The Independent Bride

Nice idea, Steven. Not practical. You’re not Captain Blood and you haven’t got a pirate ship to carry her off to. Get yourself a shave and a tie and get back to normal!

He stepped back and gave her one of his public smiles—courteous, regretful, remote as the moon. He was invulnerable Steven Konig again.

‘Well, have a good one, whatever you decide to do. Safe landing!’

‘Th-thank you.’

Or he thought that was what she said. He did not wait to hear her reply.

See that fantasy; let it go. He said it to himself savagely as he made his way back to his seat. He was thirty-nine years old and far too many people depended on him to keep his head. Fantasising about goddesses was for teenagers.

CHAPTER TWO

PEPPER brushed her teeth and did what she could to get her tangled hair back into order. She must have looked like a complete zombie. The man had stared at her so hard. Then again, poor guy, she had nearly knocked him over. It wasn’t surprising he’d stared. He would have the bruises to show for the impact tomorrow, she thought, wincing.

Oh, well done, Pepper! Your first encounter with someone who won’t connect you with the Calhoun millions and you do your best to cripple him!

At least he had not looked at her as if she was a potato.

But he hadn’t asked her for a date either.

Pepper shook her head at her image in the tiny restroom mirror. So what? Who ever heard of someone asking a woman for a date in the middle of a plane? Especially when she had literally bumped into him only two minutes before. But there was a moment when she had almost thought he might. There had been something—

Her eyes flared, remembering that moment when his hands had closed round her. Surely it wasn’t just her imagination? She had hardly been able to see his face, the dawn light had been so strong in her eyes. But she’d sensed that his expression had become intent, as if he had suddenly touched live power. She had noticed because it was the exact same thing she had felt herself. Raw energy. Magnetic attraction. Sex.

Her mouth dried, thinking about it. She was not used to feeling uncontrollable sexual attraction to complete strangers. She gave herself a brisk mental shake.

Okay, you may have had an adolescent moment, Pepper. But, let’s face it, you’re not at your best right now. That’s no reason for him to start lusting back at you.

Concentrate on the evidence. You walked into him and he was nice about it. He didn’t yell and he didn’t threaten to sue. Isn’t that enough to start with?

It was. It had to be. Anyway, it was the first hopeful thing that had happened for weeks. Give thanks for a civilised Englishman’s good manners and don’t ask for the moon, Pepper told herself practically.

Still, she made her way back to her seat with a smile on her face. And when the chatty passenger in the next seat started a conversation again, she even replied.

The woman was a grandmother from Montana who had never been to London before. In fact, she confided, she had never flown long distance before. She refused Pepper’s invitation to change seats, but she did crane across her to look out at the landscape below as the plane came in to land.

‘It’s big, isn’t it?’ She sounded awed.

The flight was early. Very early. The sun was barely up as they came in to land at London Heathrow. It glittered on buildings and planes. To Pepper, leaning her forehead against the bulkhead, even the runway looked as if it was studded with diamonds. On the ground nothing moved.

In the cabin, there was that air of suppressed excitement that came from being woken too early, fed croissants and orange juice you didn’t want, and throttling down from five hundred miles an hour. And being about to step out into a new country.

Or, in Pepper’s case, a new universe.

Maybe the Englishman was right. Maybe she should try looking for her cousins. How hard could it be? And she was going to have plenty of time.

Grandma Montana swallowed. Suddenly, after all the hours of chat, she blurted out the cause. She was going to meet her unknown English son-in-law and her two English grandchildren for the first time. She was real nervous, she confessed.

Pepper did not know what to say. ‘That’s a new concept for me. My grandmother has never been nervous in her life.’

‘She must be very brave.’

Pepper was crisp. ‘If people never cross you, there isn’t that much to get nervous about,’ she said tartly.

It felt good to say it. She sat straighter in her seat.

The airbus hit the runway and there was a loud rushing noise of giant brakes. Grandma Montana gave a little gasp. She was very pale.

To her own surprise—well, she was Mary Ellen Calhoun’s granddaughter, and, until a week ago, designated heir to Calhoun Carter; she didn’t do emotion—Pepper took the older woman’s hand.

‘Everything’s fine. It always makes a noise like that.’

Grandma Montana’s smile wavered. ‘Thank you. I was sure it was really. But—’ She gave Pepper’s hand a squeeze, as if Pepper were her own family and entitled to that intimate little gesture. ‘I’m being silly. You’re very kind.’

It hit Pepper like a ten-ton truck. Kindness! Outside Calhoun Carter, people were kind to each other without expecting a return. The man she’d knocked into had been kind about it. Now this woman was thanking her for a gesture that her grandmother would have laughed at.

She nearly said, No, I’m not. I’ve never been kind in my life. There’s no room for kindness in business. And I’m a business woman to my toenails. I’ve got three degrees and my own biography at Fortune to prove it.

Nearly.

Only somehow she didn’t. Somehow she thought—But I don’t have to stay like that. I can change. The unshaven man with the sexual force field around him had said she could do anything she set her mind to. And she could. She could.

So she said slowly, ‘You’re not silly. Doing anything for the first time is scary.’

‘I suppose so.’ The woman sounded doubtful.

The brakes were off and the airbus had come out of its wild thrash down the runway to a stately prowl. She let go of Pepper’s hand. For a moment Pepper nearly took it back again.

She said abruptly, ‘Are your family meeting you?’

‘I sure hope so. But they might not have got here yet. We’re so early.’

‘Tail wind across the Atlantic. Happens a lot. They’ll probably allow for it.’

Pepper’s companion began to look more hopeful. ‘Do you think so?’

‘People do,’ said Pepper, who had been met by chauffeurs all her life. Astonishing herself, she said, ‘Look, would you like me to stay with you until your daughter gets here?’

The woman looked as if she had won a lottery. ‘Would you?’

‘Sure. No problem.’

‘But you must have people meeting you—’

‘No,’ said Pepper steadily. ‘Nobody meeting me.’ Ever again. ‘I’ll be glad to stay with you. Really.’

But in the airport her good intentions hit a setback. A voice behind her called, ‘Ms Calhoun? Ms Calhoun?’

She turned instinctively. It was a financial journalist for an international press agency. She knew him slightly.

‘I thought it was you,’ he congratulated himself. ‘I was sitting behind you.’

Oh, one of the partying entrepreneurs. He wouldn’t have believed his eyes, seeing her travelling outside business class. Pepper bit her lip. Having avoided the financial pages so far, she really didn’t want to be caught out in London.

But he seemed unsuspicious enough. ‘What are you doing here? Are Calhoun’s thinking of taking over a British company?’

After only a momentary pause, she held out her hand.

‘Not a business trip,’ she said firmly. ‘How are you, Mr Franks?’

His eyes were shrewd. ‘Just back from New York. I’ve been covering the sustainable trade talks. What are you doing in London?’

Pepper remembered her conversation with the unshaven pirate. ‘I’ve got family here,’ she said, inspired.

He was sceptical. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’ She took rapid stock and told him part of the truth. ‘I haven’t had a holiday in quite a while. I’m told London in spring is beautiful.’

He pursed his lips, clearly unconvinced. But handling inquisitive journalists was all part of a day’s work for Pepper. She gave him a bland smile. He gave up.

‘Have a good time. If you could do with some company any time, give me a call.’

He fished a business card out of his wallet and handed it over. She managed not to wince. There had been a moment when she’d thought the pirate was going to give her his card. Now that would have been a triumph indeed. A man who didn’t know she was an heiress giving her his number!

‘Thank you,’ said Pepper, not looking at it. She thought wryly, Now, this is much more the sort of pick-up I’m used to.

The journalist was offering a classic bargain—dinner, or a night on the town, maybe a bit of inside information, in return for an exclusive on Calhoun Carter’s next move on the acquisition trail. He wouldn’t have bothered to say a word to Pepper if he had known that Mary Ellen had kicked her out.

The luggage carousel began to turn. She gave him a nod of farewell.

‘Excuse me. I’m going to be walking someone who’s new to London through Customs. Goodbye, Mr Franks. Nice to see you.’

But she kept his card. In the survival game you held onto any advantage you could get, however unlikely.

Steven looked for the glorious redhead in the baggage arrivals hall. There were so many people that it would have been a miracle if he’d found her. But he still looked.

Other people kept getting in the way, though. Martin Tammery, a pushy alumnus of Queen Margaret’s, returned to the attack, trying to persuade him to come on some new television game show he was starting. And he and Sandy Franks kept arguing about someone they’d seen in the crowd. The Tiger Cub, they called her.

Uninterested, Steven barely heard them. He wanted a goddess, not a tiger cub. He scanned the surge of people. Surely that fiery mane could not disappear so easily?

Martin Tammery took on an acquisitive expression. ‘Do you think she’ll be here for long? Could I get her on to In My Experience?’

Sandy Franks pursed his lips. ‘You’d have to move fast. She never stays anywhere long.’

‘Yeah. But if she’s here on some secret deal the London office will deny all knowledge. How do I get hold of her?’

Sandy’s eyes gleamed. ‘Ask me along to the recording and I might just help you out. I have contacts.’

‘There you are, Steven. That’s the class of company you’d be in if you come on the new programme,’ Martin said to him. ‘What about if I do a deal with you, too? If I get Pepper Calhoun on the programme, you stop wriggling.’

‘I have no idea who Pepper Calhoun is,’ said Steven, not taking his eyes off the crowd.

They both started to give him a potted biography. He paid no attention. There was a gleam of red on the other side of the luggage carousel. He started after it.

In vain, of course. By the time he got there the crowd had parted and closed up again too many times. She was lost, his golden Venus with her shy smile and her infectious laugh. And that mouth that brought him out in a cold sweat just to think about.

He should have asked for her number right then, when he’d had the chance, and to hell with political correctness. He should have given her his card. At least then he would have known.

The other two came panting up after him.

‘So what about it, Steven?’ said Martin. ‘Do the pilot show? For the honour of the old college?’

Steven sighed deeply. But, as the newly appointed Master, he had obligations to old alumni.

Here was the real world kicking in again, he thought wearily. Goodbye, dream of a goddess. Hello, duty.

‘Send me a proposal,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll have to check the diary. But in principle I’ll do anything I can.’

Martin Tammery was exuberant in his thanks. ‘Great. I’ll count on that.’

He could, too, Steven thought, as he trailed his suitcase out into the main concourse and agreed to share a cab back into central London with the other two. Steven never let people down.

Story of my life, he thought with a touch of bitterness. Steven Konig, the ultimate sustainable resource. Always there for Queen Margaret’s College. For Kplant. Chairing a conference here, delivering a lecture there. Never rebelling. And never, ever giving in to impulse.

Which is exactly why I’m travelling in to London with two men who want more lectures and interviews and wise words, he thought with irony. Whereas what I want is my golden goddess here alone with me.

What would have happened if I had given her my card? Would she have given me her number? Agreed to meet? Maybe even been here now?

He went hot at the thought.

And where would we have gone from there?

Just the question filled him with wild longing. It was so acute that he winced. His companions, deep in conversation about employment law, did not notice.

Just as well, thought Steven, crushing the picture that his reflections had brought to leaping life. He was still influential Steven Konig with all those responsibilities. He still had no spare capacity to run a private life as well.

But he wished he had. He could not remember ever wishing anything so much. If only…

The other two broke off their conversation.

‘What was that, Steven?’ said Martin Tammery blankly.

Steven’s smile was full of self-mockery. ‘I just said Captain Blood had all the fun.’

Pepper found that life as a non-rich person was surprisingly easy. In lots of ways, it was even fun. And the best thing of all was not having to think how her grandmother would react to everything she wanted to do.

She had never stayed anywhere but five-star hotels before, all pre-booked by efficient Carmen. So it was an adventure to find herself a modest hotel to stay in.

It was a relief that she came through that all right. She even managed to negotiate with the concierge when he said that she had to wait until midday to take possession.

‘I’ve had a bad time. I need to sleep for a week,’ she said, yawning hugely. She brought out her remaining credit card. ‘I’ll pay for last night, too, if you want. Just lead me somewhere I can lie down.’

Either the yawn worked or the concierge was someone else with an unexpected streak of human kindness. Within ten minutes she was stretched out on a hard bed, her eyelids closing.

‘First problem solved,’ she said to herself drowsily. ‘So shucks to Mary Ellen Calhoun.’

She did not wake until the evening. And even then she just got up and had a slightly dazed walk through dark streets before falling back into bed.

The next morning she felt entirely different. Not hopeful, exactly. More interested. The pirate on the plane had said she could do anything she put her mind to. So—was he right?

After a good night’s sleep she was ready to find out. She had even half formulated a plan. She went out and got herself a mobile phone and began putting it into practice.

Problem solving seemed to be her forte. By the end of the day an old contact had agreed to look at her business plan for Out of the Attic. Another had offered to make some introductions. She’d found a temporary job to get her through the next few weeks. It was only word processing, but at least it meant that she did not have to dig into her small store of capital—or spend hours on her own thinking about the vicious little darts that her grandmother had thrown.

She’d also made a decision that surprised her. She had the name of a lawyer who had acted for her mother’s family years ago. She went back through the files on her laptop and there it was, a reply to a letter he had sent her on her twenty-fifth birthday.

‘Tell them you want nothing to do with them,’ Mary Ellen had said.

And Pepper had. So she’d been shamefaced in approaching him today. But that piratical endorsement had got her through the first hesitation. She’d called the lawyer.

He had been cool, but he had not refused to see her.

‘This is a surprise,’ he said when she came in. ‘Mrs Calhoun always insisted that you did not want to see anyone from the Dare family.’

‘That was then.’

He looked sceptical.

‘I’ve been disinherited,’ she told him baldly.

‘Ah.’ He pursed his lips. ‘So what exactly do you want from the Dare family?’

Pepper flushed. ‘Not money, if that’s what you think,’ she said indignantly. Being thought a sponger was a new experience she could have done without. ‘I can look after myself. But—I just thought—if anyone in my mother’s family wanted to see me, I’m going to be in London for a while. We might get a cup of coffee some day. That’s all.’

‘I see.’ The lawyer pondered.

She said with difficulty, ‘I don’t remember my mother, you see. Since—I mean, recently I’ve been thinking about that. And I think I’d like to meet my aunt. This feud thing has gone on too long. I don’t even know what it was about.’

For the first time the lawyer smiled. ‘I’ll ask,’ he promised.

He must have asked swiftly. Now, at the end of the day, Pepper was taking a phone call in her hotel room.

‘Pepper?’ said a voice that bubbled over with enthusiasm. ‘Oh, I can’t believe this. It is so good to talk to you after all these years.’

‘Who is this—?’ began Pepper, and then fell over her own words.

She knew that voice. She still had dreams of it saying, ‘Come on, what does it matter if you get dirty? You’re going to see the kingfishers.’

‘Isabel?’ she said in disbelief.

She had thought it was a dream. Her grandmother had said it was a dream. Or a prolonged case of a preschooler’s imaginary friends. Mary Ellen had even threatened to take her to a psychiatrist— ‘To get it out of your system for good and all.’

‘Izzy? Izzy, is that you?’

Izzy’s laugh had not changed either. In the memory that Mary Ellen had said was disturbed fantasy, she and Pepper had visited together just once when they were children. Izzy must have been about eight—and muddy; Pepper had been ten, in her best dress—and longing to be muddy, too.

Now Izzy sounded just the same as she had in Pepper’s memory: as if she could take on the world—and have the time of her life doing it.

‘Yup. It’s me,’ said Isabel Dare ungrammatically. ‘I gather you’re over in the UK for a while. Want to come and play?’

Pepper sat down hard in the overcrowded little room. In the mirror on the opposite wall, she saw that she was grinning all over her face. She embraced the disputed memory with relish. More, with laughter.

‘You’ve got more ditches for me to wade through?’

‘You remember, then?’ Izzy gave a choke of amusement. ‘Better than that. I’ve got a spare room that just happens to be empty. Fancy sharing a flat with your cousins?’

And Pepper thought, Home!

She had never shared with friends of her own age. It was a revelation.

Pepper had never come out of her room at the Calhoun mansion until every hair was neatly in place. Isabel and Jemima thought nothing of wandering around in their underwear with their hair in curlers while they swapped plans for the day. They shared clothes and housework and invitations with careless freedom. Then fought to the death over a low-fat yoghurt. They read each other’s horoscope aloud over Sunday breakfast. They split bills without arguing but battled over whose turn it was to wash up a couple of coffee cups. After a week of stunned disbelief, Pepper began to talk, too.

At first it was just little ironic asides. ‘I’ve lived in New York, Paris and Milan. But I’ve never lived in chaos before.’

‘Good experience for you, then,’ said Izzy cheerfully.

But Jemima was curious. ‘You must have. I mean you were a student, right? Everyone lives in chaos when they’re a student.’

‘Not me. I had my electronic personal organiser. And a maid.’

‘A maid?’ they chorused.

‘Well, someone to do the housework.’

‘We do our own housework,’ said Jemima firmly.

‘Unless Jay Jay is giving a party for all her cool friends,’ said the irrepressible Izzy. ‘Then we call in a stylist to run it. And a firm of industrial cleaners afterwards.’

Jemima threw a cushion at her.

There was some truth in the accusation, though, as Pepper found out. Izzy’s friends were a casual bunch, but Jemima took her socialising seriously.

‘It’s because she’s a fashion model,’ Izzy told Pepper when they were alone. She sounded unwontedly serious. ‘She seems to make a decent living. But her agent says she could be really big. That’s what the networking is all about.’

‘I know about networking,’ agreed Pepper with feeling. ‘I’ve been trying to put together a new retail idea. The business plan is beautiful. Now all I have to do is get the capital. Networking rules!’

That was when she moved on to full-scale confidences. Well, she didn’t tell them everything. Not ‘you’re a potato’ and ‘I paid men to date you’. But why she left Calhouns. And what she was trying to do in London.

‘And if it all collapses, I can hire out as a consultant,’ she ended flippantly. ‘That’s what unsuccessful entrepreneurs do between projects.’

‘So tell us about Out of the Attic,’ said Jemima, a dedicated shopper.

Pepper lit up. She loved her project.

‘It does two things. Most important, it looks at shopping as a form of entertainment. It has to be comfortable, stimulating, and aesthetically pleasant. So we turn a shop into a treasure trove. You don’t go through racks, you discover things. As if you were going through an attic, in fact.’

Jemima, the clothes professional, pursed her lips. ‘But you want people to move through the shop fast, buying as much as they can carry?’

‘They can buy. The stock is on site. But clients have the chance to look at things in a pretty environment before they decide what they want to try. They check their coats and bags at the door. They can get a coffee. They can sit and look at stuff.’

Jemima was unconvinced. ‘Sounds like an awful lot of effort to sell one garment.’

‘It would be. But most people will buy more than one. And they’ll take a catalogue home with them. We’re talking lifestyle here. And building a customer base.’ Pepper was warming to her theme. ‘I’m thinking we should have a Girls’ Night Out facility. An exclusive show for a few friends after work.’

Izzy was enthusiastic. ‘Great. Shopping and a party at the same time.’

Pepper nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘But you don’t shop and you hate parties,’ Jemima pointed out.

‘So? There aren’t enough people like me to build a business on. I know what other people want.’

Jemima stayed sceptical. ‘And what would the clothes be like?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t just be clothes. They’re too seasonal and subject to fashion.’

‘You mean you don’t know,’ Jemima crowed.

Pepper was stung. ‘I know. I’ve got a couple of designers on standby. The brief I gave them was pretty and practical.’

Jemima looked down her nose.

‘You probably don’t want to believe it,’ Pepper told her with feeling, ‘but most clothes in the mall are designed for adolescents who don’t feel the cold, never sit down and think they ought to be sexual predators. There’s this great big market out there who don’t fulfil the brief. My clothes will be for them.’

‘You mean the Size Fourteen Syndrome,’ sniffed Jemima.

Pepper glared. ‘And what is wrong with being size fourteen? Do you know how many people are?’

Jemima opened her mouth, caught Pepper’s eye and thought better of it.

‘There’s only one problem with being size fourteen,’ Pepper announced. ‘It’s not cool. I’m going to make Out of the Attic so cool no one who comes in will be ashamed of herself, no matter what size she is.’

Jemima cast her eyes to heaven. ‘Dream on.’

But Pepper was unmoved. ‘I’ve done the market research. And I’ve lived size fourteen. Women are just waiting for Out of the Attic. You’ll see.’