Harlequin Romance April 2021 Box Set

by Rebecca Winters

  When their waiter asked if they wanted another coffee, Eloise looked to Josh. He nodded. ‘And another puppuccino for Daisy?’ he asked.

  ‘But of course,’ she said, smiling. She was glad she’d have some more time with this thoughtful man. ‘What line of business are you in?’ she asked, to change the subject from the personal.

  ‘Tech entrepreneur just about covers it. As a teenager I started developing apps and trading gaming codes and went from there.’

  ‘Clever you,’ she said.

  So he was smart as well as handsome. He wore a very expensive watch and his jacket and trousers were tailor-made from Italian fabrics. She figured he was about her age, so she could add successful to the list of his attributes.

  ‘What about you?’ he said.

  ‘I’m a dress designer. Bridal wear mostly.’

  ‘Always a market for that, I guess,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said.

  But not for her. She made her living ensuring her clients’ dreams of fairy-tale weddings came true. However, she had no intention of walking up the aisle herself any time soon.

  Once, she’d been idealistic about the concept of romance, of falling in love at first sight the way her parents had—the story of their meeting at summer school had become family mythology—but those illusions had long been shattered. Perhaps because she had gone into her early relationships too ready to fall in love, and got too easily hurt and disillusioned as a result. These days she seemed to attract controlling men who hid behind superficial charm. Just because her business was ‘girly’—their word—and she liked dressing in a feminine, vintage-inspired style didn’t mean she wanted to be submissive. She’d escaped a difficult relationship a year ago and wasn’t looking for another one.

  ‘My gowns are exclusive and unique. I say without boasting that I have a long waiting list. Women in the know put their names down as soon as they think there’s a chance of their guy proposing. Or their girl in the case of a same-sex couple.’

  ‘It sounds a romantic way to make a living.’

  She laughed. ‘People often say that. Most of the time it is romantic and beautiful. To create an exquisite gown for a bride is a truly joyous thing. But have you heard the term Bridezilla?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quickly. Too quickly. ‘I...uh...have a friend who works in catering in Boston. She knows all about demanding Bridezillas.’

  Eloise wondered how serious the ‘friend’ was and noted that he didn’t wear a wedding band. It was just coffee, she reminded herself.

  ‘The stress of organising a wedding can bring out the worst in people. Dream weddings can turn into nightmares.’ She stopped herself. Okay, so she could get a touch cynical about happy-ever-afters that went wrong. But she would be wise to keep that level of detail to herself when she was chatting to a stranger.

  Since she’d gone to Los Angeles and dressed the bride and eight attendants for the extravagant wedding of mega American pop star Roxee—the diva used only the one name—Eloise had been pestered for interviews. And learned how easy it was to be misquoted. She was very careful what she said now and never revealed anything confidential about a client.

  ‘Thankfully Bridezillas are the exception,’ she continued. ‘Most brides are awesome and it’s lovely to work with people at such a happy time of their lives. There’s nothing I love more than being invited to their weddings. I go to mush and cry my eyes out every time.’

  ‘Do you have a retail outlet? A factory?’ She noticed he kept the conversation business-focused, which she liked. No disparaging ‘girly’ comments here, which she appreciated.

  ‘Yes, to the store—no, to the factory. I have a storefront. In the window I display just one perfect dress that changes weekly. There are fitting rooms at that level. Upstairs is my atelier, which is a fancy name for a designer’s workroom. But the French sounds classier, doesn’t it?’ She’d learned the term during her internship at a Paris couture bridal house.

  ‘Branding is everything,’ he said seriously.

  ‘Eloise Evans Atelier works for me,’ she said lightly. Her last boyfriend had been pushing her towards marriage. And expected that she would change her surname to his and her business name to reflect the change. As if!

  She had worked too hard to build up her business, to make sure it was hers and hers alone, and no one would be allowed to take it from her.

  ‘How long are you in Sydney?’ she asked.

  ‘Until tomorrow, then I fly to Melbourne,’ he said. ‘My time in Australia depends on how negotiations go with a start-up I want to buy.’ She understood he would be tight-lipped about the details of his business. It must be highly competitive.

  ‘I hope this lovely weather holds for the rest of your stay.’

  The waiter came with their bill. In spite of the agreement that she would pay for the coffee, as he wouldn’t let her pay for his dry cleaning, Josh went to pay for it. Eloise insisted she should pay. ‘I invited you,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  She didn’t like it when men high-handedly insisted on paying, as it too often became a ‘now you owe me’ situation. Another way of them trying to assert control over her independence that she fiercely resisted. Not that she thought that would be the case with Josh. She suspected it was purely good manners on his part. Thankfully, he graciously conceded.

  The waiter took their empty coffee cups away and an awkward silence fell between them that Eloise struggled to break. The sounds of the park—the clatter of cutlery in the café, Daisy’s breathing—became something intrusive.

  They spoke at the same time.

  ‘I have to go—’ she said.

  ‘Would it be out of order to—?’

  ‘To what?’ She held her breath for his answer.

  ‘Ask if you’re free for dinner tonight?’

  She didn’t know who was more surprised, Josh or her at her rapid reply. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I mean no, it wouldn’t be at all out of order.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  JOSH COULDN’T BLAME the dog, or Eloise, or anyone else but himself for his spontaneous dinner invitation. At that moment, the need to see Eloise again while he was in town had overwhelmed good sense.

  It had nothing to do with Tori or his self-appointed role of investigator. Fact was, he had enjoyed every second in Eloise’s company and didn’t want to say goodbye. There was something about her that fascinated him—and it wasn’t just the resemblance to his friend. It had been a long time since he’d anticipated a date with such enthusiasm. And because he was a visitor in town only briefly, the encounter could be contained to just the one evening without there being any expectations of further dates. It could be awkward explaining to women that he didn’t want the complication of commitment at this stage of his life.

  But his obligation to Tori was a complication. Back in his hotel in Double Bay, not far from Eloise’s atelier, he paced the room as he thought about what he would say to Tori. The time distance between Sydney and Boston meant late morning in Sydney was late evening back home. She would be anxiously waiting for his report on his sighting of her Australian lookalike, but he was curiously reluctant to speak to his friend. His reactions to the woman who must surely be Tori’s long-lost twin were too new, too unexpected, too private for him to be interrogated or teased in best female friend style.

  Josh wasn’t a man to draw out decisions. He’d got where he was by being decisive, and acting swiftly on a mix of intuition and canny market knowledge. Yet he here was being indecisive as hell. Over a woman.

  He knew that he could not lie to his friend about actually engaging with Eloise, sharing a coffee with her, arranging to see her again. Loyalty was important to him. In a world when even his own mother had ultimately proved disloyal, Tori and her family had been unfailingly loyal to him.

  He picked up the phone. Tori reacted to his news with predictable excitement, deman
ding to know every detail twice over. The possible finding of a long-lost sister was a big deal and he knew it. He had lost a sibling, through unmitigated selfishness and greed on his brother’s part, but it was a loss all the same and had left a brother-sized gap in his life. If Tori chose to make contact with Eloise she would find a kind person as besotted with dogs as she was. That could only be a blessing.

  He recounted the incident with the dog and her ball and how it had brought him into accidental contact with Eloise. He told her they’d had coffee, how he was convinced the two women must be twins. And that even though they’d grown up separated from the age of two they had a lot in common and he was convinced Tori would like Eloise a lot. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to pick up anything from his tone that revealed his unexpected and overwhelming attraction to Eloise.

  Tori sniffed back tears. She thanked him effusively for tracking Eloise down for her. He told her he was seeing Eloise for dinner and she didn’t object. Not that her objection would have stopped him. But he agreed again not to tell Eloise about Tori just yet.

  As soon as he put down the phone he realised how difficult he had made things for himself. If at some stage the twins met each other, he would be the bad guy for not having told Eloise the truth straight away. Immediately he dismissed the thought. Surely Eloise would see he had done the right thing by staying silent about his real purpose for being in the park this morning. It was Tori’s story to reveal, not his. He hoped she’d take action on it sooner rather than later.

  He turned his mind to his work. From when he’d first started in his line of business he’d had dealings with people from all around the world and, while much of his business was conducted online, he liked to meet people face to face. His personal touch had won him business others had missed out on. He was tough in negotiations, but always fair. The ideal was that all parties to the transaction walked away from the negotiating table believing they’d got a good deal. That way led to ongoing, profitable business relationships. The end game was, after all, profit. Every new million he made was a kick in the teeth for the father and brother who had written him off as unworthy.

  With recent world events, however, flights to Australia had been disrupted, so the point of this trip was to touch base with people he hadn’t seen for far too long. But when an important client of his digital app marketplace called with a suggestion to meet for dinner that night he straight away declined the invitation. Then took a pause when he realised it was the first time he’d put a date with a woman ahead of a business deal.

  * * *

  Eloise had arranged for Josh Taylor to meet her at a favourite restaurant in nearby Potts Point. As her mother might say, it was wise to stay cautious about a man she had picked up in the park. No matter how genuine he seemed or how attractive she found him.

  She’d quickly searched him online, of course—just enough to check if he was who he’d said he was—only to find he’d been remarkably self-effacing about his achievements. At twenty-nine, he was considered to be one of the world’s leading tech moguls. He also appeared in several lists of ‘most eligible bachelors’ in the United States. Who knew? And she’d thought him just a friendly fellow dog lover. She could have read up on him all day but she’d had to rush into work.

  But she made sure she and Daisy got back to her apartment in time for her to dress carefully for her date with Josh. Could she call it an actual date? He’d probably only suggested dinner because otherwise he’d be facing an evening alone in his hotel room and she was a friendly face. And that was okay because otherwise she would be curled up on the sofa, with Daisy at her feet, binge-watching TV.

  But it didn’t hurt to look her best. Despite its population of more than five million, Sydney was a small town—the eastern suburbs especially—and she never knew who she might see when she was out. Reputation was vital in her business and she couldn’t be seen to be dressed anything less than stylishly. Not that it was a hardship. She adored dressing up and wearing make-up.

  Tonight she was trialling one of her own designs, a heavy silk, full-skirted, calf-length nineteen-fifties-style dress in a flattering deep rose that she thought would be a hit for bridesmaids at a day-time wedding. She had a particular Bridezilla in mind, one who had told her she had directed her bridesmaids to lose weight so they’d all fit into the same size dresses.

  This dress required a trim waist, so might work for those particular attendants. She’d had to use all her diplomatic skills not to retort that if she were a bridesmaid, she would immediately resign from bridesmaid’s duties if any bride ever ordered her to lose weight, get a boob job, dye her hair to the wedding approved colour, or sign an agreement not to get pregnant before the bride’s big day.

  Eloise had heard them all. And every time was surprised at the women who went along with the crazy directives. Yet the perfect dress for the bride and for her attendants was a pivotal part of any wedding. It was her role to help every bride achieve her dream—the ideal gown for her fairy-tale wedding. What the bride and the bridesmaids did themselves wasn’t Eloise’s concern.

  That wasn’t a conversation she’d have with Josh over dinner though. Part of her success came from the fact that she always maintained strict confidentiality about her clients. Despite her design credentials, she would never have got the Roxee gig without her reputation for being scrupulous about her clients’ privacy. She’d had no qualms about signing the strict non-disclosure agreements, and both before and after Roxee’s wedding she had refused substantial sums to dish the dirt on what happened behind the scenes at celebrity weddings. In interviews she spoke about the thrill of working for the stars, snippets about her design process, but nothing that hadn’t been cleared by her clients. Her business would soon dry up if she was indiscreet. And she fiercely protected her business. It was something that was all her own and that gave her a certain sense of security in a world that had been turned upside down when she was thirteen and had never quite spun on the same axis again.

  Eloise was proud of what she had achieved. From making gorgeous original prom dresses for her friends at high school, to creating exclusive wedding dresses for clients including international superstars, her business brought her independence and fulfilment and she loved it.

  The early days of her career, working in established fashion houses, had made her all the more determined to strike out with her own business, where she wouldn’t be answerable to anyone. One well-known name had taken credit for her designs and then fired her when she’d asked for some acknowledgement—apparently all her work was his intellectual property and it said so in the contract she hadn’t properly read. She’d resigned from another who used cheap materials but charged huge prices to the bride. With her own business she could work the way she wanted—and if it failed she could only blame herself. She’d worked hard to make Eloise Evans Atelier the success it was. She would do anything to protect it. How a man could expect her to give it up or let him take a hand in its management was beyond her. And that was what the most recent man in her life had expected her to do if she’d married him.

  She should have seen the warning signs flashing around Craig sooner than she had. He’d been very good-looking and she’d fallen right back into that instant attraction trap. She’d been infatuated with him in the beginning and stupidly blinded to the reality of the man until finally her self-preservation mechanisms had kicked in. But not before he had inflicted serious damage to her self-esteem.

  Craig had drip-fed criticisms of her—sometimes in the guise of barbed compliments or ‘helpful’ advice—until she had started doubting herself, censoring her answers to him so they wouldn’t annoy him. He had pressed for an engagement but some deep instinct held her back. One day he had gone to kiss her and she hadn’t wanted to kiss him back. Not then. Not ever. When she’d finally broken up with him, he had shown his true colours in a stream of invective that had shattered her. Then she found out he’d been cheating on her. No w
onder she had soured on the idea of marriage. No wonder those old feelings of not being able to trust anyone close to her had resurfaced.

  Fortunately, she’d then been plunged into the distracting workload of Roxee’s wedding, which had involved several trips to LA, and there’d been no time for her to date.

  Josh had arrived at the restaurant before Eloise. As she came in she saw him sitting at the table he’d booked, head down as he scrolled through his phone. She took the opportunity to admire him. The man was every bit as hot as she remembered. And as well dressed. Sophisticated in a lightweight charcoal sweater—cashmere, she was sure—with the sleeves pushed up to reveal that bank-balance-defying watch, and black linen trousers.

  After the Craig fiasco more than a year ago, she hadn’t dated at all. Casual dinners with trusted male friends only. She was surprised at how content she was being single. It meant she could live her life on her terms, could work all hours without being accused of not giving her man enough attention. Or having to worry what he might be up to while she had to work—a particular kind of worry she could well do without.

  Of course, sometimes she got lonely for a man’s company, a man’s arms around her. Just that morning when she’d set off for her walk with Daisy she’d realised with a pang just how many couples there were in the park, from teenagers entwined around each other to silver-haired seniors holding hands. For a moment she’d felt suddenly alone in a world of couples. Until Daisy had sniffed out another single, quite probably the most attractive man in the park. And here he was now, waiting for her in her favourite restaurant. A casual, no-strings date with a handsome man might be just the lift her spirits needed.