Harlequin Romance April 2015 Box Set (48 page)

‘If you’ll excuse me, I have a wedding
dress to sort out.’ She gave him a level look. ‘And I’m modelling the dresses for Ash, which means I’ll need to change several times—so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come through to the back until I’m done.’

‘Noted,’ he said.

She locked the shop door again, still keeping the ‘closed’ sign in place, and vanished into the back room. Feeling a bit like a spare part—but wanting to know
just how Claire had managed to lose a wedding dress—Sean waited in the main area of the shop until she walked back out, this time dressed in faded jeans and a strappy top rather than a wedding dress.

‘No coffee?’ she asked.

‘No.’

She folded her arms. ‘OK. Spit it out.’

‘Firstly, does Ashleigh actually have a dress?’ he asked.

‘There are three she likes,’ Claire said. ‘I’m
taking them all over to Capri as soon as I can get a flight. Then she can try them on, and I’ll make any necessary alterations in time for the wedding.’

‘What I don’t understand is how you managed to lose her dress in the first place.’ He shook his head in exasperation. ‘Why wasn’t it with you in the plane?’

‘Believe it or not,’ she said dryly, ‘that was my original plan. I cleared it
with the airline that I could put the boxes with her dress and mine in the overhead storage compartments, and if there was room they’d hang Ash’s dress on a rail in the stewardesses’ cabin. I packed both the dresses in boxes that specifically met the airline’s size guidelines. Your waistcoat and cravat, plus Luke’s and Tom’s, are packed in with my dress.’

So far, so sensible. But this was
Claire—the woman who was chaos in high heels with a snippy attitude. ‘But?’

‘It turned out there were three other brides on the flight. One of whom was a total Bridezilla and demanded that her dress should be the one in with the stewardesses. There was a massive row. In the end, the captain intervened and ordered that all the bridal dresses should go in the hold with the rest of the luggage—even
those belonging to people who weren’t involved in the argument with Bridezilla. He wouldn’t even let us put the dresses in the overhead lockers. The atmosphere on the plane was pretty bad.’ She shrugged. ‘The airline staff have looked in London and in Naples, and there’s no sign of the box with Ash’s dress. They’re still checking. It might turn up in time. But it probably won’t, so these dresses
are my contingency plan—because I don’t intend to let Ash down. Ever.’

It hadn’t been
entirely
Claire’s fault, Sean acknowledged. But, at the same time, she
had
been the one responsible for the dress, and right now the dress was missing. ‘Why didn’t you buy a seat for the dress?’

‘They said I couldn’t—that if I wanted the dress to come with me, it would have to be treated as additional
cabin luggage. Which,’ she pointed out, ‘is what I organised and what I paid for.’ Her blue eyes were icy as she added, ‘And, just in case you think I’m perfectly OK about the situation, understand that I’ve spent weeks working on that dress and I’m gutted that my best friend doesn’t get to wear the dress of her dreams—the dress I designed especially for her. But moaning on about the situation
isn’t going to get the dress back. I’d rather do something practical to make sure Ash’s wedding goes as smoothly as possible. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have three wedding dresses to pack and a flight to book.’ She shrugged again. ‘But, if it makes you feel better, do feel free to storm and shout at me.’

Funny how she was the one in the wrong, but she’d managed to make him feel as if
he
were
the one in the wrong, Sean thought.

Though she had a point. Complaining about the situation or losing his temper with her wouldn’t make the dress magically reappear. And Claire had spent most of today travelling—two and a half hours each way on a plane, plus an hour each way on a train and waiting round in between. Now she was just about to fly back to Italy: yet more travelling. All for
his sister’s sake.

Claire Stewart was trying—in both senses of the phrase. But maybe he needed to try a bit harder, too.

‘Do you want me to find you a flight while you pack the dresses?’ he asked.

She looked at him as if he’d just grown two heads.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Are you actually being
helpful
?’ she asked. ‘To
me
?’

He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Don’t make it sound
as if I’m always the one in the wrong.’

‘No. That would be me,’ she said. ‘In your regimented world view.’

‘I’m not regimented,’ he said, stung. ‘I’m organised and efficient. There’s a difference.’

Her expression suggested otherwise.

‘I was,’ he pointed out, ‘trying to call a truce and work with you. For Ashleigh’s sake.’

She looked at him for a long, long time. And then
she nodded. ‘Truce. I can do that. Then thank you—it would save me a bit of time if you could find me a flight. I don’t care which London airport it’s from or how much it costs—just let me know as soon as they need paying and I’ll come to the phone and give them my credit card details. But please put whichever airline in the picture about what happened to the dress this morning, and I want cast-iron
guarantees that
these
dresses are going to make it out to Italy with me. Otherwise I’ll be carving their entire check-in staff into little pieces with a rusty spoon.’

He couldn’t help smiling. ‘Spoons are blunt.’

‘That,’ she said, ‘is entirely the point. Ditto the rusty.’

‘You really care about Ashleigh, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Sean, how can you not already know that?’ Claire
frowned. ‘She’s been my best friend for more than half my lifetime, since I moved to the same school as her when I was thirteen. I think of Ash practically as my sister.’

Which would technically make her his sister, too. Except Sean didn’t have any sibling-like feelings towards Claire. What he felt for Claire was...

Well, it was a lot easier to think of it as dislike. When they weren’t
being scrupulously polite to each other, they clashed. They had totally opposite world views. They were totally incompatible. He wasn’t going to let himself think about the fact that her hair was the colour of a cornfield bathed in sunshine, and her eyes were the deep blue of a late summer evening. And he certainly wasn’t going to let himself think about the last time he’d kissed her.

‘Of
course. I’ll get you a flight sorted.’

Though he noticed her movements while he was on the phone. Deft and very sure as she packed each dress in tissue paper to avoid creases, put it inside a plastic cover to protect it from any damage and then in a box. As if she’d done this many times before. Which, he realised, she probably had.

He’d never seen Claire at work before. Apart from when
she’d measured the three men in the wedding party for their waistcoats, and that had been at Ashleigh and Luke’s house. He’d been too busy concentrating on being polite and anodyne to her for his sister’s sake to take much notice of what she was actually doing.

And, OK, it was easy to think of dress designers as a bit kooky and not living in the same world as the rest of the population. The
outlandish outfits on the catwalks in Milan and the big fashion shows left him cold and wondering what on earth was going on in the heads of the designers—real people just didn’t wear stuff like that. But the woman in front of him seemed businesslike. Organised. Efficient.

Like someone who belonged in his world.

He shook himself. That was just an illusion. Temporary. Claire didn’t belong
in his world and he didn’t belong in hers. They’d be civil to each other over the next few days, purely for Ashleigh’s sake, and then they’d go back to avoiding each other.

Safely.

CHAPTER TWO

A
S
C
LAIRE
WORKED
on packing up the dresses, she found herself growing more and more aware of Sean. He looked every inch the meticulous businessman in a made-to-measure suit, handmade shirt, and perfectly polished shoes; as part of her job, Claire noticed details like that. Sean wouldn’t have looked out of place on a catwalk or in a glossy magazine ad.

And he was
actually helping her—working with her as a team. Which was rarer than a blue moon. They didn’t get on.

Apart from a few occasions, and some of those were memories that still had the ability to make Claire squirm. Such as Ashleigh’s eighteenth birthday party. Claire’s life had imploded only a couple of weeks before and, although she’d tried so hard to smile and be happy for her best friend’s
sake, she’d ended up helping herself to too much champagne that evening to blot out the misery that had threatened to overwhelm her.

Sean had come to her rescue—and Claire had been young enough and drunk enough to throw herself at him. Sean had been a perfect gentleman and turned her down, and her adult self was glad that he’d been so decent, but as a teenager she’d been hideously embarrassed
by the whole episode and she’d avoided him like the plague for months and months afterwards.

Then there was his parents’ funeral, three years later. Claire had been there to support Ashleigh—just as Ashleigh had supported Claire at her own mother’s funeral—and she’d glanced across at Sean at a moment when he’d looked utterly lost. Wanting to help, Claire had pushed past the old embarrassment
and gone to offer him her condolences. Sean hadn’t been quite approachable enough for her to give him a hug, so she’d simply squeezed his hand and said she was sorry for his loss. At the time, her skin had tingled at the contact with his—but the timing was so inappropriate that she hadn’t acted on it.

They’d fought again when Ashleigh had decided not to join the family business. Sean had
blamed Claire for talking Ashleigh out of what he clearly saw as her duty. OK, so Claire had been a sounding board and helped Ashleigh work out what she really wanted to do, encouraging her to follow her dreams; but surely Sean had wanted his sister to be happy instead of feeling trapped and miserable in a job she really didn’t want to do? And surely, given that his parents had died so young, he understood
how short life was and how you needed to make the most of every moment? It wasn’t as if being a maths teacher was some insecure, fly-by-night job. And Ash was a really gifted teacher. She loved what she did and her pupils adored her. It had been the right decision.

The problem was, Sean had always been so overprotective. Claire could understand why; he was Ashleigh’s elder brother and had
been the head of the family since he was twenty-four. But at the same time he really needed to understand that his sister was perfectly capable of standing on her own two feet and making her own way in the world.

She forced herself to concentrate on packing the dresses properly, but she couldn’t help noticing the deep tone of Sean’s voice, his confidence and sureness as he talked to the airline.

Most of the time Claire didn’t admit it, even to herself, but she’d had a secret crush on Sean when she’d been fourteen. Which was half the reason why she’d thrown herself at him at Ashleigh’s birthday party, three years later.

Another memory seeped back in. Ashleigh’s engagement party to Luke. Sean had asked her to dance; Claire had been well aware that he was only being polite for his
sister’s sake. Which was the same reason why she’d agreed to dance with him. Though, somewhere between the start and the middle of the song, something had changed. Claire couldn’t even blame it on the champagne, because she hadn’t been drinking. But something had made her pull back slightly and look up at Sean. Something had made her lips part slightly. And then he’d dipped his head and kissed
her.

The kiss had shaken her right to the core. Nobody had ever made her feel like that with a single kiss—as if her knees had turned to mush and she needed to cling to him to keep herself upright. It had panicked her into backing away and cracking some inane joke, and the moment was lost.

Since then, she’d been scrupulously polite and distant with Sean. But in unguarded moments she
wondered. Had he felt that same pull of attraction? And what if...?

She shook herself. Of course not. Apart from the fact that her judgement when it came to men was totally rubbish, she knew that Sean just saw her as his baby sister’s super-annoying best friend, the woman he ended up bickering with every time they spoke to each other for more than five minutes. It rankled slightly that he
still didn’t take her seriously—surely the fact that she’d had her own business for the last three years and kept it going through the recession counted for
something
?

Then again, she didn’t need to prove anything to him. She was perfectly comfortable with who she was and what she’d achieved.

She finished packing the last box.

‘Any luck with my flight?’ she asked when Sean ended
his call.

‘There’s good news and bad,’ he said.

‘OK. Hit me with the bad first.’

He frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Because then I’ve faced the worst, and there’s still something good to look forward to.’

He looked surprised, as if he’d never thought of it in that way before. ‘OK. The bad news is, I can’t get you a flight where they’ll take the dresses on board.’

The worst-case
scenario. Well, she’d just have to deal with it. ‘Then if planes are out, I’ll just have to go by train.’ She thought on her feet. ‘If I get the Eurostar to Paris, there’ll be a connecting train to Milan or Rome, and from there to Naples. Though it means I probably won’t get to Capri until tomorrow, now.’

‘Hold on. I did say there was good news as well,’ he reminded her. ‘We can fly to Naples
from London.’

She frowned, not understanding. ‘But you just said you couldn’t get me a seat where they’ll take the dresses.’

‘Not on a commercial flight, no. But I have a friend with a private plane.’

‘You have
what
?’

‘A friend with a private plane,’ he repeated, ‘who’s willing to take us this afternoon.’

‘Us.’ The word hit her like a sledgehammer and she narrowed her
eyes at him. ‘Are you saying that you don’t trust me to take the dresses on my own?’

‘You need to go to Naples. I need to go to Naples. So it makes sense,’ he said, ‘for us to travel together.’

She noticed that he hadn’t answered her question. Clearly he didn’t trust her. To be fair to him, she had already lost his sister’s wedding dress—but it hadn’t been entirely her fault. ‘But don’t
you already have a flight booked?’

‘I cancelled it,’ he said. ‘I promised Ashleigh I’d be there tonight or I would’ve offered you my original booking and flown in later. This seemed like the best solution to the problem.’

‘You have a friend with a private plane.’ She still couldn’t get over that one. ‘Sean, normal people don’t have friends with private planes.’

‘You barely accept
that I’m human, let alone normal,’ he pointed out.

And they were heading towards yet another fight. She grimaced. ‘Sorry. Let’s just rewind and try this again. Thank you, Sean, for coming to the rescue and calling in whatever favour you had to call in to get me a flight to Naples. Please tell your friend that if he ever needs a wedding dress or a prom dress made, I’ll do it for nothing.’

‘I’ll tell her,’ Sean said dryly.

Her.
Girlfriend? Probably not, Claire thought. Ashleigh was always saying that Sean would never settle down and never dated anyone for more than three weeks in a row. So maybe it was someone who’d gone to university with him, or a long-standing business acquaintance. Not that she had any right to ask.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘So what time does the flight
leave?’

‘When we want it to, give or take half an hour,’ he said. ‘My car’s outside. I just need to drop it back home and collect my luggage.’ He looked at her. ‘You might as well come with me.’

Gee, what an invitation, Claire thought. But she wasn’t going to pick a fight with him now. He’d already gone above and beyond. It was for Ashleigh’s sake rather than hers, she knew, but she
still appreciated it. ‘Ready when you are.’

He drove them back to his house and parked outside. His luggage was in the hallway, so it only took a few seconds for him to collect it; Claire noticed that he didn’t invite her in. Fair enough. It was his space. Though she was curious to know whether his living space was as organised and regimented as the rest of him.

They took the tube through
to London City airport. Claire used the noise of the train as an excuse not to make conversation, and she knew that he was doing exactly the same. Being with Sean wasn’t easy. He was so prickly. He had to have a charming side, or he wouldn’t have made such a success of running the family business—clients wouldn’t want to deal with him. But the sweetness of the toffee that Farrell’s produced
definitely didn’t rub off on him where Claire was concerned.

The check-in process was much faster than Claire was used to; then again, she didn’t know anyone with a private plane. It was more the sort of thing that a rock star would have, not a wedding dress designer. The plane was smaller than she’d expected, but there was plenty of room to stretch out and the seats were way, way more comfortable
than she was used to. She always travelled economy. This was another world.

‘Welcome aboard,’ the pilot said, shaking their hands. ‘Our flight today will be about two and a half hours. If you need anything, ask Elise.’

Elise turned out to be their stewardess.

And, most importantly, Elise stored the dress boxes where Claire could see them. This time, she could be totally sure that
none of the dresses would be lost.

‘Do you mind if I...?’ Sean gestured to his briefcase.

Claire would much rather work than make small talk with him, too. ‘Sure. Me, too,’ she said, and took a sketchpad from her bag. She’d had a new client yesterday who wanted a dress at short notice, plus there was the big wedding show in two months’ time—a show where Claire was exhibiting her very
first collection, and she was working flat out to get enough dresses ready in time. Six wedding dresses plus the bridesmaids’ outfits to go with each, as well as colour co-ordinating the groom’s outfit with each set. She could really do with an extra twenty-four hours in a day for the next few weeks—twenty-four hours when she didn’t need to sleep. But, as that wasn’t physically possible, she’d have
to settle for drinking too much coffee and eating too much sugary stuff to get her through the next few weeks.

* * *

As he worked, Sean was aware of the quick, light strokes of Claire’s pencil against her sketchpad. Clearly she was working on some preliminary designs for someone else’s dress. When the sound stopped, he looked over at her.

She’d fallen asleep mid-sketch, her pencil
still held loosely in one hand, and there were deep shadows beneath her eyes.

Right at that moment, she looked vulnerable. And Sean was shocked by the sudden surge of protectiveness.

Since when did he feel protective about Claire Stewart?

That wasn’t something he wanted to think about too closely. So he concentrated on his work and let her sleep until the plane landed. Then he leaned
over and touched her shoulder. ‘Claire, wake up.’

She murmured something and actually nestled closer, so her cheek was resting against his hand.

It was his second shock of the afternoon, how her skin felt against his. It made him feel almost as if he’d been galvanised. Very similar to that weird sensation when she’d measured him for the waistcoat—even though her touch had been as professional
and emotionless as any tailor’s, it had made him feel strange to feel the warmth of her fingers through his shirt.

Oh, help.

Sexual attraction and Claire Stewart were two things that definitely didn’t go together, in his book.

OK, so there had been that night, all those years ago—but Claire had been seventeen and his mother had dispatched him to rescue the girl and get her safely
to bed back at their house. Of course he’d been tempted when she’d tried to kiss him—he was a man, not an automaton—but he also knew that he was responsible for her, and no way would he ever have taken advantage of her.

And the times since when their eyes had met at one of Ashleigh’s parties...

Well, she’d normally had some dreadful boyfriend or other in tow. In Sean’s experience, Claire’s
men were always the type who’d claim that artistic integrity was much more important than actually earning a living. Sean didn’t have much time for people who wouldn’t shoulder their fair share of responsibility and expected other people to bail them out all the time, but he still wouldn’t encourage their girlfriend to cheat on them. He’d never made a move.

Except, he remembered with a twinge
of guilt, for the night Ashleigh had got engaged to Luke. He’d asked Claire to dance—solely for his sister’s sake. But then Claire had looked up at him, her blue eyes huge and her mouth parted, and he’d reacted purely on instinct.

He’d kissed her.

A kiss that had shaken him to the core. It had shaken him even more when he analysed it. No way could he feel like
that
about Claire Stewart.
She was his total opposite. It would never, ever work between them. They’d drive each other crazy.

He’d been too shocked to say a word, at first, but then she’d made some terrible joke or other and he’d somehow managed to get his common sense back. And he’d blanked out the memory.

Except now it was back.

And he had to acknowledge that the possibility of something happening between
himself and Claire had always been there. Right now, the possibility hummed just a little harder. Probably because he hadn’t dated anyone in the last three months—this was a physical itch, he told himself, and Claire definitely wasn’t the right woman to scratch said itch. Their approach to life was way too different for it ever to work between them.