The Man Who Broke Hearts

‘It went off very well, thanks.’ He paused for an instant. ‘How about if I tell you all about it over dinner this evening?’

‘This evening?’ The room was swimming round her ears. Could she believe what she was hearing or had she gone mad?

‘Unless you’ve got something else fixed, of course...?’

He sounded disappointed. Tina rushed in to assure him, ‘No, I don’t have anything fixed at all.’

‘Then I’ll pick you up about eight. How does that sound?’

Like a dream come true, she thought. ‘It sounds fine,’ she said.

‘Eight o’clock it is. I’ll see you then. Bye for now.’

Tina was shaking so badly as she laid down the phone that she fancied she could hear the bones tattling in her fingers. For a full thirty seconds she just sat where she was, grinning like an idiot and glowing with excitement. Then with a whoop of dalight she leapt to her feet, rushed through to her bedroom and flung open the cupboard doors. What on earth was she going to wear?

Justin was every bit as punctual as she’d expected he would be. At the stroke of eight o’clock his gleaming white Mercedes appeared like a fairytale coach and horses outside her modest red-brick flat block.

‘You look terrific,’ he told her as he held open the passenger door for her and she slid a little shyly into the leather-upholstered seat. ‘But then you always look terrific. You’re just looking particularly so tonight.’

Tina might very well have answered, So are you, but she bit her lip and just smiled at him instead. She was feeling far too nervous to pull off remarks like that!

All the same, it was true—if such a thing was actually possible! He was looking even more terrific than usual.

He was wearing a dark blue suit whose simple clean-cut lines showed off to perfection his manly proportions—the strong, broad shoulders, the lean hips and long legs. And the plain white shirt provided a perfect dramatic contrast to his suntanned skin and the ebony darkness of his hair.

He was a positive feast for the eyes, Tina decided. She wouldn’t need to eat; she could just sit and admire him!

Justin took her to a restaurant in the heart of Mayfair. The most elegant place she’d ever set foot in. You could almost smell the gold credit cards and hear the rustle of designer labels. She was rather glad she’d worn the most stunning outfit in her wardrobe—a chic, long-skirted dress in bright cherry-red.

‘Champagne,’ Justin told the waiter as they were shown to their table. Then he smiled at Tina. ‘Unless you’d prefer something else, of course?’

‘Oh, no. Champagne’s fine.’

She could hardly keep her face straight. Was this really happening or was it all a dream? Would she wake up and find herself in her local Wimpy bar with Vicki?

But at least she was rapidly losing her nervousness. There was just something about being with Justin that felt easy and right. The conversation flowed. There was no sense of strain. As they were being served their first course, she took the initiative and asked him, ‘So tell me about your trip to Germany.’

But Justin shook his head. ‘That was just business. Very boring.’ He smiled that smile that made her heart keel over. ‘What I really want to talk about this evening is you. I want you to tell me all about yourself, Tina Gordon.’

‘Me? There’s not much to tell. I’m just an ordinary girl from Shropshire.’ Tina’s cheeks had turned the same cherry-red as her dress. ‘My parents both work at a local car plant and I have two sisters, one married and one at college, studying French.’

She laughed a little nervously. ‘There! You have it in a nutshell!’ Surely, she was thinking, he couldn’t really be interested?

But it seemed she was wrong. He was shaking his head at her. ‘Ah, but I don’t want it in a nutshell. I want to hear all the gory details. By the end of this meal I want to know all there is to know about you.’

He meant it, too. He plied her with questions, and Tina found herself very happily opening up to him. He wasn’t just being curious. He seemed genuinely interested. Flushed with pleasure, she virtually told him her life story.

She told him about her schooldays back in Shrewsbury, about the friends she grew up with and all the places she knew. She told him about the articles she used to write for the school magazine, about her ambition to work on a national magazine one day and about her wonderful parents who’d encouraged her all the way.

‘You’re an interesting girl.’ Justin smiled at her across the table as he poured them both more wine and finished off his fillet steak—for by now they’d been talking for more than an hour. ‘I knew you would be. You’ve got that spark in your eyes.’

Tina smiled back at him as she took a sip of her Beaujolais. ‘But that’s enough about me. It’s your turn now,’ she told him. ‘Tell me something about Justin Marlowe.’

‘OK. What do you want to know?’

‘Everything! Fair’s fair,’ she laughed. ‘After all, I’ve told you virtually everything there is to know about me!’

And so over the next hour, until coffee, Justin told her about himself. He told her about his own modest upbringing in London and about how he started his first publishing venture with a loan from a wealthy uncle.

‘I owe it all to him,’ he told her, ‘and I’ll always be grateful. I would never have made it without his help.’

‘Oh, I’ll bet you would.’ Tina shook her blonde head at him. ‘It might have taken you a little longer, but I bet you’d have made it.’

For there was one thing she had no doubts about—Justin was one of life’s natural winners.

He didn’t exactly dispute it, but with a serious smile he pointed out, ‘A helping hand at the right time can be a great bonus, however. One must always remember to be grateful for such things.’

The remark, Tina sensed, had not in any way been intended as a reminder of the helping hand he’d given her in her career, and to have expressed her gratitude at that moment would only have embarrassed him. So she said nothing. She would thank him properly when the time was right. Besides, right now she wanted to hear more about him.

She looked into the iron-grey eyes. ‘So, what are your plans for the future? JM Publishing has four successful magazines at the moment, but I get the impression you don’t intend stopping there.’

He smiled. ‘I’d like to expand a bit. Like you, I’m ambitious.’ Then, as she laughed at that, he leaned towards her suddenly and surprised her as he added, his tone suddenly grown serious. ‘But right now it’s the more immediate future I’m thinking of. I’m rather hoping you’ll agree to have dinner with me again tomorrow.’

Tina’s heart had stopped stone-dead. Secretly, she’d been wondering what, if anything, would happen next. I couldn’t bear it, she’d been thinking, if this turned out to be a one-off.

She nodded now with all the restraint she could muster. ‘I’d love to have dinner with you again tomorrow.’

In fact, they spent virtually the entire weekend together. The theatre and dinner on Saturday. Lunch on Sunday, followed by a romantic walk in Hyde Park. Then dinner together at Justin’s sumptuous Kensington flat.

And it was on the Sunday evening, after that candlelit dinner, that Tina knew for certain that she was on the brink of something special. For that was when, for very first time, he kissed her.

Tina had dreamed of that first kiss, but the reality was better.

They were sitting together on the huge, soft sofa, two untouched cups of coffee on the low table before them, and the atmosphere between them was electric. It had been building up all evening. Every smile, every glance, as the evening wore on, had seemed to crackle with promise.

As he had led her to the sofa, Tina had scarcely been breathing. Her heart had felt as big as a football in her chest. It had been a relief to sit down, her legs felt so weak.

He had laid the coffee-cups on the table and now he was watching her, those long-lashed dark eyes of his like molten metal against her skin.

And she was suddenly afraid to meet them. Afraid of what her own eyes would reveal to him. With a darting, nervous movement she reached out to take her coffee-cup.

But her hand never reached it. He caught hold of it in his.

‘No,’ he was saying, ‘there’s something I want to do first.’

Then he was turning her round very gently to face him, and suddenly his eyes were pouring into her as his arm slipped round her waist and he drew her closer to deliver the kiss that had been waiting all evening to happen.

Tina was already hyped up, but at the moment his lips touched hers a jolt of excitement, so huge and so powerful that even in her wildest moments she could never have imagined it, went jackknifing through her, leaving her throbbing and breathless, her senses reeling, her head in a spin.

Never had a kiss been more worth waiting for. Tina clung to him as a bushfire went rampaging through her, melting her bones, sending flames shooting from her skin. Hungrily, she kissed him back, her lips as eager as his.

After a while, the tempest within them abated a little. Wrapped in each other’s arms, they sat together amid the tumbled cushions, quietly, the only sound the furious pounding of their two hearts.

‘You’re a very special girl.’ Justin’s hands caressed her. ‘I hope we’re going to see a very great deal of each other in the future.’

Tina shuddered beneath his touch, loving the cool, masterful touch of him, drinking in the delicious scent of him through hungry nostrils.

‘I hope so too,’ she murmured. ‘I hope so very much.’

He kissed her eyes, her lips, her chin, her forehead, then paused for a moment to press his lips lingeringly against the warm, throbbing pulse in the hollow of her throat.

‘There’s just one thing,’ he murmured softly, glancing up at her. He hesitated for an instant. ‘I think we ought to be discreet.’

Tina had already been thinking that. She nodded and smiled at him. ‘You’re right.’ She had no desire to start tongues wagging around the office. ‘I won’t breathe a word to a soul,’ she agreed.

‘Good girl.’ Justin held her close for a moment. Then he looked down at her, his dark eyes bright with emotion. ‘I think what lies ahead of us is going to be very special indeed.’

It was. The next nine months were the happiest of Tina’s life. Her romance with Justin seemed to go from strength to strength. He was busy a lot of the time and he travelled a great deal, presiding over his growing empire, and there were few more weekends spent entirely together like that first one, though they spent all the time they could together.

When she didn’t see him, Tina pined for him. Being without him was awful. For with every day that passed she was falling more deeply in love with him, with a love that brightened every corner of her life. She was so in love she scarcely cared about Eunice’s ever more frequent tantrums at the office. Justin had declared his love for her. She could take anything in her stride.

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