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They’d ridden in his private lift down to the parking basement in total silence. With no choice but to go along with him, she was too angry to trust herself to attempt small talk.
Her sympathy was history. Sylvie no longer cared what he was feeling.
Smug self-satisfaction, no doubt, at putting her to the maximum possible inconvenience just because he could.
He led the way past an equally black and gleaming Aston Martin that was, no doubt, his personal transport. Fast and classy with voluptuous cream leather upholstery, it fitted his specification perfectly.
For a car or a wife.
Shame on Candy for dumping him; he deserved her!
They reached the van. He unlocked it, slid open the driver’s door and held out the keys.
She stared at them.
She’d been tempted to insist on driving the van herself, if only to reclaim a little of the control which he’d wrested from her the moment she’d arrived at his office. If he was really serious about charging her for using it—and nothing about him so far suggested he had a sense of humour; his smile, when he’d finally let it go, had been pure wolf—it seemed eminently reasonable.
She’d had Tom McFarlane up to the eyebrows; he’d used up every particle of goodwill and she didn’t want to spend one more minute with him than was absolutely necessary.
But she also wanted this over and done with as quickly as possible and had been counting on the fact that macho man wouldn’t be able to stand by and watch her load and unload the thing by herself.
She might, of course, be fooling herself about that. It was quite possible he’d enjoy watching her work up a sweat as she earned every penny of her—reduced—fee. She was already regretting that twenty per cent. She’d earned every penny of it this afternoon.
Too late now. She’d just have to think of the eighty per cent she would be paid. The money for all those suppliers who’d put their heart and soul into making Candy’s dream come true. And her reputation for being the kind of solid, dependable businesswoman whose word, in a business that was not short on flakes, meant something. Trust that had taken time to garner when her centuries-old name had, overnight, become a liability …
‘I’d come and give you a hand but I have to take delivery of a cake.’ Then, ‘Do you need a hand up?’
‘No, thanks,’ she snapped back, snatching the keys from him and tossing her bag on to the passenger seat. ‘I’ve got one of these and I frequently drive it myself.’
‘Not in that skirt or those heels, I’ll bet.’
Oh, terrific!
That was where anger and speaking before your brain was engaged got you. But it was too late to change her mind because he didn’t give her the chance to do so and back down gracefully. Instead he gave one of those I’m-sure-you-know-best shrugs—the ones that implied it was the last thing he thought—and stood back, leaving her to get on with it.
Unfortunately, getting on with it involved hoisting her narrow skirt up far enough to enable her to step up into the cab. Which was far enough for Tom McFarlane to get the full stocking tops and lace underwear experience.
The up side—there had to be an up side—was that it would be his breathing under attack for a change.
‘Not that I’m complaining,’ he assured her, apparently perfectly in control of his breathing.
And a good thing too, she decided. One of them ought to be in control of their bodily functions. Not that she bothered to dignify his remark with an answer, but let her skirt drop, smoothing it primly beneath her as she sat down, before placing the key in the ignition.
‘What kept you?’
She’d had to buzz him so that he could let her through into the basement parking garage and by the time she’d pulled into the bay by the private lift that would take her directly to the penthouse loft apartment he was there, waiting for her.
His impatience touched a chord deep within her. Despite her very real, her justifiable anger with Tom McFarlane, her own impatience with every interruption, every traffic delay had been driven not by her need to be with an important client in Chelsea but by some blind, completely insane desire to get back to him. To renew the edgy, heat-filled connection.
He might make her angry but for the first time in years she felt like a woman and it was addictive …
‘I can manage,’ she assured him as he opened the door, offered her a helping hand. The default reaction of the modern woman. When did that happen?
It didn’t matter; he took no notice. ‘I’ve seen you manage once today. Since I’ve already seen your underwear, this time we’ll do it my way.’
‘A gentleman wouldn’t have looked,’ she gasped, outraged. Outraged by the fact that he obviously thought her legs not worth a second look.
‘Is that a fact? I guess that just proves that I’m not a gentleman.’ His eyes gleamed in the dim light of the underground garage. ‘Didn’t your old school chum tell you that it was one of the things she liked most about me? After my money. The risk. The realisation that for once in her life she wasn’t in control.’ He leaned close enough for her to feel his breath upon her cheek. For every cell to quiver with heightened awareness. Her skin to get goose-bumps. ‘That she was playing with fire.’
Sylvie’s mouth dried.
It worked for her.
‘But then again,’ he said, straightening, ‘you’re no lady, Miss Smith, or you’d have accepted my offer of assistance. So shall we try it again? Need a hand?’
‘The only help I need is with the boxes,’ she declared angrily. She certainly didn’t need to hitch up her skirt to get down. All she had to do was swing her legs over the side and drop to the floor but, then again, Tom McFarlane was going out of his way to rile her, so why make it easy for him?
It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to organise this wedding in the first place—especially not once she’d met the groom—but Candy had begged and when she wanted something, no one could deny her anything.
Except, it seemed, Tom McFarlane.
And maybe the house in Belgravia and the country estate were, after all, non-negotiable if you weren’t marrying for love …
In retrospect, Sylvie thought, it was easy to see why she’d left so much of the detail to Quentin, but it really was too bad that, when all her instincts had been proved right, she was being punished by this man, not just for her bad judgement but for his too.
And her body seemed intent on joining in.
Maybe that was why, instead of jumping down, she put her hands flat against the seams of her skirt in a deliberately provocative manner, as a prelude to sliding it back up her legs.
To punish him—punish them both—right back.
Tom McFarlane couldn’t believe the way he was behaving. He was already calling himself every kind of a fool. He’d cleared his desk in preparation for a month away and all he’d had to do was get on a plane. Instead, he’d demanded Sylvie Smith’s presence in his office to explain her invoice. And then, as if that hadn’t been sufficient misery for both of them, he’d made a complete fool himself by demanding she deliver a pile of useless junk to his apartment.
He’d already put himself through an afternoon of torment, looking at her long legs as she’d crossed and re-crossed them, her sexy high-heeled shoes highlighting the beauty of slender ankles.
They were the kind of legs that could give a man ideas—always assuming he hadn’t got them the minute he’d set eyes on her. Hadn’t had the best part of two hours, while she’d kept him waiting, to think about them.
But enough was enough and, before she could repeat the move with the skirt, he snatched back control, seizing her around the waist to lift her down.
Taken by surprise, she gasped as she grabbed for his shoulders, bunching his shirt in her hands as she clung to him. She was not the only one short of breath. Close up, by the armful, Sylvie Smith’s figure more than lived up to the promise glimpsed when she’d unbuttoned that sexy little jacket. All soft curves, it was the kind of figure that would look perfect in something soft and clinging. Would look even better out of it.
For a moment they were poised, locked together, just two people, holding each other, heat sizzling between them with only one thing on their minds—and it sure as hell wasn’t wedding stationery.
A wisp of her streaky blonde hair brushed against his cheek and, as naturally as breathing, his hand slipped beneath the chocolate silk to cradle her ribcage, his thumb teasing the edge of a lace bra that he knew would exactly match the trim on what could only be French knickers.
There was no exclamation of outrage. Instead, as his thumb swept up over the aroused peak of her nipple, Sylvie Smith’s lips parted, her breathing grew ragged and the look in her eyes was pure invitation as she seemed to melt against him, clinging to his shoulders as if they were the only thing keeping her on her feet.
It would be impossible to say whether it was the shudder that ran through her, her tongue moistening her hot, full lower lip or the tiny moan low in her throat that precipitated what happened next.
Or maybe it was none of those things. Maybe this had been in his mind from the very beginning, from the minute he’d first set eyes on her six months ago when he’d walked into her office and had instantly wanted to be anywhere else in the world.
Why he’d provoked today’s meeting.
Because this raw, atavistic connection between two strangers, rather than a wedding that had lain like lead in his gut for weeks, was what today had been all about and the connection between them was as inevitable as it was explosive.
Control? Who did he think he was kidding …?
As his lips touched hers it was like oxygen to a fire that had been smouldering, unseen for months. One minute there was nothing. The next it was wildfire. Unstoppable …
Somehow they made it to the lift and he groped back for the key that closed the doors, sending it silently upward as they tore at the fastenings on each other’s clothes, desperate for skin against skin. Just desperate.
A ping announced the arrival of an email from his office. Tom McFarlane bypassed the trip to Mustique, driven by a woman’s tears to take the first long haul flight out with a vacant seat, and he’d hit the ground running the moment he’d touched down in the Far East. Work. Work had always been the answer.
He opened it. Read the note from his secretary and swore. Then he picked up the picture postcard of Sydney Opera House lying beside the laptop. Read the brief message—’Wish you were here’—not a question but a statement, before tearing it in two.
‘I’ll be fine …’
Famous last words, Sylvie thought as she regarded the pregnancy test. But then, when she’d said them, she hadn’t been talking about the fact that she’d just had unprotected sex with a man with whom, despite the fact that he’d taken up residence in her brain, she’d never made it to first name terms.
She’d hoped, expected, that he’d call from Mustique, if only to make sure that there had been no consequences to their moment of madness. Maybe, even better, just to say hello. Best of all to say, I’d like to do that again …
Apparently he wouldn’t. No doubt he thought that she’d have dealt with the possibility of any unforeseen consequences without a second thought. It was true; she had momentarily thought about emergency contraception while she’d been walking past a pharmacy the day after Tom McFarlane had made love to her. Then, just like some teenage kid buying his first packet of condoms, she’d come out with a new toothbrush.
Not because she was embarrassed, but because she had given it a second thought.
She was nearly thirty and a baby would not be bad news. She smiled as she lay her hand over her still perfectly flat abdomen. Far from it. It was wonderful news. Totally right. For her, anyway.
Quite what her baby’s father would make of it was another matter altogether. She’d given up hoping for any kind of a call from him when she’d received a freshly drawn cheque in the post, clipped to a compliment slip with ‘settlement in full’ typed on it, followed by someone’s indecipherable initials. Not his. Well, no, he was taking time out in the fabulous villa that Candy had chosen for their honeymoon.
He’d reinstated the twenty per cent she’d deducted and couldn’t have made his point more succinctly. He’d known exactly what he was doing. Had regained control …
She returned the twenty per cent with a brief note, reminding him that she had deducted it from her bill. Stupid, no doubt, but pride had its price and it had been essential to make the point that she did not.
A secretary replied to thank her for pointing out the error, assuring her that Mr McFarlane had been informed.
She wasn’t going to risk that this time. Or a formal letter from a lawyer demanding a paternity test. He had a right to know he was about to become a father, but she was going to make it plain that this was something he’d have to deal with himself and steeled herself to call his office.
She doubted that holidays came easily to him and fully expected that he would have returned early, but was informed that he was still away and did she want to leave a message?
She declined. A letter would be easier. That way she could keep it cool. She pulled a sheet of her personal notepaper from the rack, uncapped her pen.
An hour later she was still sitting there.
How did you tell a man you scarcely knew that he was about to become a father? Especially since Candy had shared her joy that ruining her figure to provide him with an heir had not been part of the deal.
How could she tell a man who apparently had no desire for children of his own that this was the most magical thing that had ever happened to her? Share just how amazing she felt, how happy she was? How life suddenly had real meaning?
She knew he’d hate that and, since she didn’t want him angry, she’d keep it businesslike. Strictly to the point. Give him room to look past a moment of sizzling passion and see what they’d created together so that he could, maybe, find it in his heart to reach out to his child without any burden of liability to get in the way.
Finally, she began.
Dear Tom,
No. That wouldn’t do. She blotted out the memory of crying his name out as he’d brought her body humming to life and scratched out Tom and, clinging instead to the memory of that twenty per cent, she wrote:
Dear Mr McFarlane—that was businesslike.
I’m writing to let you know that as a result of our recent …
She stopped again.
What? How could she put into words what had happened. His unexpected tenderness. The soaring joy that had brought the tears pouring down her face …
He hadn’t understood the tears, how could he? She just kept saying, ‘I’m all right …’ Blissfully, brilliantly, wonderfully more than ‘all right’. And she would have told him, but then Josie had rung in a panic because Delores was out of her head on an illegal substance half an hour before everyone was due to arrive and the baker had turned up with the cake and there had been no time. And all she’d said was, ‘I have to go.’
She’d expected him to ring her. Kept hoping he would. But when she’d rung his office using the excuse of reminding him about the cheque—they’d somehow forgotten all about that—she’d been told he was away. He had, apparently, taken her at her word and caught his plane …
Come on, Sylvie. Get a grip. Keep it simple.
… as a result of our recent encounter, I am expecting a baby in July.
Businesslike. To the point. Cool. Except there was nothing cold about having a baby. When she’d seen the result of the pregnancy test there had been a rush of an emotion so powerful that she could hardly breathe …
Please believe me when I say that I do not hold you in any way responsible. It was my decision alone to go ahead with the pregnancy and I’m perfectly capable of supporting both myself and my son or daughter. My purpose in writing is not to make any demands on you, but obviously you have a right to know that you are about to become a father. Should you wish to be a part of his or her life, I would welcome your involvement without any expectation of commitment to me.
She crossed out without any expectation of commitment to me. You could be too businesslike. Too cool …
You have my assurance that I won’t contact you again, or ever raise the subject in the unlikely event that our paths should cross. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume that you have no wish to be involved.
Yours
Sylvie Smith
What else could she say? That she would never forget him? That he had broken down the protective wall that had been in place ever since Jeremy had decided that he wasn’t up for the ‘worse’ or the unexpectedly ‘poorer’—at least not with her—leaving her with everything in place for a wedding except the groom.
That she would always be grateful to him for that. And for the precious gift of a baby.
A new family. The chance to begin again …
No. That would be laying an emotional burden on him. Any involvement must not be out of guilt, but because he wanted to be a father. If he didn’t, well, at least that way, her child would be spared the bitter disillusionment she’d suffered at the hands of her own father.
Something dropped on to the paper, puddling the ink. Stupid. There was no reason for tears, absolutely none, and she palmed them away, took out a fresh sheet of paper and wrote out her letter minus the crossings out. Then she drove across to the other side of the river and placed her letter in Tom McFarlane’s letter box so that she wasn’t tempted to write again if he didn’t reply, just in case it had been lost in the post. Could be sure that no one else would open it, read it …
Then, since there was nothing else to be done, she went home and started making plans for the changes that were about to happen in her life.
Tom managed to get the last seat on the flight back to London. Four months. He hadn’t stopped travelling for four months. Like a man on the run, he’d been in flight from the memory, burned into his brain, of Sylvie Smith, silent tears pouring down her face.
For a moment, in that still, totally calm space, when he’d spilled his seed into her, he’d felt as if the entire world had suddenly been made over for him, that he was the hunter who’d come home with the biggest prize in the world.
Then he’d seen her tears and realised just what he’d done. That while she kept saying ‘I’ll be fine …’ she was anything but. ‘I have to go …’ when all he wanted was to keep her close.
And work, he’d discovered, was not the answer, which was why he was going back to face her. To beg her to forgive him, beg her for more …
About to go through passport control, he paused at a book shop—with a twelve hour flight ahead of him, he’d need something to read—and found himself confronted by the face that haunted his dreams, both waking and sleeping. Not crying now, but smiling serenely out at him from the latest copy of Celebrity.
Saw the story flash—’Sylvie’s Happy Event!’
He didn’t need an interpreter to decipher ‘happy event’ and for a moment he felt a surge of something so powerful that he felt like a man with the world at his feet. She was wearing something soft and flowing and there was nothing to show that she was pregnant. Only the special glow of a woman who had just told the world that she was having a baby and was totally thrilled about it.
His baby …
He picked up the magazine. Opened it and came crashing back to earth as he saw that the cover photograph had been cropped. Inside, the same photograph showed that she was posed with a tall, fair-haired man and the caption read:
‘Our favourite events organiser Sylvie Smith, who has just announced that she’s expecting a baby later this summer, is pictured here with her childhood sweetheart, the recently divorced Earl of Melchester. Their marriage plans were put on hold when Sylvie’s grandfather died and, as Jeremy put it, “life got in the way”. It’s wonderful to see them looking so happy to be together again and we confidently predict wedding bells very shortly.’
He read it twice, just to be sure, then he tossed the magazine in the nearest bin and went back to the desk to change his ticket.
‘Where do you want to go, Mr McFarlane?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
CHAPTER THREE
JOSIE FOWLER flung herself full length into the sofa that had, at considerable expense, been provided for the comfort of their clients. With her feet dangling over the arm and her arm shielding her eyes, she groaned.
‘Late night?’ Sylvie asked.
‘Late and then some. I have to tell you that you are, without doubt, a world class fantasy wedding planner.’
‘Event planner,’ Sylvie said, pulling a face. She was so off weddings. ‘We are SDS Events, Jo. Fantasy or otherwise, weddings are no different from any other job.’ Cue, hollow laughter … ‘I take it from your reaction that everything went according to plan yesterday?’
In other words, please tell me that the bride didn’t have second thoughts …
‘Pleease!’ Josie, in full drama queen mode—despite her eighteen-hole Doc Martens and punk hair-do, both of them purple—clutched both hands to her heart. ‘What SDS event would dare to deviate from “the plan”?’
‘According to my grandfather,’ she said in an effort not to think about the Harcourt/McFarlane debacle—she’d promised herself she wouldn’t think about that nightmare, or the Tom McFarlane effect, more than three times a day and she was already over budget—’the first casualty of battle is always “the plan”.’
She laid her hand over the child growing beneath her heart—living proof of that little homily.
‘That would be your Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment grandfather, right?’
‘It certainly wasn’t my party-throwing playboy grandfather. His idea of “a plan” was to order enough champagne to float a battleship and leave everything else for someone else to worry about.’ Including the final bill. And the sweetest man on earth. ‘As you’ll learn, when emotions are involved anything can happen,’ she continued as, letter in hand, she carefully placed a tick on one of the plans that decorated every available inch of wall space.
This one was for a silver wedding celebration. She felt safe with a silver wedding. Then, hand on her back, she straightened carefully.
‘Are you okay?’ Josie asked. Then, ‘Sit down, I can do that.’
‘It’s done,’ she said, waving away her concern. ‘Don’t fuss.’ Then, ‘Tell me about the wedding.’
‘I have told you. It was fabulous.’ Then, ‘You’re not still smarting over the bride who got away, are you?’
‘No!’ Her legendary calm slipped a notch and not just because of the wedding that never was. ‘No,’ she repeated, getting a grip. ‘The one thing I can’t be held responsible for is the bride getting cold feet. Even if she chose to warm them on one of my staff.’
‘You are not responsible! For heaven’s sake, it was more than six months ago. Even the groom will have got over it by now.’
‘I couldn’t say.’ All she knew was that he hadn’t responded to her letter. ‘Can we please just concentrate on yesterday’s wedding?’ she said, jerking her mind away from that long afternoon she’d spent with Tom McFarlane. The solidity of his shoulders beneath her hands. The way his hands had felt against her skin. That raw, overwhelming need as he’d looked down at her, touched her …
The only thing on his mind had been instant gratification with the first woman to cross his path. It had been nothing more than a reaction to being dumped, she knew. A wholly masculine need to have his ego restored. With maybe a little tit-for-tat payback thrown in for good measure. Just in case she needed to feel any worse about herself.