Last-Minute Proposal

by Jessica Hart

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  Tilly mumbled and brushed at something on her face before rolling over to bury her face in a pillow.

  ‘Wake up, Jenkins. It’s breakfast time.’ Campbell’s voice, warm and threaded with laughter, slowly penetrated her sleep and she stirred, opening sleep-clouded eyes to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, tickling her cheek with a finger.

  He smiled at her. ‘I thought I’d make your fantasy come true.’

  Tilly pulled herself blearily up on to the pillows. She felt boneless with pleasure still, as if she had been drenched in honeyed delight, and the colour rose in her cheeks as the memories of the night before flooded back.

  ‘I think you’ve already done that,’ she said, and he smiled.

  ‘This is a different fantasy. You told me all about it on Ben Nuarrh. Don’t you remember? You wanted to wake up with coffee and croissants.’

  Brought by a gorgeous lover. Tilly did remember, and the fact that he did, too, made her heart turn over.

  ‘Look,’ said Campbell as he laid the tray on the bed. ‘The sun’s even shining.’

  There was a ridiculous lump in her throat. Tilly swallowed. ‘So it is.’ Leaning forward, she made a big deal of breathing in the smell of coffee. ‘Mmm,’ she murmured appreciatively and unfolded a tea towel to find the promised croissants. They were even warm.

  She lifted her eyes to his green ones and wondered how she could ever have thought of them as cold.

  ‘Where did you find these?’

  ‘At the shop on the corner. You were dead to the world so I thought it would be worth a trip.’ He nodded down at the tray. ‘I realise the orange juice wasn’t specified in your fantasy. That’s my own innovation.’

  Tilly was overwhelmed. Nobody had ever done anything like this for her before.

  Last night, he had made her feel beautiful and desirable; this morning, instead of being desperate to leave, as she had half expected, he had gone to all this trouble to make her a special breakfast. He had remembered something she had once said and acted on it to make her feel special.

  He made her feel loved.

  If you were talking fantasies, this one was hard to beat.

  ‘Hey, stop that!’ she said, deciding that her only option was to make a joke of it. It was that or cry. ‘It’s not fair to start being thoughtful and perfect now you’re about to go!’

  ‘You could come with me.’

  ‘What, to the States?’ she asked, keeping the smile fixed on her face and assuming that he was joking as well.

  ‘Why not?’

  Her smile faded as they looked at each other. He couldn’t mean it.

  Tilly didn’t want to think that making love had been a mistake, but she was afraid that it probably had been. Now she was going to have to live with the memory of the heart-stopping rapture, of the consuming pleasure and the heady delight of touching and being touched, of the fierceness of the passion they had discovered together. Night after night, she would have to lie in this bed and remember and know that she would never feel that again. She would never hold him again, never kiss him again.

  She would have to say goodbye and it would hurt.

  She was a fool, in fact, but Tilly couldn’t regret it. Just one night, they had agreed, and what a night it had been.

  And now Campbell was suggesting-seriously?-that she wouldn’t need to say goodbye after all.

  There was no point in denying that she was tempted, but deep down Tilly knew this was just another fantasy. Maybe fantasies could come true for a night, even for a morning, but how could they endure day after day, in the harsh realities of life?

  She couldn’t go to the States with Campbell. Her business was here, her friends were here. And what would he do with her over there? He was a high-powered businessman, she was a homely cake-maker. Their lives would barely coincide. Tilly had seen what different aspirations had done to her parents’ marriage.

  No, she had ignored her sensible side long enough. This was no time to believe in fantasies. It could never work. Campbell was driven by the need to win. His priorities were different, his life was different.

  And he had an ex-wife to get out of his system.

  Tilly had forgotten Lisa for a while, but now she remembered the way Campbell had talked about her. He might not love Lisa any more, but there was definitely some unresolved business there, and Tilly had no intention of being a distraction until he found out what he really wanted. She had been that for Olivier, and she wasn’t doing it again.

  ‘I don’t think that would work,’ she told Campbell, choosing her words carefully.

  ‘Because…?’

  ‘Because we’re too different. Last night was wonderful, but perhaps it was wonderful because it was just one night,’ she tried to explain. ‘We both got what we needed without having to think about the consequences.’

  Campbell eyed her thoughtfully. ‘Did we? What did you get?’

  ‘I got Olivier out of my system,’ she told him, lifting her chin slightly. It was the truth, but not the whole truth, as they said. ‘My friends have had this theory that I’d never get over him properly until I had a fling with someone to restore my confidence. And I’ve done that now,’ she finished.

  There was a tiny pause. ‘I’m glad I was able to help,’ said Campbell with a touch of acid.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Tilly. ‘I mean, come on, Campbell, you know I’m right. You’re leaving the country, we’ve got completely different lives. How could it ever be more than a night?’

  All right, maybe she was right, thought Campbell. The trouble was that it didn’t feel right. It felt all wrong.

  But what could he do? He could hardly force her to go with him. He wasn’t sure where the idea that she could go to the States with him had come from. The truth was that he had been almost as surprised by his suggestion as Tilly had been. The words seemed to have come from nowhere, and yet once they were out, they made perfect sense and Campbell had been taken aback by how badly he’d wanted Tilly to agree, how disappointed he had been when she’d said no.

  Of course she was right. There was no way it could work. It was madness to even think about it. He would leave here and go to his new life in the States, and he would be grateful then that she had saved them both a lot of awkwardness by rejecting his impulsive offer.

  ‘OK,’ he admitted, ‘you’re right. It was just a night, but it was a great one.’

  Smiling, Tilly relaxed back against the pillows. ‘Yes, it was,’ she said softly, ‘and now you’ve brought breakfast, it’s a wonderful morning.’

  ‘Then let’s make the most of it,’ said Campbell, leaning across the tray to kiss her. ‘It’s not over yet.’

  That had been a mistake, too, he realised much later as he watched the taxi draw up outside the house.

  Had they really thought making love again would make it easier to say goodbye? Breakfast had been ruined, of course, but neither of them had cared. They had made fresh coffee eventually and reheated the croissants and ate them together, neither of them wanting to think about the minutes ticking away.

  Now the moment they had both been dreading all morning had arrived.

  Tilly came outside to the taxi with him. She watched as he threw his bag into the back and then turned to her.

  ‘Well, I guess this is it,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Her throat tightened painfully. ‘But I’ll see you at the ceremony when they announce the winners. You are coming back for that, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, thinking that was not for another three months.

  Once he would have been impatient to find out whether he had won. Now all he could think was that it meant three months without Tilly.

  And, after that, the rest of his life without her.

  It would be fine, he told himself. Once he was in New York, there would be so much to do, he wouldn’t have time to miss her. He would be making a new life, being even more successful than before. He would be
relieved that Tilly had been sensible.

  He wouldn’t feel the way he did now.

  He looked for the last time into Tilly’s dark, beautiful blue eyes, knowing that he could never tell her how he felt. So he reached for her instead, and she melted into him and they kissed, a bittersweet kiss that went on and on because neither could bear to let the other go.

  ‘I’m glad Keith pushed me into taking part in this stupid programme,’ Campbell confessed against her hair at last. ‘I’m glad Greg broke his leg.’

  ‘I’m glad you were the one who got to push me down that cliff,’ said Tilly.

  ‘I’m glad about last night, too.’

  Tilly was terribly afraid that she was going to cry. She couldn’t do that, not after being so brave all morning. ‘Me, too.’ She swallowed, hard. ‘Now, get in that taxi and go before I start getting all sloppy!’

  ‘All right,’ said Campbell.

  He held her tight against him for one last hard kiss and then he let her go. ‘Goodbye, Jenkins. Don’t go fulfilling any more fantasies without me.’

  Tilly’s determined smile wobbled. ‘Don’t call me Jenkins,’ she managed with difficulty.

  Her heart was cracking, tearing, as she watched him get into the taxi. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, but it was barely more than a whisper.

  Campbell leant forward to tell the driver to take him to the station, then he looked back at Tilly and lifted a hand in farewell. She waved back, barely able to see through her tears, and then the taxi was pulling away, turning on to the street, and he was gone.

  Tilly took a fortifying gulp of champagne. She probably shouldn’t have ordered a glass in her room, but she badly needed something to steady her nerves. In a few minutes, she would have to go downstairs and see Campbell again, and she had no idea how she was going to handle it. For three months now, she had longed to see him, but now the moment was almost upon her she was terrified that she would simply go to pieces.

  The programme had been screened the week before. Suzy had done a good job and it had been very cleverly edited, with a fair balance between all the contestants at each stage and good coverage of their chosen charities.

  Expecting it to be hidden in the daytime schedule somewhere, Tilly had been taken aback at how popular the programme had proved, and she had been overwhelmed at how many viewers had voted. Perfect strangers had come up to her in the street and told her that they hoped she would win, and the hospice had reported a flood of donations since they had been featured.

  Tonight was the final ceremony when they would announce the winners, and the charities who would receive the winning donations. Tilly knew she ought to be nervous about the results, but all she could think about was seeing Campbell.

  It had been three months. Three months of telling herself it was all for the best. Three months of trying to forget the night they had spent together.

  Three months of missing him.

  ‘That’s what comes of forcing people out of their ruts,’ she had raged to her brothers. ‘I was perfectly happy until you made me do that stupid television programme.’

  ‘We were only trying to help you get over Olivier,’ they protested.

  ‘Well, don’t help any more!’

  The kitchen was so empty without Campbell, her bed so lonely. It wasn’t just a physical ache either. Tilly hadn’t realised how alive she had felt in his presence, how everything had seemed to click into place when he’d been there. She missed talking to him, arguing with him, laughing with him…She even missed being exasperated by him. That was how bad it was.

  Time and again, she’d tried to convince herself that she didn’t really know Campbell at all. They had spent a matter of days together. She knew nothing about his life, his home, his friends. It was silly to build one night into such a huge deal. Much better to treat it as the brief fling she had insisted it was.

  But deep down, she was convinced that she did know him. She knew the way the crease at the corner of his mouth deepened when he was amused. She knew exactly how he turned his head, how his brows contracted, the way he would look at her and shake his head in exasperated disbelief. There had been so many times when she’d wanted to turn to him and tell him her thoughts, and she’d always known exactly how he would reply-usually irritably, of course, but Tilly wouldn’t have cared if only he had been there to reply for himself.

  All the participants had been sent a copy of the final programme in advance. Tilly had watched it with Cleo and Tony, although she’d longed to be able to see it on her own so that she could freeze the picture whenever Campbell was on the screen.

  Most of the shots were of the two of them together. There she was, clutching Campbell’s neck at the top of that wretched cliff, falling on to the muddy river bank, playing the fool on the mountain top.

  Tilly’s throat had ached as she’d watched herself. She remembered it all so clearly. She could practically smell the air and feel the breeze in her face. It was as if Campbell were still beside her, making her tingle with the astringency of his presence, the touch of his hand, the heart-twisting quiver of amusement at the corner of his mouth.

  There were clips from the video diaries, too. She rambled and Campbell was cool and concise. Everyone laughed at Campbell in the pink apron, but the most telling scene was at Cleo and Tony’s wedding when the camera caught Tilly looking at Campbell with her heart in her eyes.

  Cleo had turned and fixed her with an accusing expression. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were in love with him?’ she demanded.

  Tilly squirmed, but couldn’t deny it. ‘Because there’s no point in loving him,’ she tried to explain. ‘Nothing’s going to change. Campbell’s living in the States now. Even if his ex-wife doesn’t want him, there’ll be any number of single women in New York waiting to snap him up.’

  ‘You should tell him how you feel,’ said Cleo, but Tilly shook her head.

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  She had heard from Suzy that Campbell would only be in the country for a couple of nights. He would come to the awards ceremony, but then he had some important meeting to get back to. They wouldn’t have time to do more than say hello. There was no use expecting anything else.

  That didn’t stop Tilly from hoping, of course. Oh, she wasn’t stupid. She knew nothing lasting could come of it, but that one night had been so special, she couldn’t help wanting it again. If Campbell was still single, she had decided, she was going to suggest it to him. She was staying in the hotel where the ceremony was taking place. She would have a room, if he wanted to share it with her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  J UST one more night. Was that so much to ask?

  Tilly didn’t think it was, but she wasn’t sure she would have the nerve to suggest it. She had been hoping the champagne would give her Dutch courage, but it didn’t seem to have had much effect yet.

  Draining the glass, she put it down on the dressing table with a sharp click and regarded her reflection for a doubtful moment. She was flushed with a mixture of excitement, champagne and nerves. Her hair tumbled to her shoulders, her eyes were dark and dubious.

  Cleo had insisted that she buy a new dress, and Tilly was glad now that she had. It was a lovely midnight-blue, in a flattering cut that left her shoulders bare. She picked up a gossamer-fine shawl spangled with sequins and draped it over them. She was going to feel vulnerable enough asking Campbell to make love to her one last time without feeling half naked while she did it.

  After all the agony of waiting, Tilly dithered so long getting ready that she was one of the last to arrive in the ballroom where the ceremony was to take place. There was to be a champagne reception first, followed by dinner, and then some excerpts from the programme would be screened before the final winners were announced. All the participants would be there, along with representatives from the charities they supported, and Suzy had promised a good turnout from the celebrities who had been invited, too.

  The room was crowded by the time Tilly arrived, but she h
ad eyes for only one man.

  Hesitating in the doorway, she let her eyes travel slowly around until they locked with a pair of familiar green ones, and her heart seemed to collide with something hard and unyielding as all the oxygen was sucked instantly from the huge room.

  Campbell.

  He looked amazing. He was wearing a dinner jacket that only made him look leaner, tougher and more devastating than ever.

  Unsmiling, Campbell walked towards her. ‘You’re late, Jenkins,’ he said, and then he smiled into her eyes. ‘But you look wonderful.’

  Tilly stammered some reply. She wanted to throw her arms round him and pat him all over like a dog to make sure he was real. Had he really said she looked wonderful?

  She should ask him now, in case he had meant it, and before her mascara smudged and her lipstick wore off and she spilt something down the front of her dress. Would you like to come to my room later? she could say and get the question out of the way, but she hesitated too long. Maybe it was a bit crass to come straight out with it, before they had even had a token conversation.

  The trouble was that it was difficult to have any kind of conversation when she was overwhelmed by his nearness. There was so much she wanted to ask him, so much to say, but Tilly was tongue-tied with nerves, and when a waiter passed with a tray of champagne she grabbed a glass and practically downed it in one.

  ‘Aren’t you drinking?’ she asked Campbell, seeing that he was holding a glass of orange juice.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Keeping a clear head for your winning speech?’

  The dent at the corner of his mouth deepened. ‘Something like that.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘So…how are you?’ Tilly tried to get things going again.

  ‘Good. And you?’

  ‘Oh, fine, fine,’ she lied. ‘Is the new job going well?’

  Campbell nodded. ‘I’d say so. We’re poised to win back a major contract, and if we can pull that off, then we should be able to start turning things round. Unfortunately, the meeting is on Monday, so I’ll have to fly back tomorrow.’