Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 2: The House on Willow Street, The Honey Queen, Christmas Magic, plus bonus short story: The Perfect Holiday - Cathy Kelly - Страница 14

She shouldn’t have come. Why had she come?

In the ballroom of a small, pretty castle outside Kildare, Mara Wilson stood behind a pillar and wondered if it wasn’t too late to sneak off. To pretend a migraine. Sudden onset of shellfish poisoning. A suppurating leg sore that could be fatal …

‘Mara, sweetheart! You came!’

Jack’s mother grabbed her in a hug and Mara knew the moment to escape the love of her life’s wedding was lost.

Resplendent in mother-of-the-groom cerise pink with what looked like half a flamingo’s plumage pinned on to her head, Jack’s mother, Sissy, was half crying, half laughing as she heaped affection on Mara.

‘It’s been so long since we saw you and we miss you. Oh, remember the fun we had, that Christmas. You’re fabulous to come today, one in a million – that’s what I told Jack: Mara is one in a million.’

Unfortunately, Mara thought, smiling back grittily, Jack Taylor had decided that he didn’t want to marry one in a million. He’d chosen someone else. Tawhnee, of the long, long legs, long black hair and olive skin that looked fabulous in virginal white. Mara had stayed discreetly at the back of the church for the ceremony, on the inner pew so she wouldn’t be in the bridal couple’s eyeline when they made their triumphant walk down the aisle. But even from inside, with a woman in a cartwheel of a hat outside her, she’d still been able to see her rival and the man Mara had loved.

Jack looked like … well, Jack. Handsome, louche, a man’s man with a naughty smile on his face and his fair hair chopped to show off the clean jaw. And Tawhnee resembled a model from a bridal catalogue. Gleaming café au lait skin, courtesy of her Brazilian mother, long black hair and a smile on her beautiful face. She was the perfect bride and as Mara stared at her she finally realized it was over: Jack had married Tawhnee. Tall, elegant Tawhnee, as opposed to short, curvy Mara. He’d never be with Mara again. It was all too late.

When Tawhnee had arrived in Kearney Property Partners straight out of college, she’d been assigned to Mara.

‘I can’t hand her over to any of the men,’ Jack had confided to Mara at breakfast one day when she’d stayed over at his place and they were having coffee and toast before rushing to the office.

‘Why not?’ Mara had demanded.

‘She’s too good looking. And young, very young,’ Jack had added quickly when Mara had poked him with one of her bare feet. ‘She’s just a kid, right? Twenty-three or -four. I need a woman to take care of her. I need lovely you to do it.’

‘Lovely me?’ Mara got off her seat and slid on to Jack’s lap.

He liked her body on his, her curves nestled against his hardness.

They’d woken at six and made lazy, sleepy love. She felt adored and sensual, like a cat bathed in the sun after a hot day. Jack didn’t invite her to stay over often and never mid-week, so it was a real treat.

‘Yes, lovely you,’ Jack said, and kissed her on the lips.

‘I’ll take care of her,’ Mara said, visualizing an innocent young graduate who’d gaze up to her new mentor. In fact, Mara had had to look up to Tawhnee, who was at least five nine in her bare feet. She was an object of sin in a dress and during the five days Mara mentored her, not a single man – from client to colleague – could set eyes on Tawhnee without their jaw dropping open.

‘It’s sex appeal, that’s what it is. Raw bloody sex appeal,’ Mara told Cici, her flatmate.

‘So? You’re not the Hunchback of Notre Dame yourself,’ snapped back Cici. ‘She’s nothing but a kid.’

‘You are not getting the picture,’ Mara said. ‘This girl is Playboy fabulous. I have no idea why she wants to work for us. She could earn a fortune if she headed to a go-go bar.’

‘She might want to make money from her mind,’ Cici pointed out loftily. ‘You’re labelling her. I was reading a thing on the Web about how beautiful women aren’t taken seriously and other women are jealous of them.’ Cici loved the Internet and had to be hauled away from her laptop late at night to get some zeds.

‘True. I’m being a cow,’ Mara said, sighing. ‘I’ll try harder.’

She didn’t have to. Tawhnee was suddenly and mysteriously whisked away to work with Jack.

He was director of operations. It was unusual for such a lowly trainee to be working with Jack, but as he said himself: ‘She needs to get to grips with this side of the business. What film should we go to see tonight? You pick. We’ve gone to loads of films I’ve picked. It’s your choice.’

In retrospect, she’d been very trusting. All the ‘let’s go and see a film’ and ‘shall we have dinner out’ had kept her fears at bay. Her boyfriend was being ultra-attentive, therefore there was no way he could be lusting after Tawhnee, even if every other man in the office was.

Like, hello!

And then it was too late.

Mara was under her desk, trying to find her favourite purple pen when two of the guys came into the office after an auction.

‘Lucky bastard,’ said one. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing the tango with Tawhnee.’

‘Yeah, Jack’s always had a way with the girls. I thought Mara had settled him down, but a leopard—’

‘—doesn’t change his spots,’ agreed the other one.

‘And she’s hot. An über babe.’

‘Mara’s lovely and she’s great fun but not—’

‘Yeah, not in Tawhnee’s league. Who is, right? Don’t get me wrong, Mara’s cute and she can look sexy, it has to be said, but she wears all those mad old clothes and she is short. Basically, compared to Tawhnee, she’s …’

‘Yeah, ordinary. While, Tawhnee, phew! She’s so hot, she’s on fire.’

‘Yeah, spot on. Tawhnee’s a Ferrari, isn’t she, and Mara … Well, she’s not, is she?’

Under the desk, Mara wanted to dig a hole so deep that she came out in another country. Another planet, even. She stayed where she was for a few moments, like an animal frozen in pain. It was hard to know what hurt most. The realization that Jack was indeed cheating on her with Tawhnee, or the knowledge that the men she worked with and lunched with and joked with saw her simply as an ordinary but occasionally sexy girl who liked ‘mad old clothes’. All those times she’d thought she’d pulled it off and camouflaged herself successfully into something different – something chic, elegant, stylish – with her fabulous vintage outfits, she’d been wrong.

Talent, kindness, laughing at their bad jokes … none of it meant anything compared to being tall, slim and hot. She was ordinary beside the Ferrari that was Tawhnee.

She waited till the phone rang to crawl out the other side where a handy filing cabinet hid her, and ran from the room to find Jack.

He was in his office alone, eyes focusing on his mobile, texting. At the door, Mara stared at him and wondered if she’d been nothing more than a diverting, wait-till-the-Ferrari-comes-along girl for him too.

He’d said he loved her, loved her shape, her petiteness; he’d called her his pocket Venus, and said he hated skinny women who nibbled on celery.

‘You grab life with both hands,’ he’d murmured when they were lying in bed after the first time they made love.

‘And I eat it!’ said Mara triumphantly, wriggling on top of him to nuzzle his neck. She’d never met anyone who shared her sensuality until she’d found him. They were so well matched in many ways, but none so much as when they were in bed.

For the first time in her life, Mara Wilson had met a man who loved her as she was – with the wild, red curls, an even wilder dress sense and an hourglass body, albeit a short one. Jack adored her 1950s clothes fetish. He told her she looked fantastic in fitted angora sweaters and tight skirts worn with red lippie, Betty Boop high shoes and eyeliner applied with a sexy little flick.

And all the while he probably thought she was ordinary too. She was his ordinary fling while he waited for something better to come along.

‘Yes?’ he said now, without looking up from his phone.

Mara said nothing and Jack finally flicked a gaze at the door.

‘Oh, hi, it’s you.’

Swiftly, he pressed a couple of buttons, deleting or getting out of whatever text he’d been writing, Mara realized. He smiled guiltily at her and that’s when she knew for sure. It took one look at his face to know the truth.

‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘About you and Tawhnee?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said feebly.

‘Sorry? Is that the best you can do, Jack?’ she asked quietly. She wouldn’t shout. Not here. She would leave with dignity.

‘I wanted to tell you for ages,’ he insisted.

‘Why didn’t you?’

He shrugged.

Mara felt curiously numb. This must be shock, she thought.

‘I’ve got a headache. I’m going home now.

‘Of course,’ Jack said. ‘Take tomorrow too. Er, headaches can really get you down …’

She left and grabbed her things from her desk. The guys were chatting.

‘Hi, Mara, what’s up?’ said the one who’d called her ordinary.

She looked at him through the haze of numbness, then stumbled from the room.

Cici had volunteered to go with Mara to the wedding.

‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll look totally sad if I come with you. No offence, but coming with a female friend is like wearing a badge that says I’m a loser who couldn’t get a date. Brad Pitt is about the only man I could bring and not look like a sad cow.’

‘OK then, but promise me you’ll dance like there’s nobody watching,’ Cici added.

‘Isn’t that the advice from a fridge magnet?’ Mara demanded.

‘Fridge magnets can be very clever,’ her friend replied. ‘A clean kitchen is the sign of a boring person, and all that.’

‘True.’

There was a pause.

‘I always danced like there was nobody watching,’ Mara said mournfully. ‘Jack loved that about me. He said I was a free spirit. Although not as free as Tawhnee.’

‘She was obviously free with everything, from her favours to her skirt lengths,’ Cici said caustically.

Mara smiled. That was the thing about a good girlfriend: she’d fight your corner like a caged lioness. If you were injured, she was injured too and she remembered all the hurts and would never forgive anyone for inflicting them on you.

‘She has great legs,’ Mara admitted.

‘All people of twenty-four have great legs. It’s only when you get to thirty that your knees sag and the cellulite hits.’

Cici was thirty-five to Mara’s thirty-three and considered herself an expert on ageing issues. Mara could remember being mildly uninterested when Cici had complained about cellulite spreading over her thighs like an invasion of sponges. Then one day, it had happened to her and she’d understood. Was that to be her fate for ever – understanding when it was too late?

The wedding band were murdering ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ when Jack appeared beside her, urbane in his dinner jacket.

‘Mara, you look wonderful.’

Mara had maxed out her credit card on a designer number from an expensive shop that catered for petite women. She’d been going to wear one of her vintage specials, but she hadn’t the heart for it: she’d show Jack and everyone else that she could do ‘normal’ clothes too. So at great expense, she’d bought a bosom-defying turquoise prom dress worn with very high, open-toed shoes. She’d curled her hair with rollers and clipped it up on one side with a turquoise-and-pink flower brooch. Her lips were MAC’s iconic scarlet Ruby Woo, her seamed stockings were in a straight line, and she knew she looked as good as she could. Not mainstream, no, but good. Not ordinary, she hoped.

‘Would you like to dance?’

Dance with Jack?

It must be a dream. A very strange dream, she decided. Soon, a big white rabbit would appear, along with a deranged woman screeching ‘Off with their heads!’ and possibly Johnny Depp wearing contact lenses and a lot of make-up.

Still, even if it was a dream, she’d go along. Nobody could think she was a bad loser if they saw her dancing with her former lover.

‘Of course,’ she said, beaming at him.

Smile all the time, had been Cici’s other advice. If you stop smiling, even for a minute, they’ll all be sure you’re going to cry, so smile like you are having the time of your life.

Amazingly, Jack seemed to be buying the fake grin and grinned right back at her.

Mara steeled herself for a speedy and guilty whisk round the dance floor. Tawhnee was sure to be watching, narrow-eyed. She might be young and beautiful, but she wasn’t stupid.

However, instead of the expected quick dance, Jack held Mara very close.

Mara’s ability to smile despite the pain inside cut off suddenly.

‘Don’t do that,’ she snapped at him.

‘Do what?’

He was still smiling, seemingly perfectly happy.

Jack loved a party and what he loved even more was one of his parties. His wedding party would therefore be the ultimate in all-about-himness.

‘Smile at me like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you weren’t my boyfriend for two years and didn’t dump me for Tawhnee, like that.’

‘Oh.’

Even Jack’s skin wasn’t thick enough for that to bounce off.

They twirled some more, stony-faced now. Jack loosened his grip. Mara knew she should say nothing, but she couldn’t. Her mouth refused to obey. Instead of hissing You bastard! which had been on the tip of her tongue for some time, she demanded: ‘Why did you invite me?’

‘Why did you come?’ he countered.

‘Because if I didn’t come, everyone in work would think I was bitter and enraged.’

‘But—’

If Jack had been about to say ‘obviously you are bitter and enraged …’ some part of his brain kicked in and told him not to.

‘I wanted us to be friends,’ he said forlornly.

Friends! After two years of thinking he was the love of her life, now he wanted to be friends.

Suddenly, Mara no longer cared what it all looked like.

She pulled herself away.

‘Goodbye, Jack,’ she snapped, and stormed off in the direction of the French windows.

It was a cold evening, but because much of the castle’s beauty lay in its outdoors, lights lit up the patios where bay trees in pots were draped with giant cream bows.

If she could only hold the tears and the anger in until she was alone, Mara told herself, she’d be fine.

The fairy lights sprinkled around in the trees gave the place a storybook feel. It was such a pretty venue: the old castle with its turrets and its coat of arms, the huge hall ablaze with candles, the giant heaters outside on the verandah surrounded by mini-lanterns. It was the perfect setting for an autumn wedding.

She shivered as she crossed the stone flags to stand under a heater.

This could have been me, thought Mara with a pang of sorrow. I could have been the bride surrounded by my family, wearing old lace, rushing upstairs to the four-poster bed of the bridal suite to make legal love to my husband for the first time.

Instead, she was facing a taxi ride to a B&B in the local village, because the family had snaffled all the castle bedrooms. Her room in the B&B was tiny and freezing, situated under the eaves, and the bed was a small, creaky double – she’d sat on it earlier and the crank of springs was so loud it had made her bounce up again with fright. If she’d lost her mind and taken another guest back for a wild night of casual frolicking, the B&B owners would undoubtedly bang on the door to get them to keep the noise down because of the bed springs.

‘I thought you’d be happy,’ said a slightly plaintive voice.

She wheeled around in shock. Jack stood beside her.

Mara closed her eyes to the lovely view and wondered if Jack had always been this emotionally unevolved? What kind of man would assume that she’d be happy to be at his wedding to the woman for whom he’d dumped her? But perhaps Jack could assume that.

She hadn’t had tantrums when he’d left. She’d taken it like a grown-up. Dignity was the preserve of the ordinary girl, she’d decided.

‘Why isn’t it me here tonight?’ she asked now as, from inside, she could hear the wedding band strike up another tune.

‘Ah, Mara, now’s not the time for this—’ Jack began.

He had his tormented face on. Mara knew his every expression. The sallow handsome face could take on so many different looks, and she’d seen them all.

‘Now is exactly the time,’ she said quietly. ‘Tell me – what does she have that I haven’t?’

The instant the question was out, she regretted it. The answer could have been eight years, bought breasts and much longer legs.

Jack reached into the jacket of his suit and took out a single cigarette. He was supposed to have given up. Tawhnee was very anti-smoking. Nothing had convinced Mara that she’d lost him as much as Jack’s agreeing not to smoke any more. If Tawhnee could do that, she could do anything.

‘It’s only the one,’ he muttered, cradling his fingers around a match to light the cigarette, then inhaling like a drowning man reaching the surface.

‘You’re a great girl, Mara …’ he said.

‘Why do I think there’s a but coming?’ she said with a hint of bitterness.

‘You know me so well,’ he said, laughing softly.

‘Not well enough, apparently.’

‘I didn’t mean to fall in love with Tawhnee,’ Jack said, after he’d smoked at least half of the cigarette.

‘It just happened,’ Mara said. ‘That is such a cliché, Jack.’

‘That’s me: Mr Cliché,’ he joked.

‘Very funny. So what’s the BUT. The but that I don’t have.’

She wanted him to say it. Because you were never The One, Mara. Because I was continually looking over your shoulder and then Tawhnee came along … She wanted him to tell the truth instead of the lies he clearly had been spouting when they were together.

‘There’s no “but”. You’re perfect,’ Jack said.

‘If I’m perfect, why didn’t you stay with me?’

‘I don’t know. She came to work for us, she’s stunning – not that you’re not stunning too,’ Jack said hastily.

‘You told me you liked the way I looked, and then you go and fall in love with a woman who is the complete opposite of me,’ she said. Except for the boobs, she thought grimly. In addition to her supermodel sleekness and legs up to the armpits, Tawhnee had gravity-defying boobs. The office women were convinced that Tawhnee had had a boob job. The office men didn’t care.

Jack said nothing.

Mara wasn’t to be deflected. ‘I want to know why,’ she said. ‘That’s all. Why you’ve married Tawhnee when, despite two years with me, you never even so much as asked me what I thought about marriage? It’s because I wasn’t the one, isn’t it? I was simply the one you could play around with while you waited for her to show up.’

It wasn’t as if Mara had been pinning her hopes on a wedding, but the longer she went out with Jack, the more she began to think that such an event might happen one day. She was sure that he loved her as much as she loved him. That Jack Taylor, a man who could have any woman he wanted, had really chosen a petite red-head who’d thought she was ordinary for years until she’d met him, and he’d told her she was special. She’d begun to believe all the things he’d said.

That she was the sexiest woman he’d ever met. And the funniest. And the most beautiful … Except he’d never asked her to marry him.

Four months after she’d found out he was cheating on her, he’d announced his engagement to Tawhnee. Today, a mere two months later, they were married.

‘You didn’t talk about marriage either,’ he bleated. ‘I didn’t think you were the kind of woman who’s into all that sort of thing’.

‘What gave you that idea?’

Jack had one last card. ‘Tawhnee said she wanted to get married. She said it on our first date.’

‘Really?’ said Mara, sigh and word wrapped into one.

Was that what it would have taken? If Mara had told Jack she was the marrying kind of girl, instead of the let’s-go-to-bed-and-have-fun sort of girl, would it have been her today in the long white dress?

‘Give me that cigarette.’

She plucked it from his fingers and took a long drag. She wasn’t actually a smoker, not really. When they’d been together, she’d had a few when they were out partying. Liking the idea of taking a cigarette from his mouth. It was such an intimate thing to do. But tonight, she wanted to do something self-destructive, and letting nicotine hit her was the only thing to hand. She’d promised herself she would not drink too much: to turn into the drunken ex at a wedding would be too humiliating.

She coughed and felt her guts loosen.

‘Yeuch.’ She stubbed the cigarette out on the balustrade.

‘I hadn’t finished with that!’ wailed Jack.

Mara patted his cheek. ‘That’s precisely what I said to Tawhnee, but hey, that’s life.’

Mara left him standing there. She collected her handbag from her chair, and smiled at the people at her table. They were colleagues from work and most of them had been so sweet to her.

‘Jack’s a fool,’ Pat from accounts said for about the fifth time that evening.

‘I’d go out with you tomorrow,’ slurred Henry, who sold higher class properties because he’d been to all the right schools and looked immaculate in navy pinstripe.

His wife, a frosted blonde who was equally posh and very kind, slapped him gently. ‘Don’t be silly, Henry. What about me?’

‘You could come too,’ Henry said happily.

‘I’m going to head off,’ Mara interrupted, before Henry could get on to the subject of threesomes.

‘Good plan,’ said Veronica, who worked with Mara and had her junior doctor fiancé in tow. He was asleep in his chair and someone had put a garland of flowers on his head. ‘You’ve done your bit.’ She got up to hug Mara. ‘We all think you’re so brave for coming,’ she whispered. ‘At least you’ve got two weeks before they’re back from honeymoon. Apparently, Tawhnee will carry on working with Jack for the next year, so you’ve got some breathing space to get your head around it all.’

Mara inhaled sharply. ‘Nobody told me that.’

Tawhnee was supposed to leave, that’s what Jack had told her in the early, painful days of finding out. Tawhnee would be leaving at Christmas.

‘Easier not to know, isn’t it?’ Veronica said.

No, thought Mara suddenly, it isn’t.

Her whole career at Kearney Property Partners was changing and nobody had thought to tell her. She was the silly, cuckolded girl who’d been so in love with Jack Taylor that she’d forgotten about herself. She’d handed him her heart and her job on a plate.

‘Thanks for telling me,’ she said to Veronica.

‘You’re so brave,’ Veronica said again. ‘Please, please, find yourself a total stud within the next two weeks so you can drag him into the office for lunch on their first day back from honeymoon. Ideally, you should be practically having sex with the stud on the reception desk when they come in.’

Mara laughed, thinking of movies where desperate women hired escorts for weddings and office parties so they wouldn’t be seen as hopeless cases. Perhaps she should have rented a hunk for tonight. Someone to look as if he couldn’t wait to rip her dress off with his teeth – even if he was being paid for it. But then that would be fake and, suddenly, Mara was in no mood for fake.

Like she was in no mood to go back into the office and pretend. She looked at all the smiling faces round the table, all wishing her well, and knew she wouldn’t be able to carry on working there for much longer.

‘See you all next week,’ she said brightly and whisked her jacket – vintage fake leopard print – off the chair.

Outside, she asked Reception to call her a taxi, and then hid in a big armchair near the door, hoping nobody from the wedding party would spot her escaping.

She rang Cici, who was out with some friends.

Mara whispered what Veronica had told her. ‘Even Veronica’s getting married,’ wailed Mara down the phone. ‘The whole world is at it. Was a law brought in making marriage compulsory and nobody told me about it?’

‘Don’t be daft. You don’t want to get married, not really.’

‘I do.’

‘You don’t. Jack’s a prat. Geddit? Jack’s a prat. He’d make you miserable. What if the two of you had got married and he’d met Tawhnee afterwards? What then, tell me?’

‘He’d still have run off with her,’ Mara said, feeling like the voice of doom in her own Greek chorus. ‘Does loving a shallow man make me shallow too?’

‘No, simply a typical woman,’ advised Cici, wise after several bottles of Miller. ‘You’ll feel better tomorrow and we’ll think of a plan to have fun, right?’

‘Right.’

The taxi driver told her she was a sensible girl to be going home early.

‘The town’s full of mad young women running around in this cold with no coats on. Young girls today, I don’t understand them. Nice to see a sensible one like yourself.’

In the back seat, Mara made assenting noises out of politeness. She wasn’t in the least bit sensible, she merely looked it and always had. Even at school, silliness was assumed to be an attribute of the tall, mascara’d minxes who wore their uniform skirts rolled up and had liaisons behind the bike shed. Everyone thought that small, quiet girls who did their homework had to be sensible, nice girls, even if they had wild red hair and a penchant for spending their pocket money on mad clothes.

In the B&B, the landlady was astonished to see a wedding guest home before eleven.

‘I’m working very hard and I’m exhausted,’ Mara said, because she didn’t want another person to tell her she was a rock of sense in a crazy world.

Then she went to her room, locked the door and allowed the tears to fall. Sensible and dumped – what more could a woman ask for?