Last-Minute Proposal

CHAPTER SEVEN

RIGHT, and he needed to remember that, Campbell told himself that night. He was surprised at how much he had hated seeing how hurt Tilly had been by Olivier-and he didn’t care what she said about him being half-French, it was still a damn fool name.

What a sinful waste that she should have cut herself off from men. Alone and restless, Campbell scowled up at the ceiling through the darkness. He badly wanted to show Tilly that she was wrong, that she was quite beautiful and sexy and desirable enough as she was.

But how could he do that without hurting her himself?

Tilly had told him that she was afraid, and he didn’t have time to win her confidence. Even if he did, what then?

He was moving to the States, Campbell reminded himself. Taking over a company with a global reputation like Mentior’s would be the culmination of his business career. There would be no stopping him now. He was going to take that firm and turn it round and make it the best in the world again, and he was going to do it where Lisa couldn’t fail to note his success.

Ever since Lisa had left him, he had been focused on proving to her just how big a mistake she had made. He would never have a better chance than this. There was no question of not going.

And that meant there was no question of convincing Tilly that she was a desirable woman. She was absolutely right. It was best for both of them if they kept their relationship firmly on a friendly basis. Tilly had made it very clear that was all she wanted.

He needed to be realistic, after all, Campbell told himself. They were only together because of the television programme. As soon as Cleo’s wedding was over, and he had made that cake, they would go their separate ways. They would meet up at the awards ceremony for one last filming and, if they had won, as Campbell fully intended they would, they would hand over their cheques to the hospice that meant so much to her, and that would be that.

It was impractical to even think about anything else.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Campbell thinking about it anyway. It was hard not to when he and Tilly were spending so much time together.

Campbell hadn’t expected to enjoy his time learning to make cakes. He had expected to be bored and impatient to get back to the office. He checked his email regularly, and his PA had strict instructions to ring him if there were any problems, but they all seemed to be managing perfectly well without him, and Campbell found himself thinking about work less and less and about Tilly more and more.

Never having given it any thought, he had been surprised at quite how much was involved in making cakes for a living. As Tilly explained, it wasn’t just a question of baking. She had long interviews with each client to find out exactly what they wanted, then the cake had to be designed and decorated and delivered on time. She sourced recipes, shopped for ingredients and priced each cake, but what she was best at was talking to people.

Inclined to be dismissive at first, Campbell came to recognise her ability to make connections for the skill it was. He watched clients relax as they sat at Tilly’s table and told her about who or what they wanted to celebrate with a special cake, and he watched their faces when they saw what Tilly had made for them.

There were almost always gasps of pleasure and admiration when the cake was unveiled, and he could understand why. Campbell was amazed at what she could do. The day after Cleo’s visit, she had made a football pitch complete with players in the correct strips for a nine year-old boy who was a Manchester United fan. Campbell had helped her deliver it to the birthday party and would have enjoyed the whole experience if he hadn’t had to drive a van with ‘Sweet Nothings’ painted on the side.

A pink van.

Campbell had told Tilly she needed to work on her corporate image, but she’d just laughed at him. ‘Everyone loves the pink van,’ she said. ‘It’s fun.’

‘I just hope to God nobody I know sees me in it,’ he grumbled and Tilly slid him a mischievous glance.

‘Perhaps you’re the one who needs rebranding,’ she suggested. ‘You could tone down all that macho man and get in touch with your feminine side!’

The look Campbell sent her in reply made Tilly laugh out loud.

‘OK, there is no feminine side. That would explain why you’re finding it so hard to make a cake!’

And Campbell had to admit that he was struggling on that front. Tilly made it look so easy, but when he’d tried to make even a basic sponge it was a disaster.

‘Look, it’s not a competition,’ Tilly said to him, watching him square up to his ingredients for yet another practice cake. ‘It’s not about winning, or beating the ingredients into shape. It’s magic.’

She let some caster sugar run through her fingers, caressed a speckled brown egg. ‘It’s about taking all these different ingredients and turning them into something that looks wonderful and smells wonderful and tastes wonderful. You’re too aggressive,’ she scolded him. ‘You’re treating cooking as a battle, with you as Julius Caesar and the ingredients as the poor old Britons! Don’t think of the recipe as a series of manoeuvres. Think of it as helpful advice to create something beautiful.’

But, frustrated by his inability to master baking the way he had mastered every other obstacle in his way, Campbell was too brisk, too impatient for results, to do anything of the kind. He didn’t know what Tilly meant when she said it wasn’t about winning. Why else would he be making a fool of himself like this?

He was much happier sorting out her office for her and criticising her accounting system. He fixed wobbly shelves and changed the light bulbs she couldn’t reach. He checked the oil in the van and filled up the windscreen wash. He set up a special business email account for Sweet Nothings.

‘If you carry on like this, I’m not going to want you to leave,’ Tilly said.

Leave. Campbell was jolted by the reminder. Of course he would be leaving. He would be getting on a plane and flying off to the States, where there would be no Tilly humming tunelessly as she moved around the kitchen. No Tilly endlessly teasing him about his military approach or his interest in Roman history. No Tilly there rolling her eyes, wearing her bold bright lipstick, leaning forward with an animated face, encompassing everyone she talked to in her warmth and her light.

But he would be in New York. He would be successful. He would look Lisa in the face and show her everything that she had lost.

‘Careful!’ Tilly cautioned him as he lifted the cake out of the back of the van. ‘This one’s very fragile.’

Campbell looked down at the cake, decorated to look like a bed complete with pink frills, scatter cushions and a teddy bear. It was covered with cosmetics, a chick flick DVD and a sparkly top.

‘Is this a birthday cake?’

‘It’s for a sleepover party.’

To Campbell the house seemed full of shrieking, giggling girls who flocked around them, exclaiming at the cake and tossing back their hair as they cast sidelong glances at him under their impossibly long lashes while Tilly carried on an in-depth conversation with the birthday girl’s mother.

‘Phew!’ He let out a long breath when he finally managed to extricate her and made an escape. ‘I’d rather parachute into enemy territory than do that again.’

Tilly rolled her eyes in a characteristic gesture. ‘Honestly, they were just a few little girls!’

‘They weren’t little, and they were terrifying. You could have warned me!’

‘I didn’t realise that it would be quite such a traumatic experience for you,’ she said, grinning as she unlocked the van. ‘You certainly weren’t much back-up support!’

‘Hey, I got you out of there, didn’t I?’

‘I’m not sure grabbing me by the wrist, telling Jane that we had to go and dragging me to the door really counts. You might try a more diplomatic approach next time.’

‘There’s going to be a next time?’ said Campbell, his horror only half feigned.

‘Perhaps I’d better make it solo missions if there’s any girly stuff involved,’ said Tilly, laughing at him over the roof of the van. ‘I hope this never gets back to the mess. The day Campbell Sanderson panicked when confronted with six twelve-year-old girls!’

‘I did not panic,’ he said, trying to suppress an answering grin. ‘I merely made a strategic retreat. I was thinking of you, in any case,’ he added virtuously as they got into the van. ‘It’s been a long day.’

Tilly stretched and sighed. ‘It has. At least that’s it for today.’ She reached for her seatbelt. ‘Do you want me to drop you back at the hotel?’

‘If you’ll let me buy you dinner,’ said Campbell on an impulse and when she froze with her seat belt halfway across her, he held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. ‘Don’t panic, I’m not planning to make a move on you! You made your feelings clear enough about that,’ he told her. ‘I was just thinking that you’d done enough cooking today, and I’m sick of eating in a restaurant on my own.’

Tilly hesitated. Far from panicking, she was perversely miffed that Campbell had made his lack of intentions so obvious. It didn’t help that she was perfectly aware that it was her own fault. She had told him that she didn’t want to get involved, so she shouldn’t complain that he had taken her at her word.

She should be glad, in fact. Her heart couldn’t take another break. It would just shatter and there would be nothing left of it at all. She didn’t dare let her guard down, Tilly reminded herself. It would be so easy to let Campbell in, but how could he not hurt her? He might amuse himself for a while, but he wouldn’t stay for ever, and why should he? Look at her-overweight and screwed up and stuck in her rut. What could she possibly have to offer him compared to an incredible new job and a beautiful ex-wife who clearly would only have to crook a perfectly manicured finger to have him back?

No, face reality, Tilly, her mind told her firmly. Campbell is not for you.

The trouble was that her body hadn’t quite got the message.

Instead of listening to what her head was saying, her body was simmering with awareness of him. All Campbell had to do was turn and smile and every nerve she possessed seemed to suck in its breath.

Tilly couldn’t take her eyes off his hands, his mouth. She couldn’t stop remembering how lean and hard his body had felt, couldn’t stop wondering what it would be like to unbutton his shirt, to run her hands over his powerful muscles, to press her lips to his skin. To forget about her poor, broken heart and let him bear her down on to a bed, a couch, the floor-anywhere-as long as he made love to her.

That was the point where Tilly had to stop herself. Wasn’t it Campbell who had accused her of having a vivid imagination? It wasn’t always a good thing, she decided, not when it left you with a thudding heart and a dry mouth and your insides roiling and writhing with desire.

And if she was like this during the day, what sort of state would she be in sitting across a table from him, where the lighting would be soft and intimate and she would only have to move her hand a matter of inches to be able to touch him?

No, the sensible thing would be to go home and put herself firmly out of temptation’s way.

On the other hand, Tilly’s body argued back, it would be nice to have a meal someone else had cooked, and it wasn’t fair to leave him on his own every night. There was no point in being silly. It was just a meal with a friend. What could be the harm in that?

‘Dinner would be nice,’ she said firmly. ‘Thanks.’

They arranged to meet a couple of hours later at a restaurant in the centre of Allerby. That gave Tilly enough time to jump in the shower and then work herself into a frenzy of doubt about what to wear.

She didn’t want to look as if she were trying too hard, or as if she were expecting anything more than a friendly dinner, but it would be nice to show Campbell that she didn’t always look a mess. She dressed for comfort when she was cooking, and her shoes were always practical and flat. It wasn’t exactly a glamorous look. As for what she had worn on that Scottish hillside, Tilly didn’t want to think about what she had looked like then!

In the end she settled on a clinging wrap-over top in a lovely deep violet with a swirly black skirt which looked good with her favourite shoes. They had perilously high heels with cutaway sides and peep toes and Tilly felt a million times better about herself the moment she put them on. Really, she ought to wear them the whole time, she decided, and to hell with teetering around the kitchen all day or throwing out her back.

Even the shoes couldn’t stop her feeling nervous as the taxi stopped outside the restaurant. Tilly knew it was stupid, but her heart was thumping ridiculously and her entrails were fluttery.

‘Please, please don’t let me make a fool of myself,’ she prayed as she paid off the taxi and turned for the entrance. The restaurant was reputed to be the best in Allerby and Tilly had been doubtful that they would get a table at such short notice, but she should have known a little thing like the restaurant being full wouldn’t stand between Campbell and getting what he wanted.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled open the door. The maître d’ glided towards her, but Tilly had already seen Campbell. He rose from the table at the sight of her, and their eyes met across the restaurant.

Campbell had showered and shaved and, in his beautifully cut suit, he looked lean and cool and more than a little ruthless. He looked devastating. Tilly’s knees felt as if they were about to buckle, and she swallowed hard.

See? her mind was nagging. I told you this was a bad idea. Now how are you going to resist him?

She pushed the thought aside. This was just a friendly dinner. But her mouth was dry as, oblivious to the maîtred’, to anything except the man waiting for her, she walked over to join Campbell.

‘Hi,’ she said. The queen of sparkling repartee that was her.

Campbell felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of his lungs at the sight of her walking towards him in a tight top and a skirt that skimmed her gorgeous curves and shoes so sexy they practically left scorch marks on the floor.

Without thinking, he reached out to touch her. He couldn’t help himself. He had a hand at her waist and was drawing her towards him before the red alert siren went off belatedly in his head. He wasn’t getting involved, right?

Right.

So yanking her into his arms and kissing her, pulling her towards him and exploring all that tantalising warmth and softness, making it his, right there in front of everybody, was probably not a good idea.

His senses screamed in protest as he regained control at the very last moment and dropped a chaste kiss on the corner of her mouth instead.

Just breathing in her perfume, feeling the softness of her skin, grazing the alluring curl of her lips was enough to make Campbell’s head reel, and he had to jerk his head back before he did something really stupid.

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. ‘You look wonderful,’ he managed at last and winced inwardly at the croak in his voice. Whatever had happened to cool Campbell Sanderson, famed for his focus and control?

‘Thanks,’ said Tilly. ‘You brush up nicely yourself.’

She was surprised at how ordinary her voice sounded. The brief brush of his lips had been like an electric jolt and she had to sit down before her legs gave way. Her face was throbbing where his mouth had touched her, her waist tingling where his hard hand had held her.

She picked up the menu with hands that weren’t quite steady and made a show of reading it.

‘Hungry?’ Campbell asked.

‘You know me, I’m always hungry.’

But she wasn’t, not really. Tilly couldn’t concentrate. The words wavered before her eyes, and it was impossible to focus on them when every sense was fixed on Campbell on the other side of the table. His lashes were lowered over the keen eyes as he read his own menu. His fingers were drumming absently on the cloth, and his mouth was set in the cool, quiet line that made her heart turn over whenever she looked at it.

Tilly was hardly aware of what she ordered. The wine waiter appeared as soon as the waitress had gone and tried to discuss wine with Campbell, who simply closed the wine list and handed it back. ‘Whatever’s good,’ he said brusquely. ‘And whatever you can find most quickly.’

‘You’ll probably get the most expensive wine in the restaurant,’ Tilly warned him as the wine waiter, disappointed, took himself off.

Campbell shrugged. ‘I’d rather pay for it than endure a lot of poncey talk about it.’

Olivier had been a wine buff. He had spent ages perusing the wine list before every meal, and Tilly couldn’t help thinking that it would be a nice change to have a meal out that wasn’t punctuated with exhaustive lectures on grapes and vineyards and bouquets and aromas.

The wine waiter took Campbell at his word and came back almost immediately with a bottle. Evidently deciding they weren’t worth any flourishes, he opened the bottle, poured two glasses and left.

Tilly lifted her glass. ‘Here’s to you surviving your latest dangerous mission!’

‘All those giggling girls?’ Campbell’s laugh was rueful. ‘I’d rather do just about anything than face a gaggle like that again!’

‘My hero!’

‘You mock,’ he said severely, although there was a hint of a smile about his mouth, ‘but I’m not used to girls-or not twelve-year-old ones anyway.’

‘You don’t have a sister, then?’

‘No, it was just me and my brother growing up. Girls were an alien species for a long time.’

‘We’re not so different, you know,’ said Tilly. ‘You’d learn that soon enough if you had a daughter.’

The smile vanished abruptly. ‘God forbid!’ he said, horrified at the thought. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start dealing with a girl.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry. She would deal with you,’ Tilly reassured him. ‘She’d have you wrapped round her little finger in no time! It’s always the same with you macho men. You’re putty in the hands of a little girl.’

‘It’s just as well I never had any kids then,’ said Campbell dryly.

‘Did you ever think about having children when you were married?’

He shook his head. ‘No, babies weren’t part of Lisa’s plan, and I’ve never even considered it. I don’t think I would have been a good father.’

Tilly put down her glass with a frown. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I’m afraid I would have turned out like my own father.’ He straightened his cutlery without looking at her. ‘I suppose he loved us in his own way, but I never remember having fun with him, or doing the stuff other boys do with their fathers.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Tilly, remembering how her stepfather had been with Harry and Seb. ‘He missed out on a lot.’

‘We all did. I know you think I’m bad at expressing emotion, but you should have met my father. He was an army officer, a very moral man in lots of ways, but he had rigid standards that my brother and I never met. We used to try and outdo each other in a bid to please him but nothing we did was ever quite good enough. It didn’t matter how well we did, he never praised us. I think he thought it would spoil us or something.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She died when I was nine.’ Campbell sighed. ‘To be absolutely honest, I don’t remember her that well. Looking back, I wonder what kind of life she had, married to my father. I suspect that any spirit she may have had was crushed out of her early on. And after that we were packed off to boarding school, which sounds heartless, but we liked it more than being at home with our father.’

Poor little boys, Tilly thought, her heart twisting with pity. She had seen what losing their mother had done to her own brothers at not much older than Campbell had been. At least she had been there for them, but Campbell had had no such softening influence against his joyless, demanding father.

‘I see now why you’re so competitive,’ she said, as lightly as she could, and he gave her a crooked grin.

‘My brother is a barrister now. He’s worse than me!’

‘Your father must have been proud of you both, even if he didn’t show it. You’ve both been very successful.’

Campbell shrugged. ‘He died when I was in the Marines. Since trying to please him hadn’t got me anywhere, I’d started to rebel and I was heading off the rails. I was lucky the Marines took me,’ he confessed. ‘God knows where I would have ended up otherwise, but I was too much of a maverick to make a successful career in the forces like my father did. I’m not sure even that would have been enough for Dad.’ His mouth twisted in self-mockery. ‘Lisa used to tell me I was still trying to prove myself to him.’

You didn’t need to be married to him to guess that, Tilly thought waspishly. She wasn’t going to give Lisa any points for insight.

Absently, she crumbled a piece of bread, imagining Campbell as a boy, growing into a wild young man, his mother dead, his father distant, driven always by the need to succeed. No wonder he wasn’t good at talking about emotions. Being abandoned by his wife wouldn’t have helped either. Underneath that surface cool, was he as lost as the rest of them?

Her heart cracked for him, but she knew better than to offer pity.

‘My father is disappointed in me, too,’ she offered. ‘He doesn’t think making cakes is a proper job. It doesn’t make enough money, and that’s his only measure of success.’

Campbell wasn’t sorry to change the subject. ‘Have you seen him since your mother died?’

‘We keep in touch,’ said Tilly. ‘We have lunch every now and then, but it’s never very successful. I think it’s because we’re so different, but he thinks it’s because I’ve never forgiven him for leaving Mum. There may be some truth in that, although I know Mum was much happier with Jack than she would have been if Dad had stayed with us.’

‘How old were you when your parents divorced?’

‘Nearly seven,’ she said. ‘My mother kept telling me that my father still loved me, and that his leaving was nothing to do with me, but I didn’t believe her. If he’d loved me, he wouldn’t have left.’

She stopped and cocked her head, as if listening to what she had just said. ‘Hmm, that sounds bitter, doesn’t it? Maybe Dad’s right after all!’

Campbell wasn’t fooled by her bright smile. ‘You stayed with your mother, then?’

‘Yes, I had occasional weekends with Dad, but he was always busy. He got married again, and his new wife went perfectly with the smart, super-successful life he’d always wanted. Unfortunately a tubby little girl who reminded him of his old life just didn’t blend with his décor!

‘It was always a relief to go home,’ Tilly remembered. ‘I loved Jack. He was calm and steady and safe, and I was so happy when my mother married him. Once the twins arrived, it felt like the perfect family.’

She smiled wistfully. ‘I suppose I always hoped that I would meet someone like Jack myself. Instead, as Cleo is always pointing out, I seem drawn to men like Olivier, who are much more like my father. That’s all going to stop, though.’ She put on a resolute air. ‘From now on, I’m only interested in nice, kind men.’

Well, that ruled him out, Campbell thought. No one would ever describe him as nice or kind. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Tilly that she was much too exciting to be content with merely nice and that she would be bored rigid after a week, but he stopped himself just in time.

It wasn’t his business. He was leaving.

Focus on the new job, he told himself. Focus on Lisa and what it’s going to be like seeing her again. But all he could think about was Tilly-warm, desirable, messy Tilly, with the candlelight glowing in her dark blue eyes and the mouth that made his mind go blank.

Campbell had never met a woman so easy to talk to. He liked her spiky, self-deprecating wit and the animation in her face. He liked the smile that lit her up from inside, the glint in her eyes as she teased him. She was never still. She fiddled with the wax dribbling down the candles, or traced invisible patterns on the cloth with her glass. She sat back, and leant forward, folding her arms on the table and just about giving Campbell a heart attack as her cleavage deepened.

‘Let’s get you a taxi,’ he said gruffly when they at last came to leave. Not trusting himself to touch her, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and walked beside her to the taxi rank in silence.

At least they didn’t have to wait. Campbell wasn’t at all sure what that would have done to his self-control. He should have gone with Tilly to see her home himself, but there was no way he could manage sitting in the back seat in the dark without reaching for her.

He leant through the window of the taxi at the head of the rank and handed the driver a note that would more than cover Tilly’s fare. ‘Make sure she gets safely in,’ he said as the driver pocketed it quickly, unable to believe his luck.

‘There’s no need for that,’ Tilly protested. ‘I can get my own taxi.’

‘I know you can, but I’m getting this one.’

Tilly opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again. Campbell’s jaw was set at an angle that suggested she could argue all night and it still wouldn’t make any difference.

‘Well…thank you,’ she said awkwardly instead. ‘And thank you for dinner. It was lovely.’ At least she assumed it had been. Too fixated on trying to keep her gaze from crawling all over Campbell, she could barely remember what she had eaten. Never had she paid less attention to food.

‘I’ll see you soon then.’ Campbell’s voice was brisk, but when their eyes met, the air shortened alarmingly between them.

‘Yes,’ she managed on a gasp.

‘Goodnight, Tilly,’ he said.

‘Goodnight.’

Tilly’s heart was pounding and her legs felt as if they were about to buckle. She badly needed to sit down. Get in the car, her mind screamed at her. Get in the car-now! You’ll regret it if you don’t, you know you will.

So it wasn’t as if she didn’t know what she should do, but somehow Tilly couldn’t move. She couldn’t even drag her eyes from his, so there was no way later she could claim that she had been caught unawares, as her mind was pointing out in no uncertain terms. This is so not a good idea, her mind scolded, but it was too late to back away now and, anyway, Tilly didn’t want to. Her mind might be backing away and moaning no, no, no, but her body was screaming yes, yes, yes!

And her body won.

As if in slow motion, she saw Campbell lower his head towards her, and then his mouth captured hers and sensations Tilly hadn’t even known existed exploded inside her. She parted her lips on a gasp that was part thrill, part alarm at the dizzying loss of control as she felt herself submerge beneath a rush of response. Every cell in her body was clamouring to press closer, taste more, touch again and again and again…

Her arms went round his waist and she leant into him, giddy with the feel of him. His lips were warm and sure as they explored her mouth, his tongue teasing, his hands hard and insistent. He smelt wonderful, tasted better, and she clung to him almost feverishly. He was her solid anchor, her safe harbour, the one point of certainty in a world that was unravelling with electrifying speed, and she kissed him back, oblivious to the waiting taxi, oblivious to anything except the gathering need and the deep, dark pulse of desire inside her.

And then, abruptly, it was over.

Campbell stepped back and opened the taxi door. His jaw was set and a muscle jerked in his cheek, but Tilly was too dazed to take much else in. Somehow she got herself into the back seat of the taxi. Campbell closed the door without a word and the taxi drove off, leaving him standing on the pavement and cursing himself for a fool.