A Whirlwind Engagement. Jessica Hart
edge of an abyss. The sensation of falling was so intense that Bella had to close her eyes against a sickening wave of vertigo, and when she opened them again she felt dizzy and hollow inside.
‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘He has.’
There was a silence. Frightened by the strength of her physical response, Bella drank her champagne shakily, and it was some time before she realised that Phoebe was watching her expectantly.
‘What?’ she demanded, and Phoebe held up her hands, one still clutching her champagne glass.
‘I didn’t say anything!’
That was the worst thing about friends who knew you really well. They didn’t need to say anything for you to know exactly what they were thinking!
‘I’m not jealous, all right?’
‘All right,’ said Phoebe equably. ‘So what is the problem?’
‘Who says there’s a problem?’
Phoebe sighed. ‘Come on, Bella, it’s obvious! Is it Will?’
‘No…. Yes…sort of,’ Bella admitted with a sigh.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing, that’s just it.’ Bella stared miserably down into her glass. ‘It’s just that I’ve been feeling…I don’t know…restless, I suppose, for a while. We haven’t had an argument or anything. It was Will who suggested that we give each other some space, and I think that’s all I need. I mean, Will’s fantastic, isn’t he?’ She hated the doubtful note in her voice.
‘He certainly seems very nice,’ said Phoebe noncommittally.
‘And drop-dead gorgeous and intelligent and solvent and not screwed up…What more could I ask for? He would have come today if I’d asked him,’ she went on with a sigh. ‘I need my head examined to let him go off to Hong Kong! What’s wrong with me?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you. Will just isn’t the right man for you, that’s all.’
‘But if someone like Will isn’t the right man, who is?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Phoebe, ‘but you will when you find him.’
CHAPTER TWO
BELLA wished she had Phoebe’s confidence. She was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with her. It wasn’t that she was particularly vain, but she knew she was pretty, and there was never any shortage of men wanting to go out with her. Somehow, though, it never came to anything. She fell headlong into love and just as quickly out of it.
She might never find that special man, Bella thought glumly as she helped herself to a canapé, and now she might not even have Josh to fall back on. They had once agreed that if they both reached forty without finding anyone they would marry each other.
Bella actually remembered laughing at the time. The truth was that it had never occurred to her then that Josh might marry someone else. He was so self-contained that it was hard to imagine him sharing his life with anyone. None of his girlfriends had ever moved in with him.
Looking for him now, her eyes found him instinctively in the crowded marquee. There he was, Aisling clinging as usual to his arm, and no matter how much she wanted to think that he looked irritated by her possessiveness, she just couldn’t do it.
Bella drifted around the edge of the marquee to get a better view. That was better. Now she could see Josh quite clearly, talking to Gib. He was wearing a morning suit, and the crisp white shirt made his skin, weathered from so much time spent in the tropics, look even browner than usual.
He looked surprisingly good in formal clothes, she thought. Even now, dressed identically to most of the other men in the marquee, he had the tough, competent air of a man who should be hacking his way through a jungle or bumping along a dusty track in faded khakis, not sipping champagne and eating canapés in an English garden.
Bella’s gaze rested on him. Really, it was amazing that it had taken her so many years to realise what a great body he had, lean and hard and tautly muscled in an intriguingly restrained way. If she had walked into the marquee as a stranger, she would definitely have clocked him.
His face wasn’t that bad either. Not jaw-droppingly handsome like Will, of course, but still, there was nothing actually wrong with it. He had nice eyes, creased around the edges from too much squinting at the sun, and they held a lurking smile sometimes that might be really quite disturbing if you weren’t used to it, the way she was.
Nice mouth too, Bella thought judiciously. Not the kind of mouth you noticed at first, maybe—it was too quiet and cool for that—but if you looked at it for too long, something about it made you squirm suddenly.
Like that. A strange feeling shuddered down Bella’s spine, and she jerked her eyes away.
It felt all wrong to be thinking about Josh like this. He was her friend, the one person she could talk to about anything at all.
Except this.
Bella imagined herself strolling over and saying, ‘Hey, Josh, I was just thinking what a great body you have and wondering what it would be like to kiss you,’ and she winced, picturing already his appalled expression. She couldn’t do that to Josh.
More to the point, she couldn’t do it to herself! Honesty was one thing, humiliation quite another.
Gib’s attention had been claimed by another guest and, as Bella watched, Josh tightened his arm around Aisling and gave her a quick private kiss. The pain that sliced through her at the sight was so unexpected that it took Bella’s breath away, and the champagne spilt from her glass as she flinched instinctively.
Bella turned abruptly away. This wouldn’t do! She was the life and soul of a party, not someone who mooned around on the edges feeling left out. It was time to circulate and exert some of that charm she was so famous for.
She succeeded so well that one of Kate’s young brothers informed her owlishly at the end of the reception that he had been in love with her since he was fourteen, and asked her to marry him. Touched and amused, Bella let him down kindly but secretly she couldn’t help feeling a bit better. She might be tottering on the verge of thirty-three and she wasn’t a camping queen like Aisling, but some men wanted her, even if they were only twenty-one and had been imbibing freely of their father’s champagne.
She seemed to have developed a sudden attraction for very young men. At the ceilidh in the marquee that evening Bella found herself the centre of a group of besotted boys. Their undisguised admiration was very flattering of course, but she wasn’t entirely sure that it was a good sign. Did she really look old enough to be in the market for a toy boy? Bella wondered.
Still, it was nice to feel wanted for a change, and she glanced across the marquee to where Josh had Aisling entwined around him as usual.
Determined to show Josh, should he happen to look in her direction, that she was having a wonderful time, Bella let one of her admirers after another swing her eagerly on the dance floor. Her partners appeared deaf to the bellowed instructions of the member of the band who was desperately trying to tell everyone the moves to the Scottish dances, but what they lacked in skill, they more than made up for in enthusiasm. More than once Bella found herself being spun out of control so that she ended up cannoning breathlessly into other couples. Fortunately few of them seemed to have a clue what they were doing either.
Bella told herself she was having a fantastic time, and laughed as she shook back her hair over her shoulders.
From another set, Josh watched her dazzle the boy she was dancing with. He couldn’t be more than sixteen and obviously could hardly believe his luck, Josh thought indulgently. He had seen how effortlessly Bella had cast her spell over every man she came across. Even Kate’s famously grumpy great-uncle had not been immune to the old Stevenson charm.
It had been the same ever