Always the Best Man

by Fiona Harper

  And there was one expression in particular she feared the most, and every time she felt herself weakening she made herself remember that look—the one he’d worn as he’d watched Sara walk down the aisle. It haunted her now, in painful and exquisite detail. She hadn’t seen it tonight yet, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t slip up one day.

  Nobody could survive a relationship with that hanging over them. It would be a miserable way to live. It certainly was a miserable way to love.

  Dessert was served as the sky became fully dark and Sara turned on the string of lights that decorated the little pergola in her tiny paved garden. Zoe pushed her cheesecake around her plate for a while, but decided she had to at least eat some of it. If she didn’t, Sara would know that something was wrong, and she really didn’t want an inquisition to start while she was sitting opposite Damien. Tonight had been hard enough as it was.

  Hard, because she knew that just a slight move of her foot would have brought it into contact with his. Just a reach for the salt at the same time would have caused their fingers to brush. A million little ways she could engineer her own undoing. She wanted to touch him so badly that she was scared she’d sabotage herself and do it anyway. She needed to get out of here.

  She looked up just after she’d put the first spoonful in her mouth, habitually turning it over so she could capture every speck of dessert with her tongue, and discovered Damien staring at her. The lump of cheesecake that had been dangling on the end of his fork slid on to his plate with a splat. He didn’t even react.

  Sara gave her husband a not-so-subtle thumbs-up sign across the table.

  Zoe noticed a humming in her ears as static electricity crawled up her arms and made her body tingle. She pulled the spoon slowly out of her mouth and placed it carefully back down on her plate. Everyone watched her. Everyone was quiet.

  She pushed her chair back from the table. ‘Thanks for the lovely evening, you two,’ she said quickly, looking down and catching nobody’s eye. ‘But I’m afraid I have to get going. I pick up the keys to the shop bright and early in the morning.’

  The hosts were instantly on their feet. ‘But we’ve still got cheese and biscuits to come,’ Sara said mournfully. ‘Stay for that, at least.’ But she wasn’t looking at the cheeseboard sitting in the middle of the table when she said it. She was looking at Damien.

  Zoe shook her head. ‘Sorry.’ Her impulse had been to get out of there, and she was going with it.

  Sara ran to get Zoe’s cardigan. ‘Well, at least let us call you a cab.’

  Zoe huffed. ‘I live five minutes away. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll be fine walking.’

  ‘But it’s dark,’ Sara added, and then she narrowed her eyes and looked from Zoe to Damien and back again. ‘Luke will walk you back.’

  Luke was visibly, and almost audibly, surprised by the suggestion, but one look from his wife silenced him. He shrugged and headed for the door.

  Zoe started to relax slightly as she and Sara said their goodbyes by the front door, talking over the top of each other and promising to call the following day. Luke rolled his eyes and told them to get on with it, and Damien stood back and watched. She could tell his eyes didn’t leave her for a second, even though she was never brave enough to meet his gaze.

  A few more seconds and she’d be able to breathe again. The front door would shut behind her, blocking him from her view, and she wouldn’t have to see him for another few months, hopefully, and by then she’d be better. Stronger. Over him.

  But she should have accounted for Sara’s more devious side, a trait that had been coming more and more to the fore in recent weeks. Just as Zoe and Luke were about to leave, Sara grabbed her husband’s arm.

  ‘Actually, even better…’ she dragged him back inside ‘…Luke can help me clear up and Damien can walk you.’

  She obviously caught the man in question by surprise too, because, despite her petite frame, she managed to shove him out of the door with no problem and she closed it swiftly behind them before Zoe could argue.

  That left her and Damien standing on the front step staring at each other.

  Zoe just shook her head and walked down the path. ‘I don’t want you to walk me home,’ she said without looking at him, but knowing he would follow. ‘I don’t want to be near you at all.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DAMIEN wasn’t about to let Zoe walk away again. Or should that be run away? Another sleight of hand of hers, he realised. She’d flee uncomfortable situations, passing the blame to the other party, making them feel as if they’d pushed her, when really the momentum had been hers alone. And it was time to make her stop. Time for her to face what she was running from.

  He caught up with her, placed his hands lightly on her shoulders. Much to his surprise, she halted instantly. But she didn’t turn, just stared at the cracked paving stone illuminated by the dull orb of light from a street lamp. Rather than turning her towards him, he circled around her, maintaining contact, preventing any forward progress.

  He expected to find her glaring back at him, lightning bolts flashing from her eyes ready to sizzle him to a crisp, but instead they were filled with tears. He didn’t say anything, just brushed them from under her lashes with his thumbs while her bottom lip wobbled, and then he leaned in close and pressed his lips softly to hers. Just a single kiss, but he couldn’t bear to break contact so he stayed there, lips touching hers. Neither of them moved. More tears slid from her closed lids and after a second he tasted their salt.

  His brain had just sent a signal to pull away when Zoe stopped him before he’d even begun to move. She placed her palms on his cheeks, held him there while she returned the favour. He could feel her quivering, her hands shaking against his skin.

  But finally her mouth left his and she stepped back, ran her tongue across her bottom lip and tasted the damp salt of her own tears before sweeping them away.

  She blinked slowly and looked away. ‘There’s no point, Damien. We both know that.’

  He took a step forward. ‘There’s every point. You don’t understand—’

  ‘I understand just fine,’ she snapped. ‘It was a fling. It’s over. That’s all.’

  ‘What if I don’t want it to be over?’

  She stood tall and her chin tilted upwards. ‘Then you’re fooling yourself. You know I’m not the one you really want.’

  That wasn’t true. Not any more. But she was so blinkered, so fixed on that one point that she couldn’t see anything else. Damien almost felt like laughing. How many times had people accused him of exactly the same thing? But Zoe had been the one who’d shown him a better way, made him realise how badly that approach could short-change a person, how it could rob them of things they’d never even dared to imagine could be theirs.

  ‘I thought you were the one to follow the mad impulses, take chances.’ He stepped forward until he was practically nose to nose with her, lowered his voice. ‘Take a chance on me.’

  She bit her lip and her eyes widened further.

  ‘I want you, Zoe,’ he said quietly, firmly.

  She shook her head and took another step backwards. Then she smiled, but it wasn’t a pretty smile. A millimetre less width and it would be a grimace of pain.

  ‘I’m not right for you.’ Her voice caught. ‘Okay, maybe it could be more than a fling, but the fact you want more from me now doesn’t change anything in the long run. Eventually you’ll stop wanting me and you’ll want her—or someone like her. They always do.’

  He realised then that he wasn’t going to get through to her with just talking. He also needed time to think, time to work out if his iron-clad certainty was as solid as he’d thought it was. He was very good at setting things in stone and then pursuing them blindly, wasn’t he? Sometimes without asking if he was following the right path.

  ‘Can you guarantee me you’ll never look at her and wonder what if?’ she asked, her expression hard now. ‘Or that you won’t regret choosing me instead?’

&nb
sp; Two minutes ago he would have said yes in a heartbeat. But was there truth in what she’d just said? Would he, like his father, wake up one day and discover the life—the woman—he’d chosen wasn’t enough? He didn’t want to even consider that option, but he owed it to Zoe to be certain. He couldn’t let her fall in love with him and then snatch it all away from her. She’d already had that done to her once.

  He reached his hand out and let it drop down by his side again. ‘No, I can’t. Not yet.’

  Another tear fell. She let it roll until it reached her chin and then she wiped it away with the heel of her hand. She walked around him, stepping off the kerb to give him a wide berth, and when she was back on the pavement again she turned to look at him.

  ‘Then I can’t take a chance on you, Damien. You know that. I can’t be your backup plan. She will always be the one you picked first and I can’t live with that.’ She started walking backwards, away from him, away from the glow of the street light. ‘There’s nothing we can do to change that, and I’m afraid it’s a deal-breaker for me.’

  And then she turned and walked away. Damien waited a while then followed her, his feet heavy. There wasn’t anything else he could say. Not tonight. He kept at a discreet distance, made sure she was safe until she walked up the path to her front door, where she gave him one last look as she turned her key, then went inside, shutting the glossy red door firmly behind her.

  * * *

  Zoe slumped against the back of her front door and let the rest of her tears fall. She pressed her hands against her face as if she could somehow stop herself from falling apart by that one simple action.

  He’d broken her heart. How had he done that when she’d been so careful not to give it to him? It wasn’t fair.

  She had known she was right, but she hadn’t wanted to be. Right about Sara, right about there being no possibility of a future for them, but it had killed her to hear him agree.

  * * *

  The building was little more than a shell of girders. Damien stood at the edge of the site overlooking the Thames, the sound of bulldozers droning in his ears, and stared out at the water. He was normally really excited at this stage of a project. After months of preparation, it was time to start making those plans a reality.

  For days now he’d been preoccupied with trying to work out the answer to Zoe’s question. For days now he’d failed miserably. How could you predict something like that? Inside his head he’d taken his mental jigsaw puzzle and arranged it a hundred different ways. He’d shuffled pieces around, trying to create a space that Zoe would fit into, so he could give her the assurances she wanted. It had been no use. It had always felt as if he was jamming that last piece unnaturally into a gap that it didn’t really belong in, and that scared him.

  The only option had been to pull the whole thing apart, piece by piece, and scramble it up. All the bits were sitting at the fringes of his consciousness now, out of order, and it was driving him crazy.

  He had one piece left in his hands. Zoe.

  The site foreman came to him with a question and Damien reeled off an answer on autopilot. Then he called the man back and checked the details again.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just needed to be sure.’

  The man shrugged. ‘No problem. It’s your money we’ll be pouring down the toilet if we get it wrong, and at the stage when we have to make sure the structure is right. Otherwise there’s no point adding to it.’

  Damien nodded and the man wandered off with his clipboard. When he was alone again he went back to his mental riddle.

  Start with the thing that needs to be there to make the whole thing work. Start with the foundation.

  Just like his idea of the perfect woman, his idea of the perfect future was an illusion too. He swept those pieces away.

  Nothing and nobody was perfect in this world, but maybe that was okay. Maybe there was beauty and happiness to be found in it anyway. Maybe it was about appreciating what was right in front of you, instead of always wishing for something more—something his father had yet to learn to do. Something Zoe’s bonehead fiancé had thankfully also done.

  He took that one piece of the jigsaw he still held in his hands and put it front and centre in an empty space. Then he shooed all the other little bits away that tried to gather round and crowd it.

  There was no perfect picture he could make for Zoe. But he’d been looking at it the wrong way. This was a jigsaw with only one piece. The rest would come later. He’d build it around her whichever way it fitted, be the edges messy or undefined, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that he couldn’t imagine his life without her in it.

  Now he just had to make her believe it too.

  * * *

  Zoe leaned into the compact shop window that faced on to the covered hall of Greenwich market and hung a necklace on a display stand. It was her usual style: big chunky wooden beads with different colours and grains, mixed with chunky silver shapes and multi-faceted glass beads. This one was all in shades of pale beige, yellow and blue. It reminded her of the Cornish coast on a sunny day when the heat haze had risen.

  Outside, the market was coming to life. Traders were filling their stalls with their wares. Today was Thursday, so it was vintage fashion and handmade toys, antiques and precious stones. Quite a few early shoppers had already drifted past and stopped at her window display. She hoped that boded well.

  She’d only opened last Saturday, so it was early days yet, but she’d done okay so far. She hoped it wasn’t just the novelty of a new shop and that business would continue to grow, but who knew what would happen in the future? She’d planned it out with the help of a financial adviser. The only thing to do now was hold her breath and see if she pulled it off. If she was still open this time next year she’d give herself permission to exhale.

  The best way to check a window display was to see it the way the customers did—from the outside—so Zoe did just that. She stood, hands on hips, a good six feet away from her window and tipped her head to one side.

  The display included colourful necklaces, bracelets and earrings. She didn’t think she could fit much else in the window without overcrowding it, yet at the same time it looked empty. Something was missing. A gnawing sensation in her stomach reminded her exactly what that was.

  She knew the delicate, interwoven silver designs she’d drawn on the boat would look perfect interspersed amongst the larger pieces. Pity she didn’t have any to put there. Not because she’d sold them, but because they were still just doodles in her sketchpad. Imaginations.

  She had the materials in her safe. She had the right tools for the job. She just lacked the guts. Partly because every time she looked at them she thought of Damien, but more because she was scared that they wouldn’t turn out the way she wanted them to, that she couldn’t actually pull all that intricate work off.

  And now would be a really good time to pull something special out of the bag. Yesterday she’d got an email from someone wanting to commission a wedding and engagement ring set. Something unusual, the client had said. He’d given her carte blanche. And Mr Peters wanted it all kept very hush-hush because it was going to be a surprise for the lucky lady.

  She had a little workbench near the till at the back of the shop and she returned to it now, pulled her leather sketchpad out from its shelf and looked at it. She left it open on the desk and went to the back room-slash-office where her safe was. She returned with a pouch containing a square-cut emerald. This stone for the engagement ring, she’d decided, although she didn’t know why. It was something she’d picked up for a good price a couple of years ago, but had never really made anything it could fit into before now.

  She unwrapped the stone from its little pouch as she walked back on to the tiny shop floor, eyes down. When she looked up again she almost threw both pouch and stone into the air.

  A large, dark shape was filling her doorway. It was Damien, looking impossibly delicious in an immaculately cut suit.

  ‘You did it,
’ was all he said, looking round and smiling.

  Zoe was shaking. How was he standing there looking all normal and sounding all calm? She nodded, since her head was inclined to wobble with the rest of her.

  ‘I knew you could,’ he added. ‘You just needed to believe it too.’

  She nodded again, not even really sure what she was agreeing with.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she finally said.

  ‘Luke told me you’d opened your shop. I wanted to stop by and wish you well.’ He handed her a small gift-wrapped package. ‘I thought this might come in handy.’

  Zoe took it from him. It would be rude not to. And instantly recognised the contours of her favourite brand of ‘emergency’ chocolate through the wrapping paper.

  ‘Setting up a business can be stressful,’ he said, a slight smile tugging the corner of his mouth. ‘A little red box with breakable glass and a hammer might be a good idea.’

  Zoe dropped the chocolate on the counter by the till and closed her eyes. Why hadn’t she leased a bigger shop? She was right at the back, and he was only a pace or so away from the door and already he was too close. She closed her eyes and her voice grew thin. ‘Don’t be nice to me… Just don’t.’

  She heard him close the distance between them and opened her eyes in panic, just as he stopped in front of her and took the emerald from her fingers. ‘Lovely stone.’

  She nodded again. She really must stop doing that. Otherwise she’d have to get herself a part-time job sitting on the parcel shelf of somebody’s car. ‘They’re my favourite.’

  He held it up to the light. ‘I had a great-aunt who hated emeralds. She married a diamond broker, and after that she got very particular about her jewellery. She thought emeralds were second class. Something about impurities and flaws.’

  ‘She’s right. Emeralds are actually a type of beryl—which are a totally different colour—but impurities in the stone turn it green. They’re notorious for their flaws, too.’