‘You’re told? You haven’t tried it yourself?’
‘No… I prefer a steak as well.’
He’d laughed. A rumble of sound that made Tilly’s toes curl. Suddenly, mere approval wasn’t quite good enough. She wanted to be able to amuse this client again. Intrigue him, even. She wanted him towantto talk to her.
Maybe giving in to the desire to google Angus McLeod had been a mistake. It was only supposed to be something to satisfy her curiosity. Or perhaps she thought that if he was middle-aged and unattractive, she could stop a growing conviction that the perfect man might actually exist.
The kind of man who would be only too happy to slay a dragon or two for the woman he loved. The knight in shining armour. The prince that Tilly had been waiting for since she was six years old and had just watched the Disney version ofCinderellafor the first time. Sophie had shaken her head at Tilly’s determination to wait for The One – the man who was going to come and sweep her off her feet and into the future she dreamed of.
‘There’s no such thing as a perfect man,’ she’d warned. ‘You give up on relationships before they can even get properly started, Tilly. Sometimes you won’t even let them get started, will you?’
‘There’s no point in going down a dead-end road.’
‘You might want to go a little further sometime, though, to be sure that it’s not just a corner you can see. True love doesn’t always come with fluttery bluebirds and butterflies, you know.’
‘You might not see them,’ Tilly had agreed, ‘but they’ll be there on the inside. You can feel them.’
It was her best friend’s voice that shook her back to reality again now as Sophie picked up her phone and came back into view.
‘Just a delivery I had to sign for. One of those new, three-wheeled, all-terrain strollers that will cope with all the cobblestones and stairs when we’re in France. We’re planning a visit very soon. Right… let’s go and see your adorable goddaughter before she’s out of her bath and hopefully ready for her supper and a big sleep.’
Tilly could see that Sophie was heading up the stairs now. She recognised the stunning photographs that her husband, Luc, had captured, hanging in the stairwell. She was in one of them herself, standing with Sophie on her wedding day. They were both laughing as they hugged each other but Tilly knew she’d been so close to tears a moment before, convinced thatthis could be the last wedding they would ever share. Sophie had just confessed that she’d deliberately targeted Tilly, as her bridesmaid, to catch the bouquet that meant she would be the next to get married. The promise that she would help to plan the wedding and the tight hug that followed had been the seal on a friendship they both knew would last forever.
Which was just as well. It was beginning to feel like it might take that long for Tilly to find the man that she could give her heart to, for the rest of her life, without any of the hesitation or doubts that had always derailed relationships in the past.
Sophie sounded a little out of breath as she reached the top of the stairs. ‘So what does the woman this gorgeous Scot is about to propose to look like?’
‘Pff.’ The huff of sound was intended to emphasise how unlikely it was that that woman was anything less than stunning. ‘She probably looks like Marilyn Monroe.’ But Tilly added a shrug. ‘I have no idea. All I know is that her name is Moira, she’s his secretary, she’s never been to the South of France and everything has to be perfect because failure is not an option.’
‘Hesaidthat?’
‘Not exactly. He’s just been um… meticulous about every detail of the planning. He knows exactly what he wants and it ’as to be perfect.’
Sophie muttered something under her breath that might have contained the words ‘control freak’. Then she raised her voice. ‘And he’s going to marry his secretary?’
‘Ouais.’ There was resignation in Tilly’s tone. ‘Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to run my own business. Don’t most people meet the love of their life when they work together?’
But Sophie wasn’t listening again. She had turned her phone around and Tilly found herself looking into a bathroom and promptly forgot the question she’d just asked. She even forgot about the delectable Angus McLeod. Luc was kneeling on thefloor, the sleeves of a very damp shirt rolled up. His daughter was covered in soap bubbles, including a small cone on the top of her head like a medieval hat. She had very red cheeks, was brandishing a yellow duck in one hand and had a huge grin on her face that made Tilly squeak.
‘Ooh– what a beautiful smile,ma puce! Have you got atooth?’
2
‘You’re looking very lovely this evening, Moira.’ Angus McLeod waited until the waiter had filled both their champagne flutes. ‘I love that dress on you.’
He did. He was so used to the neatly fitted shirts tucked into pencil skirts, with a nicely tailored jacket or cardigan on top, that Moira always wore to the office. This dress was lacy and feminine and had short sleeves with enough fabric to drape over her upper arms. The front of the dress crossed over Moira’s breasts, revealing only a very discreet amount of cleavage and the pale grey, almost silver, colour went very well with her vibrant shade of red hair.
‘Thank you.’
Moira was smiling as she lifted her glass of champagne but she didn’t meet Angus’s gaze directly. Instead, she was looking around at the high ceilings, sash windows and parquet floors of this classic Georgian room and the way the chandeliers were making the polished crystal wine glasses and the silver cutlery sparkle against the backdrop of snowy-white tablecloths.
‘I’ve always wanted to come here to The Grand,’ she said. ‘This hotel has always been Edinburgh’s classic posh restaurant,hasn’t it? Where all the super-wealthy and aristocratic people went, back in the day.’
She made it sound as if being traditionally dignified, utterly reliable and a sought-after destination for foodies was somehow completely passé.
‘It’s a little old-fashioned, I guess, but my father always brought me here to celebrate important occasions like birthdays and graduations and?—’
He stopped himself adding ‘engagements’. A quick glance of his own at the other people in the crowded but still intimate-feeling room showed him that they were probably the youngest couple here by several decades. These people were his father’s generation. Had they ever seen him wining and dining the latest in a string of beautiful women who’d attracted his devotion and then broken his heart? Craig McLeod had never learned, had he? As a teenager, Angus had figured out that his father was addicted to that form of madness that being in love created. He just couldn’t help doing it. Again and again.
