Carole Mortimer Romance Collection - Carole Mortimer

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a long list of jobs the last few years—hotel receptionist, helper in a florist’s, assistant in a bridal shop for a very short time too, all mixed up with waitressing jobs, plus training to be a printer at one stage, a job she knew she definitely wasn’t cut out for after she had printed hundreds of posters inviting people to a Trafalgar Balls; her boss had been absolutely furious, and she could think of a few sailors who probably wouldn’t have been too happy either! Needless to say, it had been a short-lived training.

      Most of her jobs had been, but after a rather traumatic evening, where she had been helping her boss cater at a private dinner party in a gentleman’s apartment, and his female guest had turned out to be the boss’s own wife out for an evening of fun while her husband was working, Cyn had decided it was time for her and that particular job to part company. Especially when her boss had started throwing knives about the apartment; Cyn had decided there and then that he wasn’t temperamental, just mental!

      Unemployed again, she had sat down, briefly—she still had to pay the rent and the bills!—and thought over her career assets. Taken separately, they had seemed a bit haphazard, but when she put them all together...!

      And so Perfect Bliss had emerged from the debris, the ‘complete wedding’ agency, designed to take away all the wear and tear—or did she mean tears?—from the bride and her family. Not that it had been an overnight success. After three years she still kept the agency ticking over with the occasional dinner party, but she had enough bookings for weddings not to take on too many other commitments. She had merely been waiting for the ‘big one’, as Janie called it, the society wedding that would get her name in those circles, where she hoped her agency might become fashionable once it was seen what a good job she did.

      The Harcourt wedding was supposed to be that big break...!

      Gerald Harcourt, a man in his early forties, had been a guest at one of the weddings Cyn had organised last weekend on Easter Saturday—a small affair in the country, and the bride was the daughter of a business friend, Gerald Harcourt had explained when he spoke to her during the wedding reception. He had been most impressed when he learnt that Cyn had organised the wedding, with the bride’s requirements in mind, from the printing of the invitations to the perfect colour of the wedding bouquet—a bouquet he had somehow managed to catch when the bride threw it into the wedding crowd before departing on the honeymoon Cyn had also booked for the happy couple.

      The bouquet disposed of, given to one of the bridesmaids accompanied by a charming smile, Gerald had questioned Cyn about Perfect Bliss, explaining that his own daughter, his only child, was being married later in the year, and, as his wife had died more than a dozen years ago, Rebecca was finding the whole thing rather a headache on her own. Cyn had been only too happy to talk to him as she helped clear away after the reception. She found his tall, distinguished looks, dark hair lightly sprinkled with grey at the temples, blue eyes warm in a face that was maturely handsome, his body still fit and lean in the dark three-piece suit he had worn for the wedding, more than passingly attractive. She found the idea of organising his daughter’s wedding, the ‘society wedding’ she had been seeking, even more attractive, and she was more than willing to drive up from her little office in Feltham—she couldn’t afford London rents on business property—to the Harcourt home and talk to the daughter in person at a time to be arranged once Gerald had spoken to Rebecca.

      But if that girl in the garden was Rebecca Harcourt, Cyn had a feeling Gerald was going to be in for a nasty surprise concerning this wedding. Not to mention the bridegroom! Not that anyone had, so far. Like most grooms, he seemed to be remaining well out of the headache of organising the actual wedding.

      Even as Cyn stood there watching, the gazebo door opened once again and the girl emerged, but from her distressed state she was obviously in floods of tears, giving one last anxious look in the direction of the gazebo before rushing across the garden towards the house.

      Not a happy bride!

      Cyn turned away with a sigh, more than ever convinced that her journey here today had been a wasted one. If— She looked across the room as the door opened to admit, not Rebecca Harcourt, but Gerald himself.

      ‘My dear Cyn!’ he greeted her warmly, giving her one of his welcoming smiles. He was dressed in a dark business suit today and looking very lean and handsome. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve been kept waiting,’ he said regretfully as he crossed the room to her side, ‘but we seem to be having a little difficulty locating Rebecca.’ This last was added with a frown.

      Cyn knocked Janie’s arm as she sensed that her young assistant had been about to blab Rebecca’s presence in the garden; unless she was very much mistaken, Rebecca Harcourt wouldn’t want her father to know she had been anywhere near the garden—or the young and handsome gardener! She might be wrong, of course, but somehow she doubted it.

      ‘That’s perfectly all right,’ she returned smoothly. ‘We were just admiring your home.’ In fact, she hadn’t taken too much notice of it since they had come inside and she had seen the formal elegance of the rooms, the antique furniture, the original paintings on the walls; all the trappings of wealth that people like the Harcourts took so much for granted. It was all very nice, but it wasn’t for Cyn.

      Gerald looked pleased by her comment, looking about him appreciatively. He was obviously a man who enjoyed what his wealth could give him. ‘We like it,’ he dismissed. ‘Did you— ?’

      ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, Gerald?’ interrupted a silkily soft voice.

      A voice Cyn instantly recognised!

      But it couldn’t be. Not here. Why here? came her next unbidden question, as she knew she wasn’t mistaken, that she would know that voice anywhere.

      Wolf Thornton’s voice...

      She couldn’t move. She did try, but not one single muscle in her body seemed to be obeying her at the moment. Her feet felt like lead weights rooted to the carpeted floor, her body so still and tense that she might have been a statue. She knew her face was as pale as alabaster, so she might almost have been one!

      Her head was held at a taut angle, her eyes riveted to a spot above the fireplace, and she tried to remember what she was wearing today. What she was wearing? What difference did that make? Wolf Thornton was standing somewhere behind her, and she doubted if he was going to be any more pleased to see her than she was to see him.

      Would he have changed? Had she? It was seven years since she had last seen him; of course she had changed! Her hair was no longer that cascade of moonlight silver-blond it had been when she was twenty, but styled to her shoulders in a feathered cut that was easier to manage, and the violet-blue eyes were no longer so naïve and unaware. Her even features were the same, of course—the slightly too short nose, the wide smiling mouth, the small pointed chin that could still lift defensively. And she still wore some of the clothes she had owned seven years ago. She couldn’t afford to replace them, so she knew she hadn’t put on any weight! Did Wolf still look the same? She was still too stunned to be able to turn and look—too frightened of what she would see in his face, too, when he saw it was her!

      ‘Glad you could make it,’ Gerald was greeting the other man now. ‘I’ve only just got in from the office myself. Although it’s just as well we decided to meet here after all; Rebecca seems to have done one of her disappearing acts again,’ he added indulgently.

      ‘She’ll turn up,’ the other man dismissed smoothly. ‘She always does.’

      Oh, God, that voice. Cyn shivered in reaction, feeling waves of sheer terror coursing through her now. The last time she had seen Wolf Thornton she had made it perfectly clear exactly what she thought of him, and she had no reason to believe that the intervening years—she had had no contact with him during that time—had done anything to soften his feelings towards her.

      How could this be happening to her? Of course, Wolf ran Thornton Industries, and Gerald Harcourt ran his own company, which was just as powerfully successful; so why shouldn’t the two businessmen be friends? But why had the two men had to meet today, and here of all places?

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