It was probably true, though. No one knew how painful a divorce was unless they’d firsthand experience of it. It felt as if…you were being physically ripped in half. There was no other way of describing it. Her whole life, everything she’d invested in and worked for, had been shredded as though none of it had mattered. Anyone would be a little ‘brittle’ after that. Wouldn’t they?
‘Mint?’
She looked up to find Miles was holding out a plate of gold-wrapped mints. Jemima took one.
‘Rachel? Do you want one?’
‘Thank you.’
Jemima slowly unwrapped the foil-covered mint and let the conversation swirl around her. Miles Kingsley had turned out to be good company. At work he seemed…well…a complete caricature of what she’d imagined a playboy would be like.
It offended her that he seemed to select his dates with no more care than you would make a decision between a chocolate with a cream-filled centre and one with a nutty coating. Even more offensive was the way he discarded them days later, with as little thought.
It seemed the chase was what interested him. Winning. It was as though he were playing some complicated game of his own devising, and when he’d won he lost interest.
Not surprisingly, it wasn’t that simple. Miles was a much more complicated man. She’d wanted to dislike him, but she’d not been able to. Jemima spread out the foil wrapper and gently smoothed out the creases.
Maybe it was no more than that she disliked being at Kingsley and Bressington so much that it coloured her opinion of anything and everyone there. Tonight she had to admit that Miles had been fun. Kind, too. If discussing the various merits of a chocolate wedding cake over a traditional fruit one had bored her, it must surely have pushed him close to the edge.
In any case, she thought, smoothing out the final crease, his erudite endorsement of an assortment of cheeses and warm bread in favour of any cake had her vote.
Miles’s low laugh made her look up. ‘I haven’t seen anyone do that since school,’ he said, holding out his mint wrapper to her.
Jemima looked back down at the perfectly smooth gold square and back into his laughing blue eyes. A hard lump seemed stuck in her throat.
He had the most amazing eyes. So sexy. She felt like a rabbit caught in the glare of oncoming headlights. She couldn’t look away. Couldn’t speak either.
‘I used to do that,’ Rachel said, spreading her own wrapper out in front of her. ‘It always used to rip, though.’
Alistair leant back in his chair. ‘That’s because you rush it. Jemima’s got patience.’
Finally Jemima managed to find her voice, albeit a huskier one than usual. ‘Jemima’s got two boys who need amusing when they go out to Sunday lunch. I make a pretty good job of putting After Eight Mint envelopes inside each other too.’
She took Miles’s wrapper and carefully eased out the creases. She was aware of Miles’s soft laughter and Rachel’s cry of irritation when her wrapper tore. Jemima kept her eyes focused on the gold paper until the last crease disappeared and she was left with a shiny square.
‘Beautifully done,’ Miles said softly.
He made even that sound seductive. No wonder he had women falling over themselves to go out to dinner with him. Like lemmings on a cliff…
Daft. She didn’t like to think how dreadful they must feel when he didn’t phone, didn’t make any effort to contact them again.
Alistair reached out for a mint. ‘So, what kind of wedding will you have, Miles? When the time comes.’
‘Shotgun,’ he answered quickly amid raucous laughter. ‘If the time comes.’
Rachel screwed up her foil wrapper in exasperation and placed it on her plate. ‘It’ll come. Some woman will sneak up on you and you’ll be up the aisle before you know it.’
‘She’ll have to be SAS trained,’ Miles said lazily. ‘I think I’ve got my defences in place.’
He wasn’t joking. Miles clearly enjoyed his life exactly as it was, Jemima thought. As long as there were women out there foolish enough to risk their hearts spending time with him, he’d probably go on enjoying it. Why wouldn’t he?
Jemima glanced down at her wrist-watch and noticed with surprise how very late it was. The candles dotted around the courtyard had come into their own, but it was beginning to feel cold. She rubbed at her arms.
‘Are you getting chilly?’ Rachel asked. ‘Perhaps we’d better move inside.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s late. I ought to be going home.’
‘Now?’
Jemima held out her wrist to show her watch. ‘It’s nearly eleven. It’s going to take me half an hour to get back.’
‘You can’t go yet. I’ve not shown you my shoes,’ Rachel protested.
‘You can’t go before she’s done that,’ Alistair concurred. ‘Miles, more coffee?’
Within minutes she’d been taken to the guest room and Rachel had carefully shut the door. ‘Sit on the bed,’ she said, opening the wardrobe and reaching up to the top shelf.
Jemima sat down on the deep red eiderdown. Rachel carried the shoe box over and perched next to her. She opened the box as though it contained a live thing. Inside, loving packaged in tissue paper, was a pair of exquisite shoes. They were the colour of rich clotted cream and had seriously pointed toes. Not exactly medieval, but Jemima could see why Rachel had fallen in love with them.
‘Are they comfortable?’
Rachel laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. They’re beautiful.’
There was a rap on the door.
‘Don’t come in,’ Rachel shouted, hurrying to put the shoe box back at the top of the wardrobe.
Alistair’s voice sounded through the closed door. ‘Come on out of there, you two. Miles is about to leave.’
‘I’m just coming.’ She smiled across at Jemima. ‘I can’t believe I’m getting married. Can you believe it? I’m so excited.’
Jemima smiled back, but was relieved when Rachel turned away to open the bedroom door. It was hard to keep up the façade that any of this mattered. In reality, married life had nothing to do with the choice of shoes.
As Jemima picked her handbag from off the bed she heard Rachel say, ‘Miles, do you really have to go now?’
‘I’m afraid I do.’
‘Me too.’ Jemima appeared in the doorway.
‘You’re both very boring,’ Rachel said, tucking beneath Alistair’s arm.
Miles picked up his leather jacket from the hall chair and shrugged himself into it. His black jeans and thick black T-shirt had been sharp, but the jacket took it up another notch. Jemima looked away.
He was actually, she thought, a terrifying kind of man. Too gorgeous to be real, more like someone who’d been airbrushed to perfection.
Instinctively she smoothed down the hopelessly creased linen of her dress and immediately hoped he hadn’t noticed. She glanced up at him and caught the wicked glint in his eyes—whatever that meant.
‘It was lovely to meet you, Miles,’ she said hurriedly, aware her voice sounded slightly breathy.
The glint in his eyes intensified. ‘You, too.’ He leant forward to kiss her cheek. ‘Unexpected, but…lovely.’
It was no more than a peck, but Jemima hadn’t anticipated the way it would feel. His hand was strong and warm against her arm and his lips seemed to burn on her cheek. When he stepped back it was as much as she could do not to raise a hand to her face. She glanced over at him, wondering whether he’d noticed anything, hoping he hadn’t, but female enough to be irritated when he seemed not to have.
‘Thanks for a great evening,’ he said as he kissed Rachel before turning and placing a casual slap on Alistair’s left shoulder.
Jemima forced herself to move. ‘It was fun.’ She reached up to kiss Alistair’s cheek. ‘And the food was delicious.’
Alistair smiled down at her. ‘Not the figs.’
‘Agreed,’ Miles said as he opened the front door. ‘The figs need work.’
‘I’ll ring you,’ w
as Rachel’s parting shot. ‘I’ll arrange another evening when we can all get together.’
‘That’ll be good,’ Miles said, stepping out on to the pavement.
Jemima followed. As the door closed she took a deep breath and stopped to rummage through her handbag for her car keys.
‘You survived,’ Miles remarked.
She glanced up to find him standing a few feet away from her and her stomach flipped over at the lazy laughter in his blue eyes. Whatever it was he had, he really should bottle it. It was intoxicating. ‘So did you.’
‘But I was saved the shoe ordeal. Are they particularly medieval, would you say?’
Jemima choked on an unexpected laugh. ‘I think a twelfth century peasant might have struggled with the three-inch heels, but…’ She smiled. ‘Rachel’s going to look beautiful…which, I suppose, is the idea.’
He made a noise that sounded remarkably like a ‘humph’. ‘Alistair will think she looks stunning if she turns up in jeans. He can’t believe his luck she’s agreed to marry him.’ He pulled out his own car keys from his jacket pocket. ‘I’m inclined to think they’ll be all right, buck the statistics, don’t you? They seem good together.’
Jemima glanced back at the blue-painted front door. ‘Yes. They are,’ she said slowly, turning back to him. ‘Really good together.’ Then. ‘I—I’m sorry I said anything about the dandelion. I shouldn’t have—’
‘You’re apologising to me?’ he interrupted, seemingly surprised. Then he smiled. ‘It worked, you know. Dinner date on Friday. Keira rang as soon as the delivery hit her desk.’
Jemima’s eyes widened. ‘Good grief.’
The lines at the sides of Miles’s eyes crinkled. ‘Wouldn’t have been so successful with you, then?’
‘Absolutely not!’ Jemima smiled up at him. ‘I’d probably have sent you back a daisy. Can’t think of a rhyme at the moment, but I’m sure I’d have come up with something suitably scathing.’
The blue eyes took on a deeper glint. She loved the way they did that. It made her feel irresponsible, somehow.
‘That would have been irresistible.’
He was only teasing—but he was very sexy. Jemima looked away. It was going to make Monday morning a bit difficult. She’d preferred it when she’d been able to keep him in a nice, safe mental box marked ‘temporary boss—self-assured philanderer’.
‘Where are you parked?’
It took a moment before she understood what he’d asked. ‘Oh, not far. Just down there.’ She nodded down the pavement.
‘I’ll walk you down.’
‘There’s no need, I—’
‘It’s late,’ he said, cutting across her, ‘it’s dark and even my mother would think it okay to accept.’
‘Your mother?’ Jemima said, confused. What had his mother got to do with anything?
The lines at the edges of his eyes crinkled. ‘You don’t know?’
She shook her head. Didn’t know what, exactly?
‘My mother’s Hermione Kingsley. I would have thought Rachel would have told you. Most people can’t resist it.’
Jemima knew she looked blank for a moment and then she clicked who Hermione Kingsley was. Serious journalist and staunch feminist. Perhaps the most famous single parent of them all… Her thought processes clicked up another gear. ‘In that case, you must be…’ she said slowly.
‘Exactly.’ He nodded, his eyes once again alight with laughter. ‘A social experiment and the most public product of a sperm donation bank.’
Jemima wasn’t quite sure what her reaction should be. She hadn’t expected he’d say anything like that.
‘She tells me it’s something to be proud of and I like to think she put a great deal of effort into her choice of donor.’
‘I imagine you do,’ she replied a little primly and he burst out laughing. ‘W-what?’
Miles shook his head, still laughing. ‘And you really hope she washed her hands after…’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Jemima protested, her own lips twitching.
‘At least you don’t have to feel guilty about letting me walk you to your car. Even my mother believes that personal safety has to take precedence over higher ideals of equality.’
‘I suppose if your mother approves.’
His answering glint had her stomach twisting itself into knots. It really was no wonder he could get away with sending a dandelion. She had the strongest feeling he could get away with practically anything.
Her car really was only a few paces down the road. Jemima stopped next to her battered Volvo. ‘This is it,’ she said self-consciously.
Not by so much as a flicker did his eyes give away his opinion of her car. That took some skill, as it was a complete rust heap. She put her key in the lock and turned it.
‘Look,’ he said after a short pause, ‘I’m really sorry about…earlier. I was out of order.’
Jemima looked over her shoulder. ‘That’s okay.’
‘It isn’t. It was crass.’
She straightened up. ‘Okay, it was crass,’ she agreed with a smile, ‘but you didn’t know I was standing in the doorway.’
‘No, but… Just how much of what Alistair and I were saying did you overhear?’
He looked more uncomfortable than she’d ever seen him. Not so pleased with himself this time. It was funny. ‘Pretty much all of it.’ Miles groaned and Jemima laughed. ‘I got the bit about my clothes looking like my mother’s—’
‘You look lovely tonight,’ he cut in softly.
Her stomach flipped over and all of a sudden she didn’t want to laugh any more. This felt dangerous. She couldn’t cope with it. She didn’t know the rules of the game and it made her feel scared. ‘Stop it!’
‘What?’
‘You can’t resist flirting, can you? Does anyone ever take you seriously?’
He said nothing—and it was immensely satisfying to feel back in control.
Jemima swallowed. ‘Where was I?’ she asked, trying to recapture the light mood. ‘Oh, yes, I heard the bit about my arriving late and leaving early. Not wanting to socialise—’
‘You got it all,’ Miles said, holding up his hand to stop her. ‘I’m really sorry. I had no business talking about you like that.’
He seemed genuine. Jemima shrugged and turned back to her car. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ His words had hurt, but not as much as he might imagine. She’d never valued the way she looked. How could she when she would always be in the shadow of a super-model sister. ‘I know I don’t fit into the Kingsley and Bressington image.’
‘I was out of order.’
She turned in time to see Miles thrust an agitated hand through his dark hair. ‘Your timekeeping is fine. You’re always there by nine-thirty and don’t leave until six. That’s exactly what we asked for.’
‘I did tell Amanda. It’s because the boys need to be—’
‘It’s fine,’ he cut her off firmly. ‘Nine-thirty is fine.’ He frowned and then asked, ‘Will you be in on Monday?’
‘No choice. I promised Amanda I’d stay for the duration. She thinks it’s all good experience for me.’ On Friday when she’d posted her time sheet back that had been a grim prospect, but it didn’t feel so bad any more. ‘Besides,’ she added with a sudden grin, ‘she told me on Friday afternoon how pleased you were with my work. Now, unless you were lying to her…’
His crack of laughter made her feel terrific. She didn’t want to think why. She opened the car door.
‘Jemima?’
She turned. ‘Yes?’
‘Why didn’t you tell Rachel we’d met?’
Jemima smiled. ‘Same reason you didn’t, I imagine—just too complicated.’
‘True.’
She climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘One or the other is going to need to ring Amanda, though. If we leave it to chance she’s bound to say something to Rachel and then we’ll look very stupid.’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘What will you say?’
<
br /> ‘Don’t know.’ Miles rested his hand on the car door, preventing her from closing it. ‘The truth usually works best. Might have to be a little sparing with it, but basically I’ll stick to the truth.’
Jemima laughed again and put her keys into the ignition. Miles took that as his cue to shut the car door and then he stepped back on the pavement, clearly waiting until she drove off. She just prayed that this was one of those occasions when her Volvo started without trouble.
Please, she murmured. Just start.
Somehow it wasn’t a surprise when the engine turned over without firing up. Jemima closed her eyes and sent up a tiny arrow prayer, then tried the engine again.
Of course, it shouldn’t matter at all that her car was failing in front of Miles Kingsley. It didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t. It was just…
If there was any justice in the world she’d have twisted the ignition key and her old Volvo would have risen to the occasion and purred away into the distance.
‘Problems?’
Just life. Her life. She couldn’t even make a stylish exit. Jemima pinned a smile on her face and wound down the window. ‘It’s a little temperamental. Sometimes is doesn’t start straight away. I’ll give it a little rest and try again in a minute.’
‘Sounds like the battery’s flat.’
Yep, it sounded like that to her. You didn’t need to be a mechanic to know that the battery sounded as dead as a dodo. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. Don’t bother waiting. If there’s a problem I can ring for a taxi.’
‘Try it again.’
It seemed he wasn’t going anywhere. Jemima twisted the key again and the silence was deafening. Sometimes it helped if she pumped the accelerator, but mostly what helped was the downhill run she had from her house. Once it was going it was usually fine.
Of course, she could always suggest he gave her a push. Sometimes that worked well… There was a part of her that wished she had the audacity to do it. The mental image of an impeccably dressed Miles Kingsley pushing a battered old Volvo had a certain appeal. But if it didn’t work she’d be left blocking the road and, worse than that, her temporary boss would then get the opportunity to see how difficult she found reverse parking…
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