Of course Adam just grinned all the more, so I aimed a well-timed jab with one of what he likes to call my ‘pointy little elbows’. He dodged it, and I gave him the please behave yourself stare he usually aims at me.
I didn’t have time to play games. In just a few moments I’d be seeing Nicholas. In his house. In the house I might one day want to become my house. My heart began to do the mambo. And not in the slow, sexy way they did it in Dirty Dancing. There were odd rhythms and missed beats all over the place. I captured some air, swallowed it down, and smoothed my skirt with my hands.
We were greeted by a well-groomed, discreet-looking man who conversed with Izzi in hushed tones. He nodded upstairs and I looked up the wide marble staircase to where Nicholas must be. When I looked back again the man was gone, and Izzi was answering a call on her phone.
‘You came,’ I said out of the side of my mouth to Adam.
He nodded and gazed nonchalantly around the room. ‘Looks like it.’
I resumed the behave frown. I hate it when Adam gets like this. He knows I’m buzzing with curiosity about something, yet he refuses to be anything more than vague. However, I wasn’t about to give up.
‘What made your mind up?’
He shrugged and looked up the marble staircase, which was lined with art I probably couldn’t afford and definitely didn’t understand. ‘I decided I’d better check out this Nicholas chap in person.’ He squinted at an abstract painting made up of squares in varying shades of beige. Without looking ’round he added, ‘To see if he’s good enough for you.’
My irritation melted like a chocolate bar left on a hot car dashboard. I was suddenly very glad Adam was here, and not just because it saved me from Izzi’s displeasure if I hadn’t come up with a willing victim. It was moments like these when I realised what a treasure Adam was. I hadn’t steered the conversation or fished for that compliment; he’d produced it all on his own. No string-pulling on my part whatsoever. And the warmth it gave me was twice as sweet as if I’d wrung it from one of my lovelorn swains. My heartbeat steadied into four-four time, and I was about to hug his arm when a horrible thought occurred to me. ‘You are coming on the weekend too? You’re not just here today to spy, are you?’
Adam reclaimed the please behave look and I instantly mumbled an apology. I should have known better. Adam is an in-it-for-the-long-haul kind of guy—probably why he puts up with me—and he wouldn’t have turned up today if he wasn’t going to go through with the whole thing. I was just nervous. What was taking all this time? Was Nicholas even at home?
The discreet man, who must have been a butler of some sort, reappeared and waited patiently while Izzi finished her call and slid her phone into her handbag. I’d half-heard the end of it and gathered she’d been chivvying her girlfriends along, telling them to prise their tiny backsides out of bed and get down here pronto.
‘Your brother is ready for you in the drawing room,’ Mr Discreet said in a silky voice, then disappeared again.
I was tempted to shudder. If I ever got to be a significant part of Nicholas’s life, I wasn’t sure how I’d cope with him. He seemed to vanish in and out of thin air, and, frankly, manners that good are just plain creepy.
Izzi started off up the marble staircase and nodded for us to follow. With each step my head grew lighter and lighter. By the time I reached the top I was verging on dizzy. It was all so elegant, so refined and understated. And in comparison I felt I had all the subtlety and grace of a kids’ cartoon. I suddenly wished I’d tried harder to eradicate the Cockney edge in my accent. I’d given up too quickly, frustrated that when I tried to emulate Izzi’s effortless drawl I always ended up sounding like a parody of Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter.
I decided then that being cool, aloof and businesslike—namely, keeping my mouth shut unless absolutely necessary—would probably be in my best interests. Men like a woman who’s mysterious, don’t they? And this approach would give me another fortnight to work on those vowels of mine before the murder-mystery weekend. I’d dazzle Nicholas with my witty banter then.
Izzi led us into a large drawing room with tall, almost floor-to-ceiling sash windows, and elegant yet somehow minimalist furnishings in neutral tones. I held my breath and hovered by the doorway, overcome by uncharacteristic shyness. Nicholas was there, gazing out of the window on the right and looking all lean, sexy and slightly irritated, in dark grey trousers and a shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Even in casual attire he oozed class.
I knew at that moment that if I had a future with Nicholas I would never again have to fear the spectre of the velour jogging bottoms. Not only would I not have to worry about being old and lonely and sad, but I’d become all I’d been training myself to be for all these years. I wouldn’t be dressing up any more. I’d rightfully inhabit a world of glamour and elegance, sliding into it with the ease of Cinderella trying on that glass slipper. I’d finally be able to look myself in the mirror without having to blink a few times to erase my mother’s eyes.
Nicholas turned to face his sister, the frown he was wearing only making him seem more broody and Mr Darcy-ish.
He spoke in a low voice, but unfortunately for him his gorgeous high ceilings carried his words over to where Adam and I were standing by the door. ‘I thought you were joking when you said you were bringing “the gang” over for a fitting for this weekend of yours.’ He hardly glanced in my direction long enough to register my presence, let alone see how cute I was looking in my pretend Lilli Ann suit with the flared jacket.
Izzi just kissed him on the cheek and waved his objections away with an airy hand. ‘Well, we’re here now. So you might as well get it over and done with. If you shoo us away, you grumpy old thing, we’ll just have to come back another time.’
To his credit, I saw a flicker of indulgent amusement in his eyes as he nodded grudgingly at Izzi, then strode across the room to greet us. He held out his hand for mine.
‘Nice to meet you again…’
That pause—the one meaning he couldn’t quite remember my name—almost finished me off. I felt like one of those buildings that you see getting demolished on the evening news. For a few slow-motion seconds it felt as if nothing was happening, and then everything inside me started to slide downwards. I grinned widely, hoping the shockwave wasn’t showing on the surface.
‘Coreen,’ I said, doing a pretty good job of sounding nonchalant, actually. ‘Coreen Fraser. We met at Izzi’s birthday bash.’
A pinprick of recognition registered in his eyes, and it was just enough to delay the almost inevitable collapse of my crumbling spirits.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re the girl who sells Izzi all those second-hand dresses she raves about.’
‘Vintage clothing, actually,’ a gruff voice beside me said. ‘Coreen is an innovative and successful businesswoman.’
Nicholas’s eyebrows raised and he turned his attention to Adam.
Seriously, what is it about men? Sometimes you get two of them into a room together and they have to turn everything into a competition for who’s got the most testosterone. Of course Adam’s surly interjection hadn’t helped things. I really was going to have to have a word with him about this big brother protectiveness thing. It was starting to make him behave most strangely at times.
‘Adam Conrad,’ he said, thrusting his hand forward.
Nicholas looked across at me, and then back to Adam. I knew that look. It was a jumping-to-conclusions kind of look, and it seemed as if I was going to have to intercept swiftly before he got the wrong idea.
‘My very good friend,’ I added sweetly, before Nicholas had a chance to put two and two together and come up with a million and six. He didn’t, however, look either pleased or relieved, as many men did when they found out Adam and I were nothing