And the Bride Wore Prada (2 page)

‘Yes. Yes, that’s it, exactly.’

‘Here we are, darling ‒ coffee, cream, one sugar.’

Rhys stood before her, holding out a Costa cup.

‘Thank you,’ Nat murmured, and took the cup. ‘While you were gone, Gemma and Dominic went past with a boatload of paparazzi in their wake.’

He grimaced. ‘Glad I missed that.’

‘Oh – where are my manners? Rhys, let me introduce you to... I’m sorry,’ Natalie apologized as she turned back to speak to the woman in the seat next to hers, ‘but I didn’t catch your name—?’

But the seat was empty. The woman with the short brown hair and the laptop was gone.

Natalie frowned, perplexed. ‘That’s odd. She was just here, sitting next to me, chatting. She was very nice. But she’s gone now.’

‘They probably called her flight. Or she went to the loo.’ He sat down and sipped his coffee. ‘The queue at Costa was ridiculous, that’s what took me so long.’

‘I wonder if it’s true?’ Natalie mused as she resumed her seat next to him.

‘If what’s true?’

‘I wonder if Dominic and Gemma are finally getting married? I tried to catch Dom’s eye, but he never noticed me with all the reporters and photographers clustered round.’

‘Is Gemma still engaged to that rock star twit?’

‘Of course she is! Why wouldn’t she be?’

‘I’d hoped she’d come to her senses. Besides, they’ve been engaged for a donkey’s age, haven’t they?’ Rhys observed as he sipped his coffee.

‘Only five months,’ Natalie pointed out, ‘as long as we’ve been married. That’s not so long. And knowing Dominic, I’m sure he’s in no hurry to tie the knot.’

He lifted his brow. ‘Haven’t you talked to Gemma, then? What does
she
say?’

‘Well, that’s just it,’ Natalie admitted, and frowned down at the lid of her coffee. ‘I haven’t spoken to her, really, since she and Dom got engaged.’

It’d been four months since they’d talked, to be exact. Four whole months! Gemma, Rhys’s very capable personal assistant at Dashwood and James, had quit her job shortly after Dominic asked her to marry him. Although Gemma and Natalie had gotten off to a rocky start – Gemma thought Nat was a posh, pampered princess, and Nat thought Gemma was a rude cow – they’d eventually become, if not best mates, at least good friends.

Yet it seemed all that had changed, now.

Gemma, as her father Milo would say, had come right up in the world. She’d gone from being Rhys’s PA (and an underage topless model in
Ladz
magazine) to become Dominic Heath’s now-famous fiancée. Her photograph appeared with equal frequency in the pages of high-end fashion magazines and tabloids. She ran in altogether different circles now – circles that included rock stars, Brazilian models, former Spice Girls, and paparazzi...

...circles that plainly
didn’t
include her any longer, Natalie thought, hurt by Gemma’s exclusion a bit more than she cared to admit.

‘Not put out with you, is she?’ Rhys asked.

‘No!’ Nat said indignantly. ‘Why would she be? I’m sure Gemma’s just...busy, with lots to do now that she’s engaged to Dom.’

‘Yes,’ Rhys said, although he didn’t sound particularly convinced as he opened the latest issue of
Top Gear
he’d bought and began to flick through the pages. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

And as Natalie stood up and went to toss her half-empty coffee cup in the bin, she had to agree – she wasn’t completely convinced, either.

Chapter 2

‘Bloody
hell
, babes – please, no more perfume,’ Dominic Heath grumbled. ‘You’ve bought out the entire duty-free shop as it is! You’re fucking bankrupting me.’

Gemma ignored him and reached for a purple bottle of scent. ‘Ooh, look, it’s your ex-wife’s new scent, Positively Posh!’ She paused to squeeze the atomizer and took an appreciative sniff. ‘It’s nice. It smells like freesias and roses.’

‘It ought to smell like disappointment and an empty wallet,’ Dom retorted, ‘because that’s all I ever had when we were together.’

‘That’s not what Keeley said,’ Gemma pointed out as she put the bottle back on the shelf. ‘She said
you
were always borrowing money from
her
—’

‘Never mind that,’ Dominic cut in, annoyed. ‘Can we talk about something besides my cow of an ex-wife?’

‘Fine.’ She dumped her purchases on the counter in front of the till and fixed him with a gimlet eye. ‘Let’s talk about our wedding, then.’

Dominic let out a long-suffering sigh and handed over his AmEx black card to the clerk at the till. ‘I told you, babes, I’m leaving all that wedding crap up to you.’

‘It’s
your
wedding, too,’ Gemma pointed out, ‘and so I need your input. I mean it, Dom,’ she warned him as she gathered up her purchases and thrust them into his arms, ‘this isn’t only about me, you know. You’re the groom. You have certain responsibilities.’

‘Responsibilities? Like what? I say ‘I do,’ slap a ring on your finger, get bladdered afterwards, and have an X-rated honeymoon with my new bride. Job done.’

‘There’s a bit more to it than that!’ she snapped. ‘There’s the wedding toast, and choosing a best man, and then there’s your boutonnière—’

‘All right, all right,’ he grumbled. ‘No need to go on about it endlessly. We’ll talk about it on the jet.’

Normally, ‘the jet’ referred to Dominic’s private Lear. But since it was side-lined with mechanical problems, they’d been reduced to flying to Inverness for the holidays on a commercial flight. They were flying first class, of course, Gemma consoled herself as she trailed after Dominic into the VIP lounge, but still...it wasn’t the same as having your own private plane, was it?

No. It bloody well wasn’t.

‘And what about our children?’ she added when they were seated in side-by-side, heated massage chairs.

‘Hmm?’ Dom murmured, his eyes half closed and his thoughts lingering on that morning’s Page Three girl.
Candi,
her name was
, and her tits had been very sweet indeed
...

‘I want kids. Two. Possibly three,’ Gemma mused, ‘a girl, a boy, and another girl. Rafaella, I think, and Dylan, and Phoebe.’

‘Dylan? I’m not naming my kid Dylan! That’s a naff name,’ Dominic objected. ‘I’m not wild about Phoebe, either. I’ve got an Aunt Phoebe, and she’s a right bitch.’

‘And we’ll need to get the baby registered for Wetherby as soon as it’s born,’ Gemma went on, oblivious. ‘The waiting list is
miles
long.’

‘What? Is the waiting list so long we’ve got to register the baby for school before it’s even in bloody utero?’ Dominic demanded. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘That’s what we have to do if our baby’s to have a proper education.’

‘Poor little mite. Not even conceived yet, and the wheels are already in motion.’

‘Are you saying I’m wrong to want our baby to have a proper education?’

‘No. I’m just saying that you barely got through the local comprehensive, Gems, and I ‒’ he paused ‘‒ well, I’m not exactly a Man Booker prize candidate, am I?’

‘Maybe not,’ she agreed, ‘but you’re a famous rock singer, with lots of fans and hit records to your credit.’

‘And lots of dosh, too,’ he added with a satisfied smirk. ‘Don’t forget that.’

‘But we don’t know if little Rafaella or Dylan or Phoebe will have your artistic talents, do we? So we need to make sure they receive an excellent education.’

‘I had an excellent education,’ Dom pointed out, ‘and it didn’t do me much good.’

‘That’s because you didn’t apply yourself. And you wanted more out of life than being the next Locksley heir.’

‘True,’ he agreed, and sat up. ‘Well – at least the old man’ll be happy to know he’ll soon have a little heir-in-waiting in the old bun-warmer. He’s always banging on at me and Liam, wanting to know when we plan to produce a grandchild.’

Gemma leant forward and brushed her lips against his. ‘We can get started on making a baby tonight, if you like,’ she murmured, and smiled seductively.

‘How about sooner, babes, like...on the plane?’

Gemma giggled. ‘And tell our little girl or boy that they were conceived in an airplane loo? No!’

‘Why not? We can christen the kid...Lufthansa. Or Ryanair. Or if it’s a girl, EasyJet.’

Gemma slapped his hand away from her thigh. ‘I want our baby to be conceived in romantic surroundings, Dom, in a canopy bed piled with blankets, with a roaring fire in the fireplace, and snow coming down outside... not inside an airline loo, balanced atop a stainless-steel sink with a faucet up my arse.’

‘Every detail can’t always be perfect, you know,’ he grumbled. ‘What’ll you do ‒ post a picture to FacePage before we do the deed? I can see it now: ‘Look, everyone ‒ here’s the bed where Dom and I are about to conceive little Lufthansa’? Or maybe you can add a new relationship status – ‘currently being roundly shagged’?’

‘Oh, do shut up,’ Gemma said crossly as she picked up her mobile and thumbed through her text messages. ‘I’m not
that
bad.’

‘No. You’re worse. You’re obsessed with social media. The only way I can get your attention lately is to send you a bloody text message.’

But Gemma didn’t hear him. She was too busy posting a status update to FacePage to notice.

Thank God they haven’t cancelled the flight
, the woman thought as she shoved her laptop into the already crowded overhead bin and squeezed into the last remaining seat in economy class.
Otherwise I wouldn’t get to Scotland until after Christmas.

She glanced out the window. Snow fell steadily and had just begun to cover the Tarmac. Another hour of this and all flights out of Heathrow would be cancelled.

A family came down the aisle and sat across from her. The mother settled into a seat with her little girl beside her, and her husband sat just in front with their son. The girl had ginger hair and was perhaps nine or ten, complaining about the injustice of being denied a promised sweet. Her brother ignored her and played a game on his father’s mobile phone.

The woman reached for her iPod and earphones. Thank
God
for noise-blocking technology. She had far too much work to be doing to sit here and listen to children complaining and video games beeping and parents shushing their little darlings for two-plus hours.

Still, as she busied herself drafting a few notes on her mobile before the flight attendant asked them to shut off all electronic devices, her glance strayed once again to the girl and her brother. They were cute kids, she thought. For a moment – just for a moment – she allowed herself to imagine having a little ginger-haired girl, or a tow-headed little boy, of her own...

She pressed her lips together and turned her thoughts back to the matter at hand.
Work
. She had plenty to be doing, she reminded herself firmly, and a deadline to meet. She forced her attention back to her mobile screen.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The little girl just behind her was kicking the back of her seat in time as she sang a (very loud) CBeebies song.

She let out a long, aggrieved sigh.

Bloody deadlines. Bloody economy. Bloody
children
.

Chapter 3

‘What d’you mean, you don’t have a hire car?’

Dominic Heath, his face inches away from the man’s standing behind the hire counter, spoke in a deceptively calm voice despite the dangerous glint in his eyes.

The hire agent’s smile was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Heath, but we haven’t a car reserved for you.’

‘Well, get me another one.’

‘Regrettably, we have no other cars available at this time. They’ve all been hired out.’

‘That can’t be,’ Dominic ground out. ‘My agent, Max Morecombe, arranged for a car – along with a driver ‒ for my fiancée and me two weeks ago.’

With a nod and a nervous smile at the rock star and his glowering girlfriend, the agent tapped once again at the keys of his computer. ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ he said a moment later, ‘but I see no reservation under ‘Dominic Heath.’ Did he perhaps arrange it under another name?’

‘Try Rupert Locksley.’

More tapping, more frowning, and another regretful shake of the hire agent’s head followed. ‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’

‘Try “Dr Feckle”. Or “Mr Clyde”.’

The agent looked at him oddly, but nodded and tapped. ‘Erm...no luck with either. Sorry.’

‘Right, then. Get me another car,’ Dominic demanded.

‘As I just explained, sir, there
are
no other cars—’

‘So what the fuck am I supposed to do in the meantime?’ the rock star raged. ‘Sleep in this poxy airport lounge all night? Get me a bloody CAR!’

Natalie, alerted by Dominic’s raised voice as she waited with Rhys to get their hire car, glanced over.

‘Oh, dear,’ she murmured, and touched Rhys’s sleeve. ‘Dom and Gemma seem to be having a problem.’

He followed her glance. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, his expression dour. ‘And I’ve no doubt Dominic
is
the problem. He always is.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Natalie agreed. ‘Just the same, I think I’ll go over and see if I can help.’

Rhys shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Although
I
wouldn’t bother.’

Natalie left and made her way across the crowded floor to the car agency counter. Gemma, her attention focused on finding the perfect wedding gown on her mobile phone, didn’t look up as she approached.

‘Hullo, Dom,’ Nat said warily as she joined him at the counter, ‘what’s wrong?’

He looked up, a scowl on his face. It morphed into surprise as he caught sight of her. ‘Natalie! What are
you
doing here?’

‘Rhys and I are on our way to Loch Draemar to visit Tarquin and Wren. You remember Tark, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, of course I do. He’s that Scottish bloke with the castle and shedloads of money, isn’t he?’

She nodded. ‘He’s invited us to stay for the Christmas holidays. I’m really looking forward to it.’ She glanced over at Gemma, still texting and oblivious to anything around her, and back at Dominic. ‘Why were you shouting just now? What’s wrong?’

‘What’s wrong?’ he echoed. His face darkened. ‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong! This poxy hire car agency doesn’t have a car reserved for Gemma and me. And now there’s not so much as a clown car available for hire, thanks to Max’s screw-up and this bloody blizzard!’