Read And the Bride Wore Prada Online

Authors: Katie Oliver

And the Bride Wore Prada (3 page)

BOOK: And the Bride Wore Prada
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Natalie cast an apologetic glance at the hire agent and drew Dominic aside. ‘We’ll just be a moment.’

Gemma, alerted by Dominic’s raised voice, looked up from her texting long enough to see her fiancé having a cosy tête-à-tête with Natalie, his ex-girlfriend.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Natalie,’ she said as she put away her mobile and strode over, ‘what are
you
doing here? I didn’t expect to see you in Scotland.’

‘Obviously not,’ Nat said, and sniffed.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘How could you possibly know what I’m doing, when you haven’t spoken to me in months?’

Gemma had the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘I’ve been busy,’ she said defensively. ‘There’s lots going on.’

‘So much going on that you couldn’t even tell me you’re about to get
married
?’ Natalie hissed.

‘Shh! It’s a secret!’ Gemma hissed back.

They glared at each other.

‘All right, you two,’ Dominic interrupted, ‘do you mind having your hen fest or catfight or whatever the fuck it is some other time? I still have no idea ‒’ he scowled at the man behind the counter ‘ ‒ how we’re getting from here to Northton Grange with No. Bloody. Car.’

Gemma sighed. ‘You’re right, Dom.’ She met Natalie’s eyes. ‘Sorry, Nat, it’s been crazy, it really has. But that’s no excuse to ignore one of your best mates.’

‘It’s okay,’ Nat said. ‘The most important thing right now,’ she added briskly, ‘is to find you both a ride. I’ve an idea ‒ why don’t you come along with us? Rhys is just getting our hire car now. We can take you as far as Loch Draemar, at any rate.’

‘Ooh, would you?’ Gemma said, her expression hopeful. ‘You’d really save our bacon. I don’t fancy sleeping in the airport. Thanks, Nat.’

‘No problem. Wait here, I’ll just go and let Rhys know there’s been a change of plan.’

‘You want to do
what
?’ Rhys hissed after Natalie explained the situation. He cast Dominic, glowering at him from in front of the hire counter, a black look. ‘I don’t want to share our car with that bolshie little shit.’

‘It’s only until we get to Draemar,’ she pointed out reasonably, and added, ‘We can’t very well leave them stranded here at the airport, can we?’

‘Is that a rhetorical question?’ Rhys gritted.

‘Rhys!’

He sighed. ‘Bloody hell! All right, tell them to get their things and come along. I want to get on the A96 as soon as possible, or we’ll never make it to Tarquin’s castle by nightfall.’

The snow came swirling down in thick flakes as the unlikely foursome made their way across the car park to the waiting hire car.

Dominic loaded their luggage into the boot next to Nat and Rhys’s, then climbed into the back seat of the Ford Mondeo alongside Gemma and slammed the door, grumbling under his breath.

‘Have you something to say, Dominic?’ Rhys enquired as he eyed the rock singer balefully in the rear view mirror.

Dominic glared back. But, ‘Thanks for the ride, mate,’ was all he said.

With a grunt, Rhys started the engine, and began their journey down the A96 through the snowy Scottish countryside.

The woman clutched the steering wheel with white-tipped knuckles, her face set in a pale mask of concentration as she manoeuvred the hired Fiat along the ice-slick roads. She forced her attention on the Tarmac, barely visible through the windscreen now under the heavy curtain of snowflakes falling relentlessly down.

Without warning, the wheels lost traction, sliding on a patch of snow-covered ice. With a sharp intake of breath, she gripped the wheel tighter and slammed on the brakes, remembering as she did that you were meant to tap the brakes gently and turn into the skid, not against it; but it was already too late.

The car veered sideways. Panicked, she tried to regain control, but the Fiat slid off the road, down an embankment and into a snowdrift-covered ditch.

She let out a piercing scream.

The lorry was huge, and came hurtling straight at them in the rain. Headlights loomed, blinding their faces as each of the drivers twisted the wheel in a futile, too-late attempt to avoid a head-on collision.

The horrific shriek of metal shearing and glass shattering was the last sound she heard before the impact threw her from the car.

Her screams still echoed in her ears as she lifted trembling hands away from her face. The windscreen was covered now in white; the wipers had stopped working, frozen into immobility.
Must get out
, she thought disjointedly, her heart doing odd things in her chest.
Can’t stay in the car.
Carbon monoxide poisoning, blocked tailpipes...runaway lorries
...

She struggled to open the door, shoving it back against a pile of snow until she was able to wedge herself out of the car on trembling legs. She groped for a pair of mittens in her coat pocket and pulled them on. Cautiously she edged round the front of the car to inspect the damage, clutching at the fender, when she heard the driver’s door swing shut behind her with a thud of finality.

And as it shut, she realized her keys were still in the ignition, and her purse and her laptop were still on the passenger seat...and the bloody Fiat was bloody
locked
.

Oh,
fuck
. What do to? She was alone in the middle of a blizzard somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, with a car she couldn’t get into and only a threadbare puffa jacket and a pair of mittens – already sodden ‒ to keep her warm.

She stood and clutched at her elbows as a wave of unadulterated panic washed over her. Her mobile phone, locked away in her handbag in the car, was useless, as was any hope of calling someone to come and rescue her.

Why, why,
why
hadn’t she listened to the nice man at the hire car counter in Inverness and waited the storm out in a nearby hotel?

Because you never listen
, she told herself,
you
never
bloody listen
.

Grimly she pulled her jacket collar closer against her chin and trudged forward through the snow – because what else was she to do?

There was nothing for it but to walk, to follow the snow-covered sliver of Tarmac and keep moving.

She’d slogged through the snow for perhaps ten minutes when she glimpsed a house – no, it looked like a bloody
castle
– looming up ahead, half hidden by the snow and the trees. Her fingers were numb and she couldn’t feel her legs beneath her. Was she really seeing a castle, she wondered, or was she having some sort of...of snow hallucination?

You go to sleep, don’t you
, she thought,
just before you freeze to death
?

The snow was intermingled now with a sharp, icy rain, and she stumbled forward for several more minutes, grown slow and stupid with the cold. She thought she saw a stone cottage a few yards ahead. Or was it, too, a figment of her snow-fevered imagination?

It was a gatehouse of some sort, she realized dazedly, and thank God there was a light on inside.

She didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the tears, frozen on her face. Something under the snow – a fallen tree trunk or a rock – made her stumble. With a cry she fell hands-first into a snowdrift as her ankle gave way and twisted beneath her. Now her trousers were as sodden and wet as her gloves and her ankle began to throb. She shivered and dragged herself back up, then staggered, wincing with pain, towards the door.

‘Help,’ she croaked as she pounded weakly on the door, ‘someone let me in, please...’

Chapter 4

‘I saw the sweetest family at Heathrow,’ Natalie ventured an hour later. The atmosphere in the Mondeo, she couldn’t help but notice, was decidedly tense.

Dominic said nothing and glowered out the window. Rhys, his jaw set, was silent as he focused on navigating the slippery, snow-covered road.

And Gemma was too busy texting and posting on her mobile phone to notice anything – or anyone – around her.

Desperate to lighten the mood, Nat added, ‘This family had a little girl and a little boy. The girl was put out because she wanted an ice lolly. In this weather! Can you imagine? Isn’t that too funny?’

Evidently no one else thought it was funny, or even particularly interesting, as no one bothered to respond. Natalie gave up and subsided with a sigh into silence.

‘I’ll say this much,’ Rhys observed grimly a moment later. ‘It’s bloody treacherous out here.’

Nat leant forward and touched his arm. ‘Will we make it safely to Loch Draemar, do you think?’ she asked in a low voice. Anxiety etched her face.

‘We should do,’ he allowed, his words cautious as he kept his eyes on the windscreen, ‘barring no unforeseen surprises, like an accident or an engine malfunction—’

He’d no sooner uttered the words when a stag leapt out of the surrounding forest and slid to a stop before them, legs wildly cartwheeling, blocking the road. With a startled curse, Rhys wrenched the wheel sideways to avoid hitting the animal.

Natalie gasped. Gemma shrieked. And Dominic snarled, ‘What the fuck are you
doing
up there, Gordon? You made me lose my place in the latest issue of
Luxury Car Gear
.’

Rhys shot him a murderous glare. ‘I’m driving, in the event you hadn’t noticed, in a bloody blizzard, whilst trying to avoid the very large
elk
that just leapt in front of us.’

‘Oh.’ Dominic peered ahead. ‘Well, try not to kill us all in the process, if you don’t fucking mind.’

‘It’s you I’d like to kill,’ Rhys growled, ‘you poxy, ungrateful little shit—’

‘Ooh, look!’ Natalie exclaimed, anxious to de-escalate the hostilities as she clutched at Rhys’s sleeve. ‘Our friend’s leaving.’

It was true. The elk, having decided that the car and its occupants were of less interest than the prospect of food, turned and, with a dip of his majestic, antlered head, leapt back into the nearby woods and disappeared.

‘Could we get on with it, please?’ Dominic demanded. ‘I’d like to get to the village before nightfall. Gem and I still need to find a hotel room, you know.’

‘Perhaps,’ Rhys said, his voice dangerously calm, ‘you’d like to drive?’

‘Not my hire car, is it?’ Dominic fired back. ‘I can’t drive it, as I’ve got no liability. Sorry, mate.’

Rhys pressed his lips together. It was only Natalie’s whispered reminder that Dominic
so
wasn’t worth spending the night in a Scottish gaol that kept him from shoving the gearshift right up the rock star’s skinny little arse.

And Gemma, who’d returned once again to her texting and posting and uploading, took no notice of any of them.

Helen’s feeble knocking finally alerted someone inside the cottage, and the door swung open. She was vaguely aware of a man who helped her stumble inside, and the moment he led her to a sofa in front of a deliciously warm fire and threw a quilt over her, she fell into a deep and exhausted sleep.

She dreamt of shattering glass and overturned lorries and headlights rushing straight at her, and she heard the sound of her own screams echoing in her head...

With a start she woke up. ‘Where am I?’ she muttered, disoriented. She didn’t recognize the stone fireplace, its maw blackened and its mantel hewn of wood, or the floor lamp with its tasselled shade. Her ankle throbbed dully.

A man knelt down, his voice gruff as he said, ‘Be glad you’re not out there. Worst blizzard in five years.’

‘Who ‒ who are you?’ she asked.

She stared at him, mesmerized. He was a giant...a scowling, dark-ginger-haired giant with a dark-ginger beard who might have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, one about woodsmen and children who foolishly nibbled on houses made of candy...

‘The groundskeeper.’ He offered no further information. ‘And who are you?’

‘Helen,’ she said after a moment. ‘My car hit an icy patch and slid off the road at the bottom of the drive.’

‘It’s nae a night to be driving.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ she responded, suddenly defensive, ‘but I had no choice.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m working. I have responsibilities. Deadlines. Things I can’t put off until the weather improves.’ She paused and added, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Colm.’

She pushed herself up, wincing as pain shot through her foot with the movement. ‘Have you an aspirin? I think I may have turned my ankle.’

He said nothing, but straightened with a grunt and disappeared into the kitchen. Judging from the sound of banging pots and water running and cabinets opening and closing, he must be making tea. She
hoped
he was making tea. She’d kill for a cup of strong, hot Earl Grey right now.

Five minutes later she heard the kettle whistle, and the clatter of china and silverware. He returned in a moment with a tray in hand, laden with mugs, spoons, and pots of demerara sugar and cream...and a couple of aspirin.

There was even, she was surprised to note, a plate set out with a lemon wedge.

He put the tray down on the coffee table and glanced up. ‘How d’you take yer tea?’

‘Lemon, lots of sugar. No cream,’ she answered, and waited as he ladled in three heaped spoons of sugar, plonked in the lemon wedge, and stirred the lot with a spoon.

He thrust the mug at her.

‘Thank you.’ Gingerly she took it, and had a sip. She closed her eyes in ecstasy. It was the most perfect cup of tea she’d ever tasted, and she told him so.

In answer, he grunted.

Not exactly a candidate for a London talk show, then,
she thought uncharitably. ‘Where is this place?’ she asked, curious.

‘Draemar. Loch Draemar, to be exact.’

She’d never heard of it. ‘Ah. And who owns the castle on the hill?’

His eyes came to rest on hers. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘What is this, twenty questions?’ Irritation coloured her voice. ‘I’ve told you, my name is Helen. Why won’t you answer my question?’

He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Why d’ye need to know?’

My God, but he’s the most suspicious man I’ve ever met
, Helen thought. She reined in her annoyance and said calmly, ‘I’m on my way to Northton Grange. Do you know it?’

‘I do. There’s naught there but a church and a cemetery. And a rock star’s estate.’ He said this last with contempt.

BOOK: And the Bride Wore Prada
3.81Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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