Last-Minute Proposal

CHAPTER SIX

TILLY poured the tea. She could just imagine how Campbell would have been driven to out-perform the man who had taken his wife away from him. It would have hurt anyone, but to a man like Campbell the implication that she had left him for someone more successful must have been an extra dose of salt in the wound.

‘What will it be like, seeing her again?’ she asked.

He shrugged, and she rolled her eyes as she pushed a mug across the table towards him.

‘Come on, you must have thought about it! I’ve spent the last eighteen months practising what I would say to Olivier if I ever saw him again-not that I’ve had the chance to say any of it,’ she added ruefully. ‘It’s probably just as well.’

‘Olivier?’

‘The beat of my heart for two years,’ she said, blue eyes bleak with memory.

And presumably the man who had taught her that the absence of children didn’t make a break-up any easier. Campbell was remembering now.

‘Ah,’ he said. Were commiserations in order? These kinds of emotional conversations always made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t understand why women insisted on talking about this kind of stuff the whole time.

‘What would you have said?’ he asked at last, opting for a practical approach.

Tilly thought about it. ‘It depended on the mood I was in,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I was determined to make him realise just what he’d lost, so I was going to pretend to have a fabulous new lover and carry on as if I’d almost forgotten him. At other times I wanted him to acknowledge how he’d hurt me, but either way I would be very cool and calm.

‘In reality, of course, if I had bumped into Olivier, I would have burst into tears and begged him to come back, and then none of my friends would ever have spoken to me again!’

Campbell studied her across the table. Her generous mouth was twisted in a self-deprecating smile, but the blue eyes were wistful, and he wondered what Olivier was like. Campbell didn’t like the idea of him at all. He didn’t like the idea of anyone hurting Tilly.

She wasn’t beautiful, not like Lisa. Her features were too quirky for that, but there was something alluring about her all the same, he realised. She had warmth and wit and a charm that Lisa had never had, and in a strange way she was sexier, too.

The thought was startling, but Campbell decided it was true. Lisa was slender and elegant and perfect, but she was a woman most men admired from a distance. Tilly was quite different-all soft curves and luminous skin-and there was something irresistibly touchable about her. Any man’s fingers would be twitching with the need to reach out and slide through her hair, to smooth and stroke and explore that warm, lush body, and then he would want to take that mouth and see if it tasted and felt as good as it looked…

Alarmed by how quickly his thoughts had drifted out of control, Campbell slammed on the brakes and gave himself a mental slap.

He drank his tea, feeling jarred and vaguely uneasy. Tilly was the one with the vivid imagination, not him. Campbell Sanderson was famous for his coolness under pressure, for his single-minded pursuit of a goal. He wasn’t a man who let himself get distracted, especially not by a woman. The last time that had happened, he had ended up married to Lisa, and look what a mistake that had been! No way was he doing that again.

‘If you cried, there really would have been no chance of getting him back,’ he said caustically to make up for the fact that while his mind was firmly back under control, his hands were taking rather longer to catch up and were still tingling at the idea of touching Tilly.

Scowling at the sign of weakness, Campbell gripped them firmly around the mug.

‘I know.’ Tilly sighed. ‘What is it with men? Look at you. You’re happy to jump off a cliff but show you a woman in tears and I bet you’d run a mile!’

This was unfortunately so true that Campbell could only glower. ‘I like dealing with facts,’ he said. ‘Emotions are messy.’

Tilly stared at him and shook her head. ‘How on earth did you ever manage to get married in the first place? You must have had to succumb to a teensy little emotion then, surely!’

‘The attraction between us was a physical thing. It was never about hearts and flowers and all that stuff. Lisa’s not like that. She’s like me in lots of ways. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it, and she gets it. And for a time,’ he said, ‘she wanted me.’

Campbell paused, remembering. ‘It’s hard to resist a woman who looks the way she does. You’d have to see her to understand,’ he said, catching Tilly’s sceptical expression.

‘I can’t see you being pushed into doing anything you didn’t want to do, let alone marriage,’ she said. ‘You’re not the passive type.’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I did want to marry her.’

‘Because you loved her, or because you could show her off, prove that you had a more beautiful wife than anyone else?’

A very faint flush stained Campbell’s cheekbones. ‘I suppose there’s some truth in that,’ he acknowledged. ‘But marriage was Lisa’s idea. I’d never imagined myself as a marrying type, but she wanted a wedding, and I was mad for her. I didn’t care what happened as long as I could have her. I should have known it wouldn’t last.’

What would it be like to be so beautiful you always got your own way? Tilly wondered. What would it be like to be desired so much by Campbell that he would do whatever you wanted?

‘How long were you married?’ she asked instead.

‘Just three years,’ said Campbell. ‘There was great sexual chemistry but not much else going for the marriage. I was away on operations most of the time, and Lisa wasn’t prepared to sit at home waiting for me. She liked to have fun, and she liked money, and it didn’t take her long to get bored and start to want something more glamorous. Arthur offered her the lifestyle she wanted, so she took it.’

He shrugged, but Tilly couldn’t believe that he was as nonchalant about the failure of his marriage as he pretended. It must have been a huge blow to his pride.

‘Are you hoping that if she sees how successful you are now, she might come back to you?’

Campbell stared at her for a moment, then pushed the mug abruptly aside. ‘No,’ he said instinctively, and then, honestly, ‘I don’t know.’

So what were you thinking, Tilly? Tilly asked herself. That he might say, Of course not, how could I possibly want my beautiful ex-wife with whom I shared such incredible sexual chemistry when I could have you for a brief fling?

‘I was angry when she left,’ he said unexpectedly, almost as if the words had been forced out of him. For a long time all I thought about was seeing Lisa again, and making her regret the choice she had made. I probably did hope that she might change her mind then.’

‘And now?’

‘Now…now I think I want her to see what she could have had if she had stuck with me. Beyond that, I really don’t know. I probably won’t know until I do see her again.’

Well, she had asked and he had answered. Tilly couldn’t complain that he hadn’t been honest. She was very glad that she hadn’t done anything silly, like taking Cleo’s advice. Campbell was like a dog with a bone that it had tired of until the moment someone tried to take it away. Losing Lisa to another man would smack too much of failure for a man like him. Consciously or not, Tilly was prepared to bet that his life since then had been focused on getting his wife back.

Perhaps that was how it should be, she thought, but it was hard not to feel a little disconsolate. No one would ever feel that way about her. Olivier certainly hadn’t, she remembered with a trace of bitterness. Even if she had been the one to dump him, he would probably just have been relieved that she had saved him the trouble. He wouldn’t still be hankering after her four years down the line.

She should just face up to the fact that she wasn’t the kind of girl men got possessive or obsessed about, Tilly decided glumly. She had better just stick to baking.

And, talking of which…She sniffed delicately and looked across at Campbell, who was staring into his tea with a brooding expression.

He glanced up as he felt her eyes on him. ‘What?’

‘How long has your cake been in?’

‘The cake!’

Campbell leapt to his feet and yanked open the oven, only to cough and splutter as smoke billowed into his face. Grabbing a tea towel, he pulled the tin out, swearing as he burned his fingers and let the tin fall with a clatter on to the work surface.

When the smoke cleared, he could see that the cake was not the perfect chocolate cake he had intended to make. Instead, it was burnt, hard and flat. It didn’t take a Michelin starred chef to see that it was going to be inedible.

Only the tiniest of smiles dented the corner of Tilly’s mouth as she went into the larder and found a banana cake she had made a couple of days earlier. She put it on the table and sat down again, very carefully saying absolutely nothing.

‘All right!’ snarled Campbell as if she had been shouting accusingly at him. ‘All right! It’s not just a question of reading the instructions, OK? I admit it! Happy now?’

He looked so chagrined at his failure that Tilly had to bite her cheeks to stop herself from laughing out loud.

‘Actually, it is just a question of following a recipe,’ she tried to placate him, ‘but you have to know how to read it first. I can teach you that.’ She cut him a slice of cake. ‘Here, try a bit of this.’

Campbell took a bite. It was a revelation-moist and light and delicious, its flavours and textures perfectly balanced. He felt as if he had never eaten cake before. He finished the slice without speaking and then looked straight at Tilly. ‘That was the best cake I have ever tasted,’ he said simply.

She laughed, pleased. ‘That’s one of the easiest cakes to make. You can try one for yourself tomorrow if you like.’

‘I suppose there’s some secret ingredient you keep to yourself to make sure no one else makes a cake as good as yours.’ Campbell looked at her accusingly, but Tilly held up her hands in a gesture of innocence.

‘I promise you there isn’t. Pleasure in food is for sharing, not keeping to yourself.’

‘There must be something special you do.’

‘Oh, there is,’ she agreed. ‘I make all my cakes with love. Do you think you’ll be able to do that?’

There was a tiny silence as their eyes met across the table.

Campbell was the first to look away. ‘Will determination do instead?’

‘If that’s the best you can offer, we’ll have to hope it’s good enough for Cleo’s cake.’

Cleo was dark and vivacious and she eyed Campbell with undisguised interest when she arrived to discuss her wedding cake the next day. Right at home in Tilly’s kitchen, she plonked herself down at the table and proceeded to cross-examine him with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer while Tilly made coffee.

Campbell wasn’t doing a bad job of deflecting her questions, Tilly thought as she put a plate of biscuits she had made earlier on the table between them, but if he had hoped to deter Cleo he was in for a disappointment.

‘Biscuits…yummy…and Tony’s favourites, too! Can I take some home for him?’

Without waiting for an answer, Cleo turned back to Campbell.

‘Tilly’s a fabulous cook! Well, you probably know that already, Campbell.’ She leant confidingly towards him. ‘Tony was wild with envy when he heard you were going to be spending a couple of weeks here. He’s always angling for an invitation to dinner and then he spends weeks afterwards asking me why I can’t be a domestic goddess like Tilly.’

Ignoring Tilly’s warning kick under the table, she sat back and warmed to her theme.

‘Lucky she’s such a special person or I’d really hate her. As it is, everyone loves Tilly,’ she told Campbell. ‘She’s the best friend anyone could have. She’s the one we all go to when we need looking after. I don’t know what I’d do without her, and I certainly don’t know what Harry and Seb would have done without her. She brought them up, you know. She’s a born mother, I think, and she’s going to make some lucky guy a perfect wife one day.’

Tilly sighed and gave up on trying to be discreet. It was way too late for that now. The only thing she could do now was to brazen it out. ‘Why not come right out and offer Campbell fifty camels if he’ll take me off your hands?’ she asked acidly. ‘You’ll have to forgive Cleo,’ she said to Campbell as she handed out mugs of coffee. ‘Wedding bells have gone to her head. Just because she’s getting married, she thinks everyone else should be, too. She’s desperate to get me attached to some poor unsuspecting man and she doesn’t care who she embarrasses to do it! Just ignore her.

‘And you, Cleo,’ she added, pointing a stern finger at her friend, ‘stop it! Campbell is here to make your wedding cake, and that’s it. He isn’t attracted to me and I’m not attracted to him.’

Cleo was quite unabashed. ‘We wouldn’t have to embarrass you if you ever made the slightest effort to find someone new. You just hide yourself away in this kitchen and nobody ever knows what a lovely person you are. Honestly, it’s a crime! Tell her, Campbell.’

‘I am not hiding away!’ said Tilly, exasperated, before Campbell had a chance to reply. She dropped into the chair next to him. Right then, he seemed to be her only ally. ‘Nobody seems to understand that I’m trying to run a business here! Tell her, Campbell!’

Campbell looked from Tilly’s heated face to Cleo’s amused one, and his lips twitched. He had, it was true, been a little taken aback by Cleo’s blatant matchmaking, and wasn’t at all sure how he should react, but Tilly’s intervention had dispelled any awkwardness.

She was right, of course. He wasn’t attracted to her. Interested, perhaps. Amused, even intrigued, but not attracted.

Not really. Not the way he had been attracted to Lisa, anyway, and the two women were such polar opposites that it would be bizarre to find them both attractive. Still, Tilly’s bluntness had stung a little. She had made him feel a fool for being so aware of her the day before.

When he had taken himself back to his hotel at the end of the day, Campbell had told himself that he was relieved, but the truth was that his room had seemed cold and empty and sterile somehow after Tilly’s house. He had opened his laptop determinedly and tried to concentrate on work but his famous ability to focus had completely deserted him. He’d found himself reading emails without taking in a word, while his mind had drifted back to Tilly moving around the bright kitchen.

In her own context, her movements were graceful, her hands quick and competent. Campbell had found it strangely restful to watch her. Alone in his hotel room, he had pictured her in disconcerting detail, pushing her hair back from her face, rolling her eyes, smiling her crooked smile. She had a way of running her tongue over her lips when she was thinking. It was quite unselfconscious, and Campbell wondered if she had any idea how sexy she was, or how it made him think about what it would be like to lose himself in her warmth and her softness and her light.

‘Campbell?’ Tilly waved a hand in front of his face. ‘This is Earth calling! Do you receive?’

Campbell snapped to, aghast to discover that he had been lost in his thoughts and that Cleo and Tilly were staring at him. He was supposed to be trained to be alert at all times. He could just imagine his Commanding Officer’s scathing comments if he had caught him sitting there daydreaming about a woman! A faint flush of embarrassment crept up his cheeks.

‘Sorry,’ he said gruffly, remembering what he was supposed to be doing. ‘I think it’s probably better if I don’t get involved. That way you can both carry on believing you’re right.’

‘A little weasely, but tactful, I suppose,’ said Tilly in a dry voice. She pushed the biscuits towards her friend. ‘Have one of those and give up on the matchmaking! And now that’s sorted, let’s get down to business.’

‘I thought we were doing just that,’ said Cleo, who had been watching Campbell’s face with amusement.

‘Your cake,’ Tilly reminded her, exasperated. ‘That’s why you’re here, in case you’ve forgotten! This is supposed to be a business meeting. Have you had any thoughts about it? Or have you been too busy meddling in the lives of all your single friends?’

‘No, I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve even consulted Tony,’ said Cleo with a grin. ‘The wedding service and the reception immediately afterwards are going to be traditional-it wasn’t worth fighting Mum on that one-but we want the party in the evening to be fun. What do you think about an Antony and Cleopatra theme?’ She looked hopefully at Campbell. ‘Could you make a cake like that?

Campbell glanced at Tilly for help, but she just looked blandly back at him. ‘Antony and Cleopatra?’ he repeated carefully.

‘Yes, you know, like the Shakespeare play. I mean, how can we resist? My name really is Cleopatra, can you believe it? I don’t know what my parents were thinking of!’ Cleo shook her dark head, but her eyes twinkled. ‘It’s just chance that I fell in love with an Anthony, but it’s a cool coincidence, don’t you think?’ She struck a melodramatic pose. ‘Another pair of legendary lovers!’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t Antony and Cleopatra die at the end of the play?’ said Campbell dryly. ‘It doesn’t seem much of a precedent for a wedding cake.’

‘Details, details.’ Cleo waved that aside. ‘We just want all the fun bits. Egypt, eyeliner, bathing in milk, you know the kind of thing.’

Eyeliner? Ye gods. Campbell had to resist the urge to bang his head on the table.

‘None of that sounds very suitable for a cake,’ he told her austerely, and Tilly dug a finger into his ribs.

‘What did I tell you about listening to the client?’ Her voice was bubbling with suppressed laughter. ‘If Cleo wants an Antony and Cleopatra cake, that’s what she can have.’

She turned to Cleo. ‘I can’t believe I’ve never made the connection between Tony and Anthony before! I think it’s a brilliant idea, Cleo. I did the play for A level and loved it. There’s no reason why we-Campbell, I mean-can’t make a cake for you. It could be the alternative version: Antony and Cleopatra, happy ever after.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ Cleo nodded eagerly. ‘Antony and Cleopatra going off on their honeymoon, perhaps?’

‘On their barge…wasn’t there a barge in the play?’

Cleo clapped her hands together. ‘Oh, yes, of course. The barge!’

‘And they could have tin cans tied on the back, and a card saying “just married”!’

‘And our names and the date of the wedding along the side.’

‘Yes. This is going to be great!’ Tilly gave Campbell another prod. ‘Are you noting all this down, Campbell?’

Campbell felt as if he were at a tennis match, his eyes shifting from side to side as he tried to follow the ideas bouncing backwards and forwards between them.

He looked at the notebook in front of him. ‘You want me to make a barge?’

‘An ancient Egyptian one. You’re bound to be able to find a picture on the Internet somewhere. Antony was a Roman so you’ll be able to do him OK, and Cleopatra will be easy-give her black hair, big fringe, lots of eyeliner.’

And he was supposed to make all this out of cake?

Campbell listened as Tilly and Cleo carried on sparking ideas off each other, talking at dizzying speed, laughing and egging each other on. ‘We mustn’t forget the asp!’

He couldn’t help comparing this with the business meetings he was used to, where he told people what he wanted done and they did it. The meetings he chaired were much more controlled, much more efficient.

Much less fun.

‘What do you think, Campbell?’ Tilly had been drawing a quick summary in her sketchbook and she twisted it round so that he could see. He leant closer, trying not to notice the summery scent of her hair.

‘Very clever,’ he said. ‘I would have just stuck a couple of figures on top of a cake.’

‘Yes, well, that wouldn’t have won you many votes, would it?’

Campbell straightened. He had forgotten about the competition there for a while. Which was odd, given that winning it was the only reason he was here.

‘They’re bound to be impressed by this, if you can do it,’ said Cleo. ‘It does look a bit complicated, though. Would you rather we came up with a simpler design, Campbell?’

‘No, that’s fine,’ he said, unable to admit that he didn’t have a clue where to start with it, but was determined to succeed at this the way he succeeded with everything else. ‘Tilly promises her clients that they can have whatever cake they want, so if this is what you want, Cleo, this is what I’ll make you.’

‘Wonderful!’ Cleo beamed as she got to her feet. ‘It’s going to be such fun! You will stay for the party after they’ve filmed the cake, won’t you, Campbell? Once they’ve gone, you and Tilly can relax and enjoy yourselves-separately if you want,’ she added, rolling her eyes in such exaggerated resignation at Tilly’s expression that Campbell couldn’t help laughing.

Normally the thought of a wedding made him run in the opposite direction, but Cleo was so friendly that he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Besides, he had to go anyway to deliver the cake. It would be his last evening with Tilly.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’d like to come.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Tilly as she came back from seeing Cleo off. She dropped into a chair with a sigh. ‘I hope Cleo didn’t embarrass you. She certainly embarrassed me! Sometimes I feel like disowning all my friends!’

‘I liked her,’ said Campbell. ‘And she’s obviously very fond of you.’

‘I know.’ Tilly dragged the hair back from her face with both hands. ‘She’s a good friend, but she’s got it into her head that I need a man. And it’s not just Cleo! It’s a conspiracy,’ she complained. ‘Even my brothers are in on it, so be warned. Seb and Harry are both coming home for the weekend and, as neither of them know the meaning of subtlety, you’ll probably find yourself tied up and forced into bed with me!’

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Campbell’s mouth as her regarded her. ‘I can think of worse fates.’

Dark blue eyes flew to meet his for a fleeting moment before she looked away and coloured. ‘You don’t need to be polite,’ she muttered.

‘I’m not. You’re an attractive woman. You must know that,’ he said with a frown as Tilly goggled at him.

She swallowed. ‘It’s not how I think of myself, no,’ she said at last.

‘Why not?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘I don’t understand why you’re so hung up about your weight,’ said Campbell with a touch of exasperation. ‘OK, so you’re not the thinnest woman I’ve ever met, but you look absolutely fine to me. Some women aren’t meant to be thin, and you’re one of them. It’s only women who get worked up about what size they are. Men don’t care.’

‘I notice they all like to go out with thin women, though,’ said Tilly waspishly as she got up and began clearing away the mugs. ‘I bet your ex-wife is slim, isn’t she?’

‘She ought to be. She never ate anything. It was a waste of time taking her out to dinner,’ Campbell remembered.

‘I wish I could be like that!’

‘But then you wouldn’t have had your fantasies about meals to get you up Scottish mountains,’ he pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t be you.’

‘No, I might be slender and elegant and controlled.’

There was no mistaking the bitterness in her voice as she turned and began rinsing the mugs at the sink.

Campbell looked at her back. ‘That sounds very dull,’ he said carefully, forgetting that Tilly’s chaotic quality had once made him uneasy, too. ‘Who on earth would want you to be like that?’

‘Olivier did.’ Tilly was still clattering mugs and wouldn’t turn round. ‘That’s why he broke off our relationship in the end. I couldn’t be the kind of person he wanted me to be. I was too much for him.’

‘Too much what?’

‘Too much everything, I think. I ate too much, laughed too much, talked too much, loved too much…’ Her back was still firmly turned and, even though she was clearly trying to keep her voice light, Campbell could still hear the undercurrent of pain.

‘Surely those are the reasons he would want to be with you in the first place?’

‘I don’t think it was like that for Olivier. Cleo’s theory was that I was a kind of project for him. Perhaps he saw me as some kind of challenge. Maybe he thought it would be interesting to see if he could shape me into something different, someone cool and controlled who would blend with his stylish décor.

‘But of course I never could blend in,’ Tilly went on, setting the mugs on the draining rack and turning at last. ‘Now I feel ashamed for trying to, but I loved him so much, I was desperate to please him. I’d have done anything he wanted, but I just couldn’t be that different. I’m just not like that.’

Her throat was tight with remembered hurt, and she couldn’t bear to meet Campbell’s eyes. She reached for a tea towel instead and wiped her hands very carefully.

‘In the end, I think Olivier found me disgusting,’ she said with difficulty, her gaze on the tea towel. ‘It was awful. The more I tried to please him, the more he withdrew. It was as if he couldn’t bear me near him.’

Campbell heard the crack of pain in her voice and anger closed like a fist around his heart. ‘Who was this guy?’ he demanded furiously.

‘He’s an architect. A very good one. He’s moved to London now. I think Allerby was too provincial for Olivier.’

‘Or maybe he was too affected for Allerby,’ Campbell suggested. ‘What can you expect with a poncey name like Olivier?’ he demanded. ‘I suppose his real name is Oliver and he wanted to make himself more interesting.’

Tilly couldn’t help feeling touched that he was so angry on her behalf, but habit drove her to defend Olivier.

‘His mother’s French,’ she told him. ‘That’s why he’s Olivier and not Oliver. Actually, the name suits him. He’s very dark and good-looking and…oh, glamorous, I suppose,’ she remembered with a sigh. ‘He was always out of my league. He’s not just handsome, he’s clever and witty and artistic and good at everything he does.’

‘He certainly did an excellent job of destroying your self-confidence,’ said Campbell acidly.

Tilly smiled a little sadly. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had much of that, not when it comes to men, anyway.’

Her hands were as dry as they were ever going to be. She made herself hang the tea towel back on its hook and opened the fridge to look for butter and eggs. When in doubt, Tilly always baked. There was something about the process that soothed her. She had made an awful lot of cakes in the months since Olivier had decided she was never going to match up to his standards.

Campbell pushed back his chair to watch her. ‘Why not?’

‘Cleo blames my father, but then Cleo would. She’s an amateur psychologist. She says that I’m “replicating a pattern of loving men I can’t trust”.’ Tilly hooked her fingers in the air to emphasise the quotation.

‘And are you?’

She shrugged as she searched for sugar, flour and sultanas in the sliding larder.

‘I don’t know about that, but whatever it is I do, I’m not doing it again,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t just Olivier. Before him it was Andrew, and before him, Simon. They weren’t quite as demanding as Olivier, but I’m sick of not being quite good enough. I’m sick of having my heart broken.’

Carrying the dry ingredients over to the table, she started to set them down and looked at Campbell at last. ‘I know my friends mean well. I know they just want me to be happy. They think I shouldn’t let Olivier put me off men for life, and that I should just get back out there and start dating again, but I don’t dare. I’m too afraid I’ll just end up getting hurt again.’

She stopped, the packet of sultanas still clutched against her chest. ‘Funny, I’ve never admitted that to anyone else,’ she said, a puzzled crease between her brows. ‘I must feel safer with you than I thought.’

‘I’m not sure that’s very good for my ego,’ said Campbell wryly, and she flushed a little, belatedly realising that she had spoken her thoughts aloud.

‘I just meant…because you’re only here for a week,’ she tried to explain. ‘You’re not just leaving Allerby, you’re leaving the country soon, so even if we did find each other attractive, a relationship would be out of the question.’