Two's Company

by Jill Mansell

  It was no good. He couldn’t make her change her mind. Bringing Rose out into the hallway of the farmhouse so that Sean could have fifteen minutes with her without disturbing the ongoing party was as far as Pandora would go.

  For the first time in more years than he could remember, Sean realized he was dangerously close to tears. When Rose ran into his arms, a lump the size of a table tennis ball rose up in his throat. He couldn’t believe Pandora was doing this to him, punishing him like this, even as Rose cooed with delight, stroking his cold face and singing over and over again, “Dad-dee.”

  There was nothing else for it when his fifteen minutes were up but to turn around and drive back to London. Suggesting that he might book into an hotel in Bath did no good at all.

  “I can’t stop you,” Pandora said with an unconcerned shrug, “but it won’t help.” Making clear the difference between them, she had added calmly, “Sorry, but I’m not going to change my mind.”

  As he made his way back down the bumpy drive, Sean decided he would never forgive Imogen Trent for this. The icy wind swirled through the open car window, making his eyes sting. He had to slow down to wipe his face with the back of his sleeve.

  Less than a minute later, he reached the end of the dirt track. Another car, coming toward him through the darkness, flashed its headlights and braked, allowing Sean to pull out and back onto the road.

  Only when he had done so and the other vehicle had turned left up the dirt track did Sean think twice about the license plate. Twisting around in his seat, he saw the car slow to a halt at the top of the drive.

  He watched Donny Mulligan jump out. It was dark, but some profiles were unmistakable. Particularly when they involved dreadlocks.

  Realizing there was nothing in the world he could do about it, Sean drove on.

  * * *

  Cleo, in the back of the limousine, wondered if she was going to faint.

  “I thought you were Anton Visa.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m confused.” She shook her head, struggling to come to grips with the situation. “You’ve just bid seven thousand pounds for an evening out with me. I don’t understand this at all. You don’t even like me—”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Joel. “Of course I like you. For your information, you don’t bid seven thousand pounds for an evening out with someone you don’t like.” He took a deep breath. “In fact, you generally have to be completely crazy about them…madly in love with them…totally desperate even…”

  Cleo burst into tears. She couldn’t believe she was hearing this.

  “But you can’t afford seven thousand pounds. And you didn’t need to bid for me,” she wailed messily, “because I would have gone out with you for nothing! All you had to do was ask, dammit, and I would have paid you!”

  Deeply relieved—it had, after all, been a nerve-racking gamble that might not have paid off—Joel handed her a clean handkerchief.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” he told Cleo affectionately. “Don’t you see? It was my turn to spend more money than anyone else. I needed to do it, just this once, to prove I could compete.”

  Cleo was now crying and laughing at the same time. “B-but seven thousand pounds?”

  “Yes, well.” Joel put his arms around her, his smile dry. The amount had come as a bit of a shock to him too. “Maybe I didn’t allow for your mate Dino getting quite so carried away.”

  “Dino’s an impulsive fool,” Cleo confided. She looked indulgent. Who knew? This time, it might even last. “He’s in love.”

  “In love? Couldn’t be like it myself.” Joel kissed her. Then he kissed her again, because Cleo might be bossy, impulsive, and an incurable meddler in other people’s lives, but she was also totally, hopelessly addictive.

  “You’d better be.” To prove just how bossy, Cleo punched him lightly on the arm. “Enough to marry me at least.”

  Joel raised his eyebrows in despair. “You had to be the one to ask! Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

  “You might have forgotten to say it.” Cleo wasn’t joking. More than anything else in the world, she wanted to marry Joel Grant. She’d had enough of checking out other people’s relationships. It was high time she concentrated on her own.

  “Are you sure,” Joel said carefully, “you want to settle down with a used-car salesman?”

  “Oh, but an honest one! And honorable. Wonderfully handsome too. Yes, yes, of course I’m sure!”

  Cleo, way ahead of him, was already thinking of names for their children. She’d always adored Declan. Then again, she decided hastily, perhaps not.

  “Right. That’s it then.” Joel leaned back against the seat, marveling that his spur-of-the-moment decision—his impulse buy—had actually worked. “We’ll get married.”

  Outside, someone knocked on the car’s blacked-out window. Joel pressed the switch, and the glass slid noiselessly down.

  “Ah, there you are,” said Jack. “Everything OK? Just thought I’d better check you were all right.”

  “I’m fine.” Cleo’s megawatt smile beamed out of the darkness. “Never better.”

  “Not you, stupid.” Her father gave her a long-suffering look. “You’re always all right. I meant Joel.”

  Read on for a sneak peek at Jill Mansell’s brand new funny, feel-good story with star-crossed lovers, family drama, and all the uplifting themes you love.

  Available June 2021 from Sourcebooks Landmark

  Sometimes you had a few minutes to catch your breath before starting work. Other times you didn’t.

  Sylvia, the assistant manager, beckoned her over to the reception desk. “Didi, the American guy in the Midsummer Suite’s kicking up a fuss, something about too much noise. He’s demanding to see whoever’s in charge.”

  Didi shook her head; last night Myron Miller had complained loudly in the restaurant that he’d asked for chips to be served with his steak but had been given French fries instead, necessitating a gentle explanation that over here in the UK, chips were crisps. Needless to say, he’d found this un-American and frankly unacceptable.

  And this morning he was at it again; something about the finest suite in the hotel was clearly irking him. Such were the joys of keeping the customer satisfied. Didi said, “I’ll go and see him now.”

  She took the narrow stairs two at a time and reached the Midsummer Suite on the third floor. As their pernickety guest flung open the door in response to her knock, she began, “Mr. Miller—”

  “You gotta major problem with the electricity supply in this place.” Myron Miller shook his bear-like head. “Like, you guys need to call a professional in to fix it, before someone gets electrocuted.”

  The thought ran through Didi’s head: If only it could be you. But because she was a professional, she put on her concerned face and said, “Mr. Miller, I’m so sorry about this. Why don’t you show me what’s wrong?”

  “Because if someone dies, you guys are gonna get your asses sued, I’ll tell ya that for nothing. Come on, get yourself in here and you’ll see what I’m talking about.” He ushered her inside, then gestured with an air of triumph. “Hear that? And even if it isn’t dangerous, it’s still totally unacceptable. You can’t expect people to sleep with that kind of racket going on.”

  The last time a guest had complained about a terrible racket, it had been the sound of blackbirds singing in the trees outside their window. This wasn’t birdsong, though; it was a muffled low-level buzzing sound of an electrical nature. As Didi made her way around the suite, it soon became apparent where the noise was coming from.

  Oh please, not that.

  “I don’t think it’s a problem with our electricity supply,” she told Myron.

  “It’s been going on for three hours now.” He glared at her. “So whatever it is, you need to sort it out pretty damn quick.”

&n
bsp; Well, when you put it that way. Crossing the room, Didi bent down and listened, then rested her fingertips on the lid of Myron Miller’s gleaming Samsonite suitcase. She turned and said pleasantly, “It’s coming from inside your case. Do you want to deal with it or shall I?”

  It could have been a lot worse; luckily it wasn’t. With a sudden bark of laughter, Myron unearthed the sonic toothbrush that had presumably managed to turn itself on when he’d jammed it back into his washbag. He switched it off and the buzzing stopped. “Well wouldja believe that? It didn’t sound like my toothbrush from all the way in there.”

  An apology was clearly too much to hope for, but Didi was used to this by now. She said cheerfully, “Glad that’s sorted out. And is there anything else at all I can help you with?”

  But Myron Miller had already lost interest. Engrossed in his phone, he said absently, “No, I’m good. You can go.”

  As she let herself out of the room, the voice of another American male inside the Midnight Suite directly opposite said, “Miss? What was that infernal noise?”

  The door to the Midnight Suite remained closed. Didi called out, “It’s fine, nothing at all to worry about. It was just an electric toothbrush.”

  “Are you quite sure about that? Because it was kinda hurting my ears, lady. Almost sounded like someone was…I don’t know, trying to sing or somethin’…”

  Didi had already stopped dead in her tracks. No, it couldn’t be.

  Surely not.

  Could it?

  She stared at the Midnight Suite’s closed door and felt the thud-thud-thud of her heart like a fat pigeon trying to take off inside her chest.

  “No, sir. It definitely wasn’t singing.” She paused. “Or any other kind of caterwauling.”

  Another second passed. Then the door was pulled open and there he was, standing before her. Almost thirteen years after he’d left.

  “Hey,” said Shay.

  “Hey.” Didi swallowed; she never normally said hey. But this was one of those peculiar situations and she couldn’t work out how to react. Normally greeting an old friend again after so long apart, there’d be a hug and some sort of kiss. But Shay wasn’t an old friend as such; he was an ex-boyfriend.

  More than that, he’d been her first love.

  And the way in which they’d parted company had been tricky, to say the least.

  “Well…fancy seeing you here.” There was a glimmer of a smile, which was something.

  Didi’s brain was working overtime, racing ahead. She said, “Do you know Mr. Miller? Did you set up the whole toothbrush thing?”

  He shook his head. “No to both questions. I was half expecting to bump into you at some stage, but there were no plans to engineer it. I overheard the guy earlier on his phone, calling down to reception to complain about the noise in his suite. Then I heard someone come up to deal with him and realized it was you.” Another glint of amusement in his silver-blue eyes. “You remember Venice, then?”

  Of course she remembered Venice, every last second of it. How could she ever forget?

  “Your American accent is terrible,” she said.

  “Almost as bad as your singing.” He smiled and raised a hand. “That was a joke. You know I don’t mean it. Not then and not now”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Flew in last night, rented a car at Heathrow, arrived at midnight, managed to get the last room.” He gestured at the suite behind him, which cost as much as any suite in a boutique four-star hotel, then said, “Don’t worry, I can afford it. Just about.”

  The dig was there; of course it was. Ignoring it, Didi said, “What would you have done if we’d been fully booked?”

  “Who knows? Slept in the car, I expect.” He paused. “I can still rough it if I need to.”

  There was so much unspoken, so many things she’d wanted to say to him over the years. When he’d left, Shay had done a thorough job of it; short of hiring a private detective, there’d been no way of tracking him down, finding out what he was doing with his life and how things were going for him. And even if she had been able to pay for a private detective, it would have been a pointless exercise, seeing as she was the reason he’d left in the first place.

  But now he was back.

  She found her gaze flickering around the outline of him, as if direct contact was too intense, like looking into the sun. At thirty-one, he was aging as well as she’d always guessed he would and was as athletically built as he’d been at eighteen. He was wearing faded jeans the exact silver-blue shade of his eyes, and a plain white polo shirt with no visible logo, which meant it was either super cheap or designer and very exclusive indeed. Tanned skin. A fine scar that hadn’t been there before, across his left cheekbone. And streaky blonde hair still wet from the shower. He wasn’t wearing any jewelry, she noted, neither a watch nor a ring on his left hand.

  Damn, he’d caught her looking at his hand.

  “No, still single. Unlike you, I see.” He inclined his head in the direction of her hand just as Sylvia rounded the final bend in the steep staircase. “So you’ve found someone who wants to marry you then. Well done.”

  Sylvia said brightly, “Ooh, do you two know each other then?” She turned from Didi to Shay. “Actually, she found three someones who wanted to marry her! Not bad going, eh? Didi, did you manage to sort out the gentleman in the Midsummer Suite?”

  “I did.”

  Shay chimed in helpfully, “It was an electric toothbrush.”

  “Oh, right! Excellent! Well I just popped up to see if you were free to have a chat with the Carter-Laceys; they want to talk to you about booking the hotel for their daughter’s twenty-first. They’re waiting in the orangery.”

  Didi, whose palms were damp, was glad of an excuse to escape. “Of course, I’ll see them now.” Work took precedence over catching up with long-lost ex-boyfriends, and she needed a break in order to get used to the idea that Shay was back in Elliscombe. Meeting those oh-so-familiar silver-blue eyes, she said, “Might bump into you later.”

  “Might do.” He nodded in agreement. “Maybe.”

  “Well now, this is interesting.” Sylvia gave her a gentle nudge as they descended the narrow staircase. “He’s a bit of all right, isn’t he? What a body…and how about that smile!”

  Sylvia was sixty. She was also fascinated by people and incorrigibly nosy. Didi thought back for a moment. “He wasn’t smiling.”

  “Maybe not for you,” said Sylvia as they reached the ground floor. “But he definitely smiled at me.”

  * * *

  Fifty minutes later, Didi was checking table bookings in the restaurant when some sixth sense made her look up from the computer screen just as Shay passed the open doorway and made his way across reception.

  Maybe it wasn’t a sixth sense; in all likelihood she’d subliminally recognized the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. She waited for him to turn his head and notice her, but it didn’t happen. Instead he reached the main entrance and left the hotel without looking back.

  Without pausing to think, she hurried across the hallway and pushed open the ancient wooden front door, discreetly poking her head around it so she could see which direction he’d taken. There he was, having turned right, heading toward the market square and—

  Thirty yards away, he suddenly halted and looked over his shoulder, causing Didi to leap back in alarm before he could catch her spying on him.

  “Oof,” yelped Marcus, their newest and most nervous waiter, and crash went the silver tea tray he’d been about to carry upstairs. Scrabbling on the floor to collect up the silver teapot, the toast slices and the broken crockery, he said in a tremulous voice, “Oh no, oh God, I’m so sorry.”

  Shay Mason had been back in her life for less than an hour and already he was causing trouble.

  Poor flaming-cheeked Marcus. “Not your fault,”
Didi said. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you clear it up.”

  * * *

  “OK, you’re not going to believe this, but guess who I’ve just seen getting out of a blue Audi outside my office?”

  Didi could hear the excitement in Layla’s voice over the phone; she was practically bursting with the thrill of being able to pass on such a riveting piece of gossip.

  “I don’t know. Is it someone really good-looking?”

  “Yes,” Layla cried. “Yes!”

  “Fit body?”

  “So fit.”

  “Small scar on left cheekbone?”

  “I wasn’t close enough to see a scar.”

  “Was he wearing a white polo shirt and faded jeans?”

  “Oh I hate you.” Layla let out a groan of realization. “You already know.”

  “I bumped into him this morning. He’s staying in the Midnight Suite.”

  “Are you kidding? And you didn’t even think to tell me?”

  “I was going to, as soon as I had a second. We’ve been crazy busy, and I’ve been rushed off my feet.”

  “And was he…you know, OK with you?”

  “Pretty much.” Apart from one or two iffy moments.

  “So what’s he doing back here now? Where’s he been living and what’s he been up to all these years?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t ask. It was so weird seeing him again.”

  “Good weird or bad weird?”

  “No idea. Weird weird,” said Didi.

  “I might see him tonight then, if he’s around. D’you think he will be?”

  “You keep asking me questions I can’t answer.”

  “Sorry! But it’s exciting, isn’t it? After all this time he’s turned up again out of the blue and… Oh bum, my clients are here, I’m going to have to go.”

  “No worries,” said Didi. “I’ll see you and Rosa at eight.”

  “He’s still looking good, though, don’t you think?”

  “Who? Oh, you mean Shay.” Didi grinned. “Is he? I didn’t notice.”