Save the Last Dance (25 page)

That was why she and Coreen had been struggling to come
up with a collection of outfits that would work for the show. Over the weekend they'd inspected all their stock thoroughly, teaming up accessories with clothes, putting aside those they knew they wanted for the show. But the outfits they'd earmarked seemed to have no common thread. Seeing them individually would be great, but if they were to go down a catwalk together it would seem like a total mish-mash.

In short, they needed a theme.

There were pages of scribbles, where Jennie had obviously brainstormed ideas with herself, but she'd come up with nothing solid. In fact there seemed to be an awful lot of doodles of love hearts, wedding rings, and the details of a flight to Las Vegas. Not Alice's dream wedding venue—but each to their own…In recent days, it was obvious Jennie's mind had not been on the job.

Thinking of bright lights and big names, an idea popped into Alice's mind.

Old Hollywood glamour.

A mix of old and new, extravagance and elegance—just like Cameron's wonderful building. And it fitted Jennie's plans for a thirties feel for the evening—she'd already booked a big band and some swing dancers before disappearing over the Atlantic in a haze of true love. Oh, yes. This was
perfect
. She got on the phone to Coreen straight away, and they spent the whole evening in Coreen's lounge sorting through stock.

Now they had an over-arching idea it would be easy to hunt for outfits and place them in collections. Each mini-collection would then make a smaller section of the fashion show. They hatched a plan to show each collection and then auction those pieces off before carrying on with the next one.

Once they started thinking evening wear, day wear, and different eras, Alice's love of old movies came in handy and she
suggested film title themes for each part of the show. As she and Coreen drank wine and sorted through clothes, they settled on a shortlist of five:
Roman Holiday
would be all printed fifties cottons, full skirts and summer wear.
Some Like It Hot
would show off evening dresses, sequins, tight skirts and high heels.
Pillow Talk
would contain vintage lingerie—corsets, babydoll nightdresses and silk slips that these days many women bought to wear as cocktail dresses.
Casablanca
would be boxy jackets and high-waisted trousers, wool knits and kid gloves. And, last but not least, Coreen's favourite:
Rebel Without a Cause.
She was practically salivating at the thought of male models in soft blue jeans and leather jackets.

And it was precisely as they began discussing models that they realised they'd hit a bit of a brick wall. The market fashion shows were really a bit of fun to help sell the clothes, using people's relatives and a few of the more eager wannabees from one of the local performing arts schools. Now they'd seen Jennie's plans and Cameron's atrium, they knew they needed professionals.

Alice scurried home and checked out Jennie's files again. Booking models wasn't a problem; Jennie had made a shortlist of agencies. But as Alice picked up the phone to ring them on Wednesday morning, she froze mid-way through dialling the first number.

Just
where
was she going to hold a ‘go-see' for these models? In the last two days her tiny rented bedroom had become a makeshift office, and was now mostly buried under bits of paper, hanging rails and boxes of clothes. Now when she fell into bed at night she had to scoop a whole load of mess off of her bed and dump it on her desk. The next morning she scooped it right up again and threw it back on the bed. She could hardly phone up the modelling agencies and ask them to send
a steady stream of girls and boys to 27b Laburnham Terrace, so they could tramp up the narrow stairs and parade around in her boxroom. What sort of impression would
that
create?

She put her mobile on the only titchy free bit of space on her desk and stared at it. There was only one thing she could think of doing. Phoning Cameron. And she really, really didn't want to do that.

How could she face him again after the site meeting? Thank goodness she'd recovered a little when she'd seen the building and realised all the possibilities for the ball. She'd been able to block all the stupidity out for a while and talk sense. A shudder rippled through her as she remembered how she'd suddenly got all clumsy and wordless. She'd practically been drooling, for heaven's sake! No wonder she had no desire to repeat the humiliation.

Yes, okay, she knew they'd see each other again on the fourteenth—the night of the ball—but until then she'd hoped to keep things completely to e-mail. She'd already sent him a few lengthy updates, keeping him abreast of everything, preempting any more unexpected phone calls.

Why?

There was no point hiding from it. She'd got the hots for Cameron Hunter, and she'd got them bad. Which was a disastrous idea. She needed to be cool and professional to make a success of this project. Being so far out of her comfort zone, she was practically on a different planet.

She rested her elbows unevenly on top of some notebooks strewn across her desk and put her head in her hands. It was probably just some subconscious reaction to being recently dumped. Something to do with feeling on the shelf and unattractive. Just a subconscious thing.

And a physical thing. Definitely a physical thing.

Which was why she was aiming to keep being in the same room as him to a minimum. Perhaps then she'd have time to gather herself together. By the time the fashion show and the ball came around she'd be over it, and far too busy organising things on the night to even speak to him. And he'd be too busy mixing with the great and good on the guest list to want to talk to her. No, if she kept her distance, it would all work out fine.

But then there was the voice…

Log fires were so yesterday. Today's trend was
furnaces
. Every time he'd opened his mouth on their tour of the building she'd felt a fire lick the soles of her feet, and it had travelled up and up and up until her ears had burned and she'd been sure he'd notice the heightened colour in her cheeks.

Hence the e-mails. E-mails were good. E-mails didn't require her to stop listening to the actual words and just drift away on the warm, earthy sound of his voice…

Alice's eyes had slid shut and she snapped them open.
Stop it
! She picked up a bright yellow folder from her desk and fanned herself down with it. Was twenty-eight too young to be having hot flushes?

Now she thought about it there
was
a problem with the e-mails—the replies. When they arrived, and she read Cameron's sharp, concise verdict on her notes, she couldn't help picturing him standing on that balcony, standing so close to her that she'd been able to smell his clean, unfussy aftershave, close enough to see those warm flecks in his dark eyes. And that led to thinking about his rare, show-stopping smiles, and then her pulse would start to get all silly.

So, whichever way she looked at it, she was in big trouble. In which case she might as well just stop sitting here daydreaming, pick up the phone and get it over and done with.

In a minute, anyway. She'd just look at her notes first.

She booted up her laptop. Her fingers were hovering over the keyboard when her phone rang. Her heart did a sickening lurch, as if it had tripped over its toes and gone tumbling down the stairs. She stared at it.

It was a number she didn't recognise.

Answer it, you fool!

What? Oh, right.

‘Hello?'

‘Hello, Alice.'

Whoomp.
The furnace rushed into life.

‘Hi, Cameron! I got the stuff you sent over.' Great. She'd been aiming to sound like a calm, professional woman and instead she'd got closer to Minnie Mouse.

‘Were those files any help?' he asked, a slight tinge of desperation in his voice.

She spread the sheets out on her desk and frowned. ‘I've only been able to leaf through so far, but Jennie seems to have a lot of the details covered. I suspect she may have booked musicians and caterers already, but I'll have to ring and check.'

Cameron made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a relieved sigh. ‘Good. I'm glad it's not a complete disaster. Is there anything I can do to help?' he asked, and she took a deep breath and told herself to behave.

She explained about the models—the casting session, the lack of a suitable venue.

‘We'll do it here,' he said, before she'd finished her last sentence. ‘In fact I should have thought of the fact that you'd need space, an office…'

‘But I've got—'

‘You can have space here. There's a spare office in my suite, and you can use the meeting room for casting the models.'

Alice's face crumpled into a look of utter despair. ‘Really,
there's no need for an office. Just the meeting room would be fine. I can do the rest from—'

‘It makes sense for you to be on hand. That way I can answer any queries immediately, approve things quickly, and you can stop flooding my inbox with charts and pages of notes.' It was only the faint edge of humour in that last comment that stopped her flinging the phone down on him.

What was it about this man that made it impossible to say no to him? It was like having an argument with a steamroller. One minute you were standing your ground, pleading your case, and the next you were flat on the floor, agreeing to everything he said and wondering what had hit you. If she was going to manage to work with him on this party—this
extravaganza,
as she was now beginning to think of it—she was going to have to start giving as good as she got, even if no one else seemed to do it.

She'd seen the way everyone at the building site had behaved around him. It was,
Yes, Mr Hunter…No, Mr Hunter.
Well, maybe not
no
. She hadn't actually heard anyone be brave enough to utter that word in his presence.

But she had an advantage his employees didn't have.

None of his staff had seen him playing ridiculous party games. That Christmas, after they'd escaped from the party, they'd eventually been discovered and told off for not joining in. His staff hadn't seen him trying to pass an orange to Aunty Barb with the thick foundation. It had been cringeworthy and hilarious all at the same time. Cameron had screwed up his face and desperately tried not to get smudged with make-up that was almost as bright as the fruit under his chin. He had failed miserably.

She'd just have to keep that image in mind every time he decided to get all high and mighty on her. Yep. That ought to do the trick.

 

Alice moved into a little office at Orion Solutions the following morning. It was a small space near the lifts, and nowhere as huge as some of the other rooms nearby, but that suited Alice just fine. She didn't want big and expansive. She wanted a little hole she could hide in until all this was over and done. Even though Cameron's office was on the same floor, her new office was as far away from his as it was possible to be without falling off the edge of the building. Hopefully that kind of geography would help her concentration.

Cameron had been as good as his word. He'd arranged for all of Alice's IT bookings for the next three weeks to be covered by a team of experts from Orion Solutions, and now she had a chance to live her dream and get a taste of what it was like to live and breathe vintage fashion without all that pesky computer stuff getting in her way.

At least, she'd be able to live and breathe vintage fashion once she got a few other annoying things off her mind. Yesterday evening she'd got an e-mail from Cameron's PA, letting her know he had arranged for them to have lunch together the following day to discuss preparations for the ball. There had only been his voicemail to talk to by the time she'd found the message. This morning she'd tried to ring him again, to cancel, but had been told he was out and would be meeting her at the restaurant. She should just make her way to the lobby at twelve-thirty, where somebody would meet her and let her know where to go.

She didn't even get a chance to explain that she'd rather
not
have lunch with the boss. The fact that someone might deviate from his instructions was obviously an unknown concept around here. So, while she should have been getting down to business—making calls, crossing things off her ever-expanding list—she spent most of her time worrying about seeing
Cameron in the flesh again, and whether her wardrobe today was going to be up to anywhere he was going to take her.

The chocolate trousers had had to make a reappearance. Alice discovered a burning need to go shopping for new work clothes. Her usual jeans and boots, more suited to crawling around on the floor looking at cables, just weren't going to cut it here at the rather upmarket Orion Solutions. All the men wore really nice suits, and the women looked sharp and smart, as if their feet didn't protest at all when they marched round the office all day in heels.