“It’s my cousin’s wedding next weekend, and my mother wants to pair me off with this dreadful man she knows because she doesn’t want me to be on my own. She’s a meddler.”
Tom laughed. “I’m sure she means well.”
“She does. But she’s still a meddler. I just got out of a long relationship before I moved here, you see, and…” Carole caught herself, certain her neighbour didn’t want to hear about any of this ridiculous melodrama. “I won’t bore you with the details.”
“You’re not boring me,” Tom said quickly. “Listen, you might not believe this, but I think I’m in the same situation right now as you are.”
Carole frowned. “What do you mean?”
“My ex, Lucy, is getting married in a few weeks’ time. Evie, that’s Lucy’s daughter, was telling me while we were baking earlier that her mother was sorting out the seating arrangements for the wedding reception and has sat me beside a woman who Lucy knows from work.” Tom grimaced. “Her name is Claire and she’s quite, er, full-on, and I really,reallydon’t want to end up sitting beside her at the meal.”
Carole nodded in understanding. “It sounds like we’re both in the same predicament.”
“Exactly. Which was why I was wondering…”
He trailed off and gave her a nervous look before continuing. “Well, this idea just popped into my head when I heard you talking on the phone, and feel free to tell me it’s a terrible idea if you’re not keen, but… maybe we could be each other’s plus-ones for these weddings?”
Carole took a second to register what he was saying. Her wide-eyed silence prompted him to keep talking, faster this time.
“Look, I know we hardly know each other, and you only just moved into your house, and the last thing you’re probablythinking about is dating your new neighbour, but thisdefinitelywouldn’t be a date, not even remotely close to a date, it’d just be?—”
“—two desperate people helping each other out of dire straits,” Carole finished for him with a smile.
Tom’s bashful expression shifted into one of relief. “Exactly! You don’t want to be paired off with the plus-one your mother is trying to set you up with, and I don’t want to end up stuck with this Claire person slobbering all over me all night. She’s already told Lucy that she’s interested in me, but I’m not remotely interested in her, and she isn’t the sort of woman who’d let that sort of minor detail get in her way. I need a plus-one as a human shield.”
Carole laughed at the mental image he’d conjured and pictured herself at Tom’s side, her presence helping to repel the woman’s unwanted overtures.
And it was true that she, too, needed a plus-one as human shield—to fend off her mother’s matchmaking efforts, yes, but also as a crutch to lean on now that she knew Steven Weaver would be at the wedding.
It occurred to her to mention her old flame to Tom, but if she brought him up it would just make her sound even more pathetic than she already felt. Tom had overheard her begging unsuccessfully on the phone for a wedding date to avoid being paired off by her mother. That was mortifying enough, without adding that the only man who’d ever broken her heart would also be at the wedding, and that she wanted a man on her arm when the time came to face him after all these years.
She decided to debrief Tom on all that stuff later, not while they were chattering over the garden fence. She had to preserve at least some dignity.
What mattered right now was that she had a solution to her awful problem, and she intended to grab it with both hands.
“Okay, Tom, I’ll be your human shield if you’ll be mine,” she told him.
Tom let out a breath of obvious relief. “Brilliant! Thank you. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
“Same here. I’ve got enough going on right now, unpacking and sorting out this place,” Carole said, gesturing to her house, “without having to dig around for someone to take pity on me and agree to come with me to this wedding, which, I’m ashamed to say, I’d completely forgotten all about until about half an hour ago.”
“Right, let’s get our details straight,” Tom said, pulling out his phone. “When and where is your wedding?”
“Next Saturday. The ceremony is at one o’clock at a little church over in Petersfield, that much I do recall, but I can’t remember where the reception is being held. I’ll get back to you with the details.”
Tom tapped on his phone while she spoke. “Okay, that’s in my calendar so my boss at work can’t rope me into any new commitments or work trips.”
Carole realised she had no idea what Tom did for a living. In fact, she knew next to nothing about him at all, and yet here she was, swapping wedding plus-one details with him. It should’ve been odd, but the open warmth in his expression as he shared the date and time of his wedding commitments with her made her feel nothing but comfortable about agreeing to all this.
“So, at least we’ll get all this out the way quite quickly,” Tom said, once they’d swapped wedding details. “Your cousin’s wedding is next weekend, and my ex’s wedding is two weeks after that, and then you’ll be shot of me.”
Carole laughed. “If nothing else, it’ll be a nice chance for us to get to know each other better, now that we’re neighbours.”
“You’re right,” Tom said. “And it’s a huge a relief knowing I’ve got a date for this wedding with absolutely no strings attached.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Carole smiled and gestured to her paint-splattered clothes. “Listen, now that I’ve averted a wedding date disaster, I should get back to cleaning my paint brushes.”
Tom nodded and stepped back from the fence. “Good luck with the work.”
