you go, I should warn you—’

‘Twenty minutes,’ he repeated, closing it behind him, then stood back as two men manhandled a large sheet of plywood through the hall and into the ballroom.

He’d been away for months; there wasn’t a thing that wouldn’t wait another twenty minutes.

He fetched his overnight bag from the car, then headed for the stairs.

His foot was on the first step when the sound of a woman’s voice drifting from the drawing room riveted him to the spot.

‘I like to start with the colours, Lucy.’

He dropped the bag, moved closer. Heard someone else say, ‘This is going to be a spring wedding, so … what? Primroses, daffodils … Yellow?’

‘No.’ The word was snapped out. Then, more gently, ‘Not yellow. April is getting late for daffodils. I did see violets as I drove in through the wood, though. Why don’t you take a tour of the exhibitors and bring me anything and everything you can find from deepest violet through to palest mauve? With just a touch of green, I think.’

‘Anything special?’

‘Ribbons, jewellery, accessories. Ask the florist what he’ll have available. And don’t forget to make a note of where everything came from …’

She had her back to him, standing shadowed by the deep embrasure of the door as she quietly absorbed everything that was going on but, long before she turned, stepped forward into the sunlight streaming in through front doors propped wide open for workmen carrying in a load of steel trestles, he knew exactly who that voice belonged to.

He’d spent an entire afternoon listening to it as they’d gone, item by item, through her account. Watching her unbutton her jacket. Moisten her lips.

All the time he’d been away it hadn’t been Candy’s last-minute change of heart that had kept him from sleeping.

It had been the flush on Sylvie Smith’s cheeks. The memory of long legs, a glimpse of lace.

Her hot body moulded to his.

Her pitiful tears.

Her tears had haunted him, plaguing him with guilt, but now he understand that her tears had not been for what he’d done to her, but because she’d just risked everything she had in a momentary rush of lust. No wonder she couldn’t wait to get away …

Sylvie smiled encouragingly at the youthful journalist, the advance guard from Celebrity whose job it was to research background and photo opportunities so that when the photographer arrived on Sunday there would be no waiting. And to encourage her to give her imagination free rein when it came to the fantasy wedding.

Full of enthusiasm, the girl immediately set about hunting down anything she could find in the chosen colour scheme.

Sylvie, not in the least bit enthusiastic, dropped the face-aching smile that seemed to have been fixed ever since she’d arrived at Longbourne Court and looked around at the chaos in what had once been her mother’s drawing room.

The furniture had been moved out, stored somewhere to leave room for the exhibitors. But it wasn’t the emptiness that tore at her. It was the unexpected discovery that, despite the passing of ten years, so little had changed. It was not the difference but the familiarity that caught at the back of her throat. Tugged at her heart.

The pictures that had once been part of her life were still hanging where they had always been. Velvet curtains, still blue in the deep folds but ever since she could remember faded to a silvery-grey where the light touched them, framed an unchanged view.

There was even a basket of logs in the hearth that might have been there on the day the creditors had seized the house and its contents nearly ten years ago, taking everything to cover the mess that her grandfather, in his attempt to recoup the family fortunes, had made of things.

But driving in the back way through the woods at the crack of dawn, walking in through the kitchen and seeing Mrs Kennedy standing at the sink, her little cry of surprised pleasure, the hug she’d given her while they’d both shed a tear, had been like stepping back in time.

She could almost imagine that her mother had just gone out for an hour or two, would at any moment walk through the door, dogs at her heels …

She swallowed, blinked, reminded herself what was at stake. Forced herself to focus on the job in hand.

She’d already decided that the only way to handle this was to treat herself as if she were one of her own clients. Just one more busy career woman without the time to research the endless details that would make her wedding an event to remember for the rest of her life.

Distancing herself from any emotional involvement.

It was, after all, her job. Something she did every day. Nothing to get excited about. Except, of course, that was just what it should be. Something to be over-the-moon excited about rather than just a going-through-the-motions chore.

She shook her head. The quicker she got on with it, the quicker it would be over. She had the colour scheme, which was a start.

‘I’ll be in the morning room,’ she called out to Lucy, already busily talking to exhibitors, searching out anything useful. It was time she was at work too, hunting down a theme to hang the whole thing on, something original that she hadn’t used before.

And the even bigger problem of the dress.

She turned to find her way blocked by six and half feet of broad-shouldered male and experienced a bewildering sense of déjà vu.

A feeling that this had happened before.

And then she looked up and realised that it was not an illusion. This had happened before, except on that occasion the male concerned had been wearing navy pin-stripe instead of grey cashmere.

‘Some billionaire …’ Laura had said, but hadn’t mentioned a name. And she hadn’t bothered to ask, pretending she didn’t care.

She cared now because it wasn’t just ‘some’ billionaire who’d bought her family home and was planning to turn it into a conference centre.

It was Tom McFarlane, the man with whom, just for a few moments, she’d totally lost it. Whose baby she was carrying. Who’d grabbed her offer to forget it had ever happened. She’d expected at least an acknowledgement …

‘Tell me, Miss Smith,’ he said while she was still struggling to get her mouth around a simple, Good morning, using exactly the same sardonic tone with which he’d queried every item on her invoice all those months ago. The same look with which he’d reduced her to a stuttering jangle of unrestrained hormones.

Despite everything, she hadn’t been able to get that voice, the heat of those eyes, his touch, the weight, heat of his body, out of her head for weeks afterwards.

Make that months.

Maybe not at all …

The man she most wanted to see in the entire world. The man she most dreaded seeing because she’d made a promise and she would have to keep it.

‘What?’ she demanded, since they were clearly bypassing the civilities, but then there had never been anything civil between them. Only something raw, almost primitive. ‘What do you want?’

Stupid question …

He didn’t want anything from her.

‘To know what you’re doing here.’ Then, presumably just to ram the point home, because he must surely know that it had once been her home, ‘In my house.’

‘It’s yours?’ she said, managing to feign surprise. ‘I was told some billionaire had bought it but no one thought to mention your name. But then I didn’t ask.’ And because she had nothing to apologise for—she’d not only been invited here, but was taking part in this nonsense at great personal inconvenience and no little expense—she said, ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr McFarlane?’

She’d been so right to keep it businesslike.

He didn’t move, but continued to regard her with those relentlessly fierce eyes that were apparently hell-bent on scrambling her brains.

The man she’d dreaded seeing. The man she’d longed more than anything to see, talk to. If he would just give her a chance, let her show him a scan of the baby they’d made. His daughter. But maybe he understood the risk, the danger of being sucked into a relationship he’d never asked for, never wanted.

She’d given him that get-out-of-jail-free card and could not take it back. And, since he was studiously avoiding the subject, clearly he had no intention of voluntarily surrendering it.

‘I have a lot to get through today,’ she said, unable to bear it another moment and indicating that she wanted to pass. She’d meant to sound brisk and decisive but the effect was undermined by a slight wobble on the ‘h-h-have’.

She might have a lot to get through but the dress would have to wait until she’d had enough camomile tea to drown the squadron of butterflies that were practising formation flying just below her midriff.

Except that it wasn’t butterflies but her baby girl practising dance steps.

His baby girl …

‘I don’t think so,’ he responded, not moving.

Well, no. She hadn’t for a moment imagined it would be that easy. Trapped in the doorway, she had no choice but to wait.

‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated.

A man came through the front door carrying a pile of chairs and Tom McFarlane moved to let him pass, taking a step closer so that she was near enough for the warmth of his body to reach out and touch her.

The warmth had taken her by surprise the first time; she would have sworn that he was stone-cold right through until he’d put his hands around her waist, slid his palms against the bare skin of her back and his mouth had come down on hers, heating her to the bone.

Not cold. Anything but cold. More like a volcano—the kind with tiny wisps of smoke escaping through fumaroles, warning that the smallest disturbance could bring it to turbulent, boiling life.

Her only escape was to retreat, take a step back. His eyes, gleaming dangerously, suggested it would be the safe move, but she knew better.

She wasn’t the naïve girl who’d left this house nearly ten years ago. She’d made a life for herself; had used what skills she had to build a successful business. She hadn’t done that by backing away from difficult situations, but by confronting them.

She knew he’d take retreat as a sign of weakness so, difficult as it was, she stood her ground.

Even when he continued to challenge her with a look that sent the butterflies swerving, diving, performing aerial loop the loops.

‘In the middle of a Wedding Fayre?’ he persisted, when she didn’t answer.

He didn’t sound particularly happy about that. He’d be even less so if he knew why she was part of it. They were in agreement about that, anyway. Not that it helped.

‘I’m, um, working. It’s a Celebrity thing,’ she said, offering the barest minimum in the hope that he wouldn’t be interested in the details. ‘They’re covering this event.’

‘I’d heard,’ he said, leaning back slightly, propping an elbow in one hand while rubbing a darkly stubbled chin in urgent need of a shave with the other as he regarded her with a thoughtful frown. ‘So what kind of feature would a wedding planner be working on for a gossip magazine?’

Of course he was interested.

Men like Tom McFarlane—women like her—did not succeed by glossing over the details.

‘I don’t just coordinate weddings,’ she replied. ‘SDS, my company, organises all kinds of events. Celebrations. Bonding weekends for company staff. Conferences …’