The Best Man for the Job

Celia rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, sure.’

And actually, there was no point denying it, she might well be right. At eighteen, with the death of his father six months before and his mother’s all-consuming grief that had left no room for a son who’d been equally devastated, and ultimately no room for life, he’d been off the rails for a while. The night of Dan’s eighteenth birthday party, which had fallen on the anniversary of the date his father had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he’d been on a mission to self-destruct, and he hadn’t cared who’d got caught up in the process. In retrospect Celia had had a lucky escape. ‘Well, I guess we’ll never know.’

‘I guess we won’t.’

‘I was pretty keen on you, though,’ he said reflectively.

‘Were you?’

‘Yup. Even though you were Dan’s sister and therefore strictly off-limits.’

‘Not that off-limits,’ she said tartly. ‘If I hadn’t put a stop to things we’d have ended up in bed.’

‘No, well, I didn’t have many scruples back then.’ As evinced by the fact that following Celia’s rejection he hadn’t wasted any time in finding someone else to keep him company that night.

‘And you do now?’

‘A few. And you know something else?’ he said, taking the fact that she was still standing there, listening, as an encouraging sign.

‘What?’

‘Despite everything that’s happened between us over the years it turns out I still am pretty keen on you.’

FOUR

Just when Celia didn’t think she could take any more shocks to the system, bam, there was another one.

She was still trying to get her head around the fact that Marcus thought that what she’d achieved with her career was impressive. That she’d got quite a large part of him badly, badly wrong. That there’d never been a bet and the enormity of what that meant. That ever since that night her attitude towards him—and men in general—had been fuelled by one tiny misunderstanding and could have been so very different if teenage angst hadn’t got in the way.