Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (138 page)

‘Yeah, I got that.’ He helped me with the final knot. ‘You just can’t let a guy have a plan, can you?’

‘I’ve already told Jenny.’ I tried a little smile and it almost stuck. ‘You can’t ask Santa for a visa. He doesn’t have any pull with immigration.’

‘She tells me you don’t need any help any more.’ He was still kneeling in front of me, still close enough to kiss. ‘This whole magazine thing sounds amazing. I’m so proud of you.’

‘Yeah, I think it’s going to work,’ I said. It was too weird that something so epic had happened in my life and he didn’t know about it. ‘And they’re going to sponsor my new visa, so you’re totally off the hook.’

Alex took a deep breath and held my hand again. ‘What if I don’t want to be off the hook?’

I smiled. This time it was a real one. ‘Well, you’re not getting rid of me that easily. As much as I’ve enjoyed sleeping on an air mattress at Jenny’s, I would really like to come home.’

‘Yeah, but what if you didn’t just come home?’ Alex shuffled around until he was on one knee. On one knee and holding my hand.

‘You don’t want me to come home?’ I was suddenly very confused. And the woman at the side of me was getting very excited.

‘OK, how about I give you this and you understand what I’m talking about?’ He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a small black velvet box.

My eyes widened to the approximate size of the moon and I instinctively slapped his arm. Quite hard.

‘Not entirely the reaction I was looking for.’ He pressed his lips together, cleared his throat and looked up at me. I had suddenly been overcome by a severe case of acute Tourettes and concentrated on trying to keep my mouth shut. ‘Angela Clark, since I met you, you’ve been nothing but trouble. Within a week of having you in my life your friend threw up on my couch, you didn’t put out for, like, ever, and every time you leave the state it’s one drama after another.’

I slapped him again. ‘I hope you’re going somewhere better with this.’

‘And you’re a total wife beater.’ He rubbed his injuries. ‘But I’ve also heard that you won a ton of money on the slots in Vegas, so that cancels that out.’

‘Phew.’ I looked up at the Christmas tree behind us and back down at Alex, wrinkling my nose to try to keep my tears at bay. ‘Go on. Say nice things now.’

‘And I know you won’t believe me now you’re some super-important publishing-type person with all of Vegas’s riches at your fingertips, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while.’ He handed me the box and nodded. ‘In my family, we get to open one present each on Christmas Eve.’

‘God, I hate when people do that.’ I really did. ‘It ruins Christmas morning, it—’

‘Will you please just shut up and open it?’ Alex said with some frustration. ‘It’s very cold and my knee hurts.’

‘You old romantic,’ I muttered, flipping open the box. For the first time that day, I was happy I wasn’t wearing an elasticated waist. Things like this did not happen to someone wearing pyjama jeans. I gasped. Inside the tiny velvet box was a beautiful emerald ring. A cushion-shaped solitaire set in a white band studded with tiny diamonds. All the lights of the Rockefeller Christmas tree reflected in them, making a rainbow. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘Yeah,’ Alex agreed. ‘Right?’

I finally managed to tear my eyes away from the ring and looked at him.

‘You can’t possibly expect me to wear this and not lose it?’ I was entirely serious.

‘I do expect you to wear it and I kind of expect you to lose it,’ he shrugged. ‘I had it insured.’ Alex slipped the ring out of the box and took my left hand in his and slid the ring onto my finger. Woah. So this was why Jenny had made me have a manicure. That sneaky cow.

‘I got it in Japan. We were walking around this vintage store and they had a bunch of really old jewellery. I saw this and I just knew. I saw it and I saw you and I saw me and I saw everything,’ he explained. ‘And I did my homework. Emeralds are associated with stability and balance as well as love, creativity and communication. So it seemed like the right way to go.’

‘You’ve had this since Japan?’ I asked. It was beautiful. Everything was so beautiful.

‘Yep.’ He curled my fingers closed and kissed my hand. ‘So, how do you feel about opening your Christmas present early?’

‘I don’t have yours.’ There was no point trying to stop the tears now, so I let them come.

‘I found the guitar under the sofa,’ Alex admitted. ‘I totally looked.’

‘Did you like it?’

‘It has Batman on it.’

I paused, breath bated.

‘I loved it.’

I knew it. Truly, we were soulmates. ‘In that case, I accept my present.’

Alex smiled. I smiled. He nudged himself closer and pressed his forehead against mine. ‘Angela Clark,’ he whispered. ‘Will you marry me?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, kissing him hard. Alex wrapped his hands in my hair and I rubbed my fingers over my new ring, PDA Nazis be damned. Behind Alex, the lights of the Christmas tree blurred with my tears and somewhere I could hear a choir singing. OK, so it was a hip-hop reinterpretation of ‘Frosty the Snowman’ and not choirs of angels, but this was New York. I felt his lips curving happily against mine and I knew this was how it was meant to be.

‘Now go and get my boots back from Erin – my feet are freezing.’

‘Jesus, woman.’ He pulled my hair and kissed me again. ‘Are you going to be this difficult once we’re married?’

I think we both knew the answer to that.

Top of my Christmas card list this year is … Rowan Lawton, the best agent & tour buddy a gal could wish for. Everyone at HCUK, especially Lynne, Thalia and Hana. I’m sorry I’ve taken so many years off your lives. Thanks to everyone at Marie Claire for the amazing opportunities you’ve given me this year, especially Charlotte, Andrea and my twinsie, Kasie. And of course, a special thank you to Holly Patrick and Elinor Fewster – fag and a mag, anyone?

Without Sarah Donovan, I would never have made it through Vegas alive and without Jackie Dunning, Emma Ingram, Della Bolat, Sarah Benton, Kari Torson, Janet Bunde, Beth Ziemacki and Rachael Wright, I wouldn’t make it through every day alive.

So, you know, thanks kids.

I Heart London

Della, Beth, Sarah, Jacqueline, Ryan, Emma and Rachael.

People always ask me who my Jenny is and I tell them I’m lucky because I don’t actually have one, I have all of you … I would absolutely take your diaphragm out if I had to.

Not you, Ryan.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ I babbled as I ran into the Gloss magazine office, unbuttoning my top as I pushed the door open with my arse. ‘I had a Jenny emergency and lost my shoes and couldn’t get a cab, and how come it’s so hot today? Oh and my shirt is covered in crap but I think I left a T-shirt here so—’

‘Ms Clark.’

My blouse was halfway over my head and my arms were tangled upwards in a dying swan when I heard someone who most certainly was not Delia Spencer say my name. The reason I knew it was not my colleague and friend Delia Spencer was because it was a man’s voice. And it was one I had heard before.

‘Mr Spencer?’ I peeped through a buttonhole to see Delia’s grandfather, owner of Spencer Media and ultimately my boss, leaning against Delia’s desk with a very grim look on his face. Behind him, Delia sat in her squishy leather chair biting her lip and trying not to laugh. Neither of them seemed terribly impressed by my bra. It wasn’t one of my best.

‘How lovely to see you,’ I said, trying to pull my shirt back down over my head as casually as possible before offering Mr Spencer a handshake and a dazzling smile. ‘I’m very sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. Then he stood up, ignoring my hand, and walked straight into our tiny meeting room. ‘I understand you had an emergency and are covered in crap.’

‘And I lost my shoes,’ I whispered to Delia with a wince.

‘Happy Monday,’ she whispered back, following her grandfather into the meeting room. ‘Jenny emergency? What threat level are we on there?’

‘Orange? Maybe even a lovely reddish coral. She’s losing it. I had to intervene.’

‘As long as she’s OK now,’ Delia gave me a sympathetic look and opened the door to the meeting room. ‘There’s a spare sweater on my chair. It doesn’t have any crap on it.’

Delia had enjoyed my BFF, Jenny’s downward spiral as much as anyone over the last few months. It had been six months since she’d broken up with her ex-ex and since then she’d been doing a fine job of ruining her life. That or she was auditioning for a role on the next Jersey Shore. I hoped that was it, she was definitely going to need a new job soon if she didn’t sort herself out.

‘Perfect,’ I muttered to myself, hurriedly changing shirts and checking out my blouse for permanent damage. ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’

‘So the launch phase will take place in Q three so we can be out for fashion week, with Gloss on limited availability in New York,’ I said, as confidently as I could. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Delia nodding confirmation. Directly in front of me, Mr Spencer, my boss, formerly known as Bob, was not nodding. He was sipping coffee and fixing me with a gaze so steely I was fairly certain it could cut through a tin can. I concealed a tiny squeak and clicked onto the final slide of my PowerPoint presentation. Oh yes, I was a PowerPoint person now. ‘Once we’re out there and have established a solid audience, we’ll launch on the West Coast in Q four, and then, Q one, we go nationwide with a long-term view to international expansion in Q three the following year.’

I was incredibly proud of myself. After a less than promising beginning, I’d got through all my slides without cocking up and I hadn’t spilled a single thing down Delia’s jumper. Things were looking up. Now all we needed was Mr Spencer’s go-ahead and we were quite literally in business. I attempted my best Wheel of Fortune pose in front of the drop-down screen and gave my audience of two a dazzling smile. I was ninety-nine percent certain I looked deranged, but still, Bob was pulling his concentrated face and Delia hadn’t kicked me yet, so I took that as a win.

‘Interesting,’ Mr Spencer said. ‘Very interesting.’

Once upon a time, Mr Spencer and I had been best buds – he had brunched with me at Pastis, offered me dream jobs in Paris. We were total besties − but then I might or might not have accidentally called his granddaughter and Delia’s identical twin sister, Cici, several very colourful and slightly unflattering names in an email and, well, punched her in the face at Christmas. After that, we sort of drifted apart. He’d given Delia and me a chance to get Gloss going, we had a small office in the Spencer Media building and some office equipment, and he had reluctantly agreed to support my visa application, but that was where it ended. There was no free ride in the Spencer family. Not if you saddled yourself with a foul-mouthed British girl who knocked out a member of your family at a Christmas party while dressed like a slutty Santa. It was a long story, but Cici totally had it coming. Delia agreed. Often. I didn’t have a sister but if I did, I’d want one like Delia. Kind, thoughtful and cleverer than anyone who had ever been on The Apprentice. I did not want one like Cici. She was the Ursula to her Ariel, the coffee cream to her hazelnut whirl. Pure evil. But she was out of the picture. At least she hadn’t actively tried to ruin my life for the last couple of months so that was nice. It was just as well, I had been busy.

At last, we were ready to go. We had a killer dummy issue, we had a business plan that made sense, we had writers on standby, we even had a retailer lined up to distribute for us. We just needed advertisers. And to get advertisers, we had to get Grandpa Bob to include us in the annual Spencer Media sales conference. Delia was convinced it was a lock, but I wasn’t so sure. Yes, he’d stayed all the way through our presentation without nipping out to the loo or anything. And he’d only picked up his iPhone once; and there was no way he’d been on it long enough to be playing Fruit Ninja. Unless he was very good. Which he probably was.

‘So you have a retailer on board?’ he asked Delia.

‘Trinity,’ she confirmed. ‘As you know, the second largest women’s fashion retailer in the US.’

‘And you’ll be distributing through them directly?’ he asked Delia again.

‘We will,’ she nodded.

‘And is she actually barefoot?’ He cocked his head in my direction.

Ohhhh.

‘She is,’ Delia confirmed. ‘But she’s also a very good writer, a fantastic creative planner and an absolute asset to your company.’

I tried not to blush. Shucks.

‘Even if she is a little eccentric.’

I couldn’t really argue with that. Even if it did take the edge off her original compliment.

‘I know I’m going to regret asking,’ Bob said finally, turning to face me, ‘but what did happen to your shoes?’

‘Well, I was at my friend Jenny’s house −’ As soon as I opened my mouth I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop − ‘and I’d been borrowing her shoes, but she was just a big drunken weeping mess and she made me take them off—’

‘You don’t have shoes of your own?’ Bob interrupted. ‘I don’t follow …’

‘Maybe if we just deal with questions about the magazine right now?’ Delia suggested. ‘And let Angela’s shoe situation resolve itself. Do you have any questions about the business plan?’

Bob looked at Delia, at me, and then his phone. ‘No. It was very clear and concise.’

Delia beamed. ‘Any questions about the creative?’

‘None at all. You know more about that market than I do.’

‘So any questions at all?’ She straightened the collar on her sky-blue shirtdress. ‘Now’s the time to ask them, Grandpa.’

The stately, grey-haired media magnate leaned forward and rested his elbows on our glass conference table. ‘In all honesty, Delia, I just really want to know why she isn’t wearing shoes.’

Delia sat back, rubbed her forehead and gave me a quick, sharp nod.

‘So …’

‘That wasn’t scary at all,’ I said, spinning round and round in my office chair after Bob had left the office. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘It’s fine.’ Delia stretched her yoga-toned arms high above her head. ‘He’s going to say yes. There’s no reason for him not to. I have a good feeling.’