a string of emails that couldn’t wait.
‘I read about that pharmaceutical merger of yours going through. Congratulations.’
Despite the indignation Celia couldn’t help feeling a stab of pride because the six months she’d spent pushing that deal through had been the toughest of her working life so far, yet she and her team had done it, and now the partnership she’d been working towards for what felt like for ever was that tiny bit closer.
‘Thank you,’ she said demurely, ignoring the way his body kept brushing against hers and sent thrills scurrying through her. ‘And I heard you’d sold your business.’ For millions, according to the gossip magazine she’d picked up and flicked through at the hairdresser’s a fortnight ago, which had been light on detail about the sale and heavy on speculation about what one of London’s most eligible bachelors was going to do with all his money and free time.
‘I did.’
‘So what are your plans now?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
Not really, because she’d willingly bet her lovely two-bedroomed minimalist flat in Clerkenwell that she knew what he’d be doing for the foreseeable future. What he did best, but even better. ‘I’m guessing it’ll involve partying till dawn with scantily clad women.’
‘Am I really that much of a cliché?’
‘You tell me.’
‘And spoil the fun you have baiting me?’
‘You think I find it fun?’
He raised an eyebrow as he glanced down at her. ‘Don’t you?’
Celia thought about it for a second and decided that, as she didn’t know exactly what to attribute the thrill she always got from winding him up to, ‘fun’ would do. ‘OK, perhaps,’ she conceded. ‘Just a little. But no more than you do.’
‘Well, I’m all for equality.’
‘Yes, so the tabloids say,’ she said witheringly as the interview with one of his conquests that she’d read in that magazine popped into her head. Apparently he was intense, smouldering and passionately demanding in the bedroom, and sought the same from whoever he was sharing it with. Which was something she could really have done without knowing because now she did it was alarmingly hard to put from her mind.
‘You know, Celia, darling, you have such low expectations of me I find I can’t help wanting to live down to them.’
Before she could work out what he meant by that he turned away and directed that devastating smile of his at a couple of women at the end of a pew on Dan’s side, and as she watched them blush she mentally rolled her eyes. How very typical. That was Marcus all over. Lover of women. Literally. Lots of women.
But not her. Never her. Not that she thought about that night fifteen years ago when she’d been so desperate to lose her virginity to him. Much.
‘What’s with the death grip?’
Celia blinked and snapped her train of thought away from the treacherous path it would career down if she let it. ‘Huh?’
‘On the flowers. What did they do? What did they say? Because I know from personal experience that it doesn’t take much.’
Celia glanced down at the beautiful bouquet of pink roses and baby’s breath that matched her dress and saw that her knuckles were indeed white, and she mentally swore at herself for letting him get to her.
She really had to relax because if she didn’t she’d never make it to the door with her nerves intact. This walk down the aisle was taking for ever. What with the way Dan and Zoe kept stopping to talk to people in the pews, they were progressing at about a metre an hour and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could resist the temptation to push past the bride and groom and make a run for it.
‘The flowers haven’t done anything,’ she said, taking a couple of deep calming breaths and surreptitiously rolling her shoulders in an effort to release some of her tension.
‘Am I to take it, then, that you don’t really approve of Dan and Zoe?’
Celia stilled mid-roll and stared at him for a moment, unable to work out where that had come from because Zoe was the best thing that had ever happened to Dan, as she’d told him after supper last night just before giving him a big hug and wishing him luck. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’
‘Because you spent the entire ceremony looking like you wished you were somewhere else.’
Oh. She hadn’t wanted to be anywhere else. She’d wanted Marcus to be somewhere else, preferably on another planet, but she’d thought she’d managed to hide that. Clearly she’d been wrong. ‘I’m surprised you noticed.’
‘Oh, I noticed,’ he murmured, his gaze drifting over her and making her skin feel all hot and tingly and tight. ‘You look beautiful, by the way.’
That was the trouble with him, she thought irritably as she stamped out the heat with every ounce of self-control she had. Just when she felt like slapping him, he went and said something charming. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘And you look very handsome,’ she said, because he did and it would be churlish to ignore the fact. More handsome than usual if that were possible.
‘My, my, a compliment,’ he said softly. ‘That’s a first.’
‘Yes, well, don’t get too used to it.’
‘I won’t.’
They advanced another agonisingly slow couple of paces, then stopped, and he said, ‘So you do approve?’
‘Of Dan and Zoe?’
‘Well, I know you don’t approve of me.’
‘I approve wholeheartedly,’ said Celia with a serene smile. ‘Of them.’
‘They’re good for each other.’
She nodded. ‘They are.’
‘And are your parents behaving?’
She narrowed her eyes at her parents, who were accompanying each other down the aisle in stony silence and about as far apart as it was possible to get given the width restriction of the aisle, which was pretty much par for the course. ‘Just about.’
‘And how’s work?’
Insane. ‘Work’s fine.’
‘Then what is there to be so tense about?’
‘Tense?’ she asked, blowing out a slow breath. ‘Who’s tense?’
‘You are. If it isn’t the wedding, it isn’t your parents and it isn’t work, I might be inclined to think it’s me.’
‘Hah. As if.’
Off they set again, and this time, thank heavens, it looked as though the end was in sight because Dan and Zoe had run out of guests to chat to and the great oak door was being opened and Celia could practically taste freedom.
‘Admit it,’ he said softly, his voice so warm and teasing that it did strange things to her stomach, ‘I make you feel tense.’
‘You don’t make me feel anything,’ she said, her pulse drumming with the need to get out of here and away from him.
‘Oh, Celia, you break my heart.’
‘I didn’t know you had one. I thought it was another part of your anatomy entirely that kept you alive.’
‘So cruel.’
‘I dare say you’ll survive.’
‘I dare say I shall.’
And then, thank God, they stepped out into the July sunshine