Three Weddings and a Baby

‘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. ‘Do you know this guy?’

Jennie swallowed, and that one tiny motion seemed to get her functioning again. Her voice returned. It sounded warm, almost normal, when she spoke, which surprised her to no end. She didn’t take her eyes off the man dominating her personal space.

‘Coreen, this is. This is Alex Dangerfield.’

Alex nodded at Coreen, but he, too, didn’t look away. Maybe he couldn’t either. And it wasn’t just her sight—every sense was locked on to him. But it had always been that way. Right from the very start.

‘You know him, then?’ Coreen sounded more than a little relieved.

And then he spoke in his low, rich voice and it rumbled through her, sending tingles up the backs of Jennie’s knees.

‘She really ought to,’ he said, not even a twitch of a smile softening the sarcastic tone. ‘I’m her husband.’

CHAPTER TWO

COREEN, who had stood up some time after Alex’s arrival, now sat abruptly back down in her chair. For a long time she just stared at him, and then she transferred her gaze to Jennie.

‘Your…?’ She trailed off, seemingly unable to utter the word husband.

Jennie knew exactly how she felt.

Coreen’s eyes grew wide. ‘Is this true?’

Jennie nodded. Unfortunately, it was. She’d have heartily liked to deny it, but Alex was the irritating sort of man who would undoubtedly produce a pristine marriage certificate from his inside pocket at an inconvenient moment like this. The thought infuriated her.

In his absence, her anger towards him had been muddled up with stupid yearnings, weighed down with grief and regrets, but now it sprang free, unpolluted and unfettered, and rose up from the pit of her stomach and clouded her eyes just as effectively as her earlier tears had done.

Now? Here? At Cameron’s wedding?

What was he playing at?

She opened her mouth to ask him just that, but he cut her off by talking across her to Coreen.

‘Now we’ve made the introductions, do you think I might have a private word with my wife?’

Jennie flinched as he said the last word. She didn’t feel like his wife. Didn’t feel like the centre of his universe.

Coreen regained some of her usual faultless composure where men were concerned. A glint in her eyes told Jennie she was ready to give Alex some of her legendary sass if he tried anything funny. ‘I’m not leaving you alone with Jennie unless she says it’s okay.’

Jennie almost laughed. If the situation were less dire, she’d have been the first to book a ringside seat for a face-off between Coreen and Alex. But then she glanced at her husband and she changed her mind. She’d never seen him like this—so cold, so…hostile. Maybe, if she’d seen this side of him during their whirlwind courtship she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to say ‘I do’ quite so hastily.

After all he’d put her through, she certainly didn’t. Or, even if that wasn’t quite true, she wanted it to be. So it almost counted.

‘It’s okay,’ she told Coreen, and stood up. ‘Alex and I. Well, we…’

‘Have unfinished business,’ he said.

We are unfinished business, she wanted to say as she tried to work out if this was all some weird hallucination, as the thump of the music filtered back into her consciousness and she became aware of other people in the room again. Lots of people. Reality felt just as strange and unconnected, too, she discovered.

But it struck her that as much as she wanted to grab Alex by the scruff of his neck and make him explain properly why having a honeymoon with his new bride hadn’t been the top of his list of priorities, she didn’t have that luxury at present.

She had to get Alex out of here. Now. Before her father and Marion appeared. Jennie glanced around the room, suddenly glad the party was still in full swing. It made it much easier to blend into the background—something that was normally her worst fear. If things had wound down by now there would have been far too many speculative glances, far too many itching ears.

And, as much as she hated the idea of being the obedient little wife, the only way she could see that happening was if she did what Alex wanted and had this ‘private word’ with him.

It was ironic that during their pitifully short marriage—record-breakingly short—she’d craved nothing more than private time with him.

‘Shall we?’ he said, and motioned for Jennie to walk ahead of him. He’d gestured towards the large double doors that led to the hotel foyer. Jennie gave a tight smile to Coreen, then strode through the packed dance floor, weaving nimbly round the miscellaneous dancers.