Authors: Jill Mansell
Adele, thrilled to be engaged in conversation with an intellectual, was doing her level best to impress JD—Jasper Deveraux, what a name—with her knowledge of the great poets.
It would have been nice though, if he could have shown a bit more enthusiasm in return.
‘Sylvia
has
to be my favorite, of course.’ As she spoke, Adele deftly slid her copy of Sylvia Plath out of her bag and whisked it in front of his startled eyes like a flashcard. ‘But one can’t ignore Christina Rossetti, such
awesome
power and grace…’
Poetry wasn’t JD's thing at all; nothing sent him off to sleep faster than a couple of sonnets. Unless there was a punchline to look forward to, a guaranteed laugh at the end. Pam Ayres was far more up JD's street than Sylvia face-like-a-wet-weekend Plath.
Who was this Christina Rossetti anyway, with her awesome power and grace? Sounded like an Olympic gymnast.
In a valiant attempt to change the subject, JD nodded vigorously and declared, ‘You’re absolutely right, of course. So tell me, have you managed to get away yet this year?’
God, listen to me, I sound like a
hairdresser
.
About to launch into something moving and profound by Rossetti, Adele was abruptly halted in her tracks. Holidays, holidays, now what could she say that would impress this wealthy, powerful, erudite man?
‘Not yet, but I certainly will,’ Adele trilled. ‘Monte Carlo and St. Tropez are my favorite places to visit,’ she confided prettily. ‘How about you?’
‘Oh, we have a villa in Tuscany. Marvelous food, wonderful wine, just the place to get away from it all,’ JD enthused. Then he laughed. ‘That is, until you realize everyone you know is out there getting away from it all too!’
Tuscany. Tuscany. As she watched him chuckle to himself, Adele suddenly realized two things. Tuscany, also known as Chianti-shire, was where influential, intellectual, artistic, and literary types took their holidays. The glitterati. BBC executives. Actors. Writers. Opera singers. Good grief, why had it never occurred to her before that Tuscany would be
the
perfect place to vacation and meet glamorous, intellectual people on exactly the same wavelength as herself?
The second thing Adele realized was that although she’d read endless newspaper articles about Tuscany and the kind of people who holidayed there… gosh, even the Blairs… she didn’t actually have the faintest idea where Tuscany was.
Give her a map of Europe and a pin and she wouldn’t have a clue. Spain? France? Italy? She had an inkling it was in the
middle
of somewhere, but that was all. Could be any of them.
How incredibly embarrassing. Chianti-shire. But when you weren’t a great drinker of wine that was no help at all. Was Chianti a Spanish wine or Italian or French?
First thing tomorrow, Adele silently vowed, she would find out everything there was to know about Tuscany, every tiny last detail.
Including which country it was in.
Aloud, she said vivaciously, ‘Of course, my great love is opera. I’m a huge fan of Andrea Bocelli.’
JD, more of an Andrea Corr man himself, decided the time had come to make his escape. Touching the back of Adele's hand he said genially, ‘Why don’t I go and find you a drink?’
Much as he shared his wife Moira's wish to see his son happily settled down with the right girl before she died, he couldn’t help hoping that girl wouldn’t be Millie.
Being condemned to a lifetime of in-law-dom with Adele Brady would be more than he could bear.
‘You have a fabulous daughter,’ Orla told Lloyd Brady as they said their good-byes at the end of the evening. Turning to Judy, who was holding Adele's pink cashmere wrap while Adele made a production of kissing JD and Moira, she added in an undertone, ‘And you have the patience of a saint.’
‘I do.’ Judy nodded cheerfully. ‘Then again, I also have a secret stash of cyanide.’
Moira Deveraux whispered in her son's ear, ‘You don’t have to stay here at the house with us, you know. Nobody would mind if you… disappeared.’
Con grinned at the way his mother raised her penciled-in eyebrows delicately in Millie's direction as she spoke.
‘Mother. I can’t believe you’re even suggesting it.’
‘We’re only down here for one more day.’ Moira tapped her watch. ‘Sometimes, darling, you simply can’t afford to hang around, you just have to go for it.’ Her expression softening, she went on fondly, ‘Your father and I had a whirlwind romance, you know. He swept me right off my feet and we were engaged within a week.’
‘You mean he tried it on with you the first night and got lucky.’ Con looked scandalized. ‘Mum, I’m sorry, but that is disgraceful. I’m deeply,
deeply
shocked.’
Unperturbed, Moira said serenely, ‘The spark was there. When the spark's there, you can’t ignore it. And,’ she smiled over at Millie, ‘I saw it there between the two of you tonight.’
‘Okay.’ Con held up his hands in defeat. ‘I already tried it. I said I wanted us to spend the night together and she turned me down. She told me she wasn’t that kind of girl.’
So Millie had standards, morals, a healthy respect for her own body. Happily, Moira said, ‘Now I like her even more.’
It was two o’clock in the morning by the time Millie arrived home after first dropping off her mother, her father, and Judy. Now, parking a little way up the street, she passed a white van, a Renault the color of Bird's custard, and a dusty dark blue Jaguar.
The house was silent and empty. Yet another flyer advertising pizza delivery had been pushed through the door; Millie kicked it to one side and headed on up the stairs. Hester wasn’t back yet. Still, if she was out with Jen and Trina that was hardly a surprise.
Exhausted, Millie peeled off the fabulous Dolce & Gabbana suede dress, skittishly didn’t bother removing her make-up, and was asleep within seconds of falling into bed.
Something was ringing. On and on, in a horribly persistent fashion. Millie groaned, rolled over, and pulled the pillow over her head. If it was Hester leaning on the doorbell because she’d forgotten her key she would be forced to kill her.
But it wasn’t the doorbell, her confused brain finally managed to figure out. The ringing was too rhythmic for that.
It was the phone.
Urrgh, no, go
away
.
Buried beneath the pillow, Millie kept her eyes closed and prayed for it to stop. But whoever was calling was certainly persistent; they were showing no signs of giving up.
Then again, it could be a genuine emergency, Millie realized as she padded downstairs to answer the phone.
Hester, desperate to come home but so drunk she couldn’t remember where she lived. Ha, that had happened before.
Or Adele, panicking because she couldn’t find her precious volume of Sylvia Plath poetry and ringing to find out if she’d left it in the car.
Or even Con Deveraux, calling to tell her he couldn’t sleep for thinking about Lucas in his tight leather trousers and begging her for Lucas's phone number…
Hm, maybe not.
In the living room, Millie picked up the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Are you alone?’
‘What?’
‘Is he there with you?’
In her muddled, just-woken-up frame of mind, Millie couldn’t place the voice at the other end. Well, that wasn’t strictly true, she
thought
she could place the voice because it sounded exactly like Hugh Emerson's voice, but since the logical, slightly-less-befuddled part of her mind told her it couldn’t possibly be Hugh, she knew she must be wrong.
‘Is who here with me?’
‘I don’t know. Any of them, take your pick. Just say yes or no.’
Lord, now it sounded even more like Hugh's voice. Startled— and by this time pretty much awake—Millie said, ‘Nobody's here. I’m on my own. Why?’
A pause. Followed by a sigh. Of relief?
‘I just needed to find out.’
Millie, her heart racing like a greyhound, whispered, ‘Why?’
‘Come on.’ This time his tone was wry. ‘I think you know.’
Millie couldn’t speak. The greyhound in her chest was hurtling around the track. In a daze, she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and saw that it was three-thirty.
Three-thirty, in the morning…
‘Millie? Are you still there?’
‘I think so.’
‘Open the curtains.’
‘What?’
‘Go on.’
Was this actually happening? Or was she really still upstairs in bed with her pillow clamped over her ears?
Oh well, if it was a dream, where was the harm in letting it carry on?
Crikey, Millie thought, this was in danger of turning into the best dream she’d had in years.
Making her way over to the window, she pulled open the curtains.
Hugh was out there, on the pavement, illuminated by the pool of orange light from the streetlamp overhead. He had changed into a white denim shirt and jeans.
Speaking into his mobile, he said simply, ‘I needed to see you.’
Oh good grief.
But like this?
Millie wished she wasn’t wearing her saggy purple Harry Enfield T-shirt; the picture on the front of
Kevin the Teenager
wasn’t what you’d call seductive. She also wished—illogically—that she’d had the presence of mind to brush her hair before staggering downstairs to answer the phone.
‘You needed to see me? Why?’
‘I just did.’
Making a feeble stab at humor, Millie said, ‘Bet you wish now you hadn’t bothered.’
‘No.’ Deadpan, Hugh replied, ‘I’ve always had a thing about Harry Enfield.’
Pause. Millie couldn’t speak.
‘Right,’ said Hugh. ‘Well, we can carry on like this for the rest of
the night, or you could think about whether you might like to open the front door.’
‘Two minutes,’ said Millie shakily. ‘I’ll be back in two minutes.’ ‘Where are you going?’ He half smiled. ‘Upstairs to tip some bloke out of bed and squeeze him like toothpaste out through the back window?’
‘Surprisingly close,’ said Millie. ‘Actually, upstairs to clean my teeth.’
WHEN MILLIE OPENED THE front door two minutes later she said, ‘I wasn’t expecting this to happen.’
‘Neither was I.’ Hugh walked her gently backwards through to the living room and gazed down at her, the expression in his dark eyes unreadable. ‘That chap I saw you with… the one in the helicopter… are the two of you…?’
‘No.’ Millie was trembling. ‘No.’
‘What about the other one? In the marquee?’
‘He's Orla's gardener. He was just out of his tree.’
‘Well, that's appropriate.’ Hugh waited. ‘And there's definitely nothing going on between you and your boss?’ Lucas!
‘Definitely nothing going on,’ Millie whispered. ‘Absolutely definitely not.’
‘Right. Well, good.’ As Hugh pushed his sun-bleached hair back from his forehead, Millie saw that his hand was unsteady. ‘I couldn’t sleep, you know,’ he went on. ‘Couldn’t stand the thought of all those men hanging around you tonight. It made me realize… God,
so much
.’
‘And?’
‘I had to come and see you.’
Feeling brave all of a sudden—ah well, what the hell, it might still be a dream—Millie raised one eyebrow a fraction and said quizzically, ‘
See
me?’
He reached out and touched her face, his warm fingers tracing the outline of her pale pink mouth.
‘Okay. Kiss you.’
Too slow, too
slow
. By this time, tormented beyond endurance, Millie flung her arms around his neck, pressed every available cell of her body against him, and whispered, ‘Right, well, better get on and do it then.’
The kiss, when it happened, sent everything spiraling out of control. Millie, feeling as if she were on fire, wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if her
Kevin-the-Teenager
nightie had suddenly burst into flames. There was enough electricity zapping through her body to light up the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree. It was simply beyond belief that one mouth, one pair of lips, and one tongue could be capable of having such a staggering effect on… well,
all
of her.
This was kissing as Millie had never known it before, such a dazzling experience that she actually did stagger. Her knees had gone, and she was forced to open her eyes just to get her bearings. Dazed and blinking, she realized that while the rest of her had been dizzily reveling in the glory of Hugh's mouth on hers, her shameless fingers had been busy pulling his shirt out from his jeans, unfastening buttons like nobody's business, and roaming frantically over his chest…
Oh well, nothing like playing it cool, keeping them guessing, maintaining that enigmatic facade—
‘
Ouch
.’ Hugh winced. ‘What was that for?’
‘Oh God, sorry, sorry. I needed to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.’ Millie agitatedly rubbed the red mark on the back of his hand. ‘I was pinching myself. Except no wonder I couldn’t feel it,’ she apologized. ‘I pinched the wrong hand.’
He held her face, his mouth a tantalizing half-inch away from her own.
‘I’ve dreamed of doing this for weeks. I haven’t been able to stop
thinking about you. I swore to myself nothing would ever happen, but tonight was too much. I just couldn’t stay away.’
Millie was so happy there were tears swimming in her eyes.
‘I’m glad. I mean, me too. Thinking about you all the time, wishing something could happen.’ Drunk with exhilaration, she was having trouble stringing together a sentence that made sense; the glorious smell of his bare skin alone was enough to reduce her to gibberish. ‘I was so jealous, seeing you there with Kate. I thought you were going to elope with her to Gretna Green. And now you’re here, you came all this way to see me, well, kiss me… you really are an excellent kisser, by the way, I can’t imagine how you got to be so good, but if you ever fancy a part-time job I’m sure Lucas would hire you in a flash…’
‘Millie, you’re wittering.’
‘Gosh, am I? Surely not. Not me, I promise you, I never ever witter when I’m nervous.’
‘Are you nervous?’ Hugh smiled down at her. ‘Why?’
Why? Why? Was the man
mad
!
‘Because you drove over here to kiss me and now you’ve kissed me and you’re still here,’ Millie blurted out, ‘and I may not be the shiniest shell on the beach, but I think even I can guess what might be about to happen next.’