Her own wedding had been a great success. The three people there had all told her so. Pity she spent the entire evening in the bathroom bawling her eyes out.
***
“I don’t say this easily, believe me, Cara, but I am falling for you, really falling for you.” Alex Charles looked into her eyes as they sat holding hands over a small intimate candlelit dinner in the Unicorn restaurant.
She blushed as her heart began to race. It had been such a whirlwind. In the last few months since he got home from Dubai he had wined her and dined her. Alex Charles had literally swept her off her feet. He was so romantic and sometimes she felt she hadn’t time to catch her breath he was so close. He was completely smitten with her, of that she had no doubt.
He rubbed his soft thumbs across her hands repeatedly.
“Alex,” she whispered, “this is mental, isn’t it, but I feel exactly the same way.”
She twirled the diamond earrings in her ears, a present from Dubai. She wore an emerald green shirt with tight white skinny jeans and green wedges, her red hair piled high in a messy bun on the top of her head. She felt really beautiful for the first time in her life when she was with him. She was crazy in love with him; how could she not be?
His piercing blue eyes lit up and he leaned across the table and kissed her full on the mouth. He was the type of man she had always fantasised about. She had never had a man in her life like this. She had dated of course, but this relationship was so intense. He was so powerful and manly and real husband material. He was so protective of her. A real gentleman: he pulled out her chair before he sat, he opened doors for her, he sent her flowers, he complimented her at every opportunity.
She had begun to think she might never get married. Of course she wanted a life, and one with children, but she was a realist. She wasn’t getting any younger. She also had her mam to think of and, although Esther told her again and again to get out and get her own place, she wasn’t comfortable with leaving Esther on her own. Although her mother was only sixty-nine she was old beyond her years and vulnerable in so many ways. Anyway, Cara liked living with her mam and wanted to look after her. They got on so well and enjoyed each other’s company.
But now Alex had come along and she was head over heels in love with him. He made her feel like she was the most unique woman in the world. The sex had been amazing, still was. The night after O’Donoghue’s they had made love. Drunk on G&Ts and adrenalin. She hadn’t ideally wanted it to happen on the first date, of course, but it had. They had gone back to his hotel room at the Shelbourne and the chemistry had engulfed them. He had opened the door for her and she had gone in ahead but stopped and put her back to the wardrobe. He closed the door, dropped the key card on the table and turned to face her, the room only illuminated by the street lamps surrounding St Stephen’s Green. Their bodies seemed to close together like two exceptionally powerful magnets. The passion was mind-blowing. He had an incredibly toned and muscled body and was tanned and taut. Cara ate up every second with him and was in seventh heaven. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and he groaned as he felt her breast roughly, then unclipped her bra as his head fell to taste. She arched her back as she unzipped her denim skirt and wriggled out of it.
He raised her arms above her head and held them there as he stared at her body. “You are so perfect. No other man will ever be here again,” he whispered to her as he lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him. They made love hard and fast and noisily standing up against the wardrobe.
As they lay in bed afterwards, cocooned in each other’s arms, she knew that it was something different this time. This was no one-night stand. The way he looked down at her face and smoothed her skin with his hand. She knew this was special.
“I’m suddenly jealous of every other boyfriend you have ever had – I hate them all!” Alex laughed and kissed her gently on the mouth over and over.
“There haven’t been many.” She kissed him back. “What about you? Have you been in many serious relationships?”
“No, not really. I have always been too busy and too focused on getting my career going. I have never been in love, well . . . before . . .” and he whistled out loud as though to stop himself from saying another word.
Cara’s heart skipped a beat and she nestled into his warm chest. His smell was incredible. She wished she could bottle this moment. Open the bottle and feel and smell this very second whenever she wanted to. The chemistry was intoxicating. She didn’t want the moment to pass. She took a long deep breath and sighed quietly.
“Do you want to shower first?” he asked, breaking the silence.
She was just falling into a wonderful cosy sleep. “Ah no, thank you, I’m okay.” She nuzzled deep into his chest again.
“Really?” He sat up on one elbow, cradling his head in his hand.
She moved and sat up too.
“You don’t shower after sex?” he asked.
Suddenly she felt a bit dirty and very awkward. “No, of course I am, I mean I do, I always do – I was just nodding off there, sorry.”
“No worries,” he said, pulling the covers off her.
She slid out of the bed and padded naked into the en suite, aware of his eyes boring holes into the back of her. She closed the door behind her and looked at her burning red face in the mirror. She reached in and turned the dial to red on the shower. That had been embarrassing to say the least.
She stood under the strong jets and thought about the night. Madness. However, she couldn’t get over how attracted to him she was. She rubbed the hotel shower gel all over her body. What would happen next? He obviously thought she was gross not hopping straight into the shower. Did this mean he had one-night stands all the time? Was she falling for ridiculous one-liners when she had never ever done before? She supposed she really should get dressed and go – that’s the way it went, wasn’t it? Was she reading too much into it? Maybe the shower idea had been to get her out of the room. Of course it had! He hadn’t actually asked her to stay the night. How could she be so stupid?
She quickly dried off and rolled her hair up into a high knot. She opened the bathroom door and immediately heard his snores. She glanced around the wardrobe and sure enough he was fast asleep. She pulled on her clothes which were all in one messy pile by the door, grabbed her bag, found her shoes and closed the door behind her as gently as possible.
Chapter 7
Sandra wasn’t sure she’d get used to the smell of horses so early in the morning. It was a bit too stinky for her liking. Dermot was tacking up Bolto as she stood by the door watching him.
“Now this fella is as quiet as a lamb. I promise you he will take care of you so don’t worry – he’ll show you what to do. He’ll follow Midnight of his own accord.”
He expertly double-clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth and the small brown horse obediently followed him out of the stable, shavings flying up behind him. He had a white stripe down the centre of his nose and it reminded Sandra of icing on a brownie.
“Lorna? Lorna!” Dermot shouted. “Get Midnight out of the box for me, will ya?”
Lorna popped her head out from inside one of the stables and shouted back, “Sure, Dermot, just putting a new salt lick in for Bubbles!” Seconds later she led his big horse out.
Sandra had never been this close to Midnight and she was terrified. “Holy Mother, Dermot, he’s so massive!” Her mouth fell open.
“Yeah, he’s my big baby all right. I broke him in myself so he’s all mine. Like I said to you in Hines, I tell him everything. He has a book in him, this fella.” The horse threw its head and whinnied as Dermot rubbed his nose hard. “He’s a bit fresh so don’t mind his carry-on. Now I want you to put these on.”
He handed her a back-protector which she put on carefully, pulling the straps tight. Then she strapped the hat on – it was slightly too big.
“Now put one foot in the stirrup and over you go,” he said, fastening the strap of his own hat under his chin.
&
nbsp; “Eh, Dermot, I have never been on a horse in my life – is there not an easier way to break me in gently? Fork lift, perhaps? How am I supposed to get my foot up there?”
“Get up, Sandy!” He held Bolto’s rein tight and she put one foot into the silver stirrup. He placed his hand firmly under her bottom and pushed her up.
She managed to throw her leg over and plopped down with a bump.
“Now find your other stirrup,” he said.
She did and he adjusted the length of them. Then he showed her how to hold the reins. It felt wonderful. He was right. It felt exhilarating. She felt like she was twenty feet tall.
“Thanks, Lorna!” he called after the stable hand as she left, dragging a pitch fork along the gravel and making an awful sound.
Dermot hopped up on his horse easily and with a soft kick of his heels Midnight threw his head round and danced on the spot before moving into a slow walk. As Dermot had promised her, Bolto followed the larger horse obediently. Sandra held on tightly as they walked slowly out into the sand ring. This was so freeing. The morning was just breaking and the floodlights were on in the ring. The sand looked a soft yellow under the artificial light.
Dermot turned back to her. “You okay?”
“Perfect!” she shouted back, tipping the too-large hat back up out of her eyes. She was holding on tight with her hands and legs. She would pay for this tomorrow, she guessed.
As they walked Dermot came back and his horse fell into step beside hers. “Today is just about getting the feel for the horse. Getting to know your own seat and enjoy the experience. I will teach you then all the technical bits of how to ride properly, about being on the right leg, about the craft and we can go on hacks and you’ll love it.”
She nodded and they walked on for a while.
“How was Neil when you got home last night then?” he suddenly said.
“Awful,” she confided. “He was pissed again, Dermot. He’s up to something, I know he is. He needs a job badly to keep him on the straight and narrow.”
There had been no sign of Neil’s mobile phone in either the jeans or jacket she had taken to search, so he had been sober enough to remember to hide it. She had discreetly opened the bedroom door later that night and thrown them back in onto the floor.
Dermot digested what she had said and chose to ignore the ‘up to something’ comment, though Sandra noted he looked uncomfortable.
“What about that despicable poser brother of his – Tom? Can’t he help out, give him a few days’ work in that poncy clothes shop of his?”
“No, I called him already and he had absolutely no interest in our situation whatsoever.”
“Is Neil mad? Sorry, Sandra – I mean, what do I know, it’s nothing to do with me, is it?”
The two men had never been friendly. “I don’t know, Dermot, maybe he is mad. I honestly don’t know. The going to bed every time he walks in the door just means he wants to be as far away from me as possible because I can smell perfume a mile off and because he doesn’t care enough to run straight to the shower.”
Dermot looked straight between Midnight’s pricked-forward ears.
“I have been so caught up in my own world too, though, since I took on the full-time position at the hotel and we have had . . . well, we have tried . . .” She coughed now but wanted to go on. “Well, we have had issues getting pregnant – we’ve been doing IVF and I suppose it has taken over our, well, my life in a way. To be honest, Dermot, I can’t really remember the last time I talked to Neil properly.” She was glad the words were out but felt awful for betraying Neil’s trust. He had begged her never to tell anyone they were doing IVF.
Dermot just nodded. “So I’m presuming it didn’t work, the baby-medicine stuff?” he asked softly.
“No, it didn’t.” She shook her head and the hat fell over her eyes again.
“Do you think he’s depressed over that?”
She pushed the hat up. “You know, I don’t, I really don’t think he cared too much either way. It was mainly me. I really wanted . . . I still really want . . . a baby . . .”
“At any cost? And I don’t mean financial?” Dermot pulled up Midnight and Bolto halted too. The floodlights from the arena shone brightly in Dermot’s face. His blond hair was blowing under the back of the hat.
Sandra paused and thought about his question. “Yeah, maybe.”
Dermot clicked and they were off. They rode in silence for a few minutes. She felt she was getting some sort of hang of it.
“See what happens with time, I suppose,” he said then. “There’s not much else you can do and maybe things will work themselves out soon enough, what?”
He looked at her and she plastered a smile on her face.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” She pulled at Bolto’s reins. “So a question I suppose I should have asked ages ago . . . where are the brakes? Like, how do I make him stop?”
***
Cara took her seat at her laptop in the back office. Sandra wasn’t yet on reception and she wanted some quiet time before the other woman’s start. The scent of Sandra’s perfume filled the small office, not overpowering but sweet. Like grapefruit. Jo Malone, she guessed. She too had bought into the Jo Malone hype until it just became too expensive to condone.
She had to make a lot of decisions today with the wedding couple, Jenny and Max. She wanted this wedding to be a sign of things to come. She wanted to talk to Jenny and then Jonathan about using it as a tool for the new website. She had spoken to Mr Paul Power at The Park Studios in Dublin and they were willing to come and take some video clips for a really reasonable price to embed into the site. They had a wonderful reputation so she was thrilled. She knew the Moritz website needed a better wedding page and a video of a wonderful Christmas wedding would bring in many more bookings, she knew. She also wanted the day to look fantastic and for Jenny and Max to give them a rave review for the site. She was meeting with them at ten this morning to finalise monies and get stuck into details. She had priced the crystals and beading via a wedding website that morning, she had emailed Louise in the village about making the wedding cake, and she had priced four bands that she wanted the couple to take a look at. Then there was the wine and champagne. They would do a taste this morning before they met with Delphine the chef and try some sample dishes that she had made for them. She was presenting a variety of options and Cara knew they would all be of the highest quality.
Yes, her list for this morning’s meeting was long.
She decided to go to the staff room and pour herself a large coffee first. Jonathan was already in there.
“Good morning, Cara! Lovely morning, isn’t it?” he said cheerfully.
“Morning, Jonathan, it is – cold though.” She smiled at him as she made straight for the coffee pot.
“It’s nice, strong. Mrs Reilly put it on this morning for us. You’re in early?”
He leaned against the wall, his red Nestlé coffee mug in hand, his black suit and white shirt crisp and very professional-looking. He looked every inch a hotel manager, she thought.
“Yeah, I have a meeting with the wedding clients and I want to make sure I’m up to scratch.” She added some cream.
“I’m sure you will be. Do you need me for anything?” He was blowing into his cup now, short raspy blows.
She had to ask. “How is that too hot? The temperature of that coffee machine is always so perfect – it’s why I love it so much. Top of the range, Big Bob tells me every time he pours a coffee.”
“Ah, it’s a habit I picked up from the hotel I worked at in London. I’d always put my coffee in the microwave. I’m afraid we didn’t have as good a machine there. I never even taste things any more – just reach for the micro. I have to stop.”
She smiled and sipped her coffee, enjoying the Robusta flavour.
“Actually I wanted to talk to you about an idea I have for the hotel website?”
“Sure, drop up to me in my office later?”
She
nodded.
“How is Mr Peter’s cottage working out for you?” he asked.
“It’s good, yeah. I have a lot to do to make it homely but I’m really happy.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s he got you doing, the old miser?”
She laughed. “Ah, he’s fine – he basically said I could decorate it any way I wanted.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet he did. I’ve been on at him to do that place up before I agreed to put it on my accommodation list for the hotel staff. Listen, let me help. Let me give you some of the hotel supplies we have in the storage room – paint, brushes and that. And I can lend some muscle if you like?”
The Other Side of Wonderful Page 8