Jemima self-consciously touched her hair. Miles watched as she twisted one strand around her forefinger. She had no idea what that simple movement of one finger was doing to him. ‘I didn’t have time to straighten it. I had an argument with a paint pot and the paint pot won.’
‘It looks great,’ Alistair said as he headed back towards the kitchen.
Rachel nodded. ‘I keep telling her.’ She looked at Miles. ‘She won’t listen. She thinks it looks more sophisticated straight.’
He wasn’t about to enter that debate, but he was in no doubt which he preferred. ‘It’s a great colour,’ he said softly, willing her to look at him.
She wasn’t having any of it. ‘It’s red,’ Jemima said, picking up her wineglass. ‘And the bane of my life.’
Did she really think that? It was unbelievable. He watched as her fingers played with the stem of her wineglass. Nice fingers. Short, tidy nails with no polish on them. That was more in keeping with the Jemima Chadwick he knew.
‘So,’ he said after a short pause, ‘you’re in your first job…?’
‘After my divorce.’ She looked at him then and there was no mistaking the warning light in her green eyes. ‘It’s a shame I’m not enjoying it more, isn’t it?’
His lips twitched. ‘Why aren’t you?’
‘My boss is very…smug. Do you know the kind of man I mean? Very difficult to take seriously.’
Her green eyes were…incredible. Why hadn’t he noticed them before? Tiny flecks of topaz worked out from dark irises. Two weeks—ten days—sitting in his office and he hadn’t noticed. He was slipping.
And she thought him smug—apparently. Miles smiled. He probably deserved that. Even so…‘When you’ve had a little more experience, perhaps you ought to consider working with me. I must speak to Amanda about it.’
Her eyes narrowed and Miles waited to see what she would do next. She took her time and snapped off another piece of breadstick before saying, ‘I don’t know whether I’d be interested. What is it that you do exactly?’
‘Public relations.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s a form of professional lying, isn’t it?’
‘Jemima!’ Rachel exclaimed, shocked.
Miles laughed and raised his glass in a mock toast. Round one to the lady. How surprising. He took a sip of his wine and placed the glass back on the table. ‘So, Jemima,’ he began and watched with enjoyment the way she tensed, ‘how do you know Rachel?’
‘We were at university together,’ Rachel answered for her. ‘Jemima and I met during freshers week and ended up sharing a house together in our second and third years. Do you remember the house we had first?’ she asked, turning to Jemima. ‘I swear it had mould in the corner of every room. It even smelt damp.’
‘What did you study?’ Miles asked.
Those green eyes flashed up at him, clearly resenting telling him anything. It added a little spice to the evening.
‘English and French.’
‘We both did,’ Rachel chimed in. ‘Except, of course, Jemima got a first, whereas I got a 2:1.’
Which rather begged the question—what the blazes was she doing working for little more than the minimum wage in a temporary secretarial job? It was none of his business, but his curiosity was piqued.
And, if he was honest, a little more than that. ‘So how come you’re temping? I’d have thought a first in English and French from Warwick would have led you in an entirely different direction.’
‘She meant to be an editor. But then she met Russell and…’ Rachel shrugged ‘…everything changed.’
‘So…you gave up everything for love?’
There was a toss of that incredible hair and then she met his eyes. ‘I gave up everything when I had my first son,’ she corrected him firmly. ‘Not that there was much to give up. I was only twenty-one and hadn’t had a chance to get started on anything.’
‘And now you’re picking up where you left off.’
‘Hardly,’ she shot back with a flash of those incredible eyes, her resentment shimmering across the table towards him. ‘When I left off I’d just got a job as an assistant editor with a small educational publisher. Now I’m a temporary secretary. If life’s a game of snakes and ladders I’ve just gone down that really big snake on square twenty-four.’
Alistair was wrong. Jemima Chadwick wasn’t brittle, she was angry. It seemed that life had hit her particularly hard. Alistair had described her divorce as ‘traumatic’, but then Miles had never witnessed a divorce that wasn’t.
In his circle the accepted opinion was that ex-wives were avaricious and bled their former spouses dry. This was the flip side of that, he supposed. His smile twisted. Jemima had been left with no career to speak of and two children to bring up alone. That was tough. No wonder she was angry.
Rachel topped up Jemima’s wine. ‘I still think you ought to think about—’
Alistair interrupted by carrying out a large platter of salmon. ‘Nigella Lawson swears this is the easy way to entertain. Just fork up what you want. The duck may be a disaster so I wouldn’t hold back.’
Rachel stood up and cleared away her central table decoration to make space. She looked around for somewhere to put it.
‘Put it behind me,’ Jemima suggested. ‘It won’t get knocked round here.’
Rachel handed over the stunning arrangement of white hydrangea, viburnum and tulips. ‘Thanks.’
‘You know this is gorgeous. You could do something like it for the wedding,’ Jemima suggested, deliberately steering the topic of conversation into a new direction.
In her opinion, Miles Kingsley had spent long enough enjoying himself at her expense. Even talking about weddings was preferable to the continual haemorrhaging of her private business. She pulled back her chair and placed the flowers carefully on the ground. ‘All these tea lights are very romantic too.’
Rachel sat down eagerly. ‘I was wondering about that. I think it would work really well with our theme—’ she sat back to add gravitas to her announcement ‘—which is going to be…medieval.’
Medieval. That wasn’t what Rachel had been talking about for the past four months. ‘What happened to “nineteen-forties Hollywood glamour”?’
Miles moved his chair. ‘Am I supposed to be understanding any of this?’
‘I find it better not to try,’ Alistair said, resting an arm along the back of Rachel’s chair.
His fiancée smiled at him. ‘We’ve managed to get Manningtree Castle. They’ve had a cancellation and slotted us in. It’s going to be beautiful.’
And an incredible amount of work, Jemima added silently. Manningtree Castle was probably the most romantic place on earth to get married, but it wasn’t a package deal by any stretch of the imagination. As far as she could recall from their initial research into the options, Manningtree Castle provided little more than the Norman keep itself and a grassy field with permission to erect a marquee.
‘Where’s Manningtree Castle?’ Miles asked.
Jemima glanced across at him. ‘Kent. It’s not so much a castle as a bit of one.’
‘And it’s not far from where Rachel and I bought our cottage. A couple of miles. No more than that,’ Alistair added. ‘They’re booked up a good eighteen months in advance so we were surprised when they called us to say they’d had a cancellation