The Plus-One Agreement (8 page)

‘What happened?’

She put her head in her hands and pulled a cringing face.

‘I forgot my lines. I stood on that stage and looked out at the hall, knowing it was packed, and I couldn’t remember a word. And I don’t mean I stumbled over my lines. I didn’t just have a bit of a blip and then pick things up. My mind went completely blank. I froze. The lights were bright in my face, but I could still see the shadows of all the people. The music was so loud I could hardly think.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I ran off the stage and refused to go back on. They put the understudy on instead. My parents were in the audience and my mother gave me hell. She still brings it up now and then. I think in some part of her mind I’m still that nervy thirteen-year-old who had a public meltdown onstage and showed her up.’

She took a sip of her champagne, thinking back. The bright lights in her eyes. The cold horror rushing through her as she tried and failed to make her panicked brain work. The slick of sweat on her palms.

She looked across at Dan, easily pasting a smile on her face. She’d had years of practice at doing it. She was an adult now, with her own life, and she didn’t need to be defined by that awful feeling of failure—not any more. Yet on some level maybe it could never be erased.

‘That’s awful.’

She shrugged, smiling a little.

‘It was at the time. I was mortified. And it never happened again—not to that extent. I never put myself out there again after that—not in any situation where I couldn’t trust myself to get it right. I concentrated on academic stuff instead of the arts. Left all that to Adam. And, well, you can see how good
he
was at it. That’s partly why I decided to study law. A lot of it is about bulk learning. If you know the rules you can apply them. If you put the work in you can build a career. It isn’t left to the whim of anyone else liking what you do in order to secure your success.’

He watched her, looking down at her hands, her skin silvery pale in the moonlight, contrasting with her gleaming dark hair. The air of vulnerability about her made his heart turn over softly. He had an unexpected urge to sweep her into his arms and erase all that self-doubt, make her feel special.

‘You care far too much what people think of you,’ he said.

She frowned.

‘Isn’t that what everyone wants, though? Validation from everyone else? Or at least from the people you care about.’

‘Maybe. But sometimes love doesn’t show up as hugs and presents,’ he said. ‘Not everything is that in-your-face in life. Your mum, for example, shows she cares by—’

‘By being the most interfering woman on the planet? Maybe. But just a little...’ she searched for the right word ‘...
positivity
might be nice now and then.’

She leaned back a little, surveying him with interest.

‘I didn’t think you had such strong feelings about family,’ she said. ‘It’s not like I see you jumping through any hoops to see yours. You never seem to visit them—you never even mention them. They can’t be any more of a nightmare than mine are, and even I do my duty and see them every few months.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean,
why?
’

‘Why do you do your duty and see them? It’s perfectly clear you don’t relish spending time with them. Why don’t you just cut them out of your life if they’re that much of a chore?’

He made a slicing motion with his hand while she stared at him, momentarily speechless.

‘I couldn’t do that,’ she said at last. ‘They’re my family.’

‘You mean you care about them?’

‘Of course I do. I’ve kind of got used to the criticism in a way. It’s who they are. They might be a nightmare, but at least they’re mine.’

‘And there’s your answer.’

She shook her head faintly at him.

‘To what?’

‘You were wondering why I never mention or see my family. There’s your answer. That’s the difference between you and me. I don’t really have a family—not as such. And what I did have of one was never remotely interested in me, even in a critical way.’

* * *

She dropped her eyes from his.

‘Look, I’m sorry...’ she began.

He smiled at her.

‘Don’t be. I’m fine with it. It’s always been that way. I don’t
need
a family, Emma. What you don’t have you don’t miss. When I was a kid we didn’t do overbearing parents or criticism or sibling rivalry.’ He paused. ‘We didn’t actually
do
family.’

His mind waved the memory of Maggie before him again with a flourish and he clenched his teeth hard. Talking about family with Emma wasn’t so difficult when it related to his mother. His feelings for her had progressed over the years to end up somewhere near contempt. But family as related to Maggie meant something completely different. That had been his hope. That had been their plan. Losing that planned future had somehow been so much worse than losing any excuse for a family he might have had in the past.

She was staring at him. He could feel it. He stood up, began walking back to the terrace, deliberately not looking at her.

‘What do you mean, you didn’t do family?’ she said, catching him up, her long skirt caught in one hand.

He thought fleetingly about simply closing the conversation down, but found that on some level he didn’t want to. When had he last talked his childhood over with anyone? His usual conquests were happy to go along with however much he told them about himself—or, more to the point, however little. There had never been any need to give much away. Dinner and a cocktail or two seemed to be all that was needed to get to first base, quickly followed by second and third.

‘Exactly that,’ he said. ‘My upbringing wasn’t in a nice suburban house with a mum and dad, siblings, pets. Out of all those things some of the time I had a mum.’

‘What about your dad?’

‘I’ve never known him.’

The look of sympathy on her face was immediate and he instantly brushed it away with a wave of his hand.

‘I’ve never needed to know him. It’s no big deal.’

It was a billion times easier to talk about the family he’d actually had than the one he’d wanted and lost. The two things were worlds apart in his mind.

‘Yes, it is. That’s awful.’

He shrugged.

‘What about your mum, then? You must have been close if it was just the two of you.’

He could feel his lip trying to give a cynical curl.

‘Not especially. She wasn’t exactly Mother of the Year.’ He caught sight of her wide-eyed look and qualified resignedly, ‘Oh, hell, she was very young. It can’t have been easy, raising a kid by herself. It just was what it was.’

Maggie flashed through his mind again. They’d been young, too, and totally unprepared for parenthood. But walking away had never been an option for him. He’d known that from the very first moment she’d told him about her pregnancy.

‘She worked on and off,’ he said. ‘Bar work, mostly. When I was smaller I used to stay with a neighbour, or one or other of her friends. There was never any consistency to it. Then when I got older it was just me.’

He paused for a second, because that couple of sentences didn’t really sum up what it had felt like in that house by himself. It had been cold, with a musty smell of damp that had never gone away, even in the summer. Never tidy. Ready meals and late-night movies because no one cared if he stayed up late or if he was getting enough sleep for school. Sometimes his mother had stayed out all night until he’d wondered if she’d return at all. What would happen to him then? Where would he go? The uncertainty of it all had made him constantly on edge.

‘I’d never have known,’ she said. ‘You’ve done so well to get out from under all that.’

Emma felt a sudden stab of shame at her fussing about her own childhood. She must sound like some dreadful attention-seeker to him, with her comfortable middle-class upbringing, moaning that she’d never seemed able to please her family when he’d barely had one.

‘Not especially. I think it did me a favour. I was so determined to find a way out of there, and when I went to college I found it. Not long after that I had the idea for my first business. It was a coffee kiosk. The cafeteria on campus really sucked. It was poorly run, and there was no facility for grabbing a coffee on the go. So I plugged the gap. It wasn’t much more than a trolley at first, but I could see what worked and what didn’t. I developed the business, ran it during my free periods, and pretty soon I was making good money. And that was when I
really
knew.’

‘Knew what?’

He glanced across at her then, and the look in his eyes was intense in the moonlight, making her pulse flutter.

‘That work can be your ticket out of anything,’ he said. ‘Anything at all.’ He smiled at her, a half smile that was steely and determined. ‘I just grabbed the coffee kiosk success and ran with it. Built it up, sold it, invested and started over. You can be in control of your own destiny through work. And that’s why work will always come first with me.’

So that was why his relationships never amounted to anything. She saw now why their agreement had been of such use to him. She’d furthered his work. She’d provided a date so he didn’t need to be distracted.

There had never been any prospect of him wanting more, then. She swallowed as she took that in.

‘You’ll meet someone one day who’ll make you want to put work second,’ she said. ‘You won’t know what you’re missing until then.’

He shook his head.

‘The moment someone becomes that important you start to lose focus. And things start to go wrong. I just don’t need that kind of complication.’

She had the oddest feeling he wasn’t just talking about overcoming his childhood.

* * *

‘I think I’m going to turn in,’ she said as they neared to the hotel. ‘It’s getting late now.’

The music continued on the terrace, more mellow now, and the crowd had dispersed a little. Adam stood to one side, mobile phone clamped to his ear, a stressed expression on his face.

That didn’t come as any surprise to Dan. He could think of few things less stressful than getting married. Emma’s parents were nowhere to be seen, but obviously just their presence on the premises was enough. In the centre of the terrace the ice sculpture continued its slow melt.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

The memory of kissing her danced slowly through his mind as they made their way inside. He’d known it might put her on edge—that had rather been the point...proof that he was calling the shots now. He hadn’t thought it through any further than that. He hadn’t counted on the way she would feel in his arms, all long limbs and fragile bone structure, such a contrast to the voluptuous curves that had always been his short-term fling diet. Or the way that satiny full lower lip would feel tugged between his own. There was a hotly curious part of him wondering how it might feel to take things further. He crushed that thought—hard.

His perception of her had changed. And not just because of the kiss but because of tonight. When had they ever discussed anything before that didn’t have the ultimate goal of helping them in their jobs? It had been all insider tips from her. Who might be tendering for this contract, what their bid might be, who in her work circles might be looking for troubleshooting services. From him it had been handy introductions—name-dropping Emma to contacts who might want or need legal advice. All of it professional on one level or another.

This weekend was meant to be all about him taking charge, making the point that
he
was the one doing
her
the favour and then breaking off their arrangement the moment the wedding was over. The plan had seemed so easy in the wake of her insulting dumping of him—the perfect way to redress control and get rid of the gnawing feeling that he’d let her become indispensable in his life.

But the connection between them now felt more complex instead of more detached. The idea of walking away from it felt suddenly less gratifying. He’d been so busy taking what he could get from their agreement, manipulating it to suit his own ends so he could avoid close relationships, that he hadn’t considered what might be in it for
her
beyond the shallow work reasons they both had.

For Emma it had been a way of making life easier. Because to be ‘good enough’ she believed she had to fit a certain stereotype. He wasn’t sure which was worse—using their agreement to escape past failures or using it to avoid any remote likelihood of ever having any.

* * *

As they walked up the stairs to their room Emma realised suddenly that he still had his arm loosely draped around her. There was no one around them to see it. No family members, no staff. Just what did that mean? Or did it mean anything at all?

She wondered if it felt as natural to him as it felt to her and gave herself a mental slap for even
thinking
about reading something into it. Really? This was Dan—Mr Two-Week Relationship himself. Even if that arm resting on her shoulders right now meant something—which it didn’t—it would only ever be that.

Nothing meant anything to Dan Morgan except his work. He’d made that crystal clear this evening. And she wasn’t in the market for anything that could be described as a fling. What would be the point? She’d had that with Alistair. What she wanted was not to be some throwaway bit of arm candy but to feel special, to come first, and she wasn’t going to get that from Dan.

A hot kiss followed by a night sharing a room with him... The stuff of her dreams a few months ago. And now she had it, it was all for show. How par for the course of her life. They’d been alone together
loads
of times and he’d never had any intention of making a move. Pretend Emma got the hot kiss and the envious glances from female wedding guests over her gorgeous male companion. Real Emma got the awkwardness of bunking in with a work colleague.

She wriggled away from his arm and fumbled in her bag for the room key.

It had taken
months
to get over her stupid crush on him and to reinstate it now would be madness. She was just flustered, that was all, over a stupid fake kiss and a bit of a personal conversation. It didn’t mean
anything.