Birthday Bride

What would it be like to be that calm? Claudia was used to the frenetic activity of a television production company, and she thrived on panic and pressure. This man didn’t look as if he knew the meaning of panic. He would probably be hell to work with, she’d decided. Efficient, yes, but deadly boring.

For some reason, Claudia’s eyes had strayed back to his mouth. Well, maybe not exactly boring, she amended reluctantly. No one with a mouth like that could be really boring. It looked cool and firm, almost stern, but with an intriguing lift at the corners that made her wonder what he would look like if he smiled...

It was then that he had looked up, and Claudia had found herself staring into a pair of wintry grey eyes whose expression had sent the colour surging up her cheeks. Too late, she’d realised that she had been staring at him. He’d leant forward.

‘Is something the matter?’ he asked with careful restraint.

‘No,’ she said.

‘My hair hasn’t turned blue? There isn’t any smoke coming out of my ears?’

Claudia pretended to check. ‘No.’

‘Then perhaps you could tell me what it is about me that has been fascinating you so much for the last twenty minutes?’

The withering tone deepened the flush in Claudia’s cheeks. ‘Nothing! I’m not the slightest bit interested in you! I was just...thinking.’ Even to her own ears she sounded sullen and defensive.

‘In that case, could you please think by staring at someone else? I’m trying to work, and it’s not easy to concentrate with two great eyes boring into me.’

Claudia was amazed to discover that he had even noticed. So much for his powers of concentration! ‘Certainly,’ she said huffily, and got to her feet. ‘I had no idea that sitting quietly minding my own business would be so disturbing! I’ll go and stand in a corner and close my eyes, shall I? Or will my breathing be too distracting for you?’

The man looked profoundly irritated. ‘I don’t care what you do or where you do it, as long as you stop looking at me as if you’re deciding whether to have me for lunch or not.’

‘Lunch?’ Claudia attempted a scornful laugh. ‘I’m afraid my tastes run to something a little more substantial! You might do for a mid-morning snack, or perhaps a little something to have with a cup of tea!’

If she had hoped to rile him, she failed dismally. He looked at her incredulously for a moment, then shook his head as if deciding that she was too stupid to bother with any further, and returned his attention to his papers. Claudia felt about two inches high.

Furious, she made to stalk off in high dudgeon, but the bag she hoisted onto her shoulder was so overloaded that the strap snapped under the strain, and, to her horror, it crashed to the ground right at the man’s feet.

She wouldn’t have minded if he had jumped. She wouldn’t have minded if he had clicked his tongue or looked startled or shown some kind of reaction, but he didn’t even look up. Instead, he looked at the bag for about five seconds without saying anything, and then carried on reading. He could hardly have made it clearer that he thought she was too tedious and silly to merit any attention at all.

What if he thought she was deliberately trying to get him to notice her? The idea galvanised Claudia into action, and she dived to pick up the bag by its broken strap. It had landed on its bottom, which was fortunate, but that was where her luck ended. She hadn’t realised that the zip was open, and as she grabbed the strap at one end the whole bag tilted, upturned, and the contents that she had shoved in frantically while the taxi waited to take her to the airport spilled out over the man’s shoes.

To Claudia, it all seemed to happen in ghastly slow motion. Lipsticks, mascara, perfume, hairbrush, mirror, sponge toe dividers for painting toe-nails, the whole panoply of cosmetics, in fact, as well as mints, Biros, her purse, a camera, a travel plug, her Filofax, sunglasses, spare films, a novel, tissues, emery boards, a tiny, knitted teddy bear she had carried around with her since she was a child, keys, old credit card receipts, an earring she had been looking for for ages, dog-eared photographs, a cheap brooch Michael had once given her as a joke, even a change of underwear for the flight... all scattered with gay abandon around the man’s feet and under his seat.

Claudia closed her eyes. Please, she prayed, when I open them again, let it not have happened! But when she steeled herself to unscrew her eyes the man was still sitting there, still surrounded by her debris while the empty bag dangled uselessly from her nerveless hand.

With a sigh, he laid his papers on the seat beside him and bent to retrieve her bra from where it had caught on his shoe. Holding it between his fingers, he proffered it to Claudia. ‘No doubt you’ll need this,’ he said.

Mortified, she snatched it from his hand. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. Falling to her knees, she began scrabbling beneath his seat, desperately trying to scoop everything back into the bag, but humiliation was making her clumsy, and half of them spilled out again. To make matters worse, instead of moving away to another seat, the man bent to help her, handing her cosmetics and sentimental mementoes with a lack of comment that was somehow more crushing than any sarcasm.

‘Flight GF920 to Dubai and Menesset is now ready to board.’ To Claudia’s intense relief the tannoy crackled into life at last and there was a general stirring of anticipation as the first-class passengers and families with children were invited to board.

‘Please, there’s no need to bother,’ she said through gritted teeth as the man glanced up at the announcement. What was the betting that he was travelling first class? ‘You go on. I’ve got everything now, anyway.’

He straightened, put his papers into his briefcase with an insulting lack of haste compared to her own scramble to refill her bag, and pulled his boarding card from his jacket pocket. He was travelling first class, Claudia noted bitterly. Nodding a curt farewell, he turned towards the departure gate, only to stop and stoop to pick up yet another lipstick that had rolled along the floor.

“Nights of Passion’.’ He read the end as he handed it back to Claudia. ‘You won’t want to lose that one, will you? You never know when you might need it.’

And with that final, quite unnecessary shot of sarcasm he walked off, leaving Claudia staring resentfully after him and thinking, much too late of course, of any number of crushing retorts that would have put him in his place.

At least he was flying first class, she reassured herself, so there was no danger that she would find herself sitting next to him, and in all likelihood he would be getting off in Dubai anyway. Claudia didn’t like feeling ridiculous, and she was glad to think that she would never again have to set eyes on the one witness to her uncharacteristic lack of poise.

In fact, she could pretend that it had never happened... until she got onto this crummy little plane and realised that she was going to have to spend two and a half hours sitting next to him! Typical of her luck this year, Claudia thought glumly. Being twenty-nine had been no fun at all and it looked as if her very last day in her twenties was going to run true to form. Perhaps she would wake up tomorrow on her thirtieth birthday and find that things had changed?

Blowing out a tiny sigh, she cast the man a resentful glance from under her lashes. There had obviously been no good fairy at her christening! If there had been, she might have organised an attractive, charming man who would while away the last hours Claudia could get away with calling herself young. Instead, she was landed with someone dour and middle-aged. He must be at least forty, she decided dismissively, so used to thinking of the forties as a vague time in the future when she would be galloping through middle age on her way to a bus pass and a Zimmer frame that it came as something of a shock to realise that as from the next day, he would only be ten years older than her.

He didn’t look as if he was on the verge of cashing in his pension, it had to be said. Claudia studied him a little closer. There was a solidity about him, a balanced, assured air, as if he had grown into his looks and was completely at ease with himself. It was just a pity his expression was so formidable. He would be really quite attractive if he smiled.

She eyed him half speculatively, wondering how he would respond to a little light flirtation, but when her gaze stopped at that implacable mouth she decided not to waste her time trying. There was something decidedly unflirtable about the way he sat there reading that boring report with its endless graphs and lists of figures.

But then, she had always liked a challenge, hadn’t she?

Claudia reached for the safety card tucked into the seat back in front of her and pretended to study it while she planned her strategy. She didn’t hold out too many hopes of getting a smile out of him, but it would be fun to prise as much information out of him as possible. If he thought he was going to be able to ignore her for two and a half hours, he had another think coming!

‘This plane looks awfully old,’ she said, casting around for a way to restart the conversation after his ungentlemanly reference to the incident at Heathrow. ‘Do you think it’s safe?’

‘Of course it’s safe,’ said David without looking up from his report. He might have known she wouldn’t shut up for long! ‘Why on earth shouldn’t it be?’

‘Well, it’s so old, for a start,’ said Claudia, plucking at the tatty material covering the seats. ‘Look at it! This kind of décor went out in the Sixties! Where’s this plane been since then?’

‘Flying perfectly safely between Menesset and Telama’an, I should think.’ Very deliberately, David made a note in the margin to remind her that he wasn’t distracted that easily. ‘What’s wrong with the plane? Apart from the worrying fact that you don’t like its colour scheme, of course?’

Claudia looked around her as the plane began to roll backwards from the chocks. There were only about forty other passengers, their seats arranged in pairs on either side of the narrow aisle. ‘I didn’t realise it would be so small,’ she confessed.

David turned a page like a calculated insult. ‘Telama’an isn’t a big place,’ he said with a kind of bored indifference.

‘I hope it’s big enough to have an airport,’ Claudia snapped, irritated by his lack of reaction. ‘Or are they going to kit us out with parachutes and push us out when we’re over the right spot?’

He did glance at her at that, but it was such a withering look that she wished she had never tried to divert him from his report in the first place. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘There’s been an airstrip there for years, but this is about the biggest plane that can land there at the moment. It’ll be different when the new airbase is completed, of course. Telama’an is one of the more remote regions of Shofrar, but it’s strategically important and the government are keen to develop the area. At the moment, there’s nothing but a dusty little oasis in the middle of the desert, so the local sheikh wants a complete infrastructure: an airbase, roads, a water supply, power... it’s a huge project.’

Oh, dear, one of those men that lectured instead of answered! Claudia sighed. ‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ she said, fanning herself with the safety card and trying not to think too much about the take-off as the plane taxied slowly down the runway.

‘I should do. We’re the contracting engineers on the project.’

She half turned in her seat to look at him in surprise and dawning consternation. ‘But GKS Engineering are the contractors, aren’t they?’

For his part, David eyed her with deepening misgiving. What did this silly woman have to do with GKS? ‘How do you know that?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘My cousin’s married to the senior engineer on the project...Patrick Ward. Do you know him?’

David’s heart sank. Of course she would have to be going to visit the very people he would normally spend most time with in Telama‘an! Was there to be no getting away from her? ‘Yes, I know Patrick,’ he said reluctantly. ’And Lucy.’

‘Oh, well, I’ll tell them I met you,’ said Claudia, who had not missed the reluctance in his voice and who had perceived an opportunity to achieve at least one of her objectives. ‘What’s your name?’ Let him get out of that one!

‘David Stirling,’ he admitted after a tiny pause.

‘I’m Claudia Cook,’ she introduced herself, although he hadn’t asked. Peeping a glance at him from under her lashes, she wondered whether she should force him to shake hands, but decided against it. It had been achievement enough to get a name out of him, and, looking at that jaw, she didn’t think that David Stirling was a man she would want to push too far. Better to stick to the inane conversation line; it was a far more effective way of needling him!