‘Oh no,’ Leo groaned. ‘Oh no. Four hours of boredom and back-stabbing.’
‘You know you love it,’ Grant said. ‘Taking Isobel?’
‘Oh no,’ Leo groaned again. They both glanced over at Isobel who was talking to Old Baldy in his office. On cue, she winked at them.
‘I don’t suppose I’ve got any choice.’ Leo looked visibly shaken. ‘She’s not the company party sort of girl. I dread to think what she’ll get up to.’
‘She might liven it up,’ Grant said.
‘That’s what I’m extremely worried about.’
‘I’m going to be late,’ Grant said. ‘I’ll have to leave you to think about that.’
‘Thanks.’ Leo gingerly lowered his head back to his desk. ‘You’re all heart.’
Grant rushed for the elevator, but Lard headed him off at the pass. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Leo won’t be a happy bunny if he finds out.’
‘I know,’ Grant admitted, glancing nervously over his shoulder to where his friend was fast asleep again at his desk. ‘But it’s a risk I’m prepared to take.’
Grant was actually taking Emma out to lunch, not a client, and he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t be absolutely straight with Leo about it. Was it because there was the sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t really over between them? Or that it ever would be?
He’d taken a leaf out of Isobel’s book and had arranged for them to have a picnic lunch together in the park. He hoped it would have them giggling and laughing together like a pair of schoolkids. Love and laughter hadn’t figured in his life for quite a while and he wondered why. Maybe he was always so busy ‘achieving’ things that he never took the time to cultivate serious relationships and had been content to fill a few lonely hours with whoever happened to be passing.
It was difficult to know as a modern man when the right time was to settle down and load yourself up with responsibilities. Now you could get away with living the bachelor lifestyle until you were in your forties or even fifties, before you took yourself a much younger wife and started to produce replicas of yourself. It was the sort of thing men used to do in their twenties. But if you spent too long living the bachelor life it was hard to give that up once it became the norm. Even if he had someone to stay over for the weekend now, he began to feel claustrophobic. It was a trend that he wanted to address and, hopefully, reverse. Emma, of course, featured heavily in this plan.
He’d swung out of the Thornton Jones offices, collected the picnic bag from the local deli – hoping that Emma would be ecstatic over his choice of carefully-selected sandwiches and goodies – then he hailed a cab to take him to the gallery where Emma worked. Grant knew so little about her, except the stuff that he’d learned about her second-hand from Leo, and that wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted to take time to get to know her better and he hoped that she’d feel the same.
Now they were sitting in Potter’s Fields Square, a stone’s throw from the gallery and, thankfully, the weather had been kind again. A defiant summer sunshine, determined to make London feel positively Mediterranean, warmed the air, took the chill from the damp ground and played with the leaves so that they formed a dappled shade. On the surface it appeared to be quite a romantic spot – the area bordered the Thames and was rich with history. It had a wonderful view of Tower Bridge and the trees were lush and green. But on closer inspection, the grass was scrubby and there was too much litter and every other person was a dosser sprawled out fast asleep for the day. It was very hard to be any kind of romantic hero these days.
He was sweating inside his suit and it might have been the sun or it might have been nerves. Grant slipped off his jacket. Emma sat primly on the grass, skirt tucked around her legs. She looked beautiful.
Tucking into a sandwich, she said, ‘This is very thoughtful of you, Grant.’
‘I’m a thoughtful kind of guy.’ He wished he’d been thoughtful enough to bring a rug, but maybe that was going a bit too far. If he was very chivalrous he could have spread out his suit jacket on the ground for Emma to sit on, but then he’d have to wear it at work this afternoon stained with grass and dirt. And Emma might well drop mayonnaise or something on it. Not that it would be her fault, but it wouldn’t look great. The practicalities of being a gentleman weren’t a small consideration – no wonder so many of his peer group had chosen to abandon any attempt at it.
‘I know. And I can’t believe that I used to think you were such a . . .’ Emma stumbled to a halt.
‘A tosser?’
‘No, no, no. Such a Leo clone.’
‘Still an insult?’
‘You’re very much your own person,’ Emma assured him with a pat on his arm. ‘And all the lovelier for it.’
This was going better than he expected, Grant thought. He’d always liked Emma, but she had often been brittle and controlling when she was with Leo. He preferred this softer side to her.
‘I know that I’m one of Leo’s friends . . .’
‘His best friend,’ Emma pointed out in between bites of sandwich.
Grant shrugged his acceptance. ‘But do you think you could see me any other way?’
Emma looked puzzled. ‘No. Of course not.’
‘Not ever?’
‘No,’ Emma said, her frown deepening. ‘What other way would I want to see you?’
Grant rolled over onto his stomach. Perhaps his best intentions had been just too subtle. Shouldn’t a picnic automatically be viewed as a romantic overture? It was also very hard to be a romantic hero when women were so unused to being ‘wooed’ – for want of a better word. They might think they liked all that hearts and flowers stuff, but they actually wouldn’t recognise it unless they were hit over the head with it. Or maybe it was because he turned down Emma’s invitation to go into her flat the other night? Whatever way, she clearly didn’t feel the same way about him as he was feeling about her. He was going to have to have a serious re-think of his strategy. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.
Emma picked at the olives he’d chosen. ‘So how is Leo?’ She pouted at him and it was heartbreakingly cute. ‘Still in love?’
Grant nodded at her. ‘And you?’
Emma nodded too.
‘Thought so.’ Grant smiled sadly and concentrated on his food.
‘I dreamed about him last night,’ she said with a sigh and stretched out on the grass.
‘You weren’t tap dancing?’
Emma turned to him. ‘How did you know that?’
‘A wild guess.’ There was definitely something weird going on here and perhaps it was best not to get embroiled in it.
‘We danced all along the Embankment,’ she told him. ‘It was very romantic.’
More romantic than a picnic in a scrotty park, it would seem.
Emma lowered her eyelashes. They were long and dark and Grant thought that he’d love to feel them brushing his cheeks. The cheeks on his face, he should make that thought clear, before he did sound too much like Leo.
‘I woke up in one of the capsules on the London Eye,’ Emma said. She looked up to see Grant register his surprise. ‘Mad, eh?’
‘How did you get there?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Emma confessed. ‘But it’s not the action of a sane woman, is it?’
Grant shook his head, a worried expression on his face. There was definitely something weird going on.
‘It made me realise how much I miss him,’ Emma said. ‘I thought he was driving me nuts when I was with him, but I’m going nuts even quicker without him.’
‘Bummer,’ Grant said, but his mind was racing. Did Isobel really have some sort of magical powers? Was she behind all these strange happenings?
‘My mother thinks I shouldn’t worry about the more usual qualities for a life partner; she thinks I should marry a man who’s an animal in bed.’
Grant choked on his sandwich. Emma patted him on the back while he coughed. ‘And Leo is?’ he managed to ask when he finally found his voice.
‘What?’
‘An animal in bed?’
‘Yes,’ Emma said.
Grant cleared his throat. ‘What kind of animal?’
‘A sloth.’
Grant perked up. ‘Really?’
‘No.’ Emma sighed with disappointment.
Chapter Forty-Three
Leo was in the lounge. He was wearing a rather natty dinner suit and having a terrible time with his bow tie. So far he’d managed to get himself into a half-nelson and bind himself to a potted plant. You could tell why he wasn’t into bondage in a big way. Eventually, he gave up.
‘This is a really big deal tonight, Isobel.’ Leo was shouting to her because she was still in the bathroom. She’d been in there for hours. She might have been a fairy, but in some ways she was a typical woman. Fairy leg hair in his razor, fairy tights drying over the bath, fairy hair dye staining his towels. No. Not really. That was just a joke. Isobel didn’t seem to have to worry about the normal sort of ablutions that human women did. One of the many benefits of being a magical creature was saving a fortune on leg-waxing and manicures. But something was causing the wand-waving to take an inordinate amount of time tonight.
‘It’s going to be full of stuffed shirts,’ he went on. ‘Important stuffed shirts. The members of the board will be there. Top management. All the people who could stop my career dead in its tracks. Everyone will be on their best behaviour.’ Leo was hoping for some sort of response here, but there wasn’t one forthcoming. ‘You included, I hope.’ Still nothing. ‘Promise me there’ll be no funny stuff?’
While he was still straining to hear a reply, Isobel came into the room. She was wearing an old sack and was looking very scruffy. Her hair looked as if it had been back-combed by a combine harvester. Dirt smears emphasised her lovely cheekbones.
Leo stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Interesting.’
‘You think so?’
‘Very retro,’ he said. ‘Somewhere around the Middle Ages.’ Then he held out his bow tie. ‘Do you do stuff with these?’
Isobel pulled out her wand.
‘Of course you do.’
She waved her wand and, as if by magic, his bow tie twiddled itself into a perfect knot. His fantastic – and very useful – fairy friend smiled and said, ‘You look wonderful.’
‘Thank you.’ Emma used to love Leo wearing a dinner suit. She’d said it made him look like George Clooney. Which had always made Leo feel on top of the world. But he wouldn’t think about Emma now as that would be too, too sad and Leo was feeling happy – if more than a little apprehensive. Leo admired himself in the mirror and, without him even asking for its opinion, it whistled back at him.
‘And me?’ Isobel gave him a twirl.
Leo rubbed his hand over his chin. ‘That is a really bad question to ask a man. In fact, the worst possible question.’
Isobel waited patiently.
‘Your bum doesn’t look big in it,’ he said. ‘That’s the best I can manage.’
‘I read the fairy story Cinderella,’ Isobel told him. ‘She looked just like this before she went to the ball.’
‘Yes,’ Leo agreed, ‘but if you’re going for the Cinderella look, then something a little less “before” and a little more “after” would be nice.’
Isobel giggled and twirled round again. There was a small explosion – something Leo was becoming more used to experiencing in his lounge room – and a shower of the ubiquitous glitter. Suddenly she’d transformed before his very eyes. Isobel was now wearing a shimmering, gossamer evening gown and her hair was swept up revealing her long, slender neck. She looked . . . well . . . extraordinarily shagable. Sorry. He was a bloke. It was the best he could come up with at short notice.
‘Better?’ she asked.
Leo was filled with all sorts of conflicting emotions. His voice came out as a squeak again, as it was prone to do these days. ‘I think so.’
‘Now we can go to the ball.’ Isobel took his arm.
‘I’ve booked a taxi,’ he told her. Then he stopped short. ‘The poor bastard isn’t sitting outside in a pumpkin overrun by bloody mice, is he?’
Isobel laughed. ‘I think you’re getting to know me too well.’
Leo turned to her and held her close. ‘I’d never know all there is to know about you,’ he said. ‘Not if I lived to be a thousand years old.’
‘That can be arranged too,’ she said, and kissed him on the nose. They headed for the door while the night was still young and while Leo still had a career.
‘Be good tonight, will you?’ he pleaded.
‘I’ll be awesome,’ Isobel assured him.
And that’s what worried Leo. That’s what worried him a lot.
Chapter Forty-Four
The Thornton Jones annual bash was always held at somewhere terribly swizzy in one of the most fashionable areas of London – no cheap jaunts on some scraggy old tub on the River Thames for them. Oh no. Champagne flowed, canapés were consumed with gusto. This time the destination was a large white, double-fronted Georgian mansion – the type where you could imagine a horse and carriage pulling up outside. Instead, Isobel and Leo clattered up in their smoking diesel London cab and Leo wished that he’d booked a big white limo, but he decided to keep quiet about it. There was no knowing what would happen if he voiced that thought to Isobel. Actually, he knew exactly what would happen – and explaining the sudden appearance of a limo in the middle of the street to his work colleagues might prove a bit tricky.
The lights were blazing in all the windows and there was a bustle of people arriving at the same time – immaculately dinner-suited men and slender ballgowned women. Unfortunately, they were Leo’s toffee-nosed colleagues – but then at an office party that was hardly surprising. White ribbons fluttered from rows of standard bay trees at the entrance and there were huge bunches of silver and white balloons tied to the wrought-iron railings outside.
Leo paid the cab driver and they stepped out into the fray. This was a very grand affair and Isobel’s eyes were out on stalks. Clearly they didn’t throw pretentious parties like this where she came from. This might have been a sweeping generalisation but Leo wouldn’t mind betting that in fairyland they all sat around on toadstools and sang folk songs to the accompaniment of hand-carved pipes. Isobel wouldn’t know what had hit her – and Leo was rather frightened that Thornton Jones would come to feel the same.
All the company’s top nobs – and he chose that word advisedly – were in attendance. The reception area was draped with white chiffon and thousands of tiny twinkling lights. It looked like a fairy grotto. Or what Leo would assume a fairy grotto looked like. Groups of people were having their official photographs taken by a woodland setting that the photographer had created – frondy ferns, trees laden with fairylights, some sort of waterfall painting in the background. Obligingly Isobel and Leo stood in line and were duly snapped by the harassed-looking photographer. Leo saw tears filling Isobel’s eyes.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
She nodded quietly.
‘Homesick?’
‘It seems so very far away,’ she said, and Leo squeezed her hand.
‘Is that what it’s like?’ He flicked a look at the fake woods behind them.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But not so tacky.’
In the resulting photograph, Leo looked rather cheesy and as if he should be playing the piano in a down-market cocktail bar. Isobel, of course, looked like a cover model – except she was air-brushed in real life. So many heads had snapped round as she’d passed by that Leo thought that there’d be a lot of stiff necks in the office tomorrow. He felt as if he was on the arm of Liv Tyler or Kate Beckinsale or Keira Knightley or someone equally famous and gorgeous.
Isobel also stood out a mile because she was the only female there whose skin was the colour of pure, driven snow.
‘Why are some human women orange?’ she whispered to him as they watched two women a deep shade of Dale Winton drift by in their tight, strapless evening gown
s.
‘It’s fake tan,’ he told her. ‘They get themselves sprayed.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s the fashion.’
She gave him a puzzled look.
‘To make them look more attractive.’
‘And do they?’
‘No,’ Leo said. ‘They just look more orange.’
‘Should I do it to myself?’ She fished in her evening bag for her wand. ‘It wouldn’t take a moment.’
‘No. No.’ He gripped her hand. Damn. Leo hoped that she’d left that bloody thing behind. ‘I like you just the way you are.’
Before she had any more time to think about giving herself a new paint job, Leo tugged her towards the main reception. The champagne was already flowing. White-coated waiters were delivering it to eager, waiting hands. There was a string quartet in the corner and, for a moment, he was overwhelmed by a flashback to last night and his superb dance routine with Emma. A pang of something indefinable hit his heart. Leo used to bring Emma to this party – and she used to hate it. All of it.
Isobel squeezed his arm and looked at him tenderly. ‘Okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said. But he didn’t sound fine.
Grant and Lard were lurking in the corner looking furtive. Both guys stared slightly goggle-eyed at Isobel as the couple approached them. At least Leo assumed it was Isobel they were smitten with and that his tuxedo wasn’t responsible for turning their heads.
‘What are you two reprobates up to?’ he asked genially.
‘Nothing,’ Grant said miserably.
‘In a big way,’ Lard agreed. They both looked down at their drinks.
‘Is that really just orange juice?’
‘Career prospects damage limitation plan. We are both going to stay as sober as judges.’
‘Bugger.’ A waiter appeared at Leo’s elbow with a tray of drinks. He took the orange juice too. If all of his compadres were planning on staying upright, then he felt he should too. How dull! The only fun at these parties was to get absolutely bladdered.
‘Have you ever had strong drink?’ he asked Isobel.
‘Lavender-flower poteen,’ she told him in all seriousness.
It’s a Kind of Magic Page 18