Wedding-Night Baby

Escort could not have been the first choice of career for him. What personal circumstances had reduced him...? It’s none of my business, she told herself, closing this line of speculation as a familiar voice broke her trance.

‘Georgie, is that you, darling? I didn’t recognise you. Did you, George? We were just talking about you...so brave. Still, better to find out these things early on.’

Georgina bit her lip as she nodded placidly at this trite observation. ‘Aunt Helen, Uncle George,’ she said quietly. The arm around her waist was suddenly very welcome. ‘This is Callum,’ she said triumphantly, much with the manner of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But there the similarity ended. If Callum was to be likened to anything in the animal kingdom he was much more like a large, sleek, predatory cat.

Callum took the scrutiny of her relations in his stride. In fact, he seemed to have adopted a certain air of authority that made them look away first.

‘I meet some of Georgina’s relations at last,’ he said, enveloping her uncle’s hand in a grip that made the older man wince slightly. The kiss he planted on her aunt’s cheek made her blush and look as flustered as any teenager. ‘Charming church,’ he observed, glancing at the square stone building. ‘Norman, isn’t it?’ He took Georgina’s hand and intertwined his fingers with her own. ‘Am I speaking to the parents of the blushing bride?’

‘Indeed you are,’ Georgina agreed, bringing forth her very best not-a-care-in-the-world smile.

Blushing bride! Her dear cousin was far too hard-baked ever to blush. Harriet had awaited her opportunity and stalked Alex with all the cunning and guile of a jungle animal. Georgina had always known her cousin coveted her boyfriend. It was the fact that her unassailable belief that Alex would never even look at another woman had been proved false that made her inwardly cringe. Had she ever been that naive? When it came to the crunch he’d done a lot more than look!

But it’s useless to go over old ground, she told herself as she felt the familiar sensation of impotent fury rise. With my family history I should have known better. Well, I do know better now, she thought, her chin lifting.

Callum held the lych-gate to the churchyard open and waited for the older couple to pass through. ‘Smile,’ he hissed as they followed, still hand in hand. ‘You look like you’re on your way to the scaffold,’ he added.

Georgina’s eyes glittered with wrath and she struggled to withdraw her fingers. ‘I thought you were here to butter me up?’ she breathed angrily. This man had forgotten his passive role very thoroughly. He had no right to make personal comments.

He stopped in his tracks and jerked her around to face him. ‘I didn’t think you liked insincere compliments?’

‘I’m not too keen on insults either.’

‘I have my professional pride to consider,’ he told her gravely. ‘I would appreciate a little co-operation. Unless you relish the role of early Christian martyr?’

This question made her bite her lip. He was right, of course. She had to act a part in order to salvage her battered pride. ‘I’m not a professional,’ she reminded him. ‘And I find it strange...your being a total stranger.’

‘Live your part, Georgina; we’re a hot item,’ he contradicted her. His lips brushed hers, gently, but with a confident familiarity. ‘I thought all girls could fake it?’ His lips quirked in a deeply cynical smile.

‘I’m sure the girls you know can,’ she responded acidly. ‘Do you think you could limit that sort of authenticity to the basic minimum?’ she added, drawing away, her colour noticeably heightened. She summoned a distracted but brilliant smile for the usher, a boy she’d known since school.

‘Georgie?’ he said, a note of doubt in his voice. He flushed as she gave him a quizzical look, and continued hurriedly, ‘Bride or groom? Silly question; you’d hardly be with the groom, would you?’ The expression of ludicrous dismay that spread over his face made Georgina feel almost sympathetic.

‘We’ll find our own way, thank you, Jim,’ she said crisply, sweeping past him. ‘That’s my mother,’ she said to the man beside her in a hushed undertone as they entered the dim, ecclesiastical atmosphere of the old building. She nodded in the general direction of one of the front pews.

‘Pink hat?’ Callum had bent his head to catch her hissed words.

Georgina nodded. ‘We’ll clash marvellously; she’ll be furious,’ she observed fatalistically. ‘I should have known; Mother’s a pink sort of person.’ She led him selfconsciously to the front of the church.

‘Georgie, what possessed you to wear pink with your hair?’ Lydia Campion was a beautiful woman whose stern features had been softened by the years. As always she looked stunningly elegant. Georgina knew she could never achieve that degree of polish—the lie of the silk scarf, the tilt of the chin. To Lydia it was as simple as breathing; to her it took hours of painstaking consideration, and even then she was only halfway there.

Georgina shot her companion a tiny I-told-you-so look, before sitting down on the pew.

‘Mrs Campion, I have to take full responsibility for the outfit. Georgina was humouring me.’

The look of shock on her mother’s face as Callum, all eighteen-carat charm and charisma, bent forward across her and extended his hand made Georgina, despite the gravity of her situation, want to giggle. This was not the type of man her mother or anyone else expected good old Georgie to be with. For the first time since she’d seen Callum Smith she felt that her decision to employ a little face-saving artifice had been justified. Might as well utilise his slightly dangerous air for what it was worth. She was the only one to know how fake the glamour was.

‘He’s colour-blind,’ Georgina added with a faint quiver in her voice.

This frivolous comment earned her a swift frown from her parents. ‘Who is this, Georgina? Where are your manners?’

‘This is Callum Sm—’

‘Delighted to meet you, Mrs Campion.’

‘Do call me Lydia. You’re a friend of Georgie’s? She is so secretive.’

‘A little more than that, eh, sweetheart?’ Callum’s impossibly deep blue gaze was fixed on her face with teasing affection. The warm, rich, bitter-chocolate tones just hinted at unspoken intimacies. He was so incredibly convincing that she found herself blushing deeply.

At that moment a figure on the periphery of her vision rose from the row of pews just opposite her. Her head turned as if pulled by invisible strings and her stomach muscles clenched painfully.

The first time she’d seen him she’d been blind to everything else, but now she was uncomfortably conscious of the man beside her. Disturbingly she wanted to turn her head and look at him. The memory of the fleeting sensation she’d experienced when she’d first seen him washed over her. Had Alex ever made her feel like that? What a ridiculous time to admit how physically attractive she found her escort, she told herself crossly.

Alex was an extremely good-looking young man, tallish, athletic. His features were regular, his expression sincere and forthright. The teeth were standard toothpaste-advert stuff and his naturally blond hair was highlighted with exquisite restraint.

The loss and bitterness she felt were suddenly physical. When Alex’s eyes passed over her without any sign of recognition she didn’t know whether to be glad or devastated. The city gloss she’d worked hard to achieve obviously worked. Pity she was still the same girl underneath the expensive clothes and make-up.

The large hand that suddenly clasped her jaw woke her from the short, intense abstraction. As her head turned life flowed back into her body, and it hurt, like icy fingers when the circulation in them began to move once more. ‘I take exception when a woman with me looks at another man like a drooling idiot.’ Low, conversational, his words made her blink. His face had come in close, the whole incident having the appearance of intimacy.

‘How dare you?’ she spat. The arrogance of the man was breathtaking. ‘So long as you’re paid, it’s no concern of yours what I do. Don’t get carried away with your role,’ she advised tartly. She felt humiliated at being caught out in the sort of behaviour she’d sworn to herself she’d not indulge in. Her anger, perfectly logically, was aimed at the only person who’d noticed her momentary weakness and who had had the tasteless effrontery to mention the fact.

‘It’s a waste of time to spend money on a love-struck swain if you behave with the discretion of an adolescent. Why should I waste my time and effort to act the lover if you aren’t going to co-operate?’

She was instantly stung by the insinuation that to act the lover required a vast amount of effort. ‘Because you’re being paid to do so,’ she hissed venomously. ‘So save the temperament. What are you anyway—an out-of-work actor? If you must know, you aren’t at all what I wanted. I require an escort, not a soul mate, so stop working so hard. Unless you’re an excellent liar you’ll end up making fools of us both. My mother’s interrogation techniques are honed to perfection,’ she told him drily, aware of the sharp eyes watching their every move.

He gave a snort. ‘If that—’ he jerked his head in the direction of the groom ‘—is your taste, I find it easy to believe I’m not what the doctor ordered. Take a dummy from the average shop window and you could have a facsimile of your perfect mate.’ The curl of his lip was openly derisory.

Her bosom swelled with outrage. ‘How dare you?’ The long-entrenched habit of thinking Alex encapsulated masculine perfection made her eyes flash.

‘Without any great effort,’ he murmured with casual, almost bored provocation. ‘You do keep saying that, or hadn’t you noticed? Repetition is a sign of a limited intellect, so I’ve heard.’

‘Do they employ many intellectual giants at the escort agency?’ she was pushed into responding sarcastically.

‘One for every snobbish client.’

Absurdly she felt suddenly apprehensive; there was something about the softness in his voice and the contrasting hardness in his deceptively guileless eyes Mentally she shook herself for having such fanciful thoughts. After today she would never have to see this man again; he had no influence upon her life. Still, he did have a point she would have to pull herself together if she was going to convince anyone she was totally heart-whole and leading a completely satisfying life.

Which, of course, she was. She had a stimulating career as a personal assistant in an advertising agency. A frown furrowed her wide, smooth brow as she thought of the man who had, up until recently, been her boss. Oliver Mallory, the infamous hand that had guided the well-known firm to its present place as one of the top six advertising agencies in the country. She had been his protégée and he had been her friend. Oliver had built the agency up from nothing and now he was gone. Though this left her own position uncertain, it was genuine sadness at the loss of the dear old reprobate that made her sigh.

She had everything she had wanted—a career, a flat of her own, independence, good friends, freedom—but without a man at her side she knew that her friends and relations would see only a jilted woman. The widely held conviction that a woman needed a man for fulfilment was one she personally detested. She had seen her own mother go through a series of temporary affairs of the heart, each one leaving her a little more desperate and lonely than the last. Her own recent experience of loss had made her determined never to repeat it.

‘Do you mind taking your hands off me?’ she said, raising her lowered eyes to the face of the man who was, given the time and place, in socially unacceptable proximity to her.

The hand that had captured her attention still lay along the line of her jaw; the tips of his fingers were burrowed into her hairline. His bent head was level with her own, close enough for her to be able to admire the texture of his bronzed skin, smell the masculine fragrance that drifted from him.

One of his fingers worked its way around a stray lock of hair that had escaped the confines of her wildly expensive headgear. The expression in his heavy-lidded, shadowed eyes as they watched the temporary corkscrew effect of his casual labour was absurdly riveting. Also the hard thigh pressed against her own on the wooden seat was distracting—unpleasantly so, she told herself, frowning as a pack of butterflies ran riot in the pit of her stomach.

The familiar strains of the Bridal March issued forth from the organ and, heart thudding, she pulled free, giving her escort a cold, dismissive look, as much to convince herself that he had nothing to do with the adrenaline surge that sent her heart against her ribcage as anything else. At a time like this she couldn’t possibly spare a second thought for anything but the main event.