The Plus-One Agreement (3 page)

His pique had absolutely nothing to do with any sudden realisation that Emma was attractive. He’d always
known
she was attractive. Dan Morgan wouldn’t be seen dating a moose, even for business reasons. That didn’t mean she was his type, though—not with her dark hair and minimal make-up, and her conservative taste in clothes. And that in turn had made it easy to pigeonhole her as friend. A proper relationship with someone like Emma would be complex, would need commitment, compromise, emotional investment. All things he wasn’t prepared to give another woman. Tried, tested and failed. Dan Morgan learned from his mistakes and never repeated his failures.

It had quickly become clear that Emma was far more useful to him in the role of friend than love interest, and all thoughts of attraction had been relegated from that moment onwards. It had been so long now that not noticing the way she looked was second nature.

But the gnawing feeling in his gut was there nonetheless. Their romantic relationship might have been counterfeit, but some element of it had obviously been real enough to make the dumping feel extremely uncomfortable.

He’d never been dumped before.
He
was the one who did the backing off. That was the way he played it. A couple of dinner dates somewhere nice, the second one generally ending up in his bed, a couple more dates and then, when the girl started to show signs of getting comfortable—maybe she’d start leaving belongings in his flat, or perhaps she’d suggest he meet her family—he’d simply go into backing-off mode. It wasn’t as if he lied to them about his intentions. He was careful always to make it clear from the outset that he wasn’t in the market for anything serious. He was in absolute control at all times—just as he was in every aspect of his life. That was the way he wanted it. The way he
needed
it.

He was amazed at how affronted he felt by the apparent ease with which Emma had dispensed with him. Not an ounce of concern for how
he
might feel as she’d planned to trounce him spectacularly in front of all those people. His irritation at her unbelievable fake break-up plan was surpassed only by his anger with himself for actually giving a damn.

Feeling low at being dumped meant you had feelings for the person dumping you. Didn’t it?

Unease flared in his gut at that needling thought, because Dan Morgan didn’t
do
deep feelings. That slippery slope led to dark places he had no intention of revisiting. He did fun, easy, no-strings flings. Feelings need not apply. Surely hurt feelings should only apply where a relationship was bona fide. Fake relationships should mean fake feelings, and fake feelings couldn’t be hurt.

That sensation of spinning back in time made him feel faintly nauseous. Here it was again—like an irritating old acquaintance you think you’ve cut out of your life who then pops back up unexpectedly for a visit. That reeling loss of control he’d felt in the hideous few months after Maggie had left, walking away with apparent ease from the ruins of their relationship. He’d made sure he retained the upper hand in all dealings with women since. These days every situation worked for
him.
No emotion involved. No risk. His relationships were orchestrated by
him,
no one else. That way he could be sure of every outcome.

But not this time. Their agreement had lasted—what?—a year? And in that time she’d never once refused a date with him. Even when he’d needed an escort at the last minute she’d changed her schedule to accommodate him. He’d relied on her because he’d learned that he
could
rely on her.

And so he hadn’t seen it coming. That was why it gnawed at him like this.

You don’t like losing her. You thought you had her on your own terms. You took her for granted and now you don’t like the feeling that she’s calling the shots.

He gritted his teeth. This smacked a bit too much of the past for comfort. It resurrected old feelings that he had absolutely no desire to recall, and he apparently couldn’t let it slide. What he needed to do now was get this thing back under his own control.

Well, she hadn’t gone yet. And he didn’t have to just
take
her decision. If this agreement was going to end it would be when
he
chose—not on some whim of hers. He could talk her round if he wanted to. It wouldn’t be hard. And then
he
would decide where their partnership went.

If it went anywhere at all.

He pulled his chair back close to the desk and pressed a few buttons, bringing up his calendar for the next couple of weeks with a stab of exasperation. Had she no idea of the inconvenience she’d thrust upon him?

Not only had Emma dumped him, she’d really picked a great moment to do it.
Not.
The black tie charity dinner a week away hadn’t crossed his mind the other evening when she had dropped her bombshell. It hadn’t needed to. Since he’d met Emma planning for events like that had been a thing of the past. He simply called her up, sometimes at no more than a moment’s notice, and he could count on the perfect companion on his arm—perfect respect for the dress code, perfect intelligent conversation, an all-round perfect professional impression. There was some serious networking to be had at such an event, the tickets had cost a fortune, and now he was dateless.

He reached for the phone.

It rang for so long that he was on the brink of hanging up when she answered.

‘Hello?’ Her slightly husky voice sounded breathless, as if she’d just finished laughing at something, and he could hear music and buzzing talk in the background, as if she were in a crowded bar or restaurant.

From nowhere three unheard-of things flashed through his mind in quick succession. Emma never socialised on a work night unless she was with him; she never let her phone ring for long when he called her, as if she was eager to talk to him; and in the time that he’d known her she had never sounded this bubblingly happy.

‘What are you doing a week from Friday?’ he said, cutting to the chase.

‘Hang on.’

A brief pause on the end of the phone and the blaring music was muted a little. He imagined her leaving the bar or the restaurant she was in for a quiet spot, perhaps in the lobby. He sensed triumph already, knowing that she was leaving whoever she was with to make time to speak with
him.

‘Tying up loose ends at work, probably. And packing.’

So she was storming ahead with her plans, then. The need for control spiked again in his gut. He went in with the big guns.

‘I’ve got a charity ball in Mayfair. Black tie. Major league. Tickets like hen’s teeth. It promises to be a fabulous night.’

He actually heard her sigh. With impatience, or with longing at the thought of attending the ball with him? He decided it was definitely the latter. She’d made no secret of the fact she enjoyed the wonderful opulence of nights like that, and he knew she’d networked a good few new clients for herself in the past while she was accompanying him—another perk of their plus-one agreement.

For Pete’s sake, she had him giving it that ludicrous name now.

Their usual dates consisted of restaurant dinners with his clients. Pleasant, but hardly exciting. Except for Dan’s own company, of course. Luxury events like this only came up occasionally. He waited for her to tear his arm off in her eagerness to accept.

‘What part of “it’s over” did you not understand, Dan?’ she said. ‘Did you not hear any of what I said the other night?’

It took a moment to process what she’d said because he had been so convinced of her acceptance.

‘What I heard was some insane plan to desert your whole life as you know it for some guy you’ve known five minutes,’ he heard himself say. ‘You’re talking about leaving your friends and family, walking out of a job you’ve worked your arse off for, all to follow some celebrity.’

‘It would be a sabbatical from work,’ she said. ‘I’m not burning my bridges there. Not yet. And you make me sound like some crazy stalker. We’re in a relationship. A proper grown-up one, not a five-minute fling.’

He didn’t miss the obvious dig at his own love life, and it made his response more cutting than he intended.

‘On the strength of—what was it?—
half a dozen dates?
’ he said. ‘I always thought you were one of the most grounded people I know. You’re the last person in the world I’d have expected to be star-struck.’

He knew from the freezing silence on the end of the phone that he’d sunk his foot into his own mouth up to the ankle.

‘How dare you?’ she said, and a light tremble laced her voice, which was pure frost. ‘It was obviously too much to hope that you might actually be
pleased
for me. Yes, Alistair is in the public eye, but that has
nothing
to do with why I’ve agreed to go away with him. Has it occurred to you that I might actually like him because he’s interested in
me
for a change? As opposed to the grandchildren I might bear him or the fact I might be his carer when he’s old and decrepit. Or...’ she added pointedly ‘...the fact that I might boost his profile at some damned work dinner so he can extend his client list a bit further because he never quite feels he’s rich or successful enough.’

She paused.

‘You’re saying no, then?’ he said. ‘To the all-expenses-paid top-notch Mayfair ball?’

He heard her draw in a huge breath and then she let it out in a rude, exasperated noise. He held the phone briefly away from his ear. When he put it back her voice was Arctic.

‘Dan,’ she was saying slowly, as if he had a problem understanding plain English, ‘I’m saying no to the Mayfair ball. I’m through with posing as your professional romantic interest so you can impress your damned client list while you date airhead models for a week at a time.’

Had he really thought this would be easy? It occurred to him that in reality she couldn’t be further from one of his usual conquests, of which currently there were two or three, any of whom would drop everything else at a moment’s notice if he deigned to call them up and suggest getting together.

You didn’t get as far up the legal career ladder as she had by being a ‘yes’ girl. But her easy refusal bothered the hell out of him. He’d expected her to agree to resurrect their agreement without even needing persuasion. Had expected her to thank him, in fact.

The need to win back control rose another notch with her unexpected refusal of his offer, and also her apparent indifference to it. It put his teeth on edge and gnawed at him deep inside.

‘How about helping me out with this one last time, then?’ he pressed, confident that in an evening he could quickly turn the situation around. Reinstate their agreement and then decide what he wanted to do with it. End it, change the terms—whatever happened it would be up to him to decide,
not
her.

‘Dan, you don’t need my help,’ she said patiently. ‘I’m in the middle of dinner and I haven’t got time to discuss this now. It’s not as if you’re short of dates. Grab your little black book and pick one of your girlies from there. I’m sure any one of them would love to go with you.’

There was a soft click on the end of the phone as she hung up.

That went well.
Not.

THREE

‘Let me
just recap. You’re in a relationship with Alistair Woods—
the
Alistair Woods, the man who looks a dream in Lycra—and you’re not planning on mentioning it to Mum and Dad?’

Adam’s eyebrows practically disappeared into his sleek quiff hairstyle and Emma took a defensive sip of coffee. The fantasy she’d had of disappearing around the world on Alistair’s arm and calling up her parents from Cannes/LA/somewhere else that screamed kudos, to tell them she would be featuring in next month’s celebrity magazine, had turned out to be just that. A fantasy.

Because Adam was getting married.

Her big brother, Adam—who never failed to make her laugh, and who was so bright and sharp and funny that she’d never for a moment questioned her role in family life as the forgettable backing act to his flamboyant scene-stealer. Of
course
she had paled into insignificance in her family’s eyes next to Adam—not to mention in the eyes of schoolteachers, friends, neighbours... But only in the way that everyone else had faded into the background next to him in her own eyes. He was simply someone who commanded success and attention without needing to put in any effort.

She couldn’t exit her life without telling Adam, and she’d asked him to meet her for coffee to do exactly that. She’d even tried to sweeten the news by buying him an enormous cream bun, which now sat between them untouched. If she’d thought he’d simply scoff the bun and wave her off without so much as a question, she’d been deluded.

‘You’re not going yet, though, right? You’re at least waiting until after the wedding?’

‘Erm...’

He threw his arms up theatrically.

‘Em! You can’t be serious! How the hell am I going to keep Mum under control without you? I can’t get married without my wingman!’

‘Woman,’ she corrected.

He flapped both hands at her madly.

‘Whatever. You saw what Mum was like the other night. The wedding is in Ernie’s home village. He’s got a massive family, they’re all fabulously supportive, and if you don’t come along our family’s big impression on them will be Mum telling everyone I’ll get over it when I get bored with musical theatre and meet the right girl.’

‘Dad will be there,’ she ventured. ‘Maybe you could talk to him beforehand, get him to keep Mum on a short leash.’

‘He’d be as much use as a chocolate teapot. We both know he’s been beaten into submission over the years. Since when has Mum ever listened to him? She just talks over him. I
need
you there.’

His voice had taken on a pleading tone.

‘It’s not as simple as that. Alistair’s covering another cycling race in a few weeks’ time. We’re meant to be having a break before it starts because it’s pretty full-on. I’m flying out to the States, meeting some of his friends and family, relaxing for a couple of weeks. It’s all been arranged.’

She looked down at her coffee cup because she couldn’t bear the disappointment on Adam’s face.

Adam
had never made her feel insignificant. Any inability to measure up was her failing, not his. And she was the one who let it bother her.

‘Then there’s no problem! Bring Alistair to the wedding,’ Adam said, clapping his hands together excitedly. ‘You’ve already said he’s got time off from work. The guy’s probably got a private jet. You could zoom in and zoom out on the same day if you had to.’ He made a soaring aeroplane motion in the air with his hand.

She suppressed a mirthless laugh.

‘You mean introduce him to Mum and Dad? A whole new person for Mum to drive insane?’ She narrowed suspicious eyes at him. ‘It would certainly take the heat off you and Ernie.’

He held his hands up.

‘You’ll have to introduce him at some point anyway. OK, so you might travel with him for a while, maybe even settle in the States with him, but you’ll have to come home to visit, won’t you?’

She didn’t answer. Visiting wasn’t something she’d thought about much in her excitement about getting away. It hadn’t crossed her mind that she’d be missed that much.

‘Bloody hell, Em.’

She sighed. She couldn’t say no to Adam any more than the rest of the world could. He just had that gift.

‘It’ll be a nightmare if I bring Alistair,’ she said. ‘Mum will be all over him like a rash, demanding marriage and grandchildren and mentioning my biological clock. He’s a free spirit. He’ll run a bloody mile.’

Adam was on the comment like a shot.

‘Then you definitely
should
bring him. You’re talking about leaving your whole life behind to be with him—don’t you think he ought to prove himself a bit before you take that kind of plunge? If he’s really the guy you think he is—if he’s really going to put you first above everything else in his life—then he’ll love you no matter what crazy relative you introduce him to, right?’

She couldn’t help latching on to that thought—that desire for a level of regard where she would come absolutely first with someone for a change. Was that what this was really about? Was she afraid to bring Alistair to the wedding because of some stupid subconscious conviction that he might see through her? Might see that she really was a plain and inferior mousy girl, despite all the years she’d put in on breaking away from that persona?

‘He does love me,’ she insisted, mainly to bat away the prickle of unease that had begun in her stomach. It was all Adam’s fault for questioning her perfectly laid plans.

‘Great. Then put your man where your mouth is. Introduce him to Mum and watch him prove it.’

* * *

Dan clicked his phone off with ill-suppressed irritation.

Cancelling a working lunch at a moment’s notice was extremely bad form. Focused to a pinpoint on work performance himself, he found it difficult to tolerate lateness or bad planning in others. Especially when it meant he’d interrupted his day to turn up at a restaurant when he could have eaten lunch on the run or at his desk.

He gave the menu an uninterested glance and was on the point of calling for the bill for the two drinks he’d ordered while waiting for the no-show client when he saw Emma cross the restaurant. A waiter showed her to a table by the window and she sat down alone, so engrossed in scrolling through her phone that she didn’t even notice he was in the room.

The news that she was leaving seemed to have given him a new heightened perspective, and he picked up on tiny details about her that had simply passed him by before. He saw her objectively for once, as someone else might. Alistair Woods, for example. This time his gaze skimmed over her usual business dress when previously it would have stopped at observing the sharply cut grey suit. Instead he now noticed how slender she was. How had he never picked up before on the striking contrast of her double cream skin with her dark hair? The ripe fullness of her lower lip? When you had reason to look past the sensible work image she was unexpectedly cute. He’d been so busy taking her presence for granted he’d failed to notice any of those things.

Maybe this lunchtime wouldn’t be a total waste of time after all. Dealing with her on the phone had been a bad choice. A face-to-face meeting might be a better approach to talking sense into her.

He picked up his drink and crossed the room towards her. His stomach gave a sudden flutter that made him pause briefly en route to the table—then he remembered that it was lunchtime. He was obviously just hungry, and since he was here maybe he should take the chance to grab a sandwich as well as a drink and a smoothing-over session with her. Not that his appetite had been up to much this last week or so.

‘Dan!’

Her eyes widened in surprise as he slid into the seat opposite her and put his drink down on the table. She glanced quickly around the restaurant, presumably for a waiter.

‘Really glad I bumped into you,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to say no hard feelings about the other night.’

A smile touched the corner of her lips, drawing his eyes there. She was wearing a light pink lipstick that gave them a delectable soft sheen.

‘The other night?’ she said.

‘The charity ball.’

‘I hadn’t realised there
could
be hard feelings,’ she said, toying with her water glass. ‘It was just a work arrangement we had after all, right? Not like I broke off a date, is it?’

She held his gaze steadily and for the first time it occurred to him that it might take a bit more than sweet-talking for him to regain the advantage between them. His own fault, of course. He was judging her by the standards of his usual dates, who seemed to fall over themselves to hang on his every word. Emma was a different ball game altogether. Taking her for granted had been a mistake.

He gestured to the waiter for a menu.

‘How did it go, then?’ she said.

‘How did what go?’ he evaded.

‘The charity ball?’ she said. ‘No-expenses-spared Mayfair hotel, wasn’t it? Who did you take?’

‘Eloise,’ he said shortly.

She had to bring it up, didn’t she? When what he’d really like would be to erase the entire evening from history.

‘Which one’s that?’

She cranked her hand in a come-on gesture and looked at him expectantly until he elaborated.

‘She’s a leg model,’ he said. ‘You know—tights, stockings, that kind of thing.’

The woman had the best legs in the business. Unfortunately she was entirely defined by that one physical feature. Tact, sense and reliability didn’t come into it.

‘Did you make any new contacts?’ Emma said. ‘Normally charity bashes are great for networking, aren’t they? Perfect opportunity for a shared goal, loads of rich businessmen?’

‘Normally they are,’ he said. ‘But normally I have you with me, oozing tact and diplomacy and class.’

It had been kind of hard to hold a professional conversation with Eloise’s arms wound constantly around his neck like a long-legged monkey. The one time he had begun to make headway with a potential client she’d returned from the bar with two flutes of pink champagne and positioned herself between them by sitting on his lap.

He watched Emma carefully, to see if his compliment had hit its mark, and was rewarded with the lightest of rosy blushes touching her high cheekbones. Hah! Not so easily dismissed after all. A proper in-depth talk about her whirlwind plans and he was confident he could sow a few seeds of doubt. From there it would be a short step to convincing her to stay put, reinstating their working agreement, getting things back to normal.

He was giving her a quick follow-up smile when he realised her eyes were actually focused somewhere over his shoulder and the blush had nothing to do with him. A wide smile lit up her face and suddenly she was on her feet, being drawn into a kiss by a tall blond man with a deep golden tan and perfect white teeth. No matter that he was wearing a sharply cut designer suit and an open-necked silk shirt instead of clinging Lycra cycling shorts and a helmet. He was instantly recognisable—by Dan and by the room at large.

Alistair Woods was on the premises.

The surrounding tables suddenly appeared to be filled with rubberneckers. Clearly basking in the attention, he offered a wave and a nod of greeting to the tables either side of them before sitting down—as if he was a film star instead of a has-been athlete. Dan felt an irrational lurch of dislike for the guy, whom he’d never met before but who clearly made Emma brim with happiness.

Jealous?
his mind whispered.

He dismissed the thought out of hand. This wasn’t about jealousy. Emma was clearly star-struck and on the brink of making a rash decision that could ruin her working life and her personal life before you could say
yellow jersey.
If anything, he would be doing her a favour by bringing her back down to earth.

‘Alistair, this is Dan,’ Emma said, taking her seat again, her hand entwined in Alistair’s. ‘Dan, this is Alistair Woods.’

She glanced pointedly at Dan.

‘Dan happened to be here meeting someone,’ she said. ‘He just came over to say hello.’

She didn’t want him to join them. It couldn’t be clearer.

‘Heard a lot about you, friend,’ Alistair said in a strong American accent, stretching in his seat. ‘You’re the platonic plus-one, right?’

Of all the qualities he possessed that Emma could choose to reference him by she’d chosen that. Just
great.

‘Did you get my phone message?’ Emma asked Alistair eagerly. ‘I know it means rejigging our plans a little, but I just can’t let my brother down. It’s his wedding day. And it’ll be a good chance for you to meet my family.’

She was taking Alistair to Adam’s civil partnership ceremony?

Dan felt a deep and lurching stab of misplaced envy at the thought of this guy slotting neatly into his recently vacated place—fake though it might have been—in regard to Emma’s family. OK, so they were opinionated and mouthy, and in her mother’s case that translated as being downright bigoted at times, but he’d never felt anything but welcomed by them, and their simple mad chaos had been something he’d enjoyed.

An unhappy flash of his own childhood rose in his mind. His mother, hardly more than a child herself. No father—at least not in any way that mattered to a kid. Plenty of ‘uncles’, though. He hadn’t been short of those. And plenty of random babysitters—friends of his mother’s, neighbours, hardly the same person twice. What he wouldn’t have given for an interfering nosy mother at the age of thirteen, when babysitters had no longer been required and he’d been considered old enough to be left home alone.

He dismissed the thought. Things were different now. He’d learned to rely only on himself, without influence from anyone else. Maggie had been the one time he’d deviated from that course, and it had turned out to be an agonising mistake that he had no intention of repeating. He had no need for family. Past or future.

‘Got your message, baby, but there’s no way we’re going to be able to make the gay wedding,’ Alistair said.

Dan watched Emma’s smile falter and suppressed an unexpected urge to grab Woods by the scruff of the neck.

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I can’t miss Adam’s wedding. I promised him.’