Jessica Hart - Here Comes The Bride

Nell’s voice brought him back to the present. ‘Isn’t it true, then?’ she asked.

‘Isn’t what true?’

‘That you’ve made your fortune?’

‘Yes, I’ve made a lot of money,’ said P.J. in a down-to-earth voice. ‘Janey says it’s an obscene amount of money.’ He half smiled. ‘I didn’t set out to be rich, though. I wanted to build a business, and that was the exciting part. The money just came along with the success.’

‘Must be nice, though,’ said Nell, thinking of the bills and the mortgage and the credit card payments that loomed over her every month.

‘Sure. It’s great to be able to buy a car like this without thinking about it but…’

‘You’re not going to tell me that money isn’t everything, are you, P.J.?’

P.J. laughed a little ruefully at the dangerous sweetness of her tone. ‘Guilty as accused!’ he confessed. ‘It’s a horrible cliché, I know, but it really isn’t enough on its own. The best thing is knowing that you don’t need to worry about it anymore, but after a while you’re not even risking anything when you try something new, because you’re always safe and have got money to fall back on.

‘I miss that feeling,’ he told her. Nearly as much as he had missed her, and being able to talk to her like this. ‘Going out on a limb, trying something new, working flat out to make your idea succeed because the alternative is just too dire to contemplate… Now I’ve got a huge business, but I’ve got nothing to do! I employ thousands of people to do what I once did by myself, and it’s all a bit…I don’t know…dull, I guess. I’ve been feeling recently as if I need a new challenge, or something new to get excited about.’

‘You should have a family,’ said Nell lightly. ‘It’s hard to be bored with kids around. And you’d soon find a use for all that money you’ve got sitting around. You have no idea how expensive children are!’

‘So Janey is always telling me,’ said P.J.

There was a pause. ‘Have you ever thought about having a family?’ she asked, trying to sound casual, as if having children weren’t the issue that had pushed them apart all those years ago.

He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I’ve thought about it a lot. I guess I made the classic mistake of thinking that I should wait until the time was right, and then found that the time was right, but my relationship wasn’t.’

‘You’ve never married?’

‘No…I’ve come close, but…no.’

And it wasn’t anything to do with Nell, whatever Janey said, P.J. swore to himself. It was just that he had never found another woman who was as easy to talk to as she was, who had felt quite as right in his arms, or who could offer him the same sense of peace when she lay warm against him.

‘So you’re still looking for the right woman?’ Nell asked.

P.J. took his eyes off the road to glance at her, and their eyes met for a jarring moment as he remembered how desolate he had felt when she had told him that she was going to marry Simon Shea. ‘We belong together,’ he had told her, not too proud to plead.

‘You’ll find someone else,’ she had said, her voice shaking with tears. ‘Somewhere out there is the perfect woman for you.’

‘No, there isn’t.’ His voice had been as bleak as his heart. ‘It’ll only ever be you.’

All rubbish, naturally. How melodramatic he had been, P.J. thought indulgently. Of course there would be someone for him, just as Nell had said. He just hadn’t found her yet.

‘Yes,’ he said, striving to sound suitably cheerful. ‘Still looking.’

‘I WOULDN’T have thought it would be that difficult,’ said Nell, thinking that she couldn’t be the only woman who had noticed what an attractive man he had grown into. ‘Surely billionaires get to have their pick of beautiful women?’ she added with an ironic look.

‘You’d be surprised,’ said P.J. ‘Janey says I’m impossible to please.’

He hadn’t been hard to please before, thought Nell. All she had had to do was to be herself. Her gaze slid sideways to rest on his profile, lingering on the corner of his cool mouth, before drifting down to the lean, tough body and the competent hands on the steering wheel, and something turned over inside her.

She looked away. Inside the car, the silence seemed suddenly loud, and she could hear her heart thumping.

P.J. seemed aware of the same constraint. ‘That’s enough about my financially rewarding but ultimately empty life,’ he said, mocking himself. ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing.’

‘Oh…’ Nell lifted her shoulders a little helplessly. ‘What is there to say? My life has been very unglamorous compared to yours. I’ve taken no risks and had no staggering success. I can’t boast about my transatlantic lifestyle. I haven’t even got a car, let alone one like this. I’ve just spent the last sixteen years getting through the days and bringing up my daughter as best I can. Not very exciting, I’m afraid.’

‘I hate to sound like a walking cliché,’ said P.J. with an ironic glance, ‘but bringing up a happy, healthy child has to be more worthwhile in the long run than making millions.’

‘It’s probably as hard work, especially when you’re on your own,’ said Nell in a wry voice. ‘Clara was hardly more than a baby when Simon left, so it was difficult to find a job that I could fit around looking after her.’

About to tell him about the expense of childcare, Nell caught herself just in time. She didn’t want to sound like a sad, single mother, consumed with bitterness about her divorce and perpetually moaning about money. If she couldn’t compete with him in the glamorous lifestyle stakes, she could at least convince him that she had a good life and no regrets.

Least of all about him.

‘Anyway, that’s the story of my life,’ she said with a bright smile. ‘No glittering prizes for me, but Clara and I have fun together, my family have been fantastically supportive, I’ve got lots of friends… I think I’ve been pretty lucky. And now I’ve even got a good job, so things are definitely looking up.’

Was that enough to convince P.J. that she was perfectly happy with her life? Nell wondered. If only he hadn’t been quite so successful! It would be much easier to be honest and open with him if she didn’t know how stupendously wealthy he was. As it was, she was terrified that he would think that she was hinting that she regretted having left him and was angling to re-establish their relationship just because of his money.

But P.J. showed no sign of thinking any such thing. He asked about her job instead. ‘I was wondering what you did.’

‘I’m in recruitment,’ said Nell, allowing herself to relax a bit. Talking about work was good. Work made for an excellent neutral topic of conversation. She should stick with it from now on, and not let herself get diverted by memories.

‘I used to work for an agency,’ she told him. ‘I dealt with mostly secretarial and clerical positions, but I’ve just got a new job with a firm of head hunters. It’s very small but very prestigious, so it’s a good move for me, but a bit scary at the same time. Everything is much more pressurised. I find it a bit stressful, to be honest.’

‘Can’t you go back to what you were doing before?’

There spoke someone who hadn’t had to worry about money for a while! ‘I’ve got this quaint little notion about paying my mortgage,’ said Nell, a little more sharply than she intended.

‘The brutal truth is that I need the money,’ she went on, with less of an edge to her voice. ‘And I want to prove myself, too. I’ve never had a chance to work like this before. Everything is much more professional and high-powered.’

‘In what way?’ asked P.J.

‘I’ve got a very demanding boss. She always looks immaculate, and I’m supposed to look the same.’ Nell’s mouth turned down at the corners as she thought about Eve and the impossible standards she set. ‘It’s all about the company’s image, she says, but it’s a bit of a strain having to look perfectly groomed the whole time.’

P.J.’s blue eyes rested for a moment on Nell in her jogging pants and trainers and old sweatshirt, and his mouth quirked.

Nell flushed. He didn’t need to say anything. ‘I change when I get there,’ she told him a shade defensively. ‘I had an accident last year and broke my ankle and my wrist. I’m fine now, but walking long distances is hard except in sensible shoes, so I tend to wear these for the commute and put on my work shoes when I get there.’

‘Very sensible,’ said P.J. gravely, but his eyes danced in a way that made Nell feel distinctly ruffled.

‘Normally I’d be dressed properly by now,’ she told him, even as she wondered why she was bothering to justify her appearance to him. ‘But I’ve got an important meeting this afternoon, and I’m going to pick up my suit from the dry-cleaner’s on the way in.’

If she hadn’t overslept, she would have had her makeup on by now, too. It wasn’t fair. If she had to bump into P.J. she could at least have been looking her best. That was just typical of her life at the moment, thought Nell fatalistically. It was about time something started to go right for a change.

‘How is your ankle now?’ he asked.

‘It’s fine,’ she said truthfully. The rest had done it good, and she could only feel a slight throb now. ‘I won’t have to walk much further on it today, anyway. We’ve got an important meeting this afternoon, but fortunately my boss is a great believer in taxis, so we’ll probably get driven door-to-door.’

P.J. looked interested. ‘What’s the meeting about?’

‘I don’t know much about it, to tell you the truth,’ Nell admitted. ‘I know that we’ve got an important contract to recruit someone for a senior position in some big company, and Eve-my boss-seems to think that if we do a good job, we’ll be in a good position to do a lot more recruitment work for them. She wants me to go along and learn the ropes about finding out what they really want-which is apparently not always what they say they want! Fortunately I’m not going to be called upon to do more than look cool and professional and as if I know what’s going on.’

‘And won’t you?’

‘No,’ said Nell frankly. ‘I’m terrified that someone will ask me a question, but I’m hoping that if I keep my mouth closed and look enigmatic enough, it won’t be too obvious that I haven’t got a clue about what’s happening.’

‘Ah, then you have already learnt the secret of professional success!’ said P.J., amused. ‘I can tell you’ll go far!’

They both laughed, but found their smiles fading at exactly the same moment, as if both unnerved by how quickly they had slipped back into the old, easy ways.

Constraint seeped back into the air. Nell stared desperately out of her window at the commuters streaming out of the tube station they were just passing. She was one of them usually. That was her life, not sitting in this luxurious car, cocooned in comfort with P.J. beside her. She belonged in the crowd, glancing enviously at those who could travel in such comfort. She didn’t belong with P.J., not now.

She must remember that.

It would be too easy to forget if she were to spend any longer in P.J.’s company. The tug of attraction, the tug of the past, was very strong. Nell was conscious of having to dig in her heels mentally to stop herself falling back under the old spell, the one that made it seem as if everything were easy and natural between them.

But how could it be after all this time? This was just a chance encounter, a brief interlude, and it would be a mistake to pretend that it could always be like this. P.J. was a different man, one whose assurance and attractiveness had left her feeling flustered and more disturbed than she wanted to admit. Things might feel the same, but they weren’t, and if she forgot that it would make going back to her real life so much harder. The past was the past. Better if it stayed that way.

As the silence lengthened in the car, and the memory of their shared laughter thrummed in the air, P.J. drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and thought about what Janey had said.

‘You’ll never move on until you’ve got Nell Martindale out of your system. Look her up. She won’t be the same pretty young girl, and you won’t feel the same about her.’

P.J. hadn’t wanted to do that. He hadn’t wanted to see that Nell had grown older, or to think that she had lost her charm. He hadn’t wanted to face the fact that the old dream had died.

But now fate had put her in his way, and she was older, just as he had feared. Older and warier, with faint lines starring her eyes, but she was still beautiful, and the warmth and the charm were still there. Why not see if the spark could be rekindled?

They were edging over Waterloo Bridge now. They would be in the city soon, and then this strange meeting would be over. Why not take advantage of coincidence?