The Bridesmaid's Secret

by Sophie Weston

  ‘Tell him?’ She slammed the bottle back on the bar. ‘Tell him to do his own asking.’

  She turned away without another word.

  Yes! thought Paco exultantly.

  Salsa babe or not, she had the mettle to meet Gil on his own terms. Maybe the man knew what he was doing after all.

  Paco said as much to Gil the next morning, with the frankness of an old friend, when Gil called yet again.

  ‘Go for it,’ he concluded. ‘Do your own asking like the girl says. May the best man win.’

  ‘He will.’ Gil sounded as determined as Paco had ever heard him.

  He grinned. Gil might be determined. But the blonde looked as if she had a will of her own as well. He said that too.

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘Good luck, then.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Gil drily. Paco could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I think I’m going to need it.’

  Bella did not sleep much on Monday night. Not surprising in the circumstances. On Tuesday she hit the ceiling every time her phone rang. By the end of the day, her nerves were in tatters, her computer files in complete disarray, and her waste-paper basket full. Gil did not call.

  On Tuesday night she did not sleep at all.

  On Wednesday the morning light in the bathroom was pitiless. Bella glared at the cruelly illuminated wreck that was her face and thanked God for cosmetics.

  Even perfect skin was not proof against no sleep at all. She put on the full make-up she would normally not have bothered with before the cocktail hour: light-as-air compressed powder that the magazine had just received some samples of; blusher the same tone as her discreet lip gloss; tiny, discreet touches of highlighter to make her blue eyes look huge and sparkling.

  She watched the sunken-eyed zombie in the mirror disappear with a certain satisfaction. Six months ago she could not have managed that. But six months ago she had never been near an up-market magazine’s editorial department or a fashion shoot. These days she knew the tricks of the trade. Well, some of them.

  ‘Whey, hey, what are you hiding?’ said one of the journalists from the beauty section.

  Bella was standing behind a triangular table, unwinding herself from four feet of pashmina scarf when the woman stopped by.

  Bella paused. ‘Why should I be hiding anything?’

  ‘Siren Dust by Ariane, two hundred and twenty dollars the pot. We did a feature on it last month. Nice to know the samples are getting a workout.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Don’t worry, no one else will notice. But skin is my thing. And even you don’t have a face like silk at nine o’clock in the morning.’

  She passed on.

  Bella peered in her little make-up mirror. But she was right. No one else was going to see at a casual glance that Bella had spent the night sitting in the Shaker chair, beating herself up over the past she couldn’t change and a man she couldn’t have. But anyone who looked closely would see it.

  Would Gil look closely?

  Would Gil even be here today?

  She stuffed the mirror back in her bag so hard she broke a nail. Then she settled herself at the computer and logged on. The machine burped politely and told her that she had twenty two emails in her postbox. Not one of them was from Gil. Or even from the anonymous lady who ran the office of the chief executive of Watifdotcom.

  Bella sighed and took a life-giving swig of coffee.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Sally. ‘Nerves about the millionaire?’

  Bella flung the mouse away from her. ‘That Siren Dust is a rip-off,’ she announced.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Over two hundred dollars a throw and people keep asking me what’s wrong. I must look like death.

  Sally grinned. ‘You look like a Botticelli angel, English, just like you always do. He’ll think it’s his birthday. But if you’re drinking office coffee there must be something really wrong. Can’t you wait for the Starbuck’s run?’

  ‘No,’ said Bella with feeling.

  That was when the phone rang.

  ‘I have a Mr de la Court for Ms Carew,’ said the laminated receptionist from the front desk. She was using her best, soap-opera, husky drawl. Clearly Gil was having an effect.

  Bella gave a small scream, dropped the phone, picked it up, felt her heart race until she could hardly breathe…

  And went to meet him.

  The receptionist was standing up, leaning forward, tracing something on a map for him. Her auburn hair was wavy and scented and looked about as real as the princess out of a horror comic. She was letting it brush the severe dark jacket of his business suit. Gil, Bella saw, was not fighting her off.

  She stepped forward smartly.

  ‘Hello there.’ Why on earth did she sound so vilely breezy? Like some mad kindergarten teacher, determined to pretend she was on top of things. Or a Stepford Wife.

  She made it worse by sticking out her hand like a robot arm and shaking hands with quite unnecessary vigour.

  ‘Nice to see you again,’ she said to Gil, for the benefit of the Titian-haired temptress on the reception desk.

  She had only seen him in a suit once before. Well, a city suit like this. He had worn a grey morning coat at the wedding, like all the other men, acceding to Lynda’s request for formality. But the rest of the time Bella had known him he had been dressed casually, carelessly, as if he could not remember what he had put on. Now his charcoal grey with the nearly invisible pinstripe made him look like a stranger. Like a man very much in control, clever and suave and horribly grown-up. Like a man she did not know.

  Like Caruso’s Millionaire of the Month, thought Bella. She was surprised at the sharp stab of disappointment that came with the thought.

  She detached her hand and gestured to a small alcove.

  ‘Shall we talk?’

  ‘It’s what I’m here for,’ said the suave, city sex god with amusement.

  Bella fought to stay cool. ‘Yes. Well. It’s good of you to fit me in,’ she said with a wide false smile. ‘We’re very enthusiastic about this interview.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Are we?’

  She swallowed. How did he manage to look so sexy when he was dressed exactly like her father dressed to go to work every morning? It wasn’t fair!

  Trying for brisk efficiency, she said, ‘Or maybe you would prefer me to run through our questions on the telephone? I know you’re fitting me in between meetings.’

  But every word Gil said was proving her wrong. He said yes to coffee, yes to fighting his way through potted palms to sit among the obelisks in the alcove, yes to having read Bella’s piece in the April edition, of which copies were scattered artistically on the top of a minor obelisk.

  He even congratulated her, though he looked as if he had never read any magazines except the financial ones in his life. To crown it all, instead of draining his coffee, answering Bella’s questions and going about his business, he was leaning back among the uncomfortable turquoise cushions and making conversation.

  How can you bear to make conversation with a woman you have held in your arms and loved to the point of madness? How can you expect her to make conversation back? Bella did not know if she was more amazed or offended. It was rather alarming to find that what she really felt was hurt.

  She looked blindly down at her neat list and jumped on a subject at random. ‘Were you surprised when the Watifdotcom flotation attracted so much interest?’

  ‘No. Why did you walk away from me at the airport?’ Bella set her teeth and did not answer. ‘When did you start being interested in computers?’

  ‘When I was six,’ he said absently. ‘Why haven’t you answered any of my calls?’

  ‘I didn’t want to.’ She sent him a challenging look. ‘Why should I?’

  He folded his lips together. Was he suppressing a smile? Damn it, what right had he to laugh at her?

  ‘Why did you leave university teaching?’ she snapped. ‘Not enough money in it?’

  ‘I still
teach. Just not all the time. That’s because I like inventing things. Have you been out partying? Enjoying New York?’

  ‘New York’s fabulous,’ said Bella, crushingly.

  He looked round. ‘Fabulous indeed. You like all this glamour?’ he asked curiously.

  Bella followed his glance.

  The premises of Elegance Magazine were redecorated on a rolling cycle but the entrance hall was essentially the same as the original design from 1922. Black lacquer cabinets, heavily decorated with Egyptian motifs, hid a space-station’s supply of twenty-first-century electronic equipment. Under discreet daylight simulation palm trees flourished. Lotus blossoms, etched into glass doors, sparkled. Walnut panels shone. Rosewood and ebony inlay gleamed like sunshine.

  It was an expensive designer concept that gave Bella visual indigestion. Suddenly she could not bear not to say so.

  ‘It looks like the set for a silent movie,’ she said flatly.

  This time Gil did not pretend he wasn’t laughing. She met his eyes defiantly.

  ‘OK, I’m lucky to be here. It’s a great opportunity and not one that most people have. I know all that. It doesn’t mean I have to buy the whole box of tricks. This is naff and no one’s going to brainwash me into saying anything different.’ She prodded an obelisk disparagingly. ‘Look at that.’

  Gil inspected it. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s a house telephone in there somewhere. Twelve feet of phallic symbol to hide a phone. Ghastly.’

  Gil enjoyed it. ‘Have you told them that?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m saving it up for my farewell piece.’ She recalled the reason they were together. Constraint returned. ‘After I’ve done the interview with you.’

  ‘It’s so important to you, this interview?’ His voice was level.

  ‘Only my professional reputation,’ said Bella. She wished it wasn’t true. ‘No interview and I can kiss goodbye to a job when my time is up. I’m sort of on probation, you see.’

  ‘I see.’ He frowned deeply.

  Bella tried hard not to hold her breath.

  He made up his mind. ‘In that case you must have your interview. Of course you must. Only, not here. Not now.’

  Instantly she was on the alert.

  ‘If you’re asking me out on a date, forget it.’

  ‘You don’t date?’ he mused. ‘Yes, Paco said something like that. But I found it difficult to believe. A raver like you.’ He gave her an affable smile, just a hint of a question in the cool brown eyes.

  ‘I date as much as I want.’

  But she didn’t. She didn’t. She had turned down Gary in finance regularly. Only yesterday she had gone home alone after a solitary supper. And had sat up all night in her Shaker chair remembering.

  And, oh boy, what she remembered! Not this business-suited man with his secret laughter and his cool, cool eyes. The other one. The one she had fallen in love with. Wild dancer, determined pursuer, disconcerting arguer, intense lover—she stopped herself abruptly.

  Fallen in love with?

  The thought struck her like a blow. She stared at him, arrested.

  Was that why she was angry with him? Why she’d wanted him to call and yet hadn’t answered the telephone when he had? Why she’d been so hurt when he’d left her to wake up alone?

  She had a sudden vision of herself in that warm rumpled bed, waking into the cold morning and wanting to tell him she loved him.

  Of course she was in love with him. She had been in love with him for ages. Long before she’d watched Annis look at Kosta and the knife had turned in her heart. It had not been at the loss of Kosta. It had been because Gil was not looking at her like that. Had never shown any sign of looking at her like that.

  Oh, he’d enjoyed his Tina the Tango Dancer, with her vitality and her city cool. But he did not love her. If he loved her he would not have left her to wake up alone.

  He was saying, ‘And that’s something else we need to talk about.’

  She said mechanically, ‘What is?’

  ‘Dating, dancing and what you said to my friend Paco.’

  How could she have been so stupid? What did she know about him after all? Except that off the leash he danced like a dervish and her mother thought he was in love with Annis?

  Another one! She castigated herself savagely. Another clever, sophisticated, complicated man who was a natural mate for her clever, complicated half sister. Who had nothing at all in common with party girl Bella, no matter how much he might enjoy going wild on the dance floor once in while. Not just the dance floor, of course.

  Tears pricked shamefully. She widened her eyes against them. What an idiot she was.

  Almost at random she said, ‘What did I say to your friend Paco, then?’

  Gil looked at her very steadily for a moment. ‘“Tell him to do his own asking,”’ he quoted softly.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So here I am. Asking.’

  Bella looked at the clock on the opposite wall. It had a headdress and paws like a sphinx and she hated it. But if she stared at it long enough, the stupid tears would subside.

  ‘My dating habits are nothing to do with you,’ she retorted.

  Bad temper worked every time. The tears went into retreat.

  Gil gave a little nod, as if it was no more than he expected. ‘You’re going to be difficult,’ he diagnosed.

  ‘I am not,’ said Bella between her teeth, ‘being difficult.’

  He gave her a forgiving smile that made her want to hit him. ‘Don’t worry about it. I like difficult women.’

  ‘No one has ever called me difficult.’

  ‘That’s probably because you’ve ridden roughshod over them, poor souls,’ said Gil blithely. ‘Understandable, gorgeous girl like you. Well, you won’t do that with me. You’d better get used to the idea.’

  Bella blinked. There was enough truth in that to silence her though she had no idea how he had uncovered it. Unless he had been talking to Annis again?

  The thought made her writhe inwardly.

  She said harshly, ‘What do you want?’

  He smiled. ‘You want to interview me. And I want to help you achieve your ambition.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Among other things,’ he conceded. ‘So I thought we could kill several birds with one stone. I’m going to my house in Greece tomorrow. Come with me.’

  ‘What?’

  He repeated the outlandish invitation. Except it wasn’t an invitation. It was a command.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Bella in pure instinct.

  ‘Why not? You have a passport and no commitments. Not so much as a budgerigar.’

  She did not ask him how he knew that. ‘I have a life. My work…’

  ‘This is work, or so I thought. Would you like me to clear it direct with your boss?’

  There was no way Caruso would let her get out of it. She would probably pack her bag for her.

  ‘No,’ said Bella hastily.

  ‘And you don’t date,’ he reminded her blandly. ‘So there’s no trouble there.’

  Their eyes locked. He was laughing gently. But there was something quite implacable about the look in his eyes.

  There was a little flame in their depths that made her urgently and shiveringly aware that under the conservative grey suiting there was a body that she knew as well as she knew her own.

  ‘This is not fair,’ she said under her breath.

  ‘Then, we’re quits.’

  ‘What?’ she said again, bewildered.

  ‘Do you think it was fair to throw a bomb like that at the airport and then walk away through passport control where you knew I couldn’t follow you?’

  He was suddenly steely. Bella blinked.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, not entirely truthfully.

  Gil raised his eyebrows. ‘Then I’ll explain,’ he promised. ‘But not here and not unless you meet me halfway.’

  Bella hesitated, torn.

  ‘In Greece.’

  In the
face of such determination, she had no defence. After all, half of her mind was on his side. Along with all her heart.

  Bella gave in.

  ‘What can I say?’ She flung out her hands, with a self-mocking laugh.

  Gil touched her cheek fleetingly. Possessively.

  ‘Good decision. Pick you up at six.’

  Bella felt as if the world had shot away from under her.

  ‘Tonight?’ She gasped.

  ‘Certainly tonight. I think we’ve both waited long enough,’ he said in a judicial tone. ‘Don’t you?’

  He touched his fingers to her parted lips in a pantomime of a kiss.

  And before she could protest—or respond—or say anything at all—he was gone.

  ‘Tonight,’ he said over his shoulder, as if he did not care who heard him.

  It was a promise.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AS BELLA had predicted, Rita Caruso was only too delighted to wave her off to Greece. She provided her with a camera, an Elegance Magazine charge card and some dubious vocational advice.

  ‘Don’t forget, look for the secrets. The secrets are what makes him human.’

  ‘Great,’ muttered Bella.

  She flung what clothes she could find that would do for a Greek island into an overnight bag. She did not really have any summer gear with her. It had been winter when she’d come to New York. Even now, the evenings were cool. She did not have anything to swim in. She certainly did not have any sun cream.

  ‘How hot is it in Greece at this time of the year?’ she asked Gil in the yellow cab to the airport.

  ‘Hot enough to put some colour in your cheeks,’ he told her. ‘You look terrible.’

  So much for Siren Dust!

  ‘I’ll sue that cosmetic company,’ said Bella with energy. ‘They give ravers like me a bad name.’

  By the time they arrived in Athens, though, she was too tired to manage a single smart remark.

  Gil saw it. He wafted her from the airport to the port of Piraeus without her having to do any more than smile wearily at the immigration official. As if by magic, a boat appeared at the quayside with her luggage already aboard.

  ‘You got used to the millionaire life quickly,’ mumbled Bella, but she was nearly asleep.