Bound by a Nine-Month Confession
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Cathy Williams
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CHAPTER ONE
‘WHAT?’
It had taken a few seconds for Celia to register what her client was saying.
‘What do you mean, you’ve decided not to get married after all...?’
She levered herself up from where she had been kneeling, meticulously pinning the hem of the dress she was making.
A wedding dress.
Not in the traditional white because this was marriage number two for Julie Raymond. This was a pale lilac creation, exquisitely beautiful and threaded with hundreds of tiny pearls, each of which had been laboriously sewn on by hand.
Three months of toing and froing over the design, four months of time-consuming putting together with dozens of fittings, at each of which something had had to be changed. Then there was the time spent sourcing just the right fabric from just the right factory with just the right eco-friendly credentials.
Not so much a labour of love as a rollercoaster ride underlaid with simmering panic that the creation in the making might not come to fruition in time for the big day because of the number of roadblocks that kept appearing on the journey.
But here they were, with the wedding a week away and...
Celia stared up at her client in consternation, her green eyes urgently questioning. The expression on Julie’s face was enough to slam shut the door on any notions that she might have misheard. The wedding of the year was being called off.
Should warning bells have started clanging months ago? Should she have paid more attention to throwaway remarks that had become more persistent over the past few weeks?
It wasn’t as if Julie hadn’t confided in her, snippets about her past and the loveless marriage she had endured for four years. She had wed an earl only to discover that with the title came the expectation that he be allowed to continue his womanising bachelor ways, untroubled by the humdrum monotony of married life. The divorce had been protracted and exhausting, Julie had confided bitterly.
So yes, Celia had had insights into her client and slowly they had formed an easy camaraderie, a closeness that sometimes happened between people whose lives ran on different railway tracks. It was the closeness between one with a need to confide and another with an ability to listen, two people who didn’t share the same social platform. It was a safe place for Julie because confidences shared never risked being leaked to mutual friends.
‘I can’t go through with it.’
Celia rested back on her haunches and waited until Julie had stepped down from the squat box on which she had been standing. Then she ushered her upstairs into the tiny kitchen, away from the main body of the shop with its fitting rooms and racks of clothes in the process of being made and the busyness of her two assistants with their clients.
Julie Raymond was an absolutely stunning and statuesque blonde. A dream of a model who could have worn a bin bag and still looked spectacular.
She towered over Celia, who was secretly in awe of her, from her well-behaved, sleek, shiny bob to the impeccably manicured perfection of her fingernails.
The long-sleeved wedding dress, lovingly hugging a willowy body, trailed half pinned and in miserable disarray along the ground, picking up dust along the way.
‘You’re just a little nervous,’ Celia soothed, seamlessly segueing into agony aunt mode. ‘The wedding is only a few days away and life as you know it is going to change but, Julie...you mustn’t let your past ruin a wonderful future. I know you had a...um...disappointing first marriage, but that was years ago and I’m sure that...er...Leandro will be a wonderful husband...’
‘Maybe.’ Julie laughed with carefree abandon and rested the mug of tea that had been handed to her on her lap. ‘But definitely not to me.’
What could Celia say to that? How could she wax lyrical about the virtues of someone she had never met?
Not once had the adoring husband-to-be arranged to collect his fiancée so that he could whisk her off to a romantic meal after one of her very many late evening fittings.
Nor, come to think of it, had Julie mentioned him very much at all and, when quizzed, had been conspicuously mealy-mouthed on the subject of the love of her life.
She had vaguely hinted that she had known him for absolutely ages and if she had failed to follow this up with the usual glowing reports of how wonderful he was, then, camaraderie or no camaraderie, that was not Celia’s business. At the end of the day, she was being paid to do a job and an important one. A huge job for an extravagant wedding where her dress would be the star of the show and, for three young girls climbing the career ladder in the competitive world of fashion design, a real opportunity.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Julie said gently, and Celia frowned.
She could see the faintest of tea-ring stains from the mug on the pale lilac.
‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘You have cold feet. It happens. One minute you’re looking forward to a shiny bright future and the next minute you’re terrified that you’ll be giving up all the freedoms that come with singledom...’
‘And have you ever been there, Celia? Torn between the shiny bright future and the allure of singledom?’
Celia flushed and, for a few seconds, she felt the breath leave her body.
Had she ever been there? On the brink of marriage with all its glorious possibilities and dreams and hopes?
Yes! Once upon a time when she’d been just nineteen, engaged to the boy literally only a few doors away, the boy she had known for ever. He’d been her best friend, her confidant and then, when they’d both turned sixteen, her boyfriend. In the little village where they’d both grown up, deep in the heart of the countryside, they’d simply drifted into sealing a union that had been expected of them by both sets of parents.
Celia knew now that the best thing Martin had ever done had been to break things off but still...it had hurt. She’d smiled at the time, and held her head high until her jaw had ached. She’d assured her parents that it had been a joint decision, that they were both way too young anyway, that they’d rushed into things...and wasn’t it a blessing that they’d seen sense before it was too late?
But she could still remember the tightness in her chest and the sadness that the wedding dress she’d been making, a labour of love because she’d just nailed her sewing course and had been excited to try out her newly qualified skills, would never be used.
It was neatly folded in a bag in a cupboard, a permanent reminder that when it came to giving her heart away, she would only do so with a clear head. A reminder that what you thought was love was all too often disguised as something else and if you got taken in, you ended up with an unused wedding dress gathering cobwebs in a cupboard. For her, the thrill of being engaged and planning for a wedding had papered over the blunt reality, which was that she and Martin had never been in love. They’d been a couple of kids who had allowed the tide to drift them this way and that.
Martin had found someone else in record time, someone athletic and into all the outdoor pursuits he had loved and which Celia had stoically endured. He had found his soulmate, had even asked Celia to attend his wedding, which she had politely declined. He had moved on. But for her? It didn’t matter how much she told herself that she was in a better place single than she would have been in a marriage that would have ended in bitterness and acrimony. The scales would have fallen from both their eyes and reality would have eventually intruded on their youthful, impossible bubble and they wouldn’t have remained friends, that was for sure! And what if a child had been involved? How tangled would that have been?
But Celia knew that the experience had taken that carefree side of her and curdled it. She was so careful now, so cautious...and Julie’s throwaway question seemed to have brought it all to the surface. Briefly.
‘We’re not talking about me, Julie.’ She smiled stiffly, eager to swivel the focus away from her. ‘So don’t try to change the subject.’
Actually, now that she happened to glance at Julie’s finger, the engagement ring appeared to have been well and truly ditched. When had that happened and how had she failed to notice?
Celia felt an uncharitable spurt of irritation and banked it down.
Yes, Julie’s first marriage had been a disaster. But she had moved on to find someone else, someone she presumably loved enough to accept his marriage proposal, and here she was now, washing her hands of it all in a couple of airily nonchalant sentences. Not a remorseful tear in sight.
‘I’ve worked with many brides-to-be, Julie, and there’s always some nerves beforehand.’
‘I haven’t actually been nervous about getting married.’
‘What does Leandro have to say?’ Celia swerved away from all non-starter chat about her client’s lack of pre-wedding nerves, her refusal to consider the most likely reason for her calling off the marriage at the eleventh hour. ‘He must be...heartbroken.’
Did she care about the now fast-vanishing prospect of her stunning wedding gown getting the coverage she had so hoped for? Maybe propelling them into the big league?
Yes, she did.
But more than that, Celia came from a traditional family. She and her brother both did. Their parents had married young and were still in love decades later. A straightforward life with a straightforward outcome. When she thought of the grief and unhappiness opening up at Julie’s feet, at Leandro’s feet, she felt a wrench of sadness for them both.
How was it that Julie seemed so blithely unaware of the ramifications of her snap decision?
Couldn’t she see what she was casually tossing aside? Didn’t she know how very lucky she was to be with a guy who loved her? That you didn’t get love just to throw it away on an anxious whim? Because you figured that something better might be just around the corner? Didn’t she realise that there were women out there with unused wedding dresses stuck in the back of cupboards, melancholy testament to dreams that had never come true?
‘If you met Leandro,’ Julie said thoughtfully, ‘I’m not sure heartbroken would ever be a word you could use to describe how he might feel in a situation like this.’
‘But I’ve never met him.’
‘He’s a very busy man.’
Celia frowned, tempted to pry further but conscious that she had no role to play in Julie’s decision. She wasn’t a counsellor, and it wasn’t her job to try and talk anyone out of anything!
But what a shame and what a waste.
She’d worked with wedding dresses for years. She’d ironically thought how odd it was that from her own abandoned wedding dress, lovingly sewn in anticipation of the big day that never came, had come an absolute love for the intricacies of making wedding dresses.
The attention to detail...the little personal requests some brides-to-be asked to be sewn into bodice tops, under lace...once in the lining...
She had never once felt in the slightest bit envious that all these dresses, made by her and her team, would usher in lives filled with hope and happiness while for her...who knew when her own day would come?
But as she listened to Julie kindly telling her how much she loved the dress, plucking at the expensive fabric and frowning with an expression of mild dismay at the faint mark left by the mug she had rested on it, Celia couldn’t help but feel a wave of self-pity. She had chosen to tread carefully, which meant that she was on her own now as much as she had been when she and Martin had broken up. Being on her own seemed to have become a career choice. And here was Julie, wedding dress already stained and soon to be ditched, tossing aside her chance at happiness with a shrug.
‘You’ll be paid for it, of course,’ her client was expanding now. ‘You’ve done an amazing job and I’m going to recommend you to all my friends. You’ll have so much lovely business, Celia, you’ll be rushed off your feet!’
Celia smiled weakly and gave up on trying to play agony aunt.
She felt drained. Memories had jumped out at her just when she didn’t need them and now she wanted to close the shop and head back to the small house she rented in Shepherd’s Bush.
‘I’m really sorry, Julie,’ she said gently, removing the mug, taking it to the sink and then remaining there, standing, waiting for her client to do likewise, which she didn’t, until Celia prompted, ‘It’s nearly time for me to be closing up for the evening.’
‘I should mention that I’ve met someone,’ Julie blurted out with sudden nervousness.
‘You’ve met someone?’
‘Um...’
‘But when? How? I had no idea! Not, of course, that it’s any of my business, although maybe you should have thought about breaking things off with Leandro earlier? Look, Julie, I really need to close the shop now. We can sort all the details about the dress later. There’s no need for you to tell me the ins and outs of your private life. It’s very sad that you won’t be marrying Leandro but it’s your life and, of course, I wish you well.’
She purposefully wiped the kitchen counter and headed to the door, her body language signalling the end of the conversation. She could feel a headache coming on.
‘It’s the real thing, Celia. I can tell from your expression that you disapprove but, honestly, this guy...? He’s the real deal.’
‘I... I’m happy for you, Julie, I really am, but—’
‘And there’s something else I think you should know...’
‘Really?’ Celia raised her eyebrows. She wondered what more could possibly be on the agenda. A final fitting had turned into the confession to end all confessions and her brain hurt when she thought about not just Julie’s poor fiancé but the sheer nightmare of unpicking what had been touted as the wedding of the year. Where did you even start on that?
‘The guy I’m seeing? It happens to be your brother...’
Celia was still reeling from that shock announcement two days later as she began putting away stuff in the workshop, ready to lock up and head to the Underground.
Knocked for six and frantically thinking that she surely must have misheard, she had listened with mounting horror as Julie had given her a brief synopsis of her life-changing fling with Dan.
From standing in a purposeful manner, she had collapsed like a rag doll right back into the chair from which she had earlier risen.
How on earth had her brother crept into this scenario?
She had found out fast enough.
Yes, they had met. Quite by chance, as it happened. A couple of months ago, Julie had turned up for a fitting and Dan had been there, in all his good-looking glory. He had rocked up on his motorbike to hand-deliver a book he had promised Celia.
Celia remembered the day quite clearly because she had done her best to hustle him out. She adored her older brother but life, for him, moved on his own timeline and she had been rushed off her feet with a list of things to get through before she left.
Had he and Julie chatted? Sure. Celia had barely noticed. Julie was a besotted bride-to-be. Why would Celia have paid a scrap of attention to the fact that her brother had hung around for longer than he should have, chatting?
Dan was a chatty person! Five years older, he was completely different from her...from looks to personality.
Tall to her short...dark-haired to her red...and carefree in ways she had always envied and admired.
Had Julie fallen for that?
She’d said that Leandro was something of a workaholic. Had Dan’s breezy insouciance delivered a mortal hammer blow to a bride whose head had been filled with sudden, last-minute doubts about the guy she was marrying? Had the guy who had gone freelance because he spurned the tyranny of a nine-to-five work schedule charmed the woman destined to wed a man chained to a desk?
Had opposites attracted in what had been a perfect but temporary storm?
At any rate, she had been swamped with guilt. If Dan had never been there, Julie would still be going ahead with her marriage and whatever nerves she was experiencing would have fizzled out like dew in the summer sun.
Instead...
Celia had tried to get hold of her brother, but he had gone underground and when she’d carefully tried to find out whether her parents were any the wiser, she had quickly realised that they weren’t. ‘You know your brother,’ Lizzie Drew had said with maternal indulgence. ‘Never one for the details of where he is!’
Celia was beginning to wonder whether she knew her brother at all.
Absorbed in the same train of thought that had been cluttering her head for the past two days, she was only aware of the doorbell ringing downstairs after it had gone from staccato bursts to one long, insistent, demanding and intensely annoying buzz.
She hurried down the short flight of stairs into the display area of her shop, banging on the lights at the bottom.
It was cold and dark outside, and the January air was heavy with the promise of snow, predicted but thus far yet to fall.
A miserable time of thick cardigans and coats and waterproofs and the dreary daily trudge, fighting the elements and the crowds to get to the Tube.
The Closed sign was on the door, clearly visible to anyone with twenty-twenty vision.
She pulled open the door, mouth half open to state the obvious, hand raised to indicate the sign on the door, and then it fell back.
Startled eyes travelled up and up and up to a face that was so absolutely perfect in its olive-toned symmetry that her mouth fell open and for a few seconds her head went completely blank.
Leandro stared back at the redhead in front of him in silence.
So this was the woman whose name had been mentioned with increasing regularity for the past year. Not quite what he had been expecting although, to be fair, he hadn’t had any clear image of anyone in his head.
‘Can I help you?’ She pointed to the sign that he had seen and ignored. ‘I was just about to head off...perhaps whatever you want could wait until tomorrow morning? I’m here most days by eight.’
He detected a thread of annoyance in her voice and conceded that she had every reason to be annoyed but needs must. He didn’t want to be here any more than she wanted him here. ‘I’d rather not,’ he drawled.
‘You’d rather not?’
‘I’d rather not.’ He tempered his bluntness with something of a smile, although it was damned difficult because this was no smiling situation. Not by a long shot. He raked his fingers through his hair, glanced away with a frown and then added, carefully, eyes pinned to her face, ‘Believe me, I don’t make a habit of showing up unannounced anywhere...but I assure you, this is important and it’s urgent I talk to you.’
He watched carefully as she digested what he’d said. She had a remarkably transparent face. A useful asset in a wedding-dress designer, he imagined, programmed as he was from a young age to be cynical. A bride-to-be would want an emotional and empathetic listening ear at an emotional and exciting time. All those happy-ever-after endings in sight...all those fairy tales about to turn a corner and come true...what better than someone pinning and sewing with an encouraging smile and appealing, puppy-dog eyes?
Appealing puppy-dog eyes the colour of green glass washed up on a beach?
Everything about the woman oozed just the sort of softness that would encourage a bride to open up and share her secrets.
Leandro, who had received a three-sentence message from Julie two days previously, was in no doubt that, whatever was going on, the small redhead in front of him would have the explanation and he wasn’t leaving until he got it.
Where the heck was his fiancée?
He’d thought he and Julie had a pretty good understanding of the situation. No blurred lines or room for error. But he’d been wrong.
I’m so sorry but I can’t go through with the wedding, Leandro. It’s not you. It’s me.
What the hell did that mean?
Nor had she graced her father with anything more illuminating and that in itself had infuriated Leandro, because the old guy deserved better.
Were there dots waiting to be joined? Had he missed the link somehow? He never missed links and he was excellent when it came to joining dots so what was going on here?
‘You’re interested in commissioning a dress... Mr...?’
‘I’m interested in the whereabouts of someone who’s recently commissioned a dress from you, Miss Drew,’ he said quietly.
‘Who are you?’ Celia’s heart was thudding. She wasn’t used to the impact of a guy on her like this and she didn’t like it. It made her feel exposed, because she had spent so long distancing herself from involvement with the opposite sex, happy to bide her time until the right guy came along. She’d been hurt once and she could still remember how that had felt, could remember it enough to know that if she held back, if no one could really get to her, then she would never be hurt again.
She hadn’t budged from where she was standing, blocking entry to the shop.
The man, whoever he was, commanded her full attention, pinning her to the spot. An aura of dark danger emanated from him.
She wasn’t used to this sort of powerful, self-assured and masculine presence.
‘Let me in, Miss Drew. Please.’
‘Sorry, but no.’
‘I really need to talk to you and it’s a conversation that can’t be conducted on a pavement.’
‘In that case, you can always make an appointment like everyone else. Like I said, I’m here from eight most mornings.’
‘I need to talk to you about Julie. My name is Leandro. I’m her fiancé. Or...’ he smiled wryly ‘...should I say ex-fiancé? I seem to be caught in an evolving situation.’
She was staring at him, lips pursed, arms folded, welcome mat fully retracted.
In every respect, she was as far removed from the women he was accustomed to as chalk was from cheese. Her clothes were comfy, shapeless. A pair of loose trousers, an extremely baggy shirt, an even baggier cardigan and a tape measure around her neck, which he assumed she had forgotten about in her haste to get the door.
Everything seemed to be in various shades of grey and black, but she was rescued from inevitable plainness by the amazing vibrancy of her copper-coloured hair, the way it rioted around her heart-shaped face in rebellious disarray, and crystal-clear green eyes that were framed by sooty dark gold lashes. And, of course, freckles. A lot of them.
‘You’re Leandro...’
‘Will you let me in, Miss Drew? It is Miss, isn’t it? Julie never clarified so feel free to correct me if I’ve jumped to conclusions?’
‘Yes, I’m Ms Drew, Celia, and okay, I guess you’d better come in.’
‘I appreciate that,’ he told her. ‘It’s dark. You’re in the process of locking up to go home. You don’t know who the heck might be knocking on your door, so thank you for trusting me. Like I said, I wouldn’t have descended on your doorstep if it wasn’t important.’
Her breath hitched as he swept past her, bringing in the cold air with him.
Under the glare of the overhead lights, she now had an up-close-and-personal view of just how spectacular the guy was.
He towered over her, at least six-three to her five-four, and his hair was raven black and cut short, which emphasised the harsh contours of his face with its sensual mouth, straight nose and slashing cheekbones.
‘You’d better come upstairs.’ He still made her heart skitter inside her and her nerves were all over the place but something about him, something about the sincerity of his words, made her realise that the guy was to be trusted.
And what did she imagine he was going to do anyway? She was as safe as houses around a guy like him! Just one glance at his elegant, beautiful fiancée and any fool would be able to work out that he was a man who liked tall and elegant. Not petite and far too sensible.
She spun round on her heel and headed up, acutely conscious of him behind her, as stealthy as a jungle cat.
This was not what she’d been expecting.
When she’d eventually shown Julie the door two days previously, she had been too shell-shocked to ask detailed questions about what plans she and Dan had made. The Dan connection had been enough to blow all those obvious questions out of the water. She had just gaped in silence like a stranded goldfish as Julie, liberated from having to keep everything under wraps, had opened up with enthusiasm about the thrilling journey of her wonderful affair.
Celia had assumed that her brother was diplomatically ducking the worst of the fallout for as long as he could. She’d, however, taken it as a given that Julie would have been more forthcoming with the guy she’d jilted, yet here he was now, seeking answers to questions.
Of course, he would know about her own personal connection to the messy, sorry saga. Did he intend to lay the blame at her door? Somehow? None of it was her fault but she knew that, in times of extreme stress, it was normal to divert all blame onto the shoulders of someone else. The alternative would be for him to look inwards and try and question his own role in what had happened and, judging from what she’d seen so far, this guy didn’t seem to be the sort who spent too much time soul-searching.
‘I have tea or coffee,’ she said, reluctantly turning to face him and struck once again by the sheer beauty of his perfectly arranged features. He dwarfed the tiny kitchen and seemed to suck the oxygen out of the air so that she felt breathless and addled.
‘Coffee. Black. Shall we do away with the chit-chat? What exactly did Julie say to you?’
‘Say?’
Leandro raised his eyebrows in wry questioning, utterly relaxed in the chair he had taken. ‘The one name that’s crossed my ex-fiancée’s lips for the past few months has been yours. It seems that she’s built up some kind of bond with you, which in turn leads me to conclude that you know where she is, and I would very much like to find that out.’
No beating about the bush. Celia could feel the prized self-control she had learned to exercise begin to slip away, buffeted by the sheer force of his personality.
Did he think he could breeze in here and prise information out of her? Information his fiancée, for reasons Celia might not be able to fathom or condone, had seen fit to withhold from him?
She fiddled with her hair, twirled the ends between her fingers. ‘Why would I tell you if I knew where she was?’ she eventually asked. ‘If Julie hasn’t told you where she’s going, then perhaps it’s because she doesn’t want you to know, and if she doesn’t want you to know, then it’s not up to me to go against her wishes.’
But how could she understand the questions he must want to ask, questions only Julie could answer, which was why he had shown up here on her doorstep? Hadn’t she spent days and weeks analysing her own break-up? Even though she and Martin had talked about it, even though she’d known why it had ended? It was basic human nature. Leandro had been about to walk up the aisle only to find that the woman he was in love with had decided to do a runner with another man. It was heartbreaking, really.
He wanted answers and, because Julie had failed to provide them, he had come to Celia seeking some sort of balm for his aching soul.
Granted, as they stared at one another, his dark, saturnine face coolly remote and watchful, as she felt a shiver of something steal through her body like quicksilver, she couldn’t help but think that he didn’t look at all like a guy with an aching soul.
Still...
She sighed, prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
‘I actually don’t have the answers to your questions,’ she confessed. ‘I wish I had, but no. I have no idea where Julie and my brother have gone. Not a clue.’
Leandro stilled, sat forward and looked at her with laser-sharp concentration.
‘Your brother? What does your brother have to do with this...?’
