One Night to Remember

by Kate Hardy

  She flushed. ‘No.’

  ‘I...’ He blew out a breath. ‘I don’t usually behave like this. I know it’s no excuse, but there’s something about you that just draws me.’

  She inclined her head. ‘It wasn’t just you. Look, let’s just put it down to the music and the way it stirs up emotions.’

  Tell her now.

  Except he couldn’t. Not when she was right in the middle of sticking up a huge wall between them. How did he tell her that he believed he was the father of her baby? She’d think he was crazy and he didn’t want her to push away even more.

  ‘I, um, I’d better go,’ she said.

  ‘Normally, I’d see you safely home. That was what I’d originally planned to do when Dom and Sal came home tonight.’

  She shook her head. ‘You can’t leave the children. You’re babysitting.’

  ‘Exactly. So will you let me call you a taxi?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s only a ten-minute walk to the Beauchamp Arms, and it’s still light outside.’

  ‘Even so.’ The last time he’d let her go without seeing her safely back to where she was staying, she’d been hit by a car. ‘I’d feel happier. Please let me call you a taxi. And, just so you know, there are no strings, apart from the ones on the piano or my cello.’

  She looked at him, smiling at his terrible pun; thankfully, it seemed he hadn’t scared her off completely. ‘All right. Thank you.’

  He made a swift call. ‘It’s going to be twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Which is long enough for me to make you another cup of tea, and maybe play something else. So my hands will be occupied and you can feel totally safe with me, because I don’t want you to feel worried or uncomfortable.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  He made the quickest cup of tea in history. And then he had to hope that he could play the cello well enough to move her to the point of agreeing to see him again. ‘What would you like me to play?’ he asked.

  ‘Anything,’ she said.

  Just what she’d said that first time. Right. He’d take a risk and try to jog her memory. ‘This is a bit flashy,’ he said, and proceeded to play Paganini’s ‘Caprice No. 24’.

  ‘I know this from somewhere,’ she said.

  He held his breath. Would she make the connection?

  But then she said, ‘I must’ve heard it on the radio or something.’

  ‘Probably,’ he agreed, damping down the disappointment. Instead, he played Bach and Elgar until her taxi arrived, things he knew he hadn’t played for her before.

  ‘Thank you for a lovely evening,’ she said.

  He couldn’t quite let it go, and took her hand. ‘Holly, I’m going back to London tomorrow for the weekend. I’m playing tomorrow night in London and at a wedding on Saturday evening, but—your university’s in London, Dom says, so I assume you live there?’

  ‘I do,’ she confirmed. ‘I stay here during the week, but I go home at weekends.’

  ‘Would you consider having lunch with me in London on Sunday?’

  ‘I...’ She curved her hand over her barely-there bump and wrinkled her nose.

  ‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘But it’s not an issue for me.’ And maybe on Sunday he could tell her about Bath and that he was the father of her baby. ‘Have lunch with me. Please.’

  For a moment he thought she was going to refuse, but then she nodded. ‘All right. Where and what time?’

  ‘What time is good for you?’ he asked.

  ‘Half-past twelve?’ she suggested.

  ‘Half-past twelve,’ he repeated. ‘Whereabouts are you?’

  ‘Camden,’ she said.

  ‘Would you prefer to eat somewhere in Camden? Or I could book a table somewhere and pick you up?’

  ‘I’ll meet you at the restaurant,’ she said. ‘Anywhere you like.’

  He’d been here before, arranging a date with her; and he was beginning to think that Lucy’s theory was right and he had mistyped her number in his phone. He wasn’t going to make a mistake like that again. ‘Text me your number, and I’ll let you know where I’ve managed to book,’ he said.

  She pulled her phone out of her bag. ‘Oh. It’s out of charge.’ She grimaced. ‘Sorry. Everyone nags me about this. It’s a habit I need to break.’

  He handed his phone to her. ‘If you put your number in there, I’ll text you later.’

  And, while she was doing that, he scribbled his own number down on the back of his business card. ‘Just in case I manage to break my phone or something before I text you,’ he said. ‘If you haven’t heard from me by tomorrow morning, it means I’ve done something stupid with my phone, not that I’ve changed my mind and I’m ghosting you.’ The way he’d once thought she’d ghosted him.

  ‘Got it,’ she said. And how sweet her smile was. It made him ache.

  The more time he spent with her, the more he realised that he could be himself, with her. He really, really liked her.

  But so much could go wrong. He’d thought that he and Rochelle would make a go of it, having so much in common and having known each other for years, but he’d been very wrong. Holly was nothing like Rochelle—and nothing like his parents with their constant fights—but he found it hard to ignore the past and how miserable relationships had made him.

  He pulled himself together. ‘All right. I’ll see you on Sunday.’

  He wanted to kiss her again. Really, really wanted to kiss her. But he didn’t want to scare her away, so he let her go and finished clearing up before his brother and sister-in-law came home. He needed to tell Holly the truth about her lost weekend. But how?

  * * *

  Holly was thoughtful all the way back to the Beauchamp Arms. All evening, on and off, she’d felt this strange sense of déjà vu. As if she was on the cusp of something.

  It absolutely wouldn’t be fair of her to start any kind of relationship with Harry Moran. She was pregnant and she couldn’t expect him to step into the place of the baby’s father. Especially as she didn’t even know who the baby’s father was, which made her feel ashamed and guilty—though the sensible side of her knew that her amnesia wasn’t her fault. And yet there was something about him. Something that drew her. He was nice. Kind. A real family man, clearly very fond of his nieces and nephews. Which rather begged the question of why he was still single and childless.

  At the pub, she discovered that Harry had already paid for her taxi. That was definitely above and beyond. She texted him swiftly.

  Thank you—though I could’ve paid for my own taxi.

  It was the least I could do, as I wasn’t able to drive you home myself.

  An old-fashioned gallant gentleman.

  Gallant...gentleman. Why was that familiar? Where had she heard that recently?

  But it was like reaching out to grab mist on the surface of a pond, gone again before she could think about it.

  She curled up in bed and looked him up on the Internet.

  Harry Moran. Cellist. Part of the Quartus string quartet, though he’d also released solo music. The youngest son of Viscount Moran.

  He kept his private life very private, she noticed. It seemed as if he’d been married briefly, a few years ago, but all the articles that talked about his marriage were from the kind of gossip magazines she disliked. She’d rather hear Harry’s side of the story from Harry himself, if he wanted to tell her.

  All his social media talked about music, not necessarily played by him. The posts that talked about his awards and accolades were all by other people, tagging him in; he clearly wasn’t one to boast about his achievements.

  After reading his entire website and all the non-gossipy articles she could find about him, she still knew no more about Harry himself. She didn’t have a clue what drove him, other than a love of music.

  He’d seemed to be of the opinion that her baby wa
sn’t a barrier to a future relationship with her. Why? Was he perhaps unable to have children of his own, and her baby would give him a ready-made family? Was that why his marriage had broken up? Though those weren’t the kind of questions you could ask straight out. She needed to get to know him better before she asked.

  Was she making the right decision, agreeing to meet him for lunch on Sunday? OK, so he’d said no strings... But did he really mean that?

  There was only one way to find out: and that was to meet him on Sunday.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘YOU’VE ACTUALLY FOUND your Lady in Red?’ Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, my God! So did you find out why she didn’t turn up?’

  ‘She was in a car accident,’ Harry said, ‘which meant she lost all her memories from the week before it happened. Including meeting me.’

  ‘Unbelievable! How did you find her?’

  ‘She’s leading the dig at the abbey.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lucy bit her lip. ‘Awkward. So have you told her?’

  Harry wrinkled his nose. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Harry said and focused on tuning his cello, even though it didn’t actually need it.

  ‘How is it complicated?’

  He couldn’t quite bring himself to explain about Holly being pregnant. Particularly as Lucy knew all about why he’d married Rochelle, and how he’d felt when she’d lost the baby. He’d sobbed his heart out on Lucy’s shoulder over both the miscarriage and the divorce, though he’d kept the bit that had really broken him to himself.

  ‘How am I going to tell her, Luce? “Oh, by the way, you also met me a few months ago and we spent the night together.”’ He rolled his eyes. ‘That’s going to go down well. Not.’

  ‘If you don’t tell her, when she finds out some other way—say she gets her memory back—it’s going to be a whole lot worse,’ Lucy warned. ‘And don’t fall back on the excuse that you’re rubbish at emotional stuff because you’re male and you’re posh.’

  ‘It’s not an excuse. It’s a fact.’ It was one of the accusations Rochelle had hurled at him: that he backed away and lost himself in music rather than confronting anything. He’d grown up with his parents sniping at each other constantly and he’d hated the atmosphere, so he didn’t seek out confrontations. And maybe deep down he’d used the tour as an excuse to stay away and avoid his own pain instead of coming back to comfort her.

  The irony was that he’d won critical acclaim for his recording of Elgar’s cello concerto later that year. He’d poured all his pain and his loss and the longing and the misery into his performance, letting the music comfort him.

  When she’d finally told him the truth, it had hurt him so deeply that he hadn’t let anyone else close since. How could he trust their motives for wanting to be close to him? How could he trust his own judgement, when he’d been so completely fooled? He’d loved her and he’d thought she’d loved him: but it had turned out he hadn’t really known her at all.

  He pushed the thought away. ‘And you were right. When I put Holly’s number in my phone, I got it wrong.’

  ‘Told you so.’ Lucy clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You need to be honest with her. Yes, it’s going to be awkward. But if you don’t tell her, Harry, it’ll come back to bite you.’

  ‘I know.’ He plucked the strings of the cello, subconsciously playing the song he and Holly had sung to, right before he’d kissed her again. ‘I didn’t expect this to matter, Luce. I barely know her. And I don’t believe in love at first sight.’

  ‘You don’t believe in love, full stop,’ she said. ‘But it’s out there. Ignore your parents, because they’re really not like normal people. Ignore Rochelle, too, because she was just as much to blame for your marriage breaking up as you were.’

  He knew that—they’d both been young, both made made decisions—but he still felt responsible.

  ‘I have a long memory, and a good one,’ she said softly. ‘Yes, you could’ve done things differently. But so could she.’

  Yeah. And Lucy didn’t even know the worst of it. He hadn’t told anyone about Rochelle deliberately getting pregnant. He didn’t want to risk his heart to the care of anyone else ever again. Yes, he’d dated since his divorce; but he’d been wary since Rochelle’s revelations, and he’d quickly discovered that his dates had seen him primarily either as Viscount Moran’s youngest son or as Harry the up-and-coming celebrity musician. He just hadn’t felt enough for any of them to want to break through the barriers and see if love could ever be real.

  ‘Look at your brother and your sister,’ Lucy continued. ‘That’s real. Look at Stella and Drew—that’s real. Look at me and Carina. That’s real, and we make it work even though I tour a lot and she’s here in London.’

  But his relationship with Rochelle hadn’t been real. It had turned out that she hadn’t loved him the way he’d thought she had. She’d found herself struggling to get work and to move up the ladder, and she’d wanted financial security so, shortly after she’d persuaded him to let her move in with him, she’d deliberately got pregnant, knowing that Harry would insist on marrying her—and gambling that he’d give up touring and instead work on his family’s estate.

  He’d done half of it, giving her the financial security she’d wanted. But he hadn’t given up his career. His music was who he was. And her ultimatum to him, making him choose between her and his music, had backfired on her spectacularly.

  When he said nothing, Lucy continued, ‘Love is out there, Harry. And your Lady in Red—’

  ‘—Holly,’ he supplied.

  ‘Holly. Get to know her. Because she might just be The One.’

  Even though he’d stopped believing in love, Holly Weston made him feel...

  How did he feel? He wasn’t sure, but it definitely wasn’t like anything he’d felt before. It was unsettling and exhilarating at the same time. Was that love? Did she feel anything like that for him? Or, if she didn’t feel that way now, could she learn to love him? Could this work out?

  Dealing with emotional stuff always made him back away. It was terrifying. He gave Lucy his best smile. ‘I get why Carina loves you so much. I love you, too. But now’s not the time to discuss this. We have work to do.’

  ‘Agreed. Love you, too, Harry.’ She ruffled his hair. ‘Let’s go play the wedding.’

  He’d play his best. He’d always do his best for the client.

  But tonight he’d lie awake and wonder what was going to be best for Holly, for their baby, and for himself.

  * * *

  On Sunday morning, Holly couldn’t settle to anything.

  Was this a date, or wasn’t it?

  On the one hand, the way she’d felt when Harry had kissed her had been amazing. More than amazing. She’d never expected to feel like that.

  On the other hand, she was pregnant with another man’s baby. A man she couldn’t even remember.

  Harry had made it clear that the pregnancy wasn’t an issue for him; but how could she start dating him, in the circumstances? Maybe she should’ve taken Natalie’s advice and done something on social media to find her mystery man, because he had a right to know about the baby’s existence—even though he hadn’t contacted her at all since that weekend and she expected nothing from him.

  She was still full of nerves when she took the tube to Clapham and found the restaurant where Harry had asked her to meet him. To her delight, it overlooked Clapham Common; the ceiling inside the restaurant was a canopy of flowers and there were fairy lights everywhere. The floors were stripped and sanded, the tables likewise, and the chairs were mismatched but somehow harmonious. She’d never seen anywhere so romantic and pretty.

  Harry was already there, sitting at one of the tables, and he lifted his hand in acknowledgement as she scanned the room. When she walked over to join him, he stood up: an old-fashioned courtes
y she really liked.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you for inviting me. This is lovely.’ She gestured to the room.

  ‘The food is amazing, too. On Sundays, they give you a choice of brunch or roast dinner.’

  ‘Brunch for me, please,’ she said. But there were so many things on the menu that she liked, she couldn’t decide what to have.

  ‘We could get a selection between us and share?’ he suggested.

  And suddenly everything was easy. ‘That would be lovely.’

  Once they’d ordered, she smiled at him. ‘How did your concerts go?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. We all enjoy playing weddings, and last night’s set was fun. They chose “Rule the World” as the first dance, and the rest was a mix of pop songs—everything from the Beach Boys and the Beatles to Abba and Taylor Swift.’ He grinned. ‘Lucy was happy because she got a chance to show off her favourite Donna Summer track.’

  ‘Did you get to use your cello as a guitar?’

  He laughed. ‘Sadly not. But it was a good night. Very different from the baroque pieces we played at St Martin’s Church on Friday night, but I enjoyed playing those, too. I suppose I just love playing and sharing the sheer joy of music.’ He smiled at her. ‘How’s the dig coming along?’

  ‘It’s fine. We’re finding really interesting bits from where the original church was, under what’s now your Orangery. Complete floor tiles, a couple of rather battered church vessels, some coins—and my absolute favourite, a tiny brass.’ She took her phone from her pocket. ‘I took some photos of the finds because I thought you might like to see them.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ He looked at the photographs with her and asked tons of perceptive, intelligent questions; and he paid attention to her answers rather than just giving her a polite smile to conceal his boredom, as Simon often had.

  Funny how easy it was to talk to Harry. She felt comfortable with him yet, at the same time, there was an undercurrent of excitement she couldn’t remember feeling with anyone else before.

  But she really needed to be fair to him rather than string him along.