The Bridesmaid's Secret

by Sophie Weston

  “I’m a walking disaster,” Bella said.

  Gil laughed, his eyes warm. “I don’t buy that.”

  “Oh, I can get dressed up in my party gear and dazzle the world. Doesn’t stop me making a complete idiot of myself.”

  His dark eyes narrowed. “You’re talking about a specific instance, aren’t you? Want to tell me?”

  Bella swallowed, shaking her head.

  He saw her distress. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Oh, yes, it can!”

  Dear Reader,

  If you have read The Millionaire’s Daughter you will recognize Bella.

  I didn’t set out to write a pair of novels. But as I came to the end of Annis’s story, I realized that Bella was at the start of a story of her own. What was more, she had behaved so generously, I really wanted her to have a happy ending, too.

  There are a lot of brothers and sisters out there welded together entirely because of their parents’ remarriage. So often they resent it—and each other. But Bella and Annis were born to be sisters, even though there is no blood tie and they have nothing in common but affection. And respect, of course. And a shuddering distaste for blue tulle. I’m crazy about them both.

  I hope you enjoy reading these books as much as I enjoyed writing them.

  Best wishes,

  Sophie Weston

  Readers are invited to visit Sophie Weston’s Web site at www.sophie-weston.com.

  THE BRIDESMAID’S SECRET

  Sophie Weston

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘OF COURSE Bella will be your bridesmaid. Why on earth wouldn’t she?’

  Annis shuffled sample wedding invitations uneasily. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said vaguely. ‘She’s only been in New York a couple of months. Maybe she’d prefer to settle in properly before making a major trip back to London.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Bella’s mother. ‘That’s why she didn’t come back at Christmas. But your wedding. That’s different. She’s been waiting to be your bridesmaid all her life.’

  Annis smiled reluctantly. ‘You’re right there. Bella was born to wear flowers in her hair.’

  Instinctively they both looked at the photograph on the bookcase. It was a black and white studio portrait, all cheekbones and soulful eyes. So it missed the gold in Bella’s hair or the forget-me-not blue of those eyes. But what it caught completely was the fun. The eyes sparkled. There was a naughty tilt to the head. You could tell that, in spite of her solemn pose and the dramatic lighting, laughter was on the point of breaking through. This was a girl who thought life was a party and who wasn’t going to sit still much longer while it went on without her.

  Lynda Carew smiled on her absent daughter. ‘Yes, she still loves dressing up, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Hey, we can’t call it dressing up any more. Now she’s working for Elegance Magazine, she’s a high-fashion babe.’

  Lynda suppressed a sigh. ‘She’s certainly found herself the ideal job. I just wish she hadn’t had to go so far away to get it.’

  Annis had a feeling that the miles between the Carews’ London home and Elegance Magazine’s Manhattan office was a good part of the reason that Bella had so surprisingly applied for the job in the first place. She did not say so. What was a feeling, after all? Just a faint impression, based on a couple of things Bella had said months ago, which Annis had paid no attention to at the time. Coupled with the things she had not said when Annis had announced that she was marrying Kosta Vitale.

  And then that abrupt departure for the US.

  But, on the other hand, Bella always did things on the spur of the moment. Miss Spontaneous, that was what her stepfather called her. And she had always been a globe-trotter.

  The wedding preparations list forgotten, Annis tapped her teeth with her pen. Heck, maybe it was nothing. Feelings had never been her strong point. It was Bella who understood why people did things, not Annis, the intellectual stepsister she called Brain Box.

  ‘Annis—’

  She looked up. Lynda was watching her narrowly. Annis blinked. She loved and respected her stepmother but it was still sometimes a bit of a shock to bump into one of her moments of shrewdness.

  ‘Is there something I should know?’ Lynda asked quietly.

  It was a question Annis had dreaded for weeks. Partly because she did not know the answer. Partly because sometimes—in the early morning when Kosta was still sleeping and she was awake and dreamily content in his arms—she half wondered if her happiness had somehow been bought at Bella’s expense. She did not quite see how that could have happened. But there was something—

  ‘No,’ she said now uncertainly.

  Lynda was not a dragon but when something was important she did not give up easily.

  ‘Is something wrong with Bella?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Tell me, Annis.’

  Annis looked again at the photograph.

  Bella looked back, all suppressed mischief. Her bare shoulders caught the light. Her mouth was not only trying not to laugh, it had a sensual curve which would raise the blood pressure of any man under ninety. A diamond teardrop, a twenty-first birthday present from her doting stepfather, nestled seductively against her neck under a feathery fall of hair.

  Of course there was nothing wrong with Bella. She was blonde, gorgeous and twenty-four. She had a job most people only dreamed about. She was living in the most exciting city in the world. She could have any man she wanted. What could possibly be wrong with Bella?

  ‘No,’ said Annis, convinced at last. ‘Bella’s wonderful.’

  She gave Lynda a brilliant smile.

  Her stepmother did not respond for a moment.

  ‘Bella would tell you anything,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘But would you tell me?’

  ‘If I thought there was something really wrong with Bella I would,’ Annis assured her. ‘But I don’t. Honestly. I’m probably just getting myself stewed up about the wedding. You know what I’m like about performing in front of a lot of people.’

  Lynda hesitated. But Annis was certain now and it had its effect. Eventually her stepmother nodded, satisfied.

  ‘All the more reason for Bella to be a bridesmaid,’ she said practically. ‘You know she gets you out of stage fright.’

  Annis remembered adolescent drama groups, school concerts, sailing club votes of thanks. Two minutes before she was due to open her mouth, Annis would freeze. That was when Bella would ram a crown down over the brows of one of the peacock boys, or seize a triangle and dodge among the waiting players, refusing to give it back; once she had slid along the polished floor of the church hall on a tea tray and had brought the wrath of a phalanx of church wardens down on her head; once, memorably, she had nearly lost her dress when a shoelace strap had broken at a critical moment. Annis would dive to the rescue. By the time she’d rush out to do her bit on stage, she’d still have half her mind on Bella. None at all was left for her nerves.

  ‘Everyone used to think I was a brilliant speaker and Bella was a tearaway,’ she said now, remembering. ‘Nobody noticed that the two went together. No tearaway, no speaker—just a frozen jelly with lockjaw.’

  Lynda laughed. ‘You’d better not get lockjaw at the altar. You get that daughter of mine back, you hear me? You need her.’

  Annis did not deny it. She took a decision.

  ‘I’ll phone her now,’ she said with reso
lution.

  The open-plan office was all limed wood and high-tech silver. No desks. Desks were not chic. The journalists used their laptop computers on tables that were minimalist swirls of wood. Some were shaped like commas, some like 1950’s kidney dressing tables. The chairs were somewhere between bar stools and chicken wire. There were lots of mirrors. Every single piece of furniture was on wheels.

  ‘Fluid. Dynamic. We like to keep everything loose,’ Rita Caruso, head of features and Bella’s boss, had said when she’d introduced her to the room. ‘The décor reminds us that the world is in constant flux.’

  That had been in November. By Christmas, Bella had been masterminding office-chair races. The course had been three times from glass wall to glass wall ending with a dash round the three central columns and the prize had been an evening clubbing under Bella’s direction. Everyone agreed that anyone who went out with Bella was in for a unique experience. As in-house lawyer, Clyde, put it, she was never going to be the queen of cool but by thunder she knew her music. And she could dance. And her contact list was fantastic.

  At five o’clock she was sitting at a particularly nasty dagger-shaped desk, trying to talk to a stylist in LA and make notes at the same time without sending all her other notes onto the floor. The silver room was supposed to be a paperless office as well. Background music thrummed through state-ofthe-art speakers that looked as if they could make it to the moon under their own steam.

  Bella was conscious of pins and needles in her leg, a crick in her neck and fast-evaporating patience with the prima donna on the other side of the country. In fact she was concentrating so hard on not losing her temper that she did not really register the first call.

  ‘Hey, English! I’m talking to you.’

  Bella looked round then. Behind her, Sally Kubitchek was waving her hands in the air. Bella put a hand over the little microphone suspended from its twenty-first-century Alice band round her head and mouthed a question.

  ‘Your sister,’ yelled Sally.

  ‘Ah.’ Bella brought LA back into the conversation. ‘Sorry Anton, something’s come up. I’ll have to call you back.’ In the teeth of his protests, she took off her headset and disconnected the cellular phone.

  Sally sat in front of a discreet bank of lights. ‘Take it in Caruso’s room,’ she advised. ‘She’s at the Guggenheim interviewing this month’s millionaire. He gave them something amazing and they’re showing the press tonight. She won’t be back.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’

  Rita Caruso’s office had one of the few chairs that was both comfortable and immobile. They all used it when they could. Bella flung herself into its leather embrace as the telephone began to purr sycophantically.

  She snatched it up. ‘Hi, Annie. How you doing?’

  ‘Hi, Bella Bug. I’m fine. You?’

  ‘I’m cool.’

  ‘How’s the job?’

  Bella laughed. ‘I’m licking them into shape.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I’ve had a couple of brushes with the style police but, apart from that, everything’s fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yup. Caruso says I have a nasty British sense of humour. She likes that. It means I write good copy. I even get to have a crack at interviewing one of her millionaires if I’m a good girl. No, correct that. If I’m a malicious and witty girl.’

  ‘Wow.’ Annis was half amused, half shocked. ‘I’ll buy witty. But you were never malicious.’

  ‘I’m working on it,’ said Bella blithely.

  She stretched her legs. Her four-inch spike heels just about reached Rita Caruso’s desk. She was not a tall girl. But she was going to put her feet on the desk anyway. It was symbolic.

  She stretched luxuriously and said, ‘So tell me about you. How’s the wedding?’

  ‘Growing,’ said Annis is a voice of deep gloom.

  Bella grinned. ‘Told you it would. Quiet wedding isn’t in mother’s vocabulary.’

  ‘For you maybe.’

  It was just as well Annis was on the other side of the Atlantic. Bella’s grin did not so much fade as freeze.

  Fortunately Annis had no suspicion. ‘But I’m not even her daughter,’ she complained. ‘And I’m too tall for frills and veils. Weddings and I were made for separate universes. But will she listen?’

  ‘No,’ supplied Bella. ‘The wedding experience pervades every known universe as far as mother is concerned. Even if you bring a sick note, she’ll convince herself you want it really.’ She made a huge effort. Her voice didn’t sound too bad.

  That was New York for you. It taught you to come back with a smart remark even if your heart was breaking. Let’s hear it for New York, she thought.

  Annis did not detect anything wrong. ‘Too right.’ She hesitated. ‘Er—that’s what I was calling about actually.’

  Bella’s hand was clammy on the receiver. Please don’t ask me to come to the wedding. Please, please, please, Annie. It was unashamed panic.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I need help.’

  If Annis had hit her, she could not have winded her more comprehensively.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Bella said, when she got her breath back. She was desperate to keep it at the level of a joke. ‘I’ve never organised a wedding. If you don’t trust mother, try one of Kosta’s glam friends. There must be a wedding consultant in there somewhere.’

  ‘Probably,’ said Annis with the indifference of a woman so utterly sure that she was adored, she hardly noticed the predatory females who still circled round the fashionable architect who loved her. ‘But it’s not technical advice I want.’

  Bella’s throat tightened. ‘Oh?’

  ‘I want my sister,’ said Annis baldly.

  For a moment Bella literally could not speak. Everything inside her screamed No! Oh, this wasn’t fair. This really, really wasn’t fair.

  ‘Bella Bug? Are you there? Bella?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bella croaked. She cleared her throat. ‘I mean, yes, I’m here. Glitch on the line.’

  ‘Well?’

  Bella floundered. She felt as if she was drowning.

  ‘Annie, do you know how hard I had to wheel and deal to get this job? American visas are like gold dust. If I go back, I’m not sure they’ll let me back in,’ she said, improvising desperately. ‘Not to work, anyway. I’m here on this six month exchange thing. This is the first proper career-type job I’ve ever had. I can’t afford to risk it.’

  The silence was full of disappointment. Bella felt awful but she did not weaken. She could not afford that either. She could feel the tears on her face. She did not know when had she started crying.

  This is stupid, she told herself savagely. She did not say anything at all to Annis.

  ‘Oh, well, if you can’t, you can’t,’ Annis said eventually. Her voice was muffled.

  She was obviously hurt. Damn! thought Bella. Still, better hurt now than have her wedding day ruined by a sister weeping all over the man she was going to marry.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go. There’s this guy I need to speak to today. I’ll call you and you can fill me in with the news then. Or email me. That’s what the Net is for,’ said Bella trying to be bracing. Even to her own ears she sounded horridly un-feeling.

  ‘Yes. Of course. I’ll call you.’

  Annis rang off.

  Bella put down the phone and blew her nose hard.

  If only Annis had not looked after her from the moment Tony Carew had married Lynda. If only she had not taught Bella how to sail. If only she had not played with her and read to her and let her borrow her make-up. And then, later, if only she had not believed in her when everyone else thought Bella was a pretty airhead.

  If only she had not fallen in love with the same man.

  But she had. And Kosta Vitale, for all his smooth sophistication, had taken one look at Annis and had fallen right back. Clever, heartbreaking Kosta was undoubtedly right. Annis was a woman men fell in love with. Bella was the girl they
took to parties.

  But that didn’t mean the party girl couldn’t fall in love. She just shouldn’t expect anyone to take her seriously when she did. And she should get over it as fast as she could.

  Well, she was trying. She wasn’t doing too badly, either. Sometimes she didn’t think of Kosta for a whole hour at a time. Eventually she would get him out of her system altogether. But not if she had to go back to London and watch him walk down the aisle with Annis. Bella knew herself and she knew she was not up to that yet.

  She had never told anyone else that she was in love. She had kept her secret well. She had wished them both all the luck in the world and had danced at their engagement party. But Kosta knew she was in love with him. And every time their eyes had met she’d known he knew, even though he’d said nothing. And her heart hurt all over again.

  ‘Love,’ said Bella aloud, furiously. ‘Who needs it?’

  But she would get over it. Of course she would. As long as Annis and Kosta stayed in London and Bella stayed in New York and forgetfulness had time to work its magic.

  ‘Annis, I need you to come with me to New York,’ Gilbert de la Court said, without preamble.

  Annis was sitting in his office, frowning over a flow chart. She looked up, startled.

  ‘What?’

  He gave one of his rare smiles. ‘I need camouflage.’

  At once she was wary. They had worked together for months and she knew his company inside out but she knew next to nothing about his private life.

  But he was thirty-three and single. Good-looking, too, when you got past his complete disengagement from the everyday world. Besides, some women found that air of aloof preoccupation the ultimate sexual challenge. Who knew how many women he was juggling in the few hours he spent away from his computer? Now she came to think of it, just last week he had taken three days off. She was not going to get involved in any domestic battles he might have.

  So she said firmly, ‘I do management consultancy. You want set-dressing, you go somewhere else.’

  He considered that for a moment in silence. Then he said, ‘Someone’s trying to take over the company.’