Last-Minute Bridesmaid

* * *

Heath Sheridan swivelled around in the heavy leather chair and gave his full attention to the pint-sized bundle of brightness and fun and energy who had burst into the hallowed library.

And then looked twice. Then looked again.

The girl standing looking at him in the elegant grey business suit had Kate’s voice but she had certainly changed a lot from the fashion student with wild hair and wilder clothing who he vaguely remembered as one of Amber’s school friends.

Her layered short brown hair framed delicate features and a pair of clear, determined and very green eyes. A sprinkle of summer freckles covered her nose but her eyes and lips had been expertly made up to make her features look magical in the diffuse light of the library.

Kate Lovat was a pixie in a skirt suit.

She seemed taller than he recalled from their last meeting but then he was sitting down and she was wearing...what was she wearing on her feet? Platform stiletto boots—but the front had been cut away so that her toes stuck out.

Why would anyone wear ankle boots—which were open-toed?

There had to be some logical explanation but at that moment he could not think of a single one, except that, oh yes—the quirky Kate was still there under the slick make-up and suit.

‘Organised? I’m very pleased to hear it,’ he coughed, quickly trying to drag his gaze away from her legs, ‘because that would make two of us. My father wanted the wedding to go smoothly. So there was only one thing for me to do—take control of the arrangements as my gift to my dad. It’s a different sort of wedding present, but at least it saves on wrapping paper.’

‘Ah. Control.’ She smiled and gave a small shoulder wiggle, which acted like a shot of warmth in the cool room. ‘Now I’m getting the picture. Well, now you can relax because I have something special for you. The last of the bridesmaids’ dresses. I finished it this morning and it is fabulous—’ she paused and looked up from unwrapping a long thick card box and gave a small shrug ‘—of course—’ then went back to untying the ribbons and lifting off the lid ‘—so you can relax and tick that off your list. They are all done. And, what’s more, you have a chance to check the merchandise before the bride. Now that is an opportunity not to be missed. But clean hands only. No sticky paws.’

Sticky paws? What?

Heath closed the distance between them and leant down to peer inside the card box, which seemed to be filled with sheets of silky cream tissue paper.

Kate’s tailored pale grey and white tweed jacket hung open at the front, revealing a coral-coloured stretchy-looking top which clung to her curves above a slim matching grey pencil skirt.

She might be wearing high-heeled shoes but she still only came up to his shoulder. A floral fragrance of roses, gardenias and jasmine filled his head. She smelt of summer on a wet and windy day and suddenly his world seemed a happier place. How did she do that?

‘I have to admit,’ she continued and slipped away from his touch, ‘I am always happy to make personal deliveries to my customers, but you did cut it fine.’

He paused and glanced out of the window before strolling across to the fine wooden cabinet with a hidden refrigerator inside and picking out two bottles of water and two glasses. ‘Last-minute decision. What do you give the bride who already has everything?’

‘Um. Good point. A toaster wouldn’t exactly cut it. I mean...’ she turned her head from side to side as though to check that they were alone ‘...I take it that the bride is not some flighty gold-digger after your dad’s loot.’

The water caught in his throat and went down the wrong way, making him cough and splutter over his computer. Kate stood on tiptoe to thump him hard between the shoulder blades. Twice. Until he lifted his hand in submission and turned back to her. After a couple of deep breaths he blinked and wiped tears from the corners of his eyes, well aware that Kate’s gaze was locked onto his face.

‘Thank you,’ he wheezed. ‘And no. Alice is definitely not after my dad for his money. She was the one who wanted a family wedding at the Jardine country estate. She knows how my dad hates fuss. This suits him very well and I’m happy to help make it all go smoothly.’

‘Are you in training for Amber’s wedding?’ She nodded. ‘What? Why are you shaking your head like that?’

‘Because there is no way that I ever want to do this again. Once is quite enough. You have no idea of the things I have had to deal with. And just wait until Alice and my dad get back from the airport with the last batch of guests. You do not want to be here when I break the news about Olivia.’

Kate reared back with a puzzled look on her face. ‘Olivia? What news about Olivia?’

Heath pressed a finger and thumb into the bridge of his nose.

What news? How about the fact that my girlfriend has just decided to dump me days before my father’s wedding? That’s all. Because apparently I am cold and guarded. Nothing important. Nothing to worry about. Just one more relationship down the pan.

He closed his eyes for a second in a futile attempt to regain control. But Olivia’s words kept echoing through his brain until they were all he could think about.

Cold and guarded.

This was pretty much the same thing the two girlfriends before Olivia had complained about. Was he cold? Guarded, yes. He did protect himself from becoming emotionally dependent on anyone, and especially a woman. Why shouldn’t he? He had seen the massive damage that kind of relationship could have on the family and the man. There was no way that he could ever allow himself to love one person and one place so completely. Not when they could be snatched away from him at a moment’s notice and he was powerless to prevent it. But cold?

Blinking his eyes open, Heath was about to reply to Kate’s question with some casual throwaway comment, when his gaze fell on the open box.

Something sparkling and shiny nestled in the tissue paper.

In two steps he was standing, looking in disbelief at the confection of dusty pink lace and satin, scarcely able to believe his eyes.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, pointing to the swirls of iridescent ivory-coloured pearls which had been sewn into the lacework across the bodice and sleeves.

‘Embellishment, of course.’ She grinned.

He should have known that things were going too smoothly. Embellishment!

Amber had trusted Kate, but then again Amber adored her friends and was obviously incapable of being objective about their abilities.

After today’s little bombshell from Olivia, the last thing he wanted to do was deal with faulty bridesmaids’ dresses.

Heath picked up his tablet computer and scanned through emails. ‘Alice sent me very specific instructions about the bridesmaids’ dresses that she required for her wedding. All four had to be the same design and made of the same fabric. Very plain. And no mention of the word embellishment.’

He looked up at her, eyebrows raised. ‘Has she made any comments about the first three?’

Kate nodded. ‘Alice has been travelling with your father for the past two weeks so I sent them over to the Manor yesterday. She texted me to say that they had arrived safe and sound but she wasn’t going to open the boxes until her bridesmaids arrived.’

‘So Alice hasn’t checked the dresses yet.’

‘What? And spoil the fun of opening the boxes with the gals? It will be like Christmas morning.’

‘Right. All I asked you to do, Kate, was make four very plain dresses. That was simple enough, wasn’t it?’ His gaze focused on the beaded neckline. ‘I didn’t think that you would change the design into something more elaborate.’

‘You’re forgetting something very important.’ She glared at him. ‘People pay me to transform a simple idea into a beautiful design. Otherwise why bother having dresses made-to-measure? Alice could have gone to a department store for a plain dress. She expects me to do something creative with this idea. Don’t you like the idea of being creative?’

Creative? He had grown up with an artist mother whose idea of responsibility was making sure there was always paint and canvas in the house. Everything else was unnecessary. Timetables were for other people to follow, not her. She was talented, celebrated, enchanting and, for a teenage boy desperate for some structure in his life, totally exasperating.

Kate Lovat was clearly cut from the same mould.

Not even an elegant grey and white pinstripe skirt suit could hide the fact that she was just as irresponsible and creative as the girl he remembered from the last time they’d met.

He should have guessed that Kate had not changed that much. Who else would choose to wear quirky red leather ankle boots with her toes sticking out the front on a wet July afternoon?

His gaze scanned her legs—and lingered a little too long on those shapely smooth legs before focusing on the footwear. Her toenails were painted in the exact same shade of red as her boots.

Fire engine red.

A flaming symbol of her attitude to life.

Well, it certainly fitted, because she had just managed to spark a match under the very last scrap of patience he had held on to for emergencies and burnt it to a crisp.

There was one thing he hated above anything else—and that was surprises.

‘Are all four dresses like this one?’ he asked with a rock-stiff jaw.

‘Of course they are. You ordered matching outfits.’

A deep furrow appeared between Heath’s brows and the air practically crackled with electricity as he exploded with a reply. ‘Kate, Alice ordered plain. I don’t know much about fashion, but this is not plain.’

Kate stepped forward so that her entire body was only inches away from his, and the fire in her eyes was the same colour as her toenails.

‘And I know about fashion. Alice. Will love. These dresses. The bridesmaids will love these dresses. Your father will love these dresses. The entire clan gathered for this shindig will love these dresses. And the wedding will be a huge success, Heath. Job done.’

‘Job done? I don’t think so. Have you any idea how important this wedding is? This is the first time in ten years that my father’s asked me to do anything for him. I’m not prepared to see their wedding day ruined by you taking creative licence. These dresses will have to be altered.’

Concern fuelled his anger but Kate’s response threw petrol onto the flames.

Because she did not look away or back down. She stared him out, and the look in her eyes was something new, something he had not seen before.

This was not the same girl he remembered. Little Kate had certainly grown up.

‘Change them? Do you have any idea what you are saying?’ Her words came out in a staccato retort of crisp clear sounds as though she was struggling to contain herself. ‘There is no way that I can alter even one of these dresses before the weekend. So, as far as I am concerned, this is it. No negotiation. No replacements.’

A surge of disbelief swept through him and he was about to launch into a tirade when his cellphone rang. His personal assistant was returning his call.

‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he ordered, pointing the phone at her chest like a baton and turned back to the desk and the sales figures.

* * *

Kate desperately fought to find the words needed to frame some kind of response but was saved when he moved out of earshot.

With a twist of her heels she turned away from him and leapt back up the stairs and tugged open the glass cases that held the books and pretended to be fascinated in the first book she picked up.

Her eyes were too blurry to read the title on the spine or admire the fine end papers.

The one thing that she had been secretly dreading for years had finally happened.

She wasn’t good enough for Heath.

And he had no idea whatsoever of how much pain and humiliation she felt at a few simple words of condemnation.

He was rejecting this dress that she had worked on for hour after hour of painstaking hand-sewing after a few seconds of his so very precious time. How could he not know that when he rejected her work he was rejecting her and everything she stood for and had worked for at the same time?

Time and time again she had come up against the same attitude, the same complaint, and the same demand. Keep it simple. Don’t get clever. Conform to what everyone else is doing. That way we might like you and take you seriously.

Even her own parents thought that she should conform. Sacrifice her creativity and ideas on the altar of the bland and the stale and the conventional.

And just the thought of that made her heart shrink with pain and anguish.

She had always known that Heath would be different, but facing it head-on in a stark announcement like this was a lot harder than she had expected. The pain hit her just behind the knees and she casually flicked her skirt out and sat down on the step before she fell down and felt even more of a fool.

She had to get out of here.

That was it.

She had made her delivery. Her job was done.

The moment her legs started working again she could take off back to the studio and lock the door and laugh about what a silly teenage crush she had once upon a time on a man who turned out to be not worth it after all.

This was so totally crazy it was mad.

Heath had never looked on her as anything else than Amber’s funny little school friend. Someone he had never taken seriously. Someone he humoured because he loved Amber and wanted to make her happy.

Part of her respected that.

Shame that the rest of her wanted to get home as fast as she could and cry her heart out over a bucket of ice cream.

This was not just futile but ridiculous and pathetic. She had finally had the rose-tinted spectacles whipped from her eyes so that she could see Heath for who he was and not the boy she had kissed on her doorstep all of those years ago.

Strange. She should be used to being disappointed with men, but she had always hoped that Heath would be different. That he would be the caring man that Amber adored.

She had dated fashion designers, artists and musicians who all claimed to be creative and experimental—but in the end they all turned out to be bland and conformist, too willing to change their ideas to fit in, and she had walked away from every one of them.

Hoping for something better. Hoping for someone who liked her exactly the way she was and loved what she did and did not want to change her or ‘shape her talent’ as one agent had called it.

No, thanks. She decided what she did. She set the standards and followed her dream and nobody, not even Heath, was going to stop her from keeping her fashion designs alive.

No. She would stay as she was. Amber’s little friend. That way, Heath would never know how much effort it took for her to get back to her feet and look at him crossing the room through the raging sea of confused emotions and regret that were still roiling inside her.

‘Fine,’ she replied, and folded the tissue paper over the dress, closed down the lid on the box and popped it under her arm before staring up into his face with a clear serious expression. ‘I’ll take this dress. But you have to understand something. This might be your father’s third marriage, Mr Sheridan. But this will be my fifteenth. Yes, that’s right; so far fourteen brides have trusted me to be creative with their wedding garments and by the end of the season that will be twenty.’

She took a tight hold of the box, which seemed outrageously large compared to her tiny frame. ‘You know where to find me if you change your mind. Good luck on the big day. You’re going to need it. Because right now your precious girlfriend Olivia doesn’t have a bridesmaid dress—and try explaining that to the bride. End of.’

And with that she turned on her heel and walked straight out of the door, her hips swaying, her high-heeled boots clicking on the hardwood floor and her seriously annoyed nose high in the air.

THREE

Heath Sheridan stepped out from the back seat of the black London cab, tugged down his suit jacket, then turned and thanked the driver. The taxi slid away from the kerb, leaving him standing on the pavement outside Kate’s studio feeling rather like a teenager watching his parents drive away from his boarding school on the first morning of the new term.

He knew that feeling only too well and it nagged at the deep well of disquiet before he rolled his shoulders back and strolled out into the bright July sunshine.

An imposing two-level stone warehouse stretched out the whole length of one side of the cobbled street. It reminded him very much of the Sheridan print works back in an old part of Boston which had not changed over the last one hundred years. Impressive buildings like these were created to intimidate visitors with the power and wealth of the owners in a time before press conferences and the kind of celebrity TV interviews he was accustomed to organizing for his bestselling fiction writers.

Well, he knew all about that. Sheridan Press had built up a reputation through years of hard work and quiet, understated excellence. Not flashy promotions or grand gestures. That was the world that his father had grown up in, which made it even more remarkable that he had swallowed his pride and asked Heath to help him.

In hindsight he should have guessed that there was more to the request than the business problems—but he had never expected it to be personal.

Just one more reason why Alice Jardine was going to have four bridesmaids walking behind her on Saturday, not three.

A passing delivery van snapped Heath awake and he straightened his back and strode towards the warehouse.

There was only one girl who would fit that bridesmaid’s dress and that girl was Kate Lovat. So he had better gird himself to do some serious grovelling.

Attached to the wall was a modern nameplate with the words Katherine Lovat Designs in an elegant font.

It was classy but not stuffy or imposing. And it stopped Heath in his tracks.

Perhaps it’d been a mistake to underestimate Kate Lovat?

Kate had been an astonishing delight until he had opened his big mouth and put his foot in it. Surprising and intriguing and more than just attractive. She had a certain unique quality about her that Heath could not put his finger on and he was kicking himself for overreacting.

The breeze picked up some dry leaves and tossed them up towards Heath, bringing him back down to earth with a thump. He had to work fast. His father was already at Jardine Manor with Alice preparing the house for their wedding, which his son was organising so very brilliantly.

Heath slid his sunglasses into his hair and his smart black designer boots clattered up the well-worn stone stairs that led to the first floor.

He stretched out to press the doorbell just as he noticed that a piece of pink fluorescent paper had been taped onto the metal door. Someone had written in large letters:

Casting today 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Gents to the left. Ladies to the right. All leotards and tutus must be collected before you leave. Any lingerie left behind will be recycled.

Tutus? Casting? Heath quickly checked his watch. Nine-thirty.

Amber had told him that Kate specialized in tailoring for women, but nothing about running dance shows! Surely designers used agencies for that sort of thing? Perhaps he had come to the wrong address?

The door was slightly ajar and, with a small tap on the frame, Heath opened the door and slipped inside the most remarkable room he had ever been in.

The entire floor of the warehouse was one single space. Large, heavy pillars supported the ceiling and no doubt the floor above. A row of tall sash windows ran the entire length of both sides of the room. Light flooded in and reflected back from the cream-painted brick walls, creating an airy light space with the quality of light he had only ever seen in an art gallery before.

He took a step further inside the room, the sound of his hard heels beating out a tune on the hardwood floorboards and echoing across the space. On each side of the door were changing areas made from what looked like tents hanging from the ceiling, and in front of the window was a very professional photo set-up with camera and lighting stands and lighting umbrellas and plain backdrops.

Someone had paid for the extras with this set-up.

But who? And where were they?

He strolled forward down the length of the room between two long white polymer worktables and a collection of ironing boards, tailors’ models in various sizes, naked and partly dressed, and two draftsman desks covered with stacks of coloured paper.

Everywhere he looked were abandoned rolls of fabric, sewing machines and what looked like cutlery trays stuffed with scissors and all kinds of boxes and packets.

So, all in all—his worst nightmare. Clutter and chaos. No sense of order or control. If he ran his office like this they would be out of business in a month.

Blowing out hard, Heath shook his head and peeked behind an elaborate Japanese lacquered folding screen. And froze for a few seconds, scarcely believing what he was looking at before breaking out into a wide smile. It was the first time that he had smiled that day—but he had good reason.

Kate was sitting at a desk under the window, nodding her head from side to side as she sang along to a pop song in a very sweet voice.

Of course he could have interrupted her—but this was a totally self-indulgent pleasure he wanted to stretch out for as long as he could.

She was wearing a tiny lime-green strappy top, which was almost covered by a necklace which seemed to be made up of bright green and yellow baubles. Her short brown hair was tousled into rough curls with some kind of hair product that made it stand out from her head and yet still seem soft and appealing. Touchable.

As a tribute to the warm July sunshine which was streaming in from the window only a few yards away, she had chosen what looked like a tight stretchy tube to wear as a skirt, which covered her hips and upper legs but moved when she stretched across the table, revealing shapely tanned legs which ended in brown platform sandals. And those amazing painted toenails which had rendered him speechless the evening before.

It was strange how this colourful and totally unlikely ensemble only seemed to make her lovely figure even more attractive.

This version of Kate was startling. Entrancing, fresh and natural.

The elegant woman in the slick city suit, designer boots and smart make-up he had met the previous evening was gone, replaced by a slim girl in working clothes doing her admin early on a Tuesday morning. She did not need make-up or expensive clothing or accessories to look stunning—she was lovely just as she was.

The city girl in the suit he had met last night he could deal with, but this version of Kate Lovat with the tape measure around her neck was far more of a challenge.

Was this her workshop? Or was she an employee of some bigger company?

He should have asked Amber a lot more questions before he’d left the hotel—background information was always useful for negotiations, and suddenly he felt out of place. This was Amber and Kate’s territory, not his. This pretty girl who looked absurdly cute might not be so generous when she remembered how he’d slighted her the night before.

Either way, he was standing here in a black business suit and crisp white shirt on a summer day, feeling completely overdressed, while she was comfortable and cool in her work clothes. He had rarely felt so out of his depth, or so attracted to a girl who was totally natural and comfortable in her own skin. And what skin!

That kind of combination would spell trouble if he stayed around long enough to get to know her better. She was dynamite with a slow-burning fuse. And the last thing he needed was another complication like Olivia to deal with.