The Bridesmaid's Secret

by Sophie Weston

  Certainly nobody who knew her would believe how badly she had been in love with Kosta. She had hidden it well and she was going to carry on hiding it. And nobody would look any deeper because they all knew that Bella Carew was a flirt who had no deep feelings to speak of. And they were damned well going to keep on knowing it, she resolved grimly.

  She led the way back into Annis’s elegant sitting room and flung herself onto the sofa. She kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her.

  ‘So tell me who’s going to be at this bash of yours, if it’s not the whole of English society.’

  Annis pulled a face. ‘It’s a small church, fortunately. That’s the only constraint Lynda has taken any notice of. There’s going to be a couple of hundred, all told. Kosta’s family are coming in from all over the world, of course.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Bella without interest. ‘Have you asked Gil the Client?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’ Annis looked at her shrewdly. ‘Don’t you like him?’

  Bella shrugged. ‘What’s to like? He looked like boring businessman, standard issue to me.’ She was really, really proud of her indifferent tone.

  Annis was totally unsuspicious. She laughed. ‘You should hear the way his staff talk about him. They think he’s somewhere between Robin Hood and the god Apollo.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, he’s trying to rescue his company and save their jobs at the moment,’ Annis explained.

  Bella pulled a face. ‘Yeah, well. Not exactly civilisation as we know it, is it? Some piffling company!’

  ‘It’s not piffling’ said Annis indignantly. ‘Gil has put together cutting edge technology. Plus, he’s committed to giving the major stake to the guys who do the work, not some clever financial predators. I think he’s a bit of a hero myself.’

  Bella buried her nose in her coffee, not answering. Part of her was exultant at this praise. She had no idea why and that made the other part of her—the older, wiser part—distinctly uneasy.

  ‘So tell me about my bridesmaid’s dress,’ she said, reverting to party-girl mode.

  ‘It’s a caftan like mine, only it’s blue.’

  Bella stayed suspicious. ‘Powder-blue? Like little girls’ party dresses.’

  ‘No, no,” Annis assured her. ‘It’s a very sophisticated colour.’

  Bella pursed her lips. ‘We-ell,’ she said, in mock negotiation. ‘No tulle. No lace, right?’

  Annis bit back a smile. ‘No tulle. No lace,’ she agreed gravely.

  ‘All right, then, I’ll wear it. I brought a designer dress from New York. But I can keep that for the dance afterwards. There is going to be a dance afterwards?’

  ‘You know your mother too well,’ said Annis ruefully. ‘We said no. She took no notice. There’s a dance.’

  ‘Great,’ said Bella with enthusiasm. Lots of music and old friends to dance with meant that, with a bit of luck, she could keep her conversation with Kosta down to the minimum.

  ‘You and your parties,’ said Annis affectionately. ‘Lynda said half the county has been on the phone asking how long you’re staying over.’

  Bella shook her head decisively. ‘Plane back on Sunday. I’ve got a career to think about, these days. Now show me that dress. I warn you, any hint of frou frou and I’m in my Big Apple number.’

  But it was a slim silken robe, peacock shot with turquoise, edged at the neck and sleeves with gold braid.

  ‘Very peace and love,’ said Bella, turning this way and that to survey her image in Annis’s new mirror.

  ‘I thought it had better not be too close fitting as you weren’t here to try it on,’ her stepsister explained.

  ‘Good thinking, Bat Woman. Let’s see yours.’

  Annis was going to wear a loose robe, too, though hers was a creamy brocade sewn with pearls.

  ‘Scrumptious,’ said Bella without envy. ‘Just right with your height. How clever of you. When did this passion for Oriental robes start?’

  Annis bit her lip. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’

  Bella was alarmed. ‘It’s not going to be some summer solstice number, is it? I mean, I’ll do whatever you want but I was expecting a bog standard wedding. Flowers, aisle, couple of rings, couple of hymns and we all make a break for the champers. Anything else and I’ll need a crash course.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Annis amused. ‘It’s a classic English wedding. But my measurements have been a bit—er—uncertain. In fact, there’s something else I ought to tell you—’

  Only then the telephone rang. Annis answered and had a brief conversation. As soon as she put it down, it rang again.

  It went on for the best part of an hour.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, making a face while she held on for the man at the other end to find some figures. ‘Gil is just coming up to a major launch. He’s been struggling to keep the lid on it for weeks. He wanted to announce it at the end of April. But it looks like all hell is breaking loose today.’

  ‘Oh?’ Bella could not have sounded more bored. She was proud of that.

  Annis nodded. ‘He’s probably going to have to call a press conference. He’ll hate that.’

  Bella wandered round the room. ‘Doesn’t like publicity?

  ‘Doesn’t like doing anything until he has thoroughly prepared himself. Gil never does anything until he’s ready.’

  Oh no? thought Bella. The voice whispered in her ear again. ‘Let me come up.’ ‘Sounds boring.’

  ‘Lovely guy but not your type,’ conceded Annis.

  She went back to her telephone conversation. Bella picked up a brides’ magazine and leafed through it. She barely saw the pictures, though.

  Was he not her type? Why? Annis’s throw-away remark annoyed her. She did not know why, either, and that annoyed her even more. After all, her heart had been broken when Kosta had turned her away. It did not matter if Gil de la Court was her type or she was his.

  When Annis finally finished her business, Bella cast the magazine aside and stood up.

  ‘I ought to be getting home.’

  Bella still had her old room in her parents’ elegant house.

  ‘Must you? We haven’t really talked yet.’

  ‘Not much chance of that from the looks of it,’ said Bella without rancour.

  ‘With me up to my eyebrows in Gil de la Court’s press announcement, you mean.’ Annis looked harassed. ‘I’m really sorry. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll get together later.’

  Annis looked even more harassed. ‘Well, there’s a problem with that. Kosta’s parents are in town and we’re doing a rush job of getting to know each other. I don’t suppose you want to come to a family meal with them tonight?’

  ‘No,’ said Bella in tones of horror.

  ‘No,’ said Annis with understanding.

  The telephone rang.

  ‘Get that,’ said Bella, picking up her bag and the elegantly packed bridesmaid’s dress. ‘I’ll get the alterations done and we can talk later.’

  Annis was on the phone again by the time she let herself out. It felt very strange.

  But nothing like as strange as it was to get home and find, instead of her usual full royalty welcome, her mother barely had time to give her a distracted kiss of welcome. Lynda Carew had tried very hard to persuade her stepdaughter to have the wedding of the century. She’d planned an abbey ceremony, a reception in a medieval castle, a dance for a thousand people afterwards, and fireworks at midnight. When this met with united opposition from Annis, Kosta and the bride’s father, Lynda decided to throw her considerable organisational talents into contriving the most stylish small wedding possible. With a mere two hundred guests to think about, she had compiled a dossier on all the major guests and a three-day timetable, broken down into half-hour units.

  Bella caused the first breach in the timetable by retiring to soak in the bath as soon as she had taken the bridesmaid’s dress for its alterations. She wa
s only just emerging when her mother and stepfather left for their dinner with Kosta’s family.

  Bella came out onto the landing wrapped in her bath towel to kiss them goodbye.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ said Lynda anxiously.

  ‘Glad of an early night,’ Bella assured her.

  ‘Don’t fuss,’ said Tony Carew gruffly. ‘She can pig out on pizza and children’s videos.’

  Bella did not deny it. Almost as soon as her mother had remarried, Bella had found that she and her new stepfather shared a passion for children’s movies that neither of the other two could understand. She grinned. ‘Railway Children here I come.’

  When they had gone, her smiled died. This wedding, she thought, was going to be more difficult than she had imagined. And she had expected it to be bad enough.

  She wrapped herself in her old dressing gown from school and trailed up to the old nursery she had shared with Annis. She wandered round, drawing stuff off the shelves at random.

  They were all there—her favourite books, the battered rabbit, the shared dolls that Annis had dressed for her, the jigsaw puzzle of Windsor Castle, the box of water-colours with no turquoise left because that had always been her favourite colour…

  Bella swallowed.

  Downstairs the doorbell rang.

  At first she was tempted to ignore it. But then she thought it must be her parents, returning to collect a forgotten door key or something. The bell rang again, imperatively. Yes, that was definitely Tony, impatient at being kept waiting.

  She ran down the stairs, bare feet slipping in her haste.

  ‘Left the family dossiers behind?’ she teased, flinging open the door and hanging onto it.

  For the second time that day she came face to face with Gil de la Court.

  ‘Oh!’

  Gil had not been able to believe it when he’d first realised who was in the photograph at Annis’s flat. For a while he had even accused himself of hallucinating, so obsessed that he couldn’t put the girl out of his mind, even when he was in the middle of life-and-death negotiations.

  But he soon realised that it was no mirage. In fact, he realised more than that. He must have been looking at the photograph during his visits to this room for months, without really taking it in. That had to be the reason why he had taken one look at the girl in the nightclub and had felt that pull of recognition. Well, part of the reason. And of course the pull he had felt was more than recognition. A lot more.

  While Annis was putting together some staff simulations for year three of Watifdotcom, he picked up the silver-framed picture.

  It had been taken at a picnic. There were the parents, whom he had met. There was Annis, long-legged in jeans. And there was his fate. Younger, rounder, with soft hair all over the place and a wide schoolgirl grin but still, unmistakeably, the fire-ball blonde of his dreams.

  ‘Your sister?’ he said to Annis, quite as if he didn’t care.

  ‘Yes, that’s Bella.’

  Bella. He savoured the name. His Bella. And now he knew how to find her.

  That was when he said goodbye to the plans he had been considering for tracking her down. Some of them were quite dramatic. Just as well, he thought with private self-mockery. He was not sure how Bella would respond to a mariachi band under her New York window.

  Now he did not have to serenade her from the street. She would have to come back for the wedding. So then he could go and knock at her door—a nice, familiar London door—and point out that they were made for each other. Well, he would give her a bit of time to get used to him and then he would point it out. Or better still he would get himself invited to the wedding. Very infectious, weddings.

  At last he could concentrate on his company rescue plan with a clear mind.

  It never occurred to him to wonder how Bella would react when she saw him.

  But as soon as she arrived, he saw that it would be pointless to try to talk to her in front of Annis. Worse than pointless, he realised, seeing her look of shock and the dawning temper.

  Oh, yes, his Tina the Tango Dancer was not at all pleased about this turn of events.

  So he kept his face neutral and his conversation brief. He could feel Bella’s frustration as the door of the flat closed behind him.

  He bit back a smile. Tonight, he promised himself. Tonight.

  When he stood on the Carew doorstep, he paused for a second before ringing the bell. What would she be handing out tonight? Not welcome, he was fairly sure. Well, not to begin with. Later, when she had forgiven him for finding her unforgettable—and then finding her—maybe. Gil braced himself for a fiery blonde rage with some anticipation.

  And then she opened the door and he was silenced.

  Elderly dressing gown? Bare feet? This was not his wild salsa babe. She was not even the wary city girl he had duelled with in the February night. She wore no make-up, no defences and she was laughing at whomever she expected to see at the doorstep. It was not him.

  Gil watched the laughter die out of her face. It was like walking into a wall. Her withdrawal hit him like a Siberian winter.

  ‘And hello to you too,’ he said, recovering.

  Bella pulled herself together and pushed a hand through her loose hair. She felt wrong-footed and vulnerable and it made her mad.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said in her most disagreeable tone.

  He was unimpressed. ‘You must have realised I’d come as soon as I could get away.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘Then, you are a lot more naïve than your sister says you are,’ he said with perfect calm. ‘Are you going to let me in or shall we shout at each other on the doorstep?’

  ‘I am not shouting,’ yelled Bella.

  He smiled.

  She pulled the old dressing tighter round her and took a firm grip on the door.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here—’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  Bella ignored the interruption. ‘But I’m getting over a transatlantic flight and a rough day. I’m going to have an early night.’

  His dark smile was pure provocation. ‘Sounds good.’

  Bella was used to dealing with male provocation. Before her departure for New York she had been known as one of the biggest flirts in London. It was not so easy to repel flirtation in a felt dressing gown, with hair damp from the bath and no make-up or shoes. But she made a gallant attempt.

  ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘You are so right. How are yours?’

  ‘My what?’

  He leaned against the door jamb as if he was going to stay there all night. ‘Dreams.’

  ‘My dreams are fine, thank you.’

  ‘You must tell me all about them,’ he said politely. ‘Now, are you going to let me in?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because this time you know who I am. You can afford to risk it.’

  Bella narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You’re saying that I would have let you in last time if I had known who you were?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And why would I have done that?’

  ‘Because this happens once in a lifetime.’

  ‘You must have led a very sheltered life.

  Gil ignored that. He leaned in towards her. His voice sank. It was horribly intimate.

  ‘Tina the Tango Dancer knew. Where has she gone?’

  Their eyes met. Something in his dark glance made the smart remark on the tip of her tongue melt away as if she had never thought of it. Bella shivered—and was silenced.

  He straightened.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he said in quite a different voice.

  ‘I—’ About to deny it, she paused. It was a better reason for shivering than the only other one that presented itself. She stood back. ‘You’d better come in.’

  She took him into her mother’s elegant drawing room, with its pale sofas and collectors’ art in discreetly lit alcoves. He did not spare them a glance.

 
; That unnerved Bella. Usually people were impressed by her home. Well, at least they noticed it. Gil de la Court did not take his eyes off her long enough to register a single priceless piece.

  Bella cleared her throat. ‘Well?’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘We had unfinished business.’

  She met his eyes defiantly. ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘You got my flowers. You had my number. All my numbers, God help me. Why didn’t you get in touch? I told you to.’

  ‘Could be you’ve just answered your own question.’

  He stared at her for an incredulous moment. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t take orders,’ announced Bella.

  She did not understand herself. Normally she was cooperative to a fault. It was Annis who dug her heels in and refused to be ordered around. Bella was the sunny peacemaker. But this man did not make her feel like a peacemaker.

  ‘That’s just petty—’

  ‘Particularly orders from someone I don’t know.’

  He shook his head, bewildered. ‘We’d talked. You knew as much about me as I knew about you.’

  ‘I didn’t know your name. When you were giving me your orders you left that bit out.’

  He brushed that aside. ‘You knew more of my name than I knew of yours.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Bella triumphantly. ‘I’m a modern woman. I protect myself from stalkers.’

  There was a short, fraught silence.

  He said levelly, ‘You knew I wasn’t a stalker. Or you wouldn’t have agreed to have coffee with me that night.’

  ‘That was before you tried to talk yourself back into my flat,’ Bella flung at him.

  Rash. Very rash. She realised it as soon as she saw him smile.

  ‘So you do remember.’

  She did. Oh, indeed she did. Bella went hot, cold, then hot again.

  This man is not going to make me blush, she vowed. He is not.

  ‘I think it’s time you went.’

  He did not move. ‘Coward,’ he said softly.

  She refused to meet his eyes. ‘Not at all. My family—’

  ‘Are all dining with the overseas visitors. You don’t expect them back for several hours.’