Читать книгу Wish Upon a Star - Trisha Ashley - Страница 20

Aimee Calthrop pondered her phone call to Jago, and the surprising comfort it had given her to hear his soft, mellow voice. I could get him back, if I wanted him, she told herself.

In retrospect, it had been such a big mistake to dump a handsome, kind man who adored her … But then, he’d earned peanuts at Gilligan’s and seemed to have no aspirations to do anything other than bake cakes.

Cold feet had set in, which was part of the reason she’d run off to Dubai just before the wedding. But Vann Hamden had seemed a lot less enthusiastic about her arrival when he met her at the airport than he’d been during their brief affair in London, and positively blanched when she tried to kiss him.

They didn’t do that kind of thing in public over there, he’d explained, and immorality was a big no-no, so he was too afraid it would affect his business to step out of line.

Dubai had to be the most boring place on earth: no one seemed interested in having her organise their parties for them and, in any case, she wasn’t part of the fashionable in-crowd there. She couldn’t even shop, because Daddy, who’d liked Jago, had been so cross with her that he’d stopped her allowance. So she spent her days drinking too much (privately; that was also frowned on) and sunbathing none too wisely, between Vann’s visits, and when he said things weren’t working out too well and suggested he buy her a plane ticket home, she accepted the offer.

The whole fiasco was really Daddy’s fault. It was his sudden decision to marry his young PA that had made her nudge Jago into proposing in the first place. And now her place had been taken by a new baby girl for Daddy to dote on just as he’d once doted on her …

He refused to reinstate her allowance, too, saying that since she was in her forties it was time she was earning a proper living, which was another nasty shock, because she’d been totally in denial about her age for so long that she’d forgotten what it really was. So what with that and the realisation that she was never going to oust the two new contenders for her father’s affections (and wallet), she’d plunged into a bit of a panic.

He’d finally relented to the point where he agreed to pay her a reduced allowance for six months while she got on her feet, but her friends and the party crowd had moved on in her absence and now she was struggling to pick up the threads of her old life. She was out of touch … and suddenly starting to feel old.

When someone told her the rumour about the big lottery win at Gilligan’s, she wondered … and even tried pumping that snotty, red-headed fiancée of Jago’s friend David, while she was having her hair done, but got nowhere. Sarah had pretended she had no idea what Aimee was talking about and then insinuated that her hair extensions were giving her a bald spot on the crown, which had to be a foul lie.

She wished she knew just how much he’d won on the lottery … No one at Gilligan’s had been prepared to tell her – in fact, they’d been really reluctant even to give her his new contact details. Maybe that meant it had been squillions? She certainly hoped so!

She tried ringing him again, but still couldn’t get hold of him on his mobile, because he must have been so flustered at hearing her voice that he’d given her the number wrongly. She thought that was a good sign, but it was annoying that the shop number now rang through to voice mail and that friend of his was quite probably wiping her messages as fast as she left them …