He almost let out a hollow laugh. No control whatsoever.
Look at him—reduced to skulking in bushes and crashing weddings just to have a few moments of her precious time. Something she was determined to deny him, it seemed. Well, just this once the spoiled princess was not going to get her own way.
He focused on her again, just in time to see her skip—actually skip—off in the direction of the party. Of course she would choose that over a quiet night in her room. She was Jennie Hunter. She had to go where she could be the centre of attention, where she could shine and glow.
A bitter taste filled his mouth and he swallowed. She really was unbelievable.
He’d been feeling calm and rational when he’d arrived, but all his composure had boiled away once he’d clapped eyes on her. Deep down, he knew he shouldn’t confront her here, not when he was feeling like this, not in front of so many witnesses, but he couldn’t stop himself following her.
He took the exact route he’d watched her take, her exit so imprinted on his memory he could foolishly imagine her shoe prints glowing subtly on the polished hardwood floor. Damn him for still seeing ‘shine’ where he wanted to see none.
However, there was not even a hint of a skip in his long strides as he entered the banqueting hall and began his search.
‘Psst.’
Jennie spun round to find her fellow bridesmaid, Coreen, strategically sitting behind the last available potted palm.
Drat Cameron’s generosity! The open bar, flowing with champagne cocktails, meant that, instead of trailing off into the night, most of the guests had returned to the reception to make sure her stepbrother got his money’s worth. The room was heaving, and her fantasy of finding a quiet corner had already died. Now she was just hoping to find a seat.
Coreen parted the fronds of the palm and leaned forward. The effect of her nineteen-fifties pin-up looks surrounded by all that greenery really was comical, but Jennie couldn’t bring herself to even muster a giggle. She waved back at Coreen, not even bothering to smile.
‘I have a spare chair and two of these,’ Coreen said, shoving an open bottle of champagne through the foliage. ‘Care to join me?’
There were angels in heaven! Jennie let out a long breath. ‘Now you’re talking,’ she replied and swiftly skirted the large terracotta urn to plonk herself in the last available seat in the room.
Coreen, as always, looked flawless. She took her business seriously, and Jennie had never seen her dress in a twenty-first century outfit. Today she had on a fifties prom dress in an icy pink that complemented Jennie’s oyster shift dress.
Coreen slid an open bottle of champagne across the table towards her. Jennie’s fingers closed around the rough foil at the neck. ‘So what are we drinking to?’ She paused. ‘And please don’t say “Happy Ever Afters”!’
Without waiting for an answer, she put the bottle to her lips and swigged. She took a long gulp, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and let the bottle land with a satisfying thunk on the table. When she glanced up, she found Coreen looking at her, a knowing smile on her sculpted lips.
‘Wedding day blues, too, huh?’
‘You have no idea,’ Jennie said dryly and lifted the bottle again. Coreen, in the meantime, managed to attract the attention of a waiter, despite the fact he was being waved at from all over the banqueting hall. Well, maybe it wasn’t that surprising. She was Coreen, after all. She signalled they’d like a couple of glasses and he saluted her, all the while giving her a saucy lopsided smile, then scuttled off to do her bidding. Coreen didn’t turn round again until his rather fine backside had disappeared into the crowd.
‘Me, too,’ she said, after letting out a long sigh.
Jennie couldn’t help but laugh. ‘The wedding day blues don’t seem to be putting you off your stride much.’
A wicked little smirk pulled at Coreen’s lips, and then the corners of her mouth turned down. ‘It’s not the same, though, is it? Flirting’s all well and good, but on days like today, everyone’s gushing about love and promises and for ever. It can make a girl decidedly—’
‘Suicidal?’ Jennie suggested.
‘I was going to go with single, but your word is…descriptive.’
The waiter returned to flirt some more with Coreen. She accepted the glasses he proffered and dismissed him with a wave of her hand and a movie-queen smile. ‘I’ve seen that look in a man’s eyes often enough to know he wasn’t thinking about love and promises and for ever.’
Still, it didn’t stop her glancing over her shoulder to get a second look at the retreating fine backside. Jennie pulled a glass across the table and filled it with bubbles.
‘And you are thinking about that?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ Coreen held up her glass so Jennie could fill it. ‘You?’
Jennie opened her mouth to make some flippant remark and found she couldn’t speak. Her vision blurred. To disguise what was happening, she reached for her glass and knocked half the contents back. The bubbles lodged like boulders in her throat.
A few short weeks ago she’d believed in all of it. Love and promises. Forever. But not now. Maybe not ever again.
‘Hey.’ The soft word came from somewhere near her right ear and she realised that the fuzzy pink blur crouching beside her chair was Coreen. Jennie willed her mouth to stop quivering, clamped her teeth shut. This time she used the backs of her hands to wipe her cheeks.
Why now? Why, after lasting all day without caving in, had she suddenly fallen to pieces? It was really pathetic. Maybe it was the way she’d seen Cameron look at Alice earlier on. She’d compared it to what she’d thought she’d found and realised it had all been a dream. A whirlwind. And the knowledge made her ache deep inside, way beneath her muscles and bones.
‘You never know,’ Coreen said, keeping contact by leaving a hand on Jennie’s knee, but perching back on her seat, ‘we might even be able to trade these dresses in for the real thing one day.’
But that just made Jennie cry all the harder, until her nose felt bubbly and her throat was hoarse.
The hand on her knee squeezed gently. ‘Although, secretly, I’ve toyed with the idea of wearing nothing at all when the fateful day arrives,’ Coreen added.
And suddenly crying turned to hysteria. The tears still flowed, but her sides started to hurt and she clutched at Coreen, and Coreen clutched her just as hard back. Somewhere in the middle of the rib-hurting cackles, Jennie became aware of someone standing a few feet away, looking at her, but she was enjoying the much-needed rush of endorphins too much to pay attention to who it was.
Coreen fell silent and Jennie’s unaccompanied giggles seemed overly loud and jarring. She gulped the last remnants of mirth down and wiped her eyes again, this time in a more ladylike fashion. Her eyelashes were clogged together on one side of her left eye, and she opened her eyes as wide as she could until the lashes untangled. It was only then that she focused on the ominously still figure in front of her.
Her mouth dropped open and every last bit of hilarity left her body, taking all the oxygen with it.
The man standing there was tall, impeccably dressed. His dark hair was cropped severely close, adding a hardness to his already angular features. But it was his eyes that took her hostage—a clear pale blue that could easily have been compared to the soft colour on the horizon on a hazy summer’s day. Only, as they pinned her to her seat, they were as warm as an arctic breeze. She even shivered a little, gripped her arms across her middle.
‘Jennie?’ There was an uncharacteristic waver in Coreen’s voice, and it sounded distant, slightly unreal.