Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 2: The House on Willow Street, The Honey Queen, Christmas Magic, plus bonus short story: The Perfect Holiday

Suddenly, Mara no longer cared what it all looked like.

She pulled herself away.

‘Goodbye, Jack,’ she snapped, and stormed off in the direction of the French windows.

It was a cold evening, but because much of the castle’s beauty lay in its outdoors, lights lit up the patios where bay trees in pots were draped with giant cream bows.

If she could only hold the tears and the anger in until she was alone, Mara told herself, she’d be fine.

The fairy lights sprinkled around in the trees gave the place a storybook feel. It was such a pretty venue: the old castle with its turrets and its coat of arms, the huge hall ablaze with candles, the giant heaters outside on the verandah surrounded by mini-lanterns. It was the perfect setting for an autumn wedding.

She shivered as she crossed the stone flags to stand under a heater.

This could have been me, thought Mara with a pang of sorrow. I could have been the bride surrounded by my family, wearing old lace, rushing upstairs to the four-poster bed of the bridal suite to make legal love to my husband for the first time.

Instead, she was facing a taxi ride to a B&B in the local village, because the family had snaffled all the castle bedrooms. Her room in the B&B was tiny and freezing, situated under the eaves, and the bed was a small, creaky double – she’d sat on it earlier and the crank of springs was so loud it had made her bounce up again with fright. If she’d lost her mind and taken another guest back for a wild night of casual frolicking, the B&B owners would undoubtedly bang on the door to get them to keep the noise down because of the bed springs.

‘I thought you’d be happy,’ said a slightly plaintive voice.

She wheeled around in shock. Jack stood beside her.

Mara closed her eyes to the lovely view and wondered if Jack had always been this emotionally unevolved? What kind of man would assume that she’d be happy to be at his wedding to the woman for whom he’d dumped her? But perhaps Jack could assume that.

She hadn’t had tantrums when he’d left. She’d taken it like a grown-up. Dignity was the preserve of the ordinary girl, she’d decided.

‘Why isn’t it me here tonight?’ she asked now as, from inside, she could hear the wedding band strike up another tune.

‘Ah, Mara, now’s not the time for this—’ Jack began.

He had his tormented face on. Mara knew his every expression. The sallow handsome face could take on so many different looks, and she’d seen them all.

‘Now is exactly the time,’ she said quietly. ‘Tell me – what does she have that I haven’t?’

The instant the question was out, she regretted it. The answer could have been eight years, bought breasts and much longer legs.

Jack reached into the jacket of his suit and took out a single cigarette. He was supposed to have given up. Tawhnee was very anti-smoking. Nothing had convinced Mara that she’d lost him as much as Jack’s agreeing not to smoke any more. If Tawhnee could do that, she could do anything.

‘It’s only the one,’ he muttered, cradling his fingers around a match to light the cigarette, then inhaling like a drowning man reaching the surface.

‘You’re a great girl, Mara …’ he said.

‘Why do I think there’s a but coming?’ she said with a hint of bitterness.

‘You know me so well,’ he said, laughing softly.

‘Not well enough, apparently.’

‘I didn’t mean to fall in love with Tawhnee,’ Jack said, after he’d smoked at least half of the cigarette.

‘It just happened,’ Mara said. ‘That is such a cliché, Jack.’

‘That’s me: Mr Cliché,’ he joked.

‘Very funny. So what’s the BUT. The but that I don’t have.’

She wanted him to say it. Because you were never The One, Mara. Because I was continually looking over your shoulder and then Tawhnee came along … She wanted him to tell the truth instead of the lies he clearly had been spouting when they were together.

‘There’s no “but”. You’re perfect,’ Jack said.

‘If I’m perfect, why didn’t you stay with me?’

‘I don’t know. She came to work for us, she’s stunning – not that you’re not stunning too,’ Jack said hastily.

‘You told me you liked the way I looked, and then you go and fall in love with a woman who is the complete opposite of me,’ she said. Except for the boobs, she thought grimly. In addition to her supermodel sleekness and legs up to the armpits, Tawhnee had gravity-defying boobs. The office women were convinced that Tawhnee had had a boob job. The office men didn’t care.

Jack said nothing.

Mara wasn’t to be deflected. ‘I want to know why,’ she said. ‘That’s all. Why you’ve married Tawhnee when, despite two years with me, you never even so much as asked me what I thought about marriage? It’s because I wasn’t the one, isn’t it? I was simply the one you could play around with while you waited for her to show up.’

It wasn’t as if Mara had been pinning her hopes on a wedding, but the longer she went out with Jack, the more she began to think that such an event might happen one day. She was sure that he loved her as much as she loved him. That Jack Taylor, a man who could have any woman he wanted, had really chosen a petite red-head who’d thought she was ordinary for years until she’d met him, and he’d told her she was special. She’d begun to believe all the things he’d said.

That she was the sexiest woman he’d ever met. And the funniest. And the most beautiful … Except he’d never asked her to marry him.

Four months after she’d found out he was cheating on her, he’d announced his engagement to Tawhnee. Today, a mere two months later, they were married.

‘You didn’t talk about marriage either,’ he bleated. ‘I didn’t think you were the kind of woman who’s into all that sort of thing’.

‘What gave you that idea?’

Jack had one last card. ‘Tawhnee said she wanted to get married. She said it on our first date.’

‘Really?’ said Mara, sigh and word wrapped into one.

Was that what it would have taken? If Mara had told Jack she was the marrying kind of girl, instead of the let’s-go-to-bed-and-have-fun sort of girl, would it have been her today in the long white dress?

‘Give me that cigarette.’

She plucked it from his fingers and took a long drag. She wasn’t actually a smoker, not really. When they’d been together, she’d had a few when they were out partying. Liking the idea of taking a cigarette from his mouth. It was such an intimate thing to do. But tonight, she wanted to do something self-destructive, and letting nicotine hit her was the only thing to hand. She’d promised herself she would not drink too much: to turn into the drunken ex at a wedding would be too humiliating.

She coughed and felt her guts loosen.

‘Yeuch.’ She stubbed the cigarette out on the balustrade.

‘I hadn’t finished with that!’ wailed Jack.

Mara patted his cheek. ‘That’s precisely what I said to Tawhnee, but hey, that’s life.’

Mara left him standing there. She collected her handbag from her chair, and smiled at the people at her table. They were colleagues from work and most of them had been so sweet to her.