Bombshell For The Boss: The Bride's Baby

‘Not possible, I’m afraid.’

‘No? Shame. But there are some seriously hunky blokes putting up a marquee out there. I’ll go and drag one of them in, shall I?’

She turned as someone cleared his throat behind her.

‘Oh, hi, Mark. What are you doing here?’ Then, before he could answer, she glanced at Sylvie, a wicked little gleam in her eye. ‘Sylvie, have you met Mark Hilliard, very hot architect of this parish? Mark, Sylvie Smith.’

‘You’ve been misinformed, Sylvie. I live in Upper Haughton with my wife and our three children, so whatever Geena has in mind I regret that the answer is no.’

‘My sentiments exactly,’ Sylvie said quickly.

But he wasn’t finished. ‘For this parish you need Tom McFarlane, Geena. The new owner of Longbourne Court.’

And, as the man himself appeared in the doorway, he left them to it while he took his notebook on a tour of the morning room.

‘Tom?’ Geena said, offering her hand. ‘Geena Wagner.’ Then, she stood back to admire the view. ‘Oh, yes. You’re perfect.’

‘I am?’ he asked, confused but smiling. A natural smile, the kind any man would bestow on an attractive woman at their first meeting. The kind he’d never given her.

He hadn’t caught sight of her—yet.

Sylvie struggled to protest, but only managed a groan—enough to attract his attention. The confusion remained, but the smile disappeared as fast as a snowball tossed into hell.

‘Absolutely perfect!’ Geena exclaimed in reply to his question, although he didn’t appear to have heard. ‘You’re not married, are you?’ Geena pressed, apparently oblivious to the sudden tension, unaware of the looming disaster.

‘Why don’t you ask Miss Smith?’ he replied while she was still trying to untangle her vocal cords. Stop Geena from making things a hundred times worse.

The mildness of his tone belied the hard glitter in his eyes as he looked over Geena’s head and straight at her. As if the fact that he wasn’t was somehow her fault.

Along with global warming, the national debt and the price of fuel, no doubt.

‘You know each other! Excellent. The thing is, Tom, Sylvie needs a stand-in fantasy man. Are you game?’

‘Nnnnnn …’ was all she could manage, since not only were her vocal cords in a knot, but her tongue had apparently turned into a lump of wood.

‘That rather depends on the nature of the fantasy,’ he replied, ignoring her frantically shaking head. His expression suggested that he harboured any number of fantasies in which she was the main participant …

‘Well, all I need is for you to stand there looking hot and fanciable.’ She smiled encouragingly. Then, before he could move, ‘That’s it. Perfect.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ he protested.

‘You don’t have to,’ she said, grinning hugely at her own cleverness. ‘Right, Sylvie. Get your imagination into gear.’

‘Geena, I think …’

‘Thinking is the last thing I want from you. This is all about feelings. The senses,’ she said bossily, stepping from between them and, taking her by the shoulders, lined her up so that she was facing him.

The sun was streaming into the morning room and she’d shrugged off the loose knee-length cardigan-style wrap that had become a permanent cover-up since her pregnancy had begun to show and her condition was unmistakable.

And his expression left her in no doubt as to his feelings. He was angry …

‘Forget that sweater, those pants, excellent though they are,’ Geena said. ‘For this exercise he’s wearing a morning suit …’ she glanced down at the purple shoes ‘.a grey morning suit with a purple waistcoat and violets in his buttonhole.’

Tom McFarlane made a sound that suggested ‘not in this life’.

‘He’s standing at the altar and he’s—’

‘What altar?’ Tom demanded, having been finally jerked out of his own private fantasy world in which, no doubt, all wedding coordinators were fed on wedding cake—the kind with rock-hard royal icing—until their teeth fell out.

What had he done with that wedding cake …?

‘Good point, Tom. Village church, Sylvie?’ she asked, breathing into her thoughts.

Sylvie opened her mouth, determined to put an end to this nightmare, but it was apparently a rhetorical question because Geena swept on without waiting for an answer.

‘Where else? But you don’t have to worry about that, Tom.’

‘I don’t?’ he said, apparently unconvinced, but Geena was in full flow and nothing, it seemed, was going to stop her.

‘Absolutely not. We’re doing all the work here.’

Sylvie shrugged helplessly as Tom McFarlane lifted a brow in her direction, putting them, for the briefest moment, on the same side.

Not possible.

In the middle of the night she might have succumbed to the impossible dream. The happy ever after. But that was all it had ever been—a dream.

‘Okay, Sylvie. The church doorway is decorated with evergreens and flowers. Your bridesmaids are waiting. All adults?’ she asked. ‘Or will you be having children too?’

Concentrate on the wedding. Just make the most of this fantasy moment …

‘One adult,’ she said. If this were real, she’d want Josie in the rear, running things. Parting her from her boots might be difficult, but at least her hair already matched the colour scheme. ‘Assorted children. Four girls, one boy.’

Her fantasy should, after all, be as close to reality as possible and she had four god-daughters who would never forgive her if they were excluded from the big day. And a five-year-old godson who would probably never forgive her if he was expected to appear in public in a pair of satin breeches. But he’d look sweet and his sisters could use the threat of posting the photographs on the Internet to keep him in order when he was at that difficult age—the one between five and ninety-five.

Girls needed all the edge they could get, she thought, as she stopped fighting a deep need for this and just let herself go.

‘Okay, here’s the scene,’ Geena said. ‘The organ strikes up, your father takes your arm …’

‘No!’ Last time that had been her grandfather’s role. This time there was no one. ‘I’ll be on my own,’ she said, doing what Geena had said. Not thinking. Just feeling.

Realising that both Geena and Tom were looking at her a little oddly, she said, ‘I’m an adult. I don’t need anyone to give me away.’

‘Oh, right … Well, whatever. It’s your wedding. So you’re poised to walk up the aisle.’ Geena picked up the violets, pressed them into her hand. ‘Okay, the organ strikes up, you hear the rustle as everyone in the church gets to their feet. This is it. Da da da-da …’ she sang. ‘You’re walking up the aisle. Walk, walk,’ she urged, pushing her towards Tom. ‘Everyone is looking at you. People are sighing, but you don’t see them, don’t hear them,’ she went on relentlessly. ‘Everything is concentrated on the only two people in the church who matter. You, in the dress of your dreams,’ she said. ‘And him.’

She met Tom McFarlane’s gaze.

Why was he still there? Why hadn’t he just turned around and walked out? He didn’t have to stay …