The Bridesmaid's Secret Read online

  ‘You can keep the press out if you want to,’ she muttered.

  ‘We can try. I wouldn’t bet much on our chances.’ Annis paused. ‘Anyway, it’s not just about the press, is it?’

  ‘I thought you said—’

  ‘Oh, Bella, we’re sisters. I want you at my wedding.’

  Bella gritted her teeth until her jaw hurt.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said at last in low voice. ‘I always thought I’d be there right behind you, holding your flowers and making sure you didn’t bolt.’

  Annis gave a rather watery laugh. ‘Well, then—’

  Briefly Bella wondered if hiding her feelings had been the best course of action. Maybe it would be healthier for everyone if she made a clean breast of it now?

  Annis saw her hesitation and misinterpreted it. She said quietly, ‘If you don’t come, it will always be there, in the family album, for ever. The Bella-shaped gap.’ She looked at her sister, torn between affection and despair.

  ‘Please?’ said Annis.

  What could Bella do?

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘I didn’t broach it before, but you know what ought to happen. You want to be a bridesmaid. I want you to be a bridesmaid. What is important enough to get in the way of that?’

  ‘I know,’ Bella agreed, wretched. And because, in spite of her broken heart, Annis was still her best friend, she gave her a hug and said, ‘Let’s go eat and I’ll give you my New York update. Next time you will stay with me. We’ll order in and it will be like it used to be. Oh, it’s good to see you.’

  And it was. It really was. By the time Annis called a cab to take her back to the airport, they were giggling like school-girls. It was almost as if they had never been apart.

  It stayed with her as she sat on the subway, too preoccupied for once to eavesdrop on her fellow passengers. It even stayed with her as she trudged through the icy slush to her building. This could not be the end to all those years of friendship.

  ‘Hi, Bella,’ said a voice above her head.

  She jumped and skidded, nearly falling on the slippery pavement. She looked round wildly.

  Mrs Portnoy from next door was hanging out of her window. Bella stared up, open-mouthed. No one hung out of their windows in weather like this.

  ‘I was looking out for you,’ said Mrs Portnoy in explanation. ‘Took in a delivery for you. I think. You’d better come up.’

  Mrs Portnoy was the Mrs Fixit of the neighbourhood. She was also an incorrigible gossip.

  Bella hid her reluctance. Mrs Portnoy had introduced her to the best delicatessen in town. ‘OK.’

  ‘Come up.’

  Mrs Portnoy closed the window.

  Bella trod up the steps of the brownstone next door. Half an hour, she promised herself.

  Mrs Portnoy was excited. She pulled her inside.

  ‘So romantic. He looked real handsome too. Course I didn’t tell him anything about you. He said he only saw you the once. It’s like a movie.’

  Bella was aware of strong sense of foreboding. ‘What is?’

  Mrs Portnoy led the way into a parlour stuffed full of furniture that had not been changed since 1950. She talked all the time.

  ‘He must have chosen every bloom personally.’

  Suspicion began to crystallise. ‘Who did?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  Mrs Portnoy stood back with a large gesture.’

  The flowers deserved it.

  Bella stared. She had never seen such an enormous bouquet in her life. Or such a red one.

  She could well believe that her unknown admirer had chosen every flower himself. No professional florist would have put together such a collection of scarlets and crimsons and orange. Any shade that technically fell into the red sector of the spectrum was represented. Blood-red. Wine-red. Brick-red. Rust and rose and ruby. Whoever he was, he was not a moderate man. Not the sort to send a dozen roses and think he had made his point. Her blood began to tingle at the thought.

  ‘Wow. That hurts,’ said Bella involuntarily.

  What had Sally said? Englishmen had no imagination?

  Mrs Portnoy grinned. ‘Guess he thinks it’s your favourite colour.’

  Bella did not ask who. She did not need to.

  Mrs Portnoy held out a piece of paper. It was a page off a roll of paper for a portable printer. The perforated borders were still attached.

  Bella did not recognise the address or the signature. But she recognised the name on the top all right.

  To Tina the Tango Dancer,

  Happy Valentine. We will salsa again soon. If I don’t catch up with you tonight, call me.

  Call me anyway.

  There followed a whole raft of numbers and email addresses. He was [email protected]. But he had not bothered to sign his full name to it—or remind her when and where they had met. Of course he had not needed to. But he did not know that. Or he shouldn’t have known it, thought Bella, fulminating.

  ‘Coffee?’ said Mrs Portnoy, scenting intrigue.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bella. Now that she had got over the strange, tingling feeling, her resolution to get out fast was forgotten in sheer fury.

  How dared he send her that imperious message and not even bother to sign it? Oh, how dared he? And those flowers! They were a message all on their own.

  ‘You like red?’ said Mrs Portnoy, returning with coffee and spiced biscuits.

  ‘Hate it,’ snapped Bella.

  Mrs Portnoy blinked. Bella was remorseful. She reminded herself that it was not Mrs Portnoy’s fault that she was Gil’s messenger in this.

  ‘He said he’d been to the flower market,’ Mrs Portnoy told her in congratulatory tones.

  ‘Very focused,’ said Bella between her teeth.

  The unwelcome voice in her head said, ‘I only do one thing at a time.’

  And one colour by the look of it.

  ‘They make my eyes sore.’

  Mrs Portnoy sighed with pleasure. ‘The colour of love. The colour of passion. I remember when I was your age, my Sam…’

  For once Bella was grateful for the legacy of legend left by the late Samuel Portnoy.

  Love, she thought. Passion, for heaven’s sake. One dance, two conversations and a kiss doesn’t add up to passion.

  But that didn’t allow for the quality of the kiss. Even now, hours later, she shivered with reaction when she recalled the sudden total physical awareness—of him, of herself. Of the cold night. Of the quick blood in her veins. Of his warm flesh and hers and the ease with which they could have gotten rid of the layers of clothing between.

  Was that a sort of passion?

  If it was, thought Bella, she did not want to have anything to do with it. She had listened to her instincts when she’d fallen for Kosta Vitale. Look where it had left her! Half the world away from her family and friends trying to screw up her courage to go home for the shortest possible visit to her sister’s wedding.

  No, no more listening to her instincts for Bella Carew. She was going to take charge of her feelings. Passionate kisses were fine and fun but they were no signpost to the future. And the future was what she had to concentrate on if she was ever going to get out of this messy misery. What she needed was less agonising over her instincts and a good solid injection of self-respect.

  That was when Bella made up her mind about three things: she would do the full bridesmaid performance and face it out; she would never call a man who did not give her his full name; and she was taking that bouquet to work tomorrow.

  She did just that.

  Sally was impressed. Even Rita Caruso was impressed.

  ‘Secret admirer?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe you could get an article out of that. As long as he’s not a stalker, of course.’

  ‘Not that secret,’ said Bella drily. ‘And speaking of articles—’

  She whipped out her offering on Latin life that described her evening at Hombre y Mujer. Well, part of her evening.

  Rita Caruso t
ook it away to think about.

  It was the start of a hectic time. Caruso liked her writing but, she pointed out, Bella was supposed to be on a training programme. So she had to do all the dogsbody’s duties before she was allowed to write.

  So Bella did. She ran around at fashion shoots, she sent flowers to celebrities, she took notes.

  In her private life she sent Annis her measurements for the bridesmaid’s dress and then resolutely put the wedding out of her mind. Instead, she shopped. She hung out with the girls. She helped build a snowman in Central Park and then joined in the snowball fight afterwards with ferocious accuracy. She got column inches out of all of them. She laughed all the time and there were only two things her friends found she wouldn’t do.

  She would not go anywhere near Hombre y Mujer.

  And she wouldn’t say who had sent her the flowers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BELLA tried to put Gil out of her mind. She really tried.

  He did not try to get in touch with her again and she told herself she was glad. Of course she was. His flowers had died and so, she assured herself, would the unsettling echo that haunted her dreams. If she concentrated.

  Heaven knew she had plenty to do. Rita Caruso agreed to give her enough unpaid holiday to go home for the wedding but, in return, she piled tasks on her until Bella’s desk became a sea of paper. Caruso beamed and promised her a three-thousand word article.

  ‘Like I need more work.’ Bella groaned.

  ‘Like you need a bodyguard,’ said Sally without sympathy. ‘Do you know how many staffers are after that slot?’

  When she did, finally, get out of the office, life was just as hectic. She had to get new clothes, to show everyone what a fabulous time she was having in New York. And her air ticket. And a wedding present, though that was almost impossible.

  What did she buy for the love of her life when he was marrying someone else? What did she buy her sister when she was walking down the aisle with her only hope of happiness? And she knew she’d helped them do it?

  So, between all her tasks, she managed not to think about the maddeningly silent Gil Whoever-he-was more than three or four times a day.

  By the time she got back to London just days before the wedding, she had almost buried him.

  Almost.

  She was going to see Annis at once. Her plane touched down at ten in the morning but knew the meeting could not be put off. She only had a carry-on bag so she did not have to wait for baggage to be unloaded. She felt oddly shaky, as if she was going to see a hostile stranger instead of a stepsister who was her best friend.

  Maybe the problem was in going to Annis’s flat—Annis ran her consultancy from home—and in coming face to face with the major changes in Annis’s life since the last time Bella had been there. At this hour, Kosta would have gone to work, of course, so she would not have to see him yet. But there would still be his things around. There had to be.

  ‘I can bear it,’ said Bella between her teeth. ‘This is stupid. Of course I can bear it.’

  But her stomach still churned as she walked out of Terminal Three and joined the queue for black taxis.

  The one she got was furnished with a telephone. She used it to call Annis.

  ‘The plane was early. Is it still all right if I come straight to you?’

  ‘Surely.’ Annis had a lovely voice, warm and full of laughter. Her affection, reaching out across the crackling reception, did a lot to soothe the turbulence in Bella’s digestion.

  ‘A client has dropped by—’ although Annis valued her privacy, sometimes a client who became a friend was asked into the pretty flat ‘—but we’ll be finished by the time you get here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. Hurry along Bella Bug. I’m putting the coffee on now.’

  The nervous acidity subsided altogether.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ Bella said involuntarily.

  ‘Me too. Can’t wait to see you.’

  Annis rang off. Bella sank back on the seat, blinking away tears but smiling.

  When she got to the luxury block of flats, she almost danced through the foyer. She nodded to the porter. He knew her well. Up to four months ago, he had seen her several times a week.

  She hummed going up in the lift. When Annis threw open the door, Bella flung her arms round her with a shout of glee.

  ‘Oh, it’s so good to be home. I missed you so much. You look wonderful. Tell me—’

  The words died in her throat.

  Standing behind Annis, his face unreadable, was a man whose kiss she had put so much effort into forgetting.

  Bella dropped her arms and her overnight bag and let out a wail of pure panic.

  ‘Oh, no!’

  Annis did not understand, of course. She was evidently taken aback.

  She cast a quick, bewildered look at her visitor before saying, ‘It’s all right. You haven’t interrupted a meeting. Gil was just going.’

  Gil. He wasn’t taken aback at all. Bella met his eyes.

  He was expecting me, she thought, suddenly certain. How long has he known who I am? Her jaw tightened.

  Annis said uncertainly, ‘Bella?’

  Bella swallowed. ‘Right. Er—sorry.’

  She did not know what she was apologising for but it filled up the horrible silence while he looked at her without speaking. Which was just as well, as she was hearing his voice rather too clearly in her head. It was not saying anything she would want Annis to overhear.

  Bella fumbled for her bag. Her hands felt crazily weak. She looked anywhere but at him as she hauled the strap of her overnight bag over her shoulder.

  At last he spoke. ‘Gil de la Court.’ He held out his hand.

  Bella did not move. She knew that voice all right. It had shared her pillow more often than she wanted to remember. She stared at his hand, mesmerised.

  More and more bewildered, Annis said, ‘My sister, Isabella Carew.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ said the voice in a neutral tone.

  But it was still the voice that had been whispering in her ear every night for what seemed like a lifetime, ‘You felt it too.’ Bella felt as if she were in a nightmare.

  He found her hand somehow, pumped it briskly up and down a couple of times and dropped it, turning back to Annis.

  ‘I’ll call you when I’ve heard what the bankers have to say.’

  Annis was taking Bella’s bag from her and drawing her inside.

  ‘Great. We can get together afterwards, if you like.’

  ‘Really?’ He looked sceptical.

  Annis chuckled. ‘I’m not getting married until Saturday, Gil. Up to then I’m all yours.’

  Bella flinched. Annis looked down at her in surprised concern.

  Gil de la Court did not look surprised at all.

  ‘Miss Carew thinks you should be concentrating on pre-wedding girl talk.’

  ‘No way. I want a career to come back to,’ said Annis with feeling. ‘Good luck with the bankers. Catch you later.’

  ‘Goodbye, Annis.’ He nodded to Bella, expressionless. More than that—indifferent. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  Indifferent? How could he be indifferent?

  You sent me flowers. All that hot red, the colour of passion. You called me Tina the Tango Dancer. You wanted to spend the night with me.

  She wanted to scream it at him.

  Of course, she didn’t.

  She knew why he was indifferent. That was then, and this was now. Then she was a wild child with a salsa addiction. Now she was his management consultant’s sister with jet lag and a five-hour time change on the clock.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said colourlessly

  Annis closed the door on him and looked into Bella’s pale face.

  ‘Jet lag?’

  Bella seized the excuse gratefully.

  ‘I was working late last night. Went straight from the office to the airport.’

  Annis raised an eyebrow. This did not sound like Bella.
<
br />   ‘Interesting job?’

  Bella laughed. Some of the colour was coming back into her face.

  ‘Necessity. I haven’t really worked there long enough to be entitled to a holiday. I only blagged a few days out of them because my boss is sentimental about weddings. She also thinks I might come back with some tasty copy on the English society wedding.’

  Annis led the way into the kitchen where a coffee pot was bubbling in welcome.

  ‘You’ll have to make it up, then,’ she said. ‘This is strictly family and friends. Not an English society in sight.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  Annis put her arm round Bella’s waist and squeezed. ‘Oh, it’s so great to have you here. I have a nasty feeling I’m going to be horribly scared walking down that aisle.’

  ‘You mean you want me there to block your escape route?’ Bella teased her.

  Annis poured coffee. ‘Maybe.’

  Bella took the mug gratefully and warmed her hands round it. Her hands were still icy, in spite of the central heating. Residual shock, she supposed. Just walking into him like that—

  She brought her wandering thoughts back ruthlessly. ‘You haven’t really got cold feet have you?’

  Annis propped herself against the refrigerator and swirled her own coffee. ‘No, but—it’s a big step.’

  ‘You’re good at big steps,’ Bella said bracingly. ‘Look at the way you set up your own business. No help from Dad.’

  ‘This is different.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘It is.’ Annis looked up quickly. She looked troubled. ‘I knew I could run the business. It’s what I’m good at. I’m not good at—’ She stopped.

  Bella did not pretend to misunderstand. ‘This is about men, right? OK, you made your mistakes. So does everyone.’

  Annis shook her head. ‘That’s too easy. You never messed up like I did. No live-ins who walked out, shouting. When you said goodbye to a man you stayed friends.’

  ‘Maybe that’s because neither of us was that involved in the first place,’ Bella said lightly, though it hurt. ‘You know me and men, Brain Box. Easy come, easy go.’