by Fiona Harper
‘How’s that party you’ve been planning with Sara?’ he asked her. She’d been mulling over restaurant and hotel websites for weeks now, looking up all sorts of bizarre things on the Web. When he’d asked her about it she’d just mumbled something about planning an ‘event’, which was usually Saffron-speak for a party. He’d thought it was a great idea at the time, something to take her mind off her current troubles, but that didn’t seem to be working, especially as she looked blankly at him for a second.
‘Oh, yes!’ she finally said, brightening considerably. ‘It’s all going along splendidly. We’re having great fun planning it all.’
He frowned for a second. ‘And when is it again?’
She put her glass down and laughed, a little nervously. ‘I’ve told you before, Alex—honestly, I’m sure you don’t listen to a word I say—it’s a Christmas party.’
He nodded but his forehead creased again. ‘Yes, but what’s the date…?’
Saffron flicked her hair back from her shoulder. ‘The twenty-first—No. I mean the twentieth. Sometime around then. We haven’t quite nailed it down yet.’
He sipped his beer, still staring at her. Saffron might be a bit ditzy in most areas of her life, but one thing she took very seriously was her social calendar. She never kept a diary, not even on her phone, but she always knew the exact date and time of every party she attended, every function she’d agreed to go to. So why couldn’t she remember the date of her own Christmas bash? It was most odd.
He decided to change the subject. If Saffron needed to keep busy to stop her from moping, he had an idea. ‘What are you doing this afternoon?’
‘Why?’
‘There’s this great new space in Shoreditch, a converted fire station that the owner is intending to use for events and all sorts of artsy things. They’ve got gallery space. I’ve arranged to go and meet the owner to chat about doing an exhibition. Why don’t you come and keep me company?’
She grimaced. ‘Sorry, darling. Can’t make it.’
‘Oh?’
She didn’t elaborate, just summoned a waiter to take their food orders.
Once he’d scurried away, Alex pushed a little bit harder. ‘What are you up to?’
Saffron blinked at him, eyes wide and innocent. ‘When?’
‘This afternoon. Or are you still thinking you need a passport to travel into the East End?’
Instead of smacking him playfully, like she usually did when he made a crack like that, she looked back at him seriously. ‘I’m meeting someone.’
‘More party planning with Sara?’ he asked.
Saffron looked both surprised and happy all at once. ‘Yes. Of course. That makes complete sense, doesn’t it? Sara and I are getting together to check out a venue for the Christmas thing.’ For some reason she avoided making eye contact. Then she spotted someone she knew in a crowd coming through the front door and leaped out of her seat to run over so they could squeal and air-kiss noisily. It was as if the pensive Saffron he’d walked in with had disappeared.
Alex stared straight ahead and tore his bread roll open. For the last week or so he’d thought all of Saffron’s strange behaviour—her faraway moods, her being incommunicado for chunks of time when she normally was glued to her phone, her vague explanations for where she’d been—was because she was stewing over this latest round of press attention.
Now he wasn’t so sure. There was only one conclusion he could draw from the exchange they’d just had.
If Saffron was meeting Sara this afternoon, then he was just about to don Darcey Bussell’s tutu and dance Swan Lake at the Opera House.
No, it was absolutely clear that Saffron—the girl he’d picked precisely because of her openness and lack of guile—was hiding something from him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Saffron flicked her long golden waves over her shoulder and stared at the folder Nicole had presented to her. Nicole sat on the edge of one of the armchairs in the meeting room at the back of Hopes & Dreams, her hands clasped together as she searched her client’s face for a reaction. She kept telling herself not to hold her breath, but she kept finding herself doing it anyway.
‘What do you think?’ she finally said, when Saffron had been staring at a particular page for at least a minute.
Saffron looked up, seeming slightly dazed. ‘Oh…It all looks, well, splendid.’
Nicole swallowed. Saffron did not seem her usual self today. She was trying not to overthink that and come up with a million reasons why that might be her fault, but she wasn’t doing very well. Mainly because she felt like an utter heel sitting here with Saffron like nothing had happened.
Okay, nothing actually had happened.
But it felt as if it had. And that was what counted.
‘We tend to try to come up with key themes and words for our proposals—to capture the essence of the person being proposed to—and use those to keep us on track when we get down to setting details in stone,’ she explained. ‘The three words we came up with for Alex, and his proposal, were: dynamic, wild and intimate.’
Saffron just blinked at her.
‘Dynamic, because Alex seems to be a full-on kind of guy,’ she carried on, hoping the reason Saffron had left the way open for her was because she wanted a fuller explanation. ‘We thought something different, something exciting would be up his street. We also came up with wild—not in the party-till-your-brain-falls-out-your-skull kind of sense,’ she added, attempting a smile, ‘but wild in the sense of rugged and untamed. Doing something outdoorsy might well be up his street.’
Nicole had come to understand that if you really wanted to show the person you wanted to marry that you meant business, then giving them what they yearned for in their heart was the key. Like Warren had done with Cheryl—she’d secretly yearned for a bit of Bond excitement and he’d worked that out and had given it to her.
All anyone had to do was take a look at Alex’s photographs, his landscapes, to see where his heart was. It was all about letting the person you loved know that you really got them, really saw what was inside. Nicole knew that if she could get her clients to not only dazzle their prospective fiancées with glitz and show, but to find a way to let the proposal touch that secret place in their heart, then a ‘yes’ was just about guaranteed.
‘What was number three again?’ Saffron asked.
‘Intimate.’ Nicole’s voice came out a little husky. She closed her eyes and looked away, trying to hide the blush that was creeping up her cheeks. ‘It’s hot in here, isn’t it? I’ll open a window.’
She got up and walked away from Saffron, cracked the large sash window on the back wall open a little, glad of the chilly air that quickly rushed in and cooled her skin. She’d settled on intimate because that was how Alex always made her feel—as if the world had closed in and it was only the two of them. Everything else was just peripheral. She couldn’t seem to imagine him without feeling that sense of intimacy.
He must make Saffron feel like that too. No wonder she wanted to marry him.
Nicole felt sick, even though she knew Saffron held all the rights and it was she who was the interloper.
She cleared her throat and turned back to Saffron. ‘I think something simple, just the two of you, but unusual and exciting would be the ticket. Now we just have to narrow down the different ideas and pick one.’ She walked back over to her chair and sat down. ‘Did you see the one where we’d hire a boat to take him to a restored Victorian lighthouse on the white cliffs of Dover? Think crashing waves and wild and dramatic coastline. It’s not in use any more, but has been turned into a luxury getaway. We’d leave a trail of candles and clues to lead him up to the top, where you’d be waiting for him…’
Saffron snapped the folder closed and looked at Nicole with sudden and unusual intensity. ‘Do you believe in love? The kind that lasts forever?’
Nicole took a moment to reorient herself. She gave Saffron one of her best smiles. ‘I’m kind of in the wrong business if I do
n’t.’
Saffron nodded, as if she’d said something meaningful and important.
Nicole leaned forward and looked at her sympathetically. ‘It’s perfectly normal to get a case of the jitters, you know, especially at this point in the proceedings, when everything starts to get a little…well, real.’
‘It’s just…’ Saffron broke off and looked at the closed folder on the coffee table. ‘I wonder if I have it in me to be a good wife. My father…Well, he doesn’t think I can stick with anything. And the whole of the UK press seem to back him up.’
To be honest, she didn’t know Saffron well enough to answer that question truthfully. ‘It’s not for me to judge you, Saffron. What do you think? Do you think you’ll be a good wife?’ She was going to add ‘to Alex’, but she couldn’t seem to make the words leave her mouth.
The look of fear and concern disappeared from Saffron’s face. ‘I’m so glad I came to you for this, Nicole.’ She let out a little laugh. ‘It’s funny—you remind me of Alex in a way.’
Nicole’s heart jolted at the mere thought that anything, even a tenuous observation of Saffron’s, could link her with him. ‘I do?’
Saffron nodded. ‘He’s just about the only person I know who takes me as I am, who doesn’t try to change me, to make me “better”. Do you know how tiring it is to try and live up to something you’re not?’
Nicole bobbed her head in agreement. She had a funny feeling she did.
‘But Alex doesn’t look down on me, doesn’t make me feel as if everything I do is wrong. And I need someone like that in my life at the moment…especially with what they’ve been saying about me in the papers. He helps balance that all out. When I start to doubt myself, he makes me feel I’m okay.’
Nicole held back a sigh. Yes, Alex did that for her too. Even when she messed up and veered completely from the plan. She knew just how warm and tingly it could make a girl feel inside.
‘And when you find that sort of person, you really should hang on to them, right? Not let them go…’
She nodded again. If only she could, she thought to herself. If only she’d realised that back at New Year, before Saffron had even met him. But she’d been too blind, too stupid, too focused on her own idea of perfection and what she needed to do to achieve it, to see what the universe had dangled under her nose. ‘No, you shouldn’t let that kind of person go…’ She looked intently at Saffron as she said her next words. ‘If you love them.’
Saffron made a large, slightly dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘I adore him! But you’ve met Alex…Everyone loves him, don’t they?’
Nicole nodded quietly, not sure she’d really got the answer she’d been fishing for.
Saffron stopped smiling and became a little more serious, catching her mood maybe. ‘I know Alex and I had a rough patch a little while ago…I think he thought I was encased in my own little “Saffron bubble”, as he likes to call it, and I wasn’t really there for him unless I needed something, but I’ve matured. I’m ready to prove him wrong. I’m ready to prove everyone wrong!’ She grinned at Nicole, a sparkly little smile inviting her to be a co-conspirator. ‘And I can’t wait to see the look on my father’s face when I tell him I’m getting married!’ She threw the folder down on the coffee table with a triumphant slap. ‘Let’s go for it!’
‘Which option?’
She shrugged and made a dismissive gesture with her hands. ‘They’re all lovely, but I think we need to work on some more scenarios—I’m thinking a big flash mob in Trafalgar Square with a party at the Savoy afterwards, everyone invited, or going to a West End show and dragging him down from the balcony to propose to him live onstage before the last curtain call. Can you come up with something along those lines?’
She looked so hopefully at Nicole that Nicole couldn’t do anything but nod silently. She thought of the hours of work she’d put into that folder, each idea that was perfectly tailored to what she’d found out about Alex, to what she thought he’d really like. ‘Of course I can,’ she said, stretching her cheeks into a smile.
What the client wanted the client got. It was Saffron’s proposal, after all, not hers.
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘Oh, my goodness! Sit down, will you?’ Peggy exclaimed loudly and suddenly.
Nicole had been staring out of the front windows at Hopes & Dreams. She turned and stared at her friend. ‘What’s got into you?’
Mia was sitting at Nicole’s desk. She’d left work a little early to drop in and give Nicole some help with her accounting software. So far she’d been squinting at the screen and frowning a lot. Now she looked up.
Peggy shook her head. ‘You’ve been pacing backwards and forwards for the last half an hour. It’s doing my head in. And every time I think you’ve finally stopped and you sit down, you’re up again two minutes later. I’m a very visual person,’ she said with a dramatic flounce. ‘And I’m supposed to be designing a website banner, and I can’t concentrate with you prowling around in my peripheral vision.’
‘Sorry,’ Nicole said, maybe a little tightly, and since her chair was occupied, she walked stiffly over to the purple sofa and sat down. ‘Pacing helps me think. You know that.’
Peggy shook her head. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I think I’d prefer to watch an endless loop of Pretty in Pink to all this extraneous movement.’
Nicole found herself tensing her leg muscles, ready to stand again, and forced herself to stay seated. Okay. She hadn’t realised she’d been doing it, but maybe Peggy had a point.
Mia took her hand off the mouse and turned to look at Nicole. ‘What’s got your brain tied up in knots? Is it Saffron’s proposal?’
Nicole shook her head. ‘No. That’s not it. I’m actually thinking about here…the shop.’
Peggy picked herself up from where she’d sprawled her top half across the desk. ‘What about the shop?’
Nicole stood up again, took one look at Peggy’s face and perched herself on the edge of the desk. She took a moment to scan the room, took in the cutesy hearts, the funky photos, the blaring fuchsia wall. ‘I think we need to redecorate,’ she said simply.
Both Peggy’s and Mia’s mouths dropped open.
‘But you’ve only been in here since April,’ Mia said. ‘And you worked really hard getting it the way it is. Why on earth would you want to change it all again?’
‘Because we may need to if we want to keep attracting new clients like Saffron,’ she explained, folding her arms.
Peggy narrowed her eyes and looked at her. ‘You’ve been acting weird all week. First of all it was Sunday’s Brat Pack marathon, and then come Monday morning you were all spruced up, superefficient, supercool, more than a little scary…and you’ve been gathering momentum all week! Thank goodness it’s Friday tomorrow, or I’d start to get really terrified.’
‘I’m fine,’ Nicole said lightly. ‘Really I am.’
Or she would be. Once she remembered who she was aiming to be, all the things she wanted from life, instead of yearning for other people’s boyfriends.
She shouldn’t want him. Not just because he belonged to her most important client, but because he was a clear and present danger to her goals. How could he be anything else? Every time she was around him, everything unravelled.
She glanced across at Peggy to find her friend still studying her intently.
Peggy stood up and rested her curvaceous derrière against her desk. ‘Has this got something to do with the cowboy?’ Nicole blinked in surprise. ‘No,’ she said, rather quickly. ‘It’s got nothing to do with him. After this weekend, our working relationship—our fake working relationship, I might hasten to add—will be over and it’ll be back to business as usual.’
Peggy pouted. ‘I like our office the way it is, and I don’t see why we have to change it.’
Well, that was understandable, thought Nicole, seeing as Peggy had steamrollered her into some of the design decisions—especially the colours. She took a moment to collect her
self. She had to say this the right way or she’d offend Peggy further, and that was the last thing she wanted to do.
‘I just think that if we’re going to be attracting more upmarket clients, maybe we need to start thinking about having premises to match.’
Peggy stiffened.
‘It took all of our three combined savings accounts to get this place up to scratch,’ Mia said. She was starting to look a little bit agitated too. Her jaw tensed and she gave Nicole a hard look through her glasses. ‘It makes no business sense to spend yet more money on something you don’t need. Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself?’
Nicole shook her head. She really didn’t think she was.
‘You’re forgetting that Saffron came to us anyway,’ Peggy said, turning round and flumping back down into her desk chair. ‘She liked us just the way we are. Why do we need to change anything?’
Also forgetting she was supposed to stay anchored, Nicole stood up and walked over to the window, looked out across the courtyard to the cafe. A group of young mums had congregated near the shop door and there was a bit of a traffic jam with the pushchairs. She looked back at Peggy and Mia. ‘Saffron was the exception, though, not the rule. She would have hooked up with Minty and Celeste if she hadn’t had a very good reason not to. If we don’t want them to wipe the floor with us and steal all the best clients, we’re going to have to make it an even playing field.’
Or open war, she added mentally, but she kept that to herself.
‘And that might require a little bit of an image overhaul, whether we like it or not. Like I say, sometimes you’ve got to—’
‘Dress for the life you want,’ both Peggy and Mia chimed in.
‘Right,’ Nicole said, noticing the way both of them folded their arms and looked at her as she did so. ‘And the same applies to Hopes & Dreams. We need to dress for the clients we want…They’re not going to come otherwise.’