Wedding Bell Wishes: It Started at a Wedding... / The Wedding Planner and the CEO / Her Perfect Proposal

But, when they got closer, he realised there was something odd. No queues.

A notice outside the Pavilion informed them that the building was closed for urgent maintenance. Just for this weekend.

Sean just about stopped himself pointing out that if Claire had planned their trip in advance, then she would’ve known about this and she wouldn’t have been disappointed.

‘Oh, well,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m sure we can find a nice tea shop somewhere and have a traditional cream tea.’

Except all the tea shops nearby were full of tourists who’d had exactly the same idea. There were queues.

‘Sorry. This is, um, a bit of a disaster,’ she said.

Yes. But he wasn’t going to make her feel any worse about it by agreeing with her. ‘Carpe diem,’ he said. ‘Maybe there’s an ice cream shop we can go to instead.’

‘Maybe,’ she said, though he could tell that she was really disappointed. He guessed that she’d wanted to share the gorgeous furnishings of the Pavilion with him—and there had probably been some kind of costume display, too.

They wandered through the historic part of the town, peeking in the windows of the antiques shops and little craft shops, and eventually found a tea shop that had room at one of the tables. Though as it was late afternoon, the tea shop had run out of scones and cream.

‘Just the tea is fine, thanks,’ Sean said with a smile.

They had a last walk along the beach, then Claire drove them home. ‘Shall I drop you back at your house, or would you like to come back to my place and we can maybe order in some Chinese food?’ she asked.

Given what she’d said to him by the sea, Sean knew what she wanted to hear. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we’ll go with the flow.’

Her smile was a real reward—full of warmth and pleasure rather than smugness. ‘We won’t go home on the motorway, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll find a nice little country pub where we can have dinner.’

Except it turned out that every pub they stopped at didn’t do food on Sunday evenings.

‘I can’t believe this,’ she said. ‘I mean—it’s the summer. Prime tourist season. Why on earth wouldn’t any of them serve food on Sunday evenings?’

Sean didn’t have the heart to ask why she hadn’t planned it better. ‘Go back on to the motorway,’ he said. ‘We’ll get a takeaway back in London.’

‘I’m so sorry. Still, at least we can keep the roof down and enjoy the sun on the way home,’ Claire said.

Which was clearly all she needed to say to jinx it, because they were caught in a sudden downpour. By the time she’d found somewhere safe to stop and put the car’s soft top back up, they were both drenched. ‘I’m so sorry. That wasn’t supposed to happen,’ Claire said, biting her lip.

‘So we were literally going with the flow. Of water,’ Sean said, and kissed her.

‘What was that for?’ she asked.

‘For admitting that you’re not always right.’ He stole another kiss. ‘And also because that T-shirt looks amazing on you right now.’

‘Because it’s wet, you mean?’ She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Men.’

He smiled. ‘Actually, I wanted to cheer you up a bit.’

‘Because today’s been a total disaster.’

‘No, it hasn’t. I enjoyed the sea.’

‘But we didn’t get to the Pavilion, we missed out on a cream tea, I couldn’t find anywhere for dinner and we just got drenched.’ She sighed. ‘If I’d done things your way, it would’ve been different.’

‘But when I planned our date, we ended up rushing and that was a disaster, too,’ he said softly. ‘I think we might both have learned something from this.’

‘That sometimes you need to plan your personal life?’ she asked.

‘And sometimes you need to go with the flow,’ he said. ‘It’s a matter of compromise.’

‘That works for me, too. Compromise.’ And her smile warmed him all the way through.

On the way back to London, he asked, ‘So are you seriously going to buy this car?’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Apart from the colour? I was thinking, it’s not very practical for transporting wedding dresses.’

‘I don’t need a car for that. I’m hiring a van for the wedding show,’ she said.

‘So why don’t you have a car?’ he asked.

‘I live and work in London, so I don’t really need one—public transport’s fine.’

‘You needed a car today to take us to the seaside,’ he pointed out.

‘Not necessarily. We could have gone by train,’ she said.

‘But then you wouldn’t have been able to sing your head off all the way to Brighton.’

‘And we wouldn’t have got wet on the way home,’ she agreed ruefully.

‘We really need to get you out of those wet clothes,’ he said, ‘and my place is nearer than yours.’

‘Good point,’ she said, and drove back to his.

Sean had the great pleasure of peeling off her wet clothes outside the shower, then soaping her down under the hot water. When they’d finished, he put her clothes in the washer-dryer while she dried off. And then he had the even greater pleasure of sweeping her off her feet again, carrying her to his bed, and making love with her until they were both dizzy.

Afterwards, she was all warm and sweet in his arms. He stroked her hair back from her face. ‘You were going to tell me how come you’re not a doctor.’

‘It just wasn’t what I wanted to do,’ she said.

‘But you applied to study medicine at university.’

She shifted onto her side and propped herself on one elbow so she could look into his face. ‘It was Dad’s dream, not mine. It’s a bit hard to resist pressure from your parents when you’re sixteen. Especially when your father’s a bit on the overprotective side.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Luckily I realised in time that you can’t live someone else’s dream for them. So I turned down the places I was offered and reapplied to design school.’

He frowned. ‘But you were doing science A levels.’

‘And Art,’ she said. ‘And the teacher who taught my textiles class at GCSE wrote me a special reference, explaining that even though I hadn’t done the subject at A level I was more than capable of doing a degree. At my interview, I wore a dress I’d made and I also took a suit I’d made with me. I talked the interviewers through all the stitching and the cut and the material, so they knew I understood what I was doing. And they offered me an unconditional place.’

He could see the pain in her eyes, and drew her closer. ‘So what made you realise you didn’t want to be a doctor?’

‘My mum.’ Claire dragged in a breath. ‘She was only thirty-seven when she died, Sean.’ Tears filmed her eyes. ‘She barely made it past half the proverbial three score years and ten. In the last week of her life, when we were talking she held my hand and told me to follow my dream and do what my heart told me was the right thing.’

Which clearly hadn’t been medicine.

Not knowing what to say, he just stroked her hair.

‘Even when I was tiny, I used to draw dresses. Those paper dolls—mine were always the best dressed in class. I used to sketch all the time. I wanted to design dresses. Specifically, wedding dresses.’

He had a feeling he knew why she tended to fight with her father, now.

Her next words confirmed it. ‘Dad said designers were ten a penny, whereas being a doctor meant I’d have a proper job for life.’ She sighed. ‘I know he had my best interests at heart. He had a tough upbringing, and he didn’t want me ever to struggle with money, the way he did when he was young. But being a doctor was his dream, not mine. He said I could still do dressmaking and what have you on the side—but no way would I have had the time, not with the crazy hours that newly qualified doctors work. It was an all or nothing thing.’ She grimaced. ‘We had a huge fight over it. He said I’d just be wasting a degree if I studied textile design instead, and he gave me an ultimatum. Study medicine, and he’d support me through uni; study textiles, and he was kicking me out until I came to my senses.’

That sounded like the words of a scared man, Sean thought. One who wanted the best for his daughter and didn’t know how to get that through to her. And he’d said totally the wrong thing to a teenage girl who’d just lost the person she loved most in the world and wasn’t dealing with it very well. Probably because he was in exactly the same boat.

‘That’s quite an ultimatum,’ Sean said, trying to find words that wouldn’t make Claire think he was judging her.

‘It was pretty bad at the time.’ She paused. ‘I talked to your mum about it.’

He was surprised. ‘My mum?’

Claire nodded. ‘She was lovely—she knew I was going off the rails a bit and I’d started drinking to blot out the pain of losing Mum, so she took me under her wing.’

Exactly what Sean would’ve expected from his mother. And now he knew why she’d been so insistent that he should look after Claire, the night of Ashleigh’s eighteenth birthday party. She’d known the full story. And she’d known that she could trust Sean to do the right thing. To look after Claire when she needed it.

Claire smiled grimly. ‘The drinking was also the worst thing I could have done in Dad’s eyes, because his dad used to drink and gamble. I think that was half the reason why I did it, because I wanted to make him as angry as he made me. But your mum sat me down and told me that my mum would hate to see what I was doing to myself, and she made me see that the way I was behaving really wasn’t helping the situation. I told her what Mum said about following my dream, and she asked me what I really wanted to do with my life. I showed her my sketchbooks and she said that my passion for needlework showed, and it’d be a shame to ignore my talents.’ She smiled. ‘And then she talked to Dad. He still didn’t think that designing dresses was a stable career—he wanted me to have what he thought of as a “proper” job.’

‘Does he still think that?’ Sean asked.

‘Oh, yes. And he tells me it, too, every so often,’ Claire said, sounding both hurt and exasperated. ‘When I left the fashion house where I worked after I graduated, he panicked that I wouldn’t be able to make a go of my own business. Especially because there was a recession on. He wanted me to go back to uni instead.’

‘And train to be a doctor?’

‘Because then I’d definitely have a job for life.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘But it’s not just about the academic side of things. Sure, I could’ve done the degree and the post-grad training. But my heart wouldn’t have been in it, and that wouldn’t be fair to my patients.’ She sighed. ‘And I had a bit of a cash flow problem last year. I took a hit from a couple of clients whose cheques bounced. I still had to pay my suppliers for the materials and, um...’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I could’ve asked Dad to lend me the money to tide me over, but then he would’ve given me this huge lecture about taking a bigger deposit from my brides and insisting on cash or a direct transfer to my account. Yet again he would’ve made me feel that he didn’t believe in me and I’m not good enough to make it on my own. So I, um, sold my car. It kept me afloat.’

‘And have you changed the way you take money?’

She nodded. ‘I admit, I learned that one the hard way. Nowadays I ask for stage payments. But there’s no real harm done. And Dad doesn’t know about it so I avoided the lecture.’ Again, Sean could see the flash of pain in her eyes. ‘I just wish Dad believed in me a bit more. Gran and Aunty Lou believe in me. So does Ash.’

‘So do I,’ Sean said.

At her look of utter surprise, he said softly, ‘Ashleigh’s wedding dress convinced me. I admit, I had my doubts about you. Especially when you lost her dress. But you came up with a workable solution—and, when the original dress turned up, I could see just how talented you are. Mum was right about you, Claire. Yes, you could’ve been a perfectly competent doctor, but you would’ve ignored your talents—and that would’ve been a waste.’

Her eyes sparkled with tears. ‘From you, that’s one hell of a compliment. And not one I ever thought I’d hear. Thank you.’

‘It’s sincerely meant,’ he said. ‘You did the right thing, following your dreams.’

‘I know I did. And I’m happy doing what I do. I’m never going to be rich, but I make enough for what I need—and that’s important.’ She paused. ‘But what about you, Sean? What about your dreams?’

‘I’m living them,’ he said automatically.

‘But supposing Farrell’s didn’t exist,’ she persisted. ‘What would you do then?’

‘Start up another Farrell’s, I guess,’ he said.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.