Engaged at The Chatsfield

Aloof and reserved, which most people mistook for arrogance, Marcus was a perfect counterpoint to Ben’s outgoing daredevil personality. He’d been like a second older brother to Juliet since she was ten, when he had fixed a puncture on her bike because Ben, at sixteen, had been too busy chatting up his latest conquest.

But last Christmas something had changed.

It had been the first time they’d been alone together since The Incident. Her eighteenth birthday party. Blush. Too much alcohol. Double blush. Cornering Marcus in the study. Cringe. Him politely but firmly rejecting her clumsy advances. Him sternly lecturing her on the dangers of excessive drinking. Cringe. Blush. Cringe.

He had avoided her ever since.

Until last Christmas...

Six months on and she remembered as if it were yesterday. They had been washing up after lunch while her mother made a phone call to an elderly relative and Ben talked to his agent in L.A. Marcus handed her a wineglass to dry and her fingers brushed against his as she took it from him. Their gazes collided. Meshed. Stilled. Heated.

A sensation like a fizzing electrical pulse travelled from his fingers to hers, raced all the way up her arm and then through her body to light a fire in her core. She saw the flare of his pupils, the way they made his eyes darken to a midnight blue. The way his fingers didn’t jerk away, but lingered. Burned against hers.

His gaze went to her mouth. Paused there. Her lips felt scorched from the heat of his gaze. She heard the scuff of his shoe on the tiled floor as he closed the half-step distance between their bodies....

But then Ben came bounding in to announce he had got the part for the rom-com. Champagne was opened. Toasts and celebrations were conducted. There were no more private moments. Marcus kept his distance. Business as usual.

‘So—’ Harriet smoothed an imaginary hair behind her ear. It was a ploy Juliet knew was so Harriet could showcase her glittering and ridiculously huge and brand new—as of last week—diamond engagement ring. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’

Juliet was going to say no. Of course she was. Why wouldn’t she say no? She hadn’t dated anyone since Simon Foster had made a fool out of her five years ago, stringing her along for months with weekend dates while he got it on in the city with a size-zero blonde the rest of the time. Of course she was going to say no. Her mouth even went as far to shape the word but instead she said, ‘N-yes.’

Harriet’s impeccably groomed eyebrows shot up beneath her perfectly trimmed and blow-dried fringe. ‘Who is it?’ But before Juliet could think of a name, Harriet had already come up with one. ‘It’s Marcus, isn’t it? That stuck-up naval architect friend of your brother’s?’

‘He’s not stuck up.’ Had she sounded too defensive?

‘Oh. My. God.’ Harriet’s china-blue eyes were as round as the satellite dishes on the International Space Station. ‘Get outta here. Are you serious? Marcus Bainbridge and you?’

Juliet’s back came up at Harriet’s incredulity. She knew she wasn’t beautiful—or at least not without soft lighting or a quick touch-up in Photoshop. She knew she didn’t have the best figure, and she hated her freckles because they made her look about eight years old. But was it that unbelievable that a man like Marcus would be interested in her? He had almost kissed her at Christmas. She hadn’t been imagining that. Had she?

She was tired of being the odd one out.

Tired of being almost twenty-nine years old and unattached. The only one of Kendra’s Clan who was still single. An object of pity. Like at school, where she had been the only girl in her class without a father. The bookish nerd who studied instead of dated. The lonely fringe-dweller who had a sudden rush of best friends around exam time when everyone wanted her to help them swot.

What would it hurt to pretend she belonged to someone? It was only for the weekend. She could head back to Bath on Monday morning and no one would be the wiser. It wasn’t as if Marcus would even hear about it; he was currently living in Dubai while he designed a luxury yacht for a sheikh.

‘Yes,’ she said, and took it one step further because she didn’t care for the way Harriet was still gaping at her. ‘It’s serious.’

‘How serious? Has he asked you to marry him?’ Harriet glanced at Juliet’s left hand, her eyes narrowing. ‘You’re not wearing an engagement ring.’

Juliet curled her fingers into a ball. There was a jeweller’s store half a block from the hotel. She had stopped to gaze dreamily at the rings in the window on her way past. ‘Erm, well, no, not yet. But I’m picking it up. Soon. This afternoon. Before tea.’ What are you doing? Are you crazy?

‘You’d better get a wriggle on,’ Harriet said. ‘I want everyone assembled for when Kendra makes her entrance. I want everything to be perfect for her.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Juliet pasted a smile on her face. ‘It will be.’

CHAPTER TWO

MARCUS WAS JETLAGGED and hungry and a tension headache was throbbing like a pneumatic drill behind his eyeballs as the cab pulled up outside the Chatsfield in London. He still had some work to do on his proposal for Gene Chatsfield’s luxury yacht before he presented it on Monday morning. He was one of three naval architects shortlisted to pitch for the multimillion-pound contract. It would be a career coup if he pulled it off, especially on the back of his success with the Dubai deal. He figured staying in-house might give him the edge on his competitors. It would demonstrate his commitment and dedication to the Chatsfield brand. He had heard the newly appointed CEO, Christos Giantrakos, was a stickler for that sort of thing.

Marcus paid the driver and turned to enter the hotel just as a small figure came bolting down the brass steps from the other direction. Her shiny brown-haired head was bent down as she glanced at her watch, a little pleat of a frown was pulling at her brow and her teeth were savaging her lower lip.

‘Juliet?’

It was as if an invisible wall had come down in front of her. She stopped dead. Froze. Then she slowly turned to face him. For a moment her face was as white as the polka dots on her cute retro dress, but then her cheeks went as cherry-red as the background fabric. ‘M-Marcus?’ Her voice came out like a squeak.

‘You’re staying here?’ he asked.

The tip of her tongue swept over her lips in a darting movement. ‘Erm...yes.’ Her throat moved up and down. ‘Y-you?’

He gave her a self-deprecating smile. ‘I just flew in from Dubai. Can’t you tell?’

Her toffee-brown eyes moved over his rumpled clothes and unshaven jaw before meshing with his gaze. She seemed to be having trouble speaking. Her creamy throat kept moving up and down as if something was lodged there.

‘Are you okay?’

‘F-fine.’ She smiled a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘How long are you—’ she gave another tight-looking swallow ‘—staying?’

‘Just for the weekend,’ he said. ‘I have an appointment with Gene Chatsfield, the owner, and his CEO first thing Monday. I’m pitching for a design project. What about you?’

She shifted her weight from foot to foot, the fingers of her right hand fiddling with the strap of her handbag. The afternoon light caught something glittering on her left hand before she tucked it out of sight.

Something grabbed at his chest like a claw. Tightened. Squeezed.

Juliet was engaged?

Why hadn’t Ben given him the heads-up? He didn’t know she’d been seeing anyone. Last Christmas he thought... What had he thought? He hadn’t been thinking. He’d acted on impulse. Something he never did. He blamed it on the glasses of wine at lunch, the eggnog and the brandy butter. It must have gone to his head. His chest gave another suffocating spasm. The thought of her dating...having sex with some guy made his insides feel hollow and empty, as if they had been scraped out with something sharp.

‘Hen’s party,’ she said.

‘Your own?’

She looked at him blankly for a moment. ‘No...Kendra Ashford’s.’

Marcus had never understood what Juliet saw in the clique of girls who called themselves Kendra’s Clan. A bunch of pampered aristocrats who did nothing but preen and party, usually with the paparazzi around to document it. Not that he could necessarily talk, given his father’s ridiculous wealth, but at least he didn’t brandish it about. And he worked for a living. He couldn’t see how Juliet had anything in common with them, but she’d been at boarding school with them, and she was a loyal little thing and wouldn’t hear a bad word said about anyone.

He pointed to the ring on her finger, trying to ignore the painful ache in his chest. ‘Who’s the lucky guy?’

Two spots of colour spread even further over her cheeks making her cute freckles stand out like a dusting of cinnamon sugar on the top of a teacake. ‘Erm...’ She did that foot shuffling, weight shifting thing again, reminding him of when she was ten years old and embarrassed about asking him to help her change the tyre on her pushbike.

Back then the six years difference in their age had seemed like a generation. Even at eighteen she had been far too young—rather memorably demonstrated by her gauche attempt to kiss him in the study the night of her birthday party. He had always made sure he was never alone with her after that, especially if there was alcohol around. She didn’t have much of a head for it. Not that he could talk given what almost happened at Christmas.

Now it was...it was a surprise to realise how grown up she was. Grown up enough to get engaged.

His chest seized again.

To get married.

He hadn’t noticed quite how grown up she was until last Christmas. In the past she had always been his best mate’s kid sister. He hadn’t seen her as anything else. He hadn’t allowed himself to, especially after the incident in the study. Getting involved with his best friend’s baby sister was breaking a strict code of mateship. If things didn’t work out, it got messy for everyone. He had too much respect for Ben and his mother, Grace—not to mention Juliet herself—to take any risks in that area.