Kitabı oku: «The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams»

To the members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. So many of you have supported and encouraged me along the way and I have made friendships that will last a lifetime. May love always turn your pages.

YES!

Planning on proposing to the woman of your dreams? Feeling the pressure to deliver a romantic spectacle worthy of YouTube?

Don’t panic! Help is at hand!

HOPES & DREAMS,

London’s first proposal-planning agency, can work with you to create a romantic personalised proposal on any scale, for any budget. Give your loved one a memory to treasure and increase the chance of hearing that all-important word—YES!

To make your hopes and dreams come true, contact:

Nicole Harrison, 2a Old Carter’s Yard, Clerkenwell,

London EC1M 7BB

nicole@hopes-and-dreams.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Extract

Endpage

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘What you need is another cosmopolitan.’

Nicole Harrison swayed on her high heels and frowned at her best friend and soon-to-be business partner, who was starting to look a little fuzzy around the edges. ‘You sure about that?’

She squinted at the large clock behind the bar of Déjà Vu, a trendy little place not too far from Covent Garden. Quarter to twelve. One more cocktail and she might not stay vertical until midnight, and she really wanted to be conscious when the new year started. Next year was the year when everything was going to fall into place and all her plans and hard work paid off.

‘‘Course I’m sure,’ Peggy said, beckoning the bartender with an elegant wave of her blood-red nails. ‘Best remedy for a broken heart.’

Nicole took a few seconds to unfocus from the clock and refocus back on her friend. She blinked slowly. For a moment she’d forgotten this was a fancy-dress party. The sight of Doris Day sitting on the next stool had momentarily confused her. The real Peggy was loud and curvy, and while she often dressed in vintage, it was always something with a little more va-va-voom than this pastel frock. As Nicole stared at her, the white polka dots started to dance around on the pale pink background.

‘My heart’s not broken,’ she mumbled.

At least not any more. But it had been. Once. What she’d felt today had just been an echo of that.

‘It was just an engagement announcement,’ she said, absent-mindedly accepting the glass of ruby liquid that Peggy slid in her direction. ‘And Jasper and I were over a long time ago.’

It shouldn’t matter any more. It didn’t.

‘Well, he’s an idiot,’ Mia, her other best friend, muttered with her usual bluntness. ‘No matter how long ago he let you slip out of his fingers.’

Mia had been sitting so quietly sipping her drink that Nicole had almost forgotten she was there, although she was hard to miss in her Lara Croft outfit, complete with chicken-fillet enhanced chest and thigh holsters. She wasn’t in the best of moods this evening, seeing as her army fiancé was out of the country on active duty. Lots of women got soppy when they missed their other halves, but Mia just got feisty.

Nicole raised her glass. ‘To the idiot,’ she said and toasted her friend’s ineffable wisdom by downing the contents in one go.

Only she knew she was lying. Jasper hadn’t been an idiot. Not at all. He was the most wonderful man she’d ever known.

‘Steady there, Nicole,’ Mia said. ‘You don’t normally put this much away.’

Peggy sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘She’ll be fine. And it was either this or sitting home with six gallons of ice cream in those tatty tracksuit bottoms of hers, and I know which one I’d rather watch her do.’

Mia frowned but nodded. ‘Forget the jerk,’ she said vehemently. ‘You were too good for him back then and you’re definitely too good for him now.’

Nicole saluted her with her empty glass. Too right. She’d worked really hard to become the woman she was today, the kind of woman who could bring the Jaspers of this world to their knees, reflected in her choice of costume this evening. Who embodied effortless elegance more than Audrey Hepburn in her Breakfast at Tiffany’s little black dress?

Okay, maybe Holly Golightly herself hadn’t always been cool, calm and dignified, but it was the overall image that counted. It was iconic.

‘Stuff Jasper! May he marry the cow and have a brood full of boys as shallow and stuck-up as he is!’ she said, trying to slide onto the stool next to Peggy’s and missing.

‘Exactly,’ Peggy said and ordered another round of cosmos.

Lara…or Mia…tapped Peggy on the arm. She nodded at Nicole. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.’

Peggy turned and studied her friend, pursing her lips. ‘Well, we’ve got to do something to cheer her up. My gran used to say the way you start a new year is the way you’ll end it, and I don’t want her moping around our brand-new office for the next twelve months.’

Mia sipped beer out of the bottle. ‘You’re all heart,’ she said, giving her a very Lara look.

‘Of course, I want Nicole to be happy too,’ Peggy added, pouting a little.

Nicole listened to her friends debate the merit of a fourth—or was it fifth?—cocktail. She hadn’t kept count. Probably because she really hadn’t planned to drink much this evening.

She felt oddly detached, as if the room was swimming in and out of focus, sounds waning and then becoming magnified. She tried to fix her gaze on Peggy, but the spots on her dress were now involved in the complicated choreography of a Busby Berkeley number, complete with split-second timing and terrifying symmetry. Nicole could have sworn, as she tried to tear her eyes away from the swimming mass of white-on-pink polka dots, that one of them actually winked at her.

‘It’s just because it’s been a while since you’ve had a man in your life,’ Peggy explained, ‘and that can always make you susceptible to the “if only”s.’

Mia snorted. ‘So that’s your excuse for not having more than a half-hour break between relationships, is it?’

Peggy glared at Mia. ‘We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about Nicole. It’s been two months since she waved bye-bye to the last boyfriend, and it’s about time she got back on the horse.’

Horse? Nicole didn’t think there’d been a horse that evening, but she’d drifted off for a moment there. Maybe there had been. She was starting to realise that whole swathes of New Year’s Eve were a complete blank. Probably because Mia was right—she didn’t usually drink much, if at all. She didn’t usually like the way alcohol fuzzied up her edges, made her lose control. She ended up doing things that really weren’t like her at all.

‘Having a conveyor belt of men in your life isn’t the answer to everything,’ Mia replied. ‘Sometimes a girl needs a bit of breathing space.’

Peggy waved a hand. ‘Breathing space, schmeathing space. There’s only one way to deal with a situation like this—she needs to find a cute guy to smooch at midnight and start the year in the way she means to go on.’

‘No,’ Nicole said, suppressing a hiccup. ‘I don’t do things like that.’

‘Then it’s about time you started,’ Peggy said, grinning at her, then scanning the room for a likely candidate.

Thankfully, Mia rescued her. ‘Who needs to pin our happiness on men, anyway? I say we refill our glasses…’ she nodded at Nicole ‘…orange juice for you, my love, and toast ourselves and Nicole’s new business venture. This time next year she’ll own the first proposal-planning agency in London and we’ll be rich because we had the good sense to invest in it!’

‘Now, that I can drink to,’ Nicole said, thumping the bar. ‘A pint of water, if you will, bartender!’

‘Classy,’ Peggy said, shaking her head.

‘Sensible,’ Mia countered, swinging her long plait behind her head.

The bartender sloshed a glass of water in front of Nicole and she scooped it up, not even caring it was dripping on her dress. ‘To Nicole!’ she said. ‘And her little shop of Hopes & Dreams!’

Peggy and Mia joined her, clinking their respective cocktail glass and beer bottle with her pint glass. ‘To us!’ they chorused.

They were all just drinking deep when Peggy nudged Nicole in the ribs. ‘Ooh, don’t look now, but…two o’clock…’

Already? Had she missed midnight? Those cocktails must be more lethal than she’d thought!

‘You’re hopeless,’ Peggy said, physically moving Nicole’s head so she dragged her gaze from the clock behind the bar and across the seething mass of partygoers. ‘I mean two o’clock. The guy with the black T-shirt standing over there. He’s a dish. I think you should claim him for that midnight kiss.’

A dish? Peggy was really getting into character, wasn’t she?

Nicole shook her head. ‘I couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’ Peggy said, nudging her off her stool and in the right direction. ‘There’s no force field stopping you, is there?’

Nicole shook her head. But there probably should be. His black T-shirt clung lovingly to his broad chest and his hair was just messy enough to be sexy but just short enough to stop him looking foppish. It was as if the air pulsed around him, the molecules excited by his presence. Or maybe that was the fifth cosmo messing with gravity…Whatever it was, there was a definite whiff of danger in the air, and if there was one thing Nicole knew, bad boys like him didn’t go for good girls like her.

‘Interesting choice of trousers,’ Mia said, looking him up and down, ‘but I suppose you can’t have everything.’

And while Nicole tried to work out what Mia meant, and if the soft fuzz of his jeans was something more than the delicious blurring effect of vodka and cranberry juice, Peggy leaned in and whispered in her ear.

‘Go on, Nicole. It’s almost midnight…I dare you.’

He watched the brunette over by the bar snap to attention and stare directly at him. He toasted her with his bottle of beer and smiled. Well, he hadn’t seen that coming. He’d been half-watching her all night and he’d thought he’d had her pegged.

He didn’t know why she’d caught his eye. She wasn’t his usual type—extroverted and free-spirited—but there was something about her calmness and poise in a room full of chaos that had drawn his gaze.

But he still hadn’t been able to help looking over now and then, and the more he’d looked, the more he’d noticed the good bone structure, the fine features that weren’t arranged to make her conventionally pretty, but interesting.

He liked interesting.

She got up from her bar stool, straightened her black dress, adjusted the rope of large pearls circling her neck, then wobbled her way towards him.

He would have said she was heading straight for him, but halfway across the room she got distracted and veered off course until the blonde in the pink dress by the bar yelled something at her and she shook herself and started pushing her way through the heaving dance floor to where he was leaning against the wall.

He couldn’t help smiling to himself. He was glad it was the Audrey Hepburn girl, not Doris or Lara, who was teetering her way towards him. He put his beer bottle down on a nearby ledge and pushed himself away from the wall.

If he’d said women hadn’t approached him in bars before he’d be lying. So badly his pants would probably burst into flames. But there was something different about this girl. Instead of that hungry, almost predatory, look he’d come to expect, she was wide-eyed and uncertain. For some reason that made her approach all the more tantalising.

‘Incoming,’ his buddy Tom, and partner in crime, whispered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Which means I’m going to make myself scarce. In fact, now that the group at the bar is depleted a little, I might just see if Lara Croft would like to get into some one-to-one combat with me.’ And with a flash of a wicked smile he set off.

‘Good luck!’

Tom was going to need it. Lara had spotted him coming her way and was glaring at him, but that probably wasn’t going to stop him. Tom liked a challenge, and you didn’t get to be a hot up-and-coming record producer without being able to handle a few prickly customers.

He watched his friend’s progress for a few seconds then turned his attention back to the brunette. She was only a few steps away now, blocked by the people on the fringes of the dance floor, but then a groping pair stumbled off to one side and suddenly she was right in front of him.

‘Hi,’ he said, his smile growing wider.

‘Hi,’ she replied, and one ankle buckled a little beneath her before she found her footing again. And then she just stared at him, as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do with him. He found he liked that too. There was a hum of anticipation that was missing from a more direct approach.

He saw her ribcage rise as she hauled in some air and then she stepped forward and placed her hands on his chest. Her long-boned fingers were pale and delicate, but they packed quite a punch. A jolt shot through him, as if he’d been on a hospital trolley and someone had zapped him with a defibrillator.

Suddenly, things got very, very interesting.

In the background the music dimmed and someone turned the television up. An overexcited presenter was bouncing up and down in a bobble hat and scarf on the Embankment, and then the shot switched to the face of Big Ben. There was a heartbeat of silence before the chimes started, but Alex hardly heard them.

‘It’s midnight soon,’ she said and leaned in closer. He caught a whiff of her perfume, fresh and delicate with an undertone of spice. ‘So I’m going to kiss you.’

He wasn’t going to argue with that.

Well, not much.

Her face was inches away now, her eyes huge and dark. His heart was pumping wildly, throbbing in his ears. ‘Not if I get there first,’ he whispered and dipped his head to taste her lips, just briefly.

He heard her little gasp of surprise, and he decided he liked it, so he kissed her again, more deeply this time. She responded, a little hesitantly at first, which was intriguing, seeing as this had been her idea, but then her hands moved from his chest, skimming his torso through his T-shirt, until they were on his back, setting off a chain of tiny fireworks that were just as potent as the ones about to explode on barges in the Thames not half a mile away.

Big Ben’s bongs went uncounted and uncelebrated, at least by him and the mystery brunette, as they took what had started as a simple kiss and kicked it up a notch.

That moment of held breath when everyone waited for the twelfth chime was long over when they came up for air. People were dancing again, although he hadn’t been aware when the music had turned back on or even how long it had been playing. The brunette swayed slightly in front of him, her eyes closed, a tiny smile curving her lips, as he looked down at her.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked hoarsely.

She didn’t reply, just traced the lone dimple on his left cheek with her finger then kissed him again. Her hands slid lower to rest on his hips, and then he felt her lips purse. She pulled away, frowning. ‘You’re wearing furry trousers. What did you come as? Mr Tumnus? Because if you did, you should have a scarf. And an umbrella. Where’s your umbrella?’

He laughed. ‘No, nothing so exotic as a faun,’ he said. ‘I’m the back end of a pantomime horse.’

She smiled a serene little smile, as if that made perfect sense. ‘Peggy said there’d be a horse…but I can’t really remember how the horse was going to get here or why.’ She screwed up her face, as if she was thinking hard. ‘Where’s your head?’

He nodded in the direction of the bar. ‘Trying to chat up one of your friends,’ he replied.

Lara was still scowling. It looked as if Tom had struck out for once, but he probably wouldn’t mind too much. His motto in everything—especially when it came to women—was ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’.

The brunette looked over her shoulder, then turned to look him in the eye and thought hard for a moment. ‘I think I need to kiss you again. Three times is supposed to be lucky, isn’t it?’

He nodded, equally serious. It certainly was. And he hoped these cheap hired horse hindquarters were fire retardant, because the kiss that followed topped the previous two on the scorch-o-meter. That was the best kiss he’d had all year. And not just the one that had started. He’d included the one before that too.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked again.

She laughed loudly, indicated her black dress and string of pearls with a hand. ‘Don’t you know?’

He shook his head, smiling. A few wisps of hair had escaped from her neat bun thing and she looked totally adorable.

‘But I’m from Breakfast at Tiffany’s! Everybody’s seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s!’

He shrugged. ‘Not me.’

Her mouth dropped open. ‘Really! Never?’

Alex shook his head. Breakfast…Now, there was an appealing idea. ‘Let me guess…Are you Tiffany?’

She went from shocked to amused in a heartbeat, hitting him gently on the chest. ‘No, silly!’

He caught her hand and kept it trapped under his.

‘I’m Holly!’ she said with a weary sigh, as if even his two-year-old niece would know that. But then again, she probably did. Women seemed to know everything about every chick flick ever made from the moment of their births.

‘Well, Holly…Can I have your number? I’d like to call you.’

She closed her eyes and rested against him, mumbled sleepily, ‘Sure.’

He waited for a moment. ‘Care to enlighten me?’

One eyelid lifted. ‘Huh?’

‘Your number?’

The eyelid slid closed again. ‘It’s oh-nine-three…no, seven…no, three…’ She lifted her head and peered at him from under half-mast false lashes. ‘I can’t seem to remember.’

‘How about I give you mine?’

She nodded. He tore a corner off a flyer on a nearby table and scribbled his number down for her. When he handed it to her she blinked twice, very deliberately, then tucked it down in the front of her dress. All the saliva evaporated from his mouth.

He caught a flash of baby-pink moving towards him and realised her friends had come to rescue her.

She smiled dreamily at him. ‘Thank you…for my midnight kiss. It was very nice.’

His smile grew wider. ‘Yes, it was.’

Over her shoulder he saw Tom heading back in his direction, down but not out, according to the rueful smile on his face. His mystery woman’s friends weren’t far behind. They pushed their way through the dance floor, stopped a short distance away and beckoned for their friend.

The one in the pink gave him a saucy wink, while the Lara Croft lookalike kept an eye on Tom, making sure he was heading away from her.

‘Call me,’ he said, as they led her away.

Pinky looked back at him over her shoulder as they headed for the door. ‘If she doesn’t,’ she said with a little smirk, ‘I will.’

Tom sighed as he leaned back against the wall beside him. ‘Damn. Knew I should have gone for Doris instead.’ He took a swig of beer and smiled at the polka-dotted hips wiggling their way out of the door. ‘The good girls are always so much fun when they’re persuaded to be just a little bit bad.’

CHAPTER TWO

Ten months later

Nicole stood on top of an office building in Lambeth, arms wrapped around her for warmth. The sun had set half an hour ago, leaving just a smudge of peach peeping out between the glass towers and church spires that crowded the London horizon.

She risked a glance over the edge and instantly regretted it. Twenty storeys below, the November wind tugged papery leaves from trees then threw them carelessly in the path of the rush-hour traffic.

‘Are you ready, Warren?’ she asked, only just managing to stop her teeth chattering. She forced her cheeks into the soothing, yet professional smile she always used on her clients at this part of the proposal process.

Warren, a baby-faced, slightly balding forty-something, was fastening an abseiling harness over the top of his dinner suit. He looked up and nodded, nervous but determined.

Nicole caught the eye of Kirk, the ex-army guy she’d used a few times for similar stunts. He was one of those wordless, beefy types, who Nicole had been worried would intimidate men preparing to be the most vulnerable they’d ever been in their life, but somehow he inspired laddish camaraderie, and even the most timid of clients seemed more ready to do something high-risk and daring under his guidance. He finished testing Warren’s harness then stepped back and nodded at Nicole.

Warren’s face paled.

Nicole stepped forward and handed him an earpiece, similar to the one she was wearing. She looked him in the eyes. ‘It’s going to be fine,’ she told him. ‘A minute from now you’re going to be face to face with the woman you love, and she’s worth all of this, isn’t she?’

He nodded and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.

Nicole stepped back as Warren jammed the earpiece into place. ‘Now you’ve got your very own piece of high-tech gadgetry—just like James Bond,’ she added, warming the ever-present smile up a notch.

Warren fidgeted with his harness a little. She guessed it was probably pinching in places she didn’t want to know about. ‘That’s the idea,’ he said. ‘Cheryl’s always had a bit of a thing for 007. I’m not under any grand illusions, but I thought if I could show her I could be the tiniest bit like him, it might improve the chance of her saying yes.’

Nicole looked across at his smooth receding forehead, his slightly chubby cheeks, the torso that suggested he’d spent more time at the kebab shop than at the gym. She wished she really could tell him he was the spitting image of Pierce or Roger or Sean. ‘You look extremely dashing,’ she said. ‘You’re going to blow Cheryl away.’

Warren smiled softly. ‘Like a real Bond film…Something always gets blown away—or up—in a Bond film.’

The thought of an explosion of any kind featuring in the proposal she spent the last month meticulously planning sent a shiver of fear down Nicole’s spine. However, she glued the smile in place and projected it back at Warren with even greater force. ‘As long as it’s an explosion of love, and love alone, everyone will be happy.’

Especially her.

She checked her watch. ‘Do you remember what to do?’

Warren went back to looking very serious. He nodded. ‘Abseil down slowly two floors, then wait for your signal before doing the last bit.’

‘You can do it,’ she said, handing him the sign he was going to clip to his harness and a single red rose. ‘Just remember…Kirk is here at the top if you need help and I’ll be waiting for you on the seventeenth floor.’

Warren nodded weakly and backed towards the edge. With Kirk’s help he started to lower himself down. Nicole stood, calm and serene, smiling as he went. Just before he vanished she did a little thumbs-up gesture, but as soon as his eyes disappeared below the parapet, and only the thinning fluff on the top of his head was left in view, she set off running like a greyhound towards the door that led to the fire escape.

Her heels clattered on the stairs as she raced down two flights. They weren’t really practical for this kind of thing, she knew, but she had a professional image to maintain.

She paused briefly outside the room where the action was due to take place and sucked in as much oxygen as she could. Five seconds was all she had, so five seconds would have to do. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she waited for her pulse to stop stampeding, then slipped gracefully through the fire-exit door and into the open-plan office. No one would ever have known she’d been a heaving mess only seconds earlier.

Cheryl, Warren’s fiancée-to-be, was tapping away on her keyboard right next to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Every now and then she glanced up at the large clock on the far wall and sighed. The rest of the office carried on with their business, as if it were the end of a normal Friday afternoon.

Nicole made eye contact with Felicity, Cheryl’s best friend, who’d been only too happy to be the office ‘mole’ for this part of the operation. Then she checked her watch. ‘Where are you, Warren?’ she mumbled into her Bluetooth earpiece.

She could hear panting and the wind whistling. ‘Just about there,’ he said in a high-pitched voice. ‘Passing the eighteenth floor now.’

She gave Felicity a nod, and Felicity turned and gave a signal to a large man sitting at a desk in the centre of the room. His name was Morris, and he had the most soulful voice Nicole had ever heard. He stood up, cleared his throat and started singing the opening bars to ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’.

A few of the other workers looked up, but most kept on about their work. One by one they joined in the song until the whole seventeenth floor was singing its heart out. Nicole grinned. Those endless choir practices at Hurstdean Academy had come in useful after all.

Warren might not be James Bond, but Nicole dearly hoped that Cheryl was going to say yes. Not only was he a really nice guy, but it said a lot about him that their workmates had spent hours perfecting the song in secret over the last fortnight.

Nicole crept a little further into the office so she could see Cheryl more clearly round the edge of a row of cubicles. She’d stopped typing now and was staring open-mouthed at her colleagues, who sang and smiled as they gathered round her. And, just as Morris took the song to its lungbursting climax, Warren lurched into view outside Cheryl’s window, fumbling to pull the red rose out of his lapel and holding it towards her.

For a moment Cheryl didn’t see him, but that sixth sense that comes when someone is looking over one’s shoulder must have kicked in, because she twisted round and screamed at the same time. She would have fled halfway across the office if Felicity hadn’t caught her and steered her back.

‘Warren!’ Cheryl shrieked, both hands pressed against her sternum, one on top of the other. ‘What the heck are you doing out there?’

Warren, bless his little cotton socks, managed to stop looking quite so nervous. He flashed her a truly 007-worthy smile, then swung the sign dangling from a short rope attached to his harness up into his hands with one swift move.

On it were written four words: Will you marry me?

He’d wanted to go with something Bond-themed, but Nicole had convinced him to keep it simple. When it came to this part of the proposal, no fuss, no frills were needed. That was all a woman needed to hear.

The hairs on the back of her neck lifted as a hush fell on the whole office. Cheryl covered her mouth with her hands then nodded slowly. Once. Twice. Then a flurry of bobbing as she pressed her hands against the glass and started crying.

Nicole smiled as she whispered into her headset, ‘We are go!’

Right on cue, fireworks erupted from the park opposite and Warren and Cheryl’s colleagues cheered and rushed to the windows to watch. Nicole waved at Warren to catch his attention and pointed downwards with an exaggerated action. He was just hanging there, a stupid grin plastered all over his chubby face. He’d completely forgotten the next part of the plan was to get him down and on this side of the glass ASAP.

She sighed and looked around at the mayhem. It was lovely. It really was. And romantic. But…

She shook her head and plucked her earpiece out of her ear. Maybe she was getting a little jaded. In the ten and a half months since she’d started Hopes & Dreams she’d helped numerous men pop the question, but maybe the daily diet of OTT was starting to wear on her.

It was lovely to see all these couples happily planning their futures, but it only seemed to emphasise that once they’d taken each other by the hand and waltzed off into the sunset, she was left standing there alone.

She’d come close—once—to being proposed to. Or so she’d thought. She shook her head to dislodge the memory of that night. She didn’t need to go back there. Life was all about moving forward, about making the future count, not about moping over things that should have been but weren’t.

Warren, who’d finally made it down to the balcony two floors below and unharnessed himself with Kirk’s help, appeared in the doorway to an almighty cheer from his colleagues. He marched over to Cheryl looking ten feet tall, a bit of a Bond swagger in his usual lolloping gait. His fiancée watched him approach, her eyes wide and moist, and Nicole couldn’t help but shake off the mood that had been troubling her a few moments earlier.

She caught Warren’s eye across the top of the crowd and he winked at her as he drew Cheryl into his arms then dipped her for a kiss. Nicole smiled back and tucked her earpiece in her pocket.

Her job was done here. Everything had gone according to her meticulous plan—as everything in her life always did. And she didn’t know why she was getting all maudlin about the lack of proposals in her own life. It was a moot point. She wasn’t even seeing anyone at the moment. There’d been no one since…

She mentally swatted that thought.

She wasn’t seeing anyone, and that was fine, because she was too busy getting a fledgling business off the ground in tough economic times. So right now she was perfectly content organising everyone else’s happy-ever-afters. As long as everything kept going to plan, hers would get here eventually.

CHAPTER THREE

Feeling a little windswept and definitely a lot tired, Nicole walked into the foyer of the Hamilton Grand Hotel and quickly disposed of her coat and bag in the cloakroom. She checked her watch. She was late. Just a little. But it didn’t sit well with her. She didn’t do late. Or unprofessional. Or disorganised.

Her outfit wasn’t perfect, either. But that was what happened when you had to go from the top of an office block to a party in one evening. She usually preferred a cocktail dress, but her pencil skirt and classic chiffon blouse would just have to do.

Since both Peggy and Mia had both invested money in Hopes & Dreams and were hoping to join Nicole in the business full-time when things took off, Nicole had invited both her friends to come along with her. She found them in the Terrace Bar with a view over the Thames, along with a hundred or so event planners, hoteliers and media bods. The Hamilton had recently undergone an extensive refurbishment and this was their ‘we’re back!’ party, designed to wow former clients who’d been less than impressed with gradually dilapidating facilities.

Nicole had to admit, they’d done a marvellous job. It was now chic and modern. Flat matt walls in both neutral and bold colours, textured fabrics, funky light fittings. No hint of the dated plasterwork, thank goodness. Nicole shuddered at the memory. She’d always had a hatred for that fussy eighties faux-Victorian look, ever since one of her posh boarding-school friends had come to stay, taken one look at Nicole’s mother’s stripy wallpaper under the glued-on dado rail and had wrinkled her nose a little.

None of the other girls at Hurstdean had homes like that. They’d had antiques instead of orange pine that had darkened to an almost radioactive tone, real oil paintings instead of Monet prints from IKEA. But that was what came from being the scholarship kid, she supposed.

But after that incident Nicole had decided it was better to go without if you couldn’t have the real thing, and she’d started building her furnishings, her wardrobe—and her life—according to that code. ‘Dress for the job you want…’ someone had once said. Well, Nicole dressed for the life she wanted, a fabulous one.

‘So, did Cheryl say yes to tubby old Warren?’ Peggy asked as Nicole approached.

Nicole nodded and the other two girls breathed out a sigh of relief. While a negative to a proposal really came down to the relationship in question, too many refusals could make the Hopes & Dreams look bad. So far, though, Nicole had a really good success rate. Only one ‘no’, and that had been right back at the beginning, a big-headed plonker whose ill-fated proposal idea had only convinced his girlfriend that he loved himself more than he did her.

That one blot on her otherwise perfect record still smarted. Still, she’d been on a huge learning curve since then and had come up with protective measures to stop herself falling into that kind of situation ever again.

Thankfully, her proposer tonight had been nothing like Mr Arrogant.

‘He got right into the part too,’ Nicole said. ‘Not sure what Cheryl’s going to do with him now he’s discovered his inner Bond.’

Peggy’s red lips stretched slowly into a smile. ‘I know what I’d do with a man who’d discovered his inner Bond…’

‘Oh, there you are, darlings! Doesn’t the Hamilton look super? I’m sure Minty and I are going to use it for one of our next parties.’

Nicole’s stomach sank, but she turned round, smiling—if not genuinely—widely. ‘Celeste…Araminta…How are you?’

The two women were both tall and had cascading, thick honey-coloured waves. They looked as if they’d blown in off the King’s Road after an afternoon’s shopping. The dresses were bang on trend, the make-up artfully suggesting a healthy glow, and the legs went on for centuries.

However, despite her irritation at their presence, Nicole couldn’t help taking a mental note of how their outfits were put together, noting details like designers, fabrics, cut…As much as she didn’t like them, Celeste and Minty always looked fabulous, and it was never good to be outshone by the competition.

It was a habit she’d picked up at school, when fitting in had been as necessary as breathing. She might have not had as much money as most of her school chums, but that hadn’t meant she’d wanted to stand out in cut-price highstreet polyester knock-offs. As a result, she’d developed a talent for breaking down an outfit into its component parts, working out how she could copy it on a shoestring or use what she already owned to pull off the look. It had helped her blend into the privileged world of Hurstdean Academy.

‘Marvellous!’ Celeste said, beaming. For some reason her smile reminded Nicole of a chihuahua baring its teeth. ‘And how’s your cute little boutique agency doing? I don’t seem to have heard much about it in ages. I Do, I Do, I Do is going great guns. Did you hear we just did the Patterson–Henley proposal? She said yes, of course. Who wouldn’t when daddy-in-law is a viscount?’

Celeste broke off so she and Minty could congratulate themselves with throaty, slightly horsey laughter.

Nicole kept smiling and gently put a hand on Peggy’s arm. She was sure she’d just heard a snarl from under her flatmate’s breath.

Minty sighed and flicked her hair in a manner that got the attention of all the men in a ten-foot radius. ‘They’ve asked us to do the engagement party as well, you know. Fabulous exposure.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ Mia said tightly. ‘Congratulations.’

Celeste started scanning the crowd. Obviously, they’d ceased to be entertaining now the gloating had finished, and she was looking for her next victim. ‘Ooh! There’s the new owner of the Hamilton, Jayce Ryder. He did say he wanted a word with us. Come on, Minty.’ She waved above the crowd. ‘Yoo-hoo, Jayce…!’

Both girls flashed identical smiles at Nicole, Peggy and Mia and then headed off into the crowd without bothering to air-kiss a farewell.

The name Peggy called them when they were out of earshot wasn’t nice.

Nicole shook her head. ‘We shouldn’t criticise the competition in public. It’s not professional.’

Peggy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Professional, schmessional. Sometimes I just can’t help myself, and I don’t know how you can be so calm, cool and collected about it, either. Not after they copied your idea and set up a rival proposal-planning agency right under your nose!’

Nicole sent a laser-targeted stare after the two disappearing willowy figures. ‘They only got that job because Minty’s daddy plays polo with Hugo Patterson’s daddy.’ Mia followed her gaze. ‘Oh, yes. I forgot you used to work with them at that big event-planning firm.’

‘Me and my big mouth,’ Nicole muttered, turning back to her friends and sighing. ‘I shouldn’t have bragged to them that I was branching out on my own.’

Mia nodded understandingly. ‘And have you seen a drop in business recently? I know you said you were worried about that when you started out.’

Nicole sighed again. She’d hoped for a fun, glitzy evening after a hard week with sleepless nights and ten-hour days. ‘A bit. I run a full range of services. The lowest tier is personalised proposal ideas that clients buy for a small fee and then they do the rest themselves—inspiration, if you like. Next is helping to find venues and vendors who match the client’s requirements, but the top tier is the no-holds-barred planning service, where I take care of everything. Not only are those the most fun to do, but they’re the ones I make most money on, and it’s interest in those kind of proposals that seems to have tailed off.’

She glanced over again at her rivals, who were busy fawning over the hotel tycoon who’d been responsible for the Hamilton’s upswing in fortune. ‘And I have a feeling I know who’s hoovering up all that kind of business.’

Peggy glared over at them. ‘Those two are toxic on so many levels it isn’t funny.’

Nicole angled her body away from Celeste and Minty. She didn’t even want to look at them. They didn’t count. She wasn’t going to let girls like that get the better of her ever again.

‘Ever since school I’ve had to deal with girls like that, girls whose lives are charmed, because someone waved a magic wand over them at birth, so they get everything their hearts desire. So life comes easy to them. So success drops easily into their laps because of their names or their connections, but it doesn’t mean they have to have it all, leaving nothing for us.’

Nicole was prepared to work for it. Work hard. She’d get there in the end.

‘It doesn’t matter how well they’re doing now,’ she said slowly. ‘Celeste was slapdash when we worked together at Elite Gatherings and I bet she’s slapdash now. She was always swanning around doing what she felt like doing and palming off the boring stuff on other people.’

‘Sounds about right,’ Peggy said grimly. ‘Look up “entitlement” in the dictionary and you’d see her ugly mug staring right back at you.’

Nicole nodded and smiled. ‘That was all fine and dandy while Celeste was working for a big event-planning firm, with plenty of victims to take up the slack, but now it’s just her and Minty, and Minty’s just as bad. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got the connections, access to the Old Boys’ Club through their fathers…They’ll trip themselves up eventually. What matters are drive and talent, and Hopes & Dreams has plenty of that, especially now Peggy has come on board part-time.’

All three women stared after their number one—well, their only—competitors.

‘Won’t matter if we go under and they continue to float around London like it’s their own personal garden party,’ Peggy muttered darkly.

Mia, ever the practical one, laid a hand on Nicole’s arm. ‘Well, if you ever want a hand with the books, just let me know. I might as well use all those fancy letters I got after my name for something I really care about.’

Nicole smiled and nodded. Mia hated her job as an accountant in a big city firm. If she could have joined her and Peggy at Hopes & Dreams, she’d have done so in a heartbeat. In fact, that was the plan if the business survived into next year.

Peggy hated any talk of boring things like numbers and spreadsheets. She let her head loll and pretended to snore softly, and when Mia poked her in the arm with a sharp fingernail she lifted her head and said, ‘Time for another drink.’ She handed her glass to Mia, who rolled her eyes but waved at the barman anyway.

‘I’d settle for a glass of fizz and change of subject,’ Nicole said. She’d been on a nice little high after Warren’s triumph that evening, but Celeste’s news about Hugo Patterson and Sarah Henley had thrown cold water all over it. Somehow, a draughty office building in Lambeth just didn’t have the same cachet. It was great having satisfied clients, but what she really needed was high-profile satisfied clients. Ones who would shell out a ton of money on a high-end proposal, then brag about it to all their friends and get Hopes & Dreams mentioned in Celebrity Life.

‘Change of subject? Oh, well in that case…Guess who dropped by our flat while you were out being a Bond girl?’ Peggy waggled her eyebrows and waited, smiling.

‘The Sultan of Brunei,’ Nicole replied, not missing a beat.

Peggy tutted. ‘It’s no fun if you don’t play along.’

‘It’s no fun for you, you mean…’

Mia leaned over and put a hand on Nicole’s arm. ‘Just humour her. You know she’ll bug you until she gets it out of her system one way or the other.’

Peggy grinned at Nicole. ‘Well, if you’re going to be boring, I’ll just tell you…Your dad came in to check that damp patch on the bathroom ceiling this afternoon, with hunky plumber Steve in tow. They were sad to have missed you—especially Steve.’

Nicole shrugged.

‘And when I say “sad”, I mean very sad. You ought to put him out of his misery and call him sometime, you know. I’m sure the only reason he keeps coming back to check the work he did on the boiler is because he wants an excuse to see you.’

‘Sorry, Peg. Steve just isn’t my type.’

‘Then find someone who is your type!’ Peggy said, flicking her artfully curled platinum locks. ‘It’s been too long since you’ve been out on a date. It’s making you very crabby.’

Nicole opened her mouth to say there was a difference between ‘crabby’ and ‘taking your life seriously’, but Mia jumped in ahead of her.

‘A woman can exist without a man in her life, you know, Peg. It’s not the 1950s any more, even though you dearly like to pretend it is. Sometimes it’s about the quality, not the quantity.’

Peggy gave Mia a well-worn look. ‘There’s not going to be any quality at all if the quantity is zero.’

‘Well, we all know you like to prove that point with a different man every week.’

Nicole could see where this was going. Mia and Peg were firm friends really, but sometimes they really could rub each other up the wrong way. ‘Calm down, children,’ she said in a soothing tone. ‘We’re supposed to be here to check out the Hamilton and schmooze for new clients, remember?’

Both women nodded reluctantly, but Peggy had to get the last word in, as always. ‘You can’t chip in anyway, Miss Mia, seeing as you’ve now got a ring on your finger, are sickeningly loved-up and can’t even remember what it’s like to be single.’

Mia suddenly stopped scowling and her whole face lit up in a beatific smile. ‘I am sickeningly loved-up, aren’t I? And who wouldn’t be with a man like Jonathan? He’s perfect, isn’t he? Tell me he’s perfect.’

Nicole laughed. It was true; Mia’s fiancé really was lovely. He’d been so nervous about popping the question that he’d asked Nicole for help and it was then she’d realised not only was there a gap in the market, but that proposal planning was only a sidestep from event and party planning. There was so much pressure on guys these days, not only asking the question but how they did it. Suddenly booking a table at a nice restaurant and buying a ring wasn’t enough. Jonathan had been very aware of all those YouTube videos out there of creative and romantic proposals. So that was where the idea to start Hopes & Dreams had been born.

‘He really is perfect,’ she reassured Mia. Perfect for Mia, at least. Not that Jonathan wasn’t a great guy, but Nicole had yet to meet the man who lived up to her idea of Mr Right, the man who was a perfect fit for the life she was dressing to have.

The only one who’d come close was Jasper.

He’d been one of her old school friend’s brothers. Their dad was head of an old and prestigious insurance company and his son had been not only rich, but gorgeous and charming. She’d fallen helplessly in love with him. Who wouldn’t have done?

She hadn’t been able to believe her luck. After all, his whole world was populated with girls like Minty and Celeste—confident, stylish, privileged. He’d told her he loved her. He’d said he liked spending time with her because she was spontaneous and unspoilt, such a refreshing change from all those rich girls who liked to dangle a chap from a piece of string just because they could. And she’d fallen completely under his spell, believing her own fairy tale had finally landed in her lap.

They’d been together for two years when Jasper had announced he had something important to discuss with her. It had come hot on the heels of a visit home to the rambling manor house his parents owned in the Berkshire countryside. He’d seemed nervous too, a look Nicole had seen more than once since then, in the faces of the men who knocked on the door of Hopes & Dreams.

So she’d gone out and bought a horribly expensive dress from one of the boutiques on Bond Street and had waited slightly breathlessly for him at the restaurant, with its imposing pillars and stern-faced waiters. And at the end of the meal he’d reached across the table and pulled her hand into his and had stared into her eyes.

She’d held her breath. And then her smile had melted from her face. She still hadn’t been able to breathe, but not because she was delirious with joy. Because Jasper had been telling her it was over between them, that he was at that age when he needed to think about getting serious and settling down. She’d known his father had been pressuring him about joining the family firm for some time, but he’d always resisted up until that point.

After the shock wore off, as she was being ferried home in the cab that Jasper had insisted paying for, the truth had hit her. Jasper wanted to settle down, but not with her. Because in his eyes she wasn’t what his family thought was the ‘right sort’. The daughter of a builder from South-East London just wasn’t good enough. And she’d hated him for being weak enough to give in to them.

Never in her whole life had she felt so small and worthless and insignificant.

Three months later she’d found out he was seeing a girl whose father owned half of Shropshire. Right there and then she’d realised she’d been fooling herself all along. She sighed. ‘Maybe if the perfect guy fell out of the sky tomorrow, I’d make time for romance, but it’s not a bad idea to concentrate on the business for the moment.’

Peggy just snorted. ‘It’s not a bad idea to be wrapped around a hot guy once in a while, either!’ She shook her head. ‘Your love life has been in drought since we started planning to open Hopes & Dreams, and the one time you did get close, you chickened out. I never understood why you didn’t call that total cutie of a cowboy you pinned down under the mistletoe on New Year’s Eve.’

Once again Peggy was playing fast and loose with the facts. ‘There was no mistletoe, and he was the back end of a pantomime horse, not a cowboy.’

Nicole went quiet then, assailed by a rather vivid flashback of that kiss—his arms pulling her close, the scent of his aftershave as she’d let her head fall back and he’d pressed his lips to that quivery little spot just under her ear.

She shuddered, then shook herself. Damn. She hadn’t had one of those for months.

‘That doesn’t count,’ she told Peggy. ‘I told you I lost his number. It was hardly surprising, seeing that under your influence, I got very…well…under the influence.’

Peggy shook her head. ‘Squiffy or no, it was very careless of you. That was one dreamy cowboy…’

Nicole sipped her drink, worried that she might incriminate herself if she said any more.

Peggy wasn’t the only one playing a little fast and loose with the facts this evening. Because Nicole knew exactly where that little scrap of paper he’d written his phone number on was. She’d known it all year.

She didn’t know why she’d lied when Peggy had asked about it the following day; she just had. She’d had too much of a hangover to have the energy to resist her flatmate’s insistence to call him and arrange a date. This year was very important. She couldn’t afford to lose focus. Besides, she didn’t do that kind of thing, not since Jasper. These days she played it cool and let the guy do all the running.

Okay, she didn’t usually go around kissing random strangers, either, but maybe one out-of-character action each year was allowed. One per year was certainly enough. She’d spent a long time grooming herself into the woman she was now. She wasn’t about to let go of all that because of one drunken kiss.

Even if it had been one seriously hot drunken kiss…

Another flashback hit. Instead of being a muted aftershock, it was double the intensity. Nicole’s ears grew warm and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She rubbed her hand over the spot to shoo the feeling away.