She had Clara. Nell clung to the thought. She couldn’t imagine life without Clara, wouldn’t want to imagine it. But she could imagine being with someone who loved her and cared for her, someone who would make her laugh and hold her when she was sad, who would celebrate her triumphs with her, and commiserate with her failures. Someone who would share her life instead of shutting her off into a small part of it, the way Simon had done.
P.J. would have been a husband like that. Nell stared unseeing out at the traffic and thought about the mistakes she had made. She had had her chance. She had been lucky enough to meet the right man for her, but she had blown it. She had been too young to appreciate kindness and integrity and strength and humour over good looks and glamour. Now, she could see how lucky she had been to find those qualities in her first love, but now it was too late.
Things might be different if P.J. hadn’t been quite so successful, but his immense wealth seemed to Nell to be an insurmountable gulf between them. It changed everything. She didn’t want him for his money, but how would he ever believe that now?
She would have to stay on her side of the gulf and make the best of it, Nell decided sadly. She would go and meet John, and make a real effort to start afresh, and maybe after a while she could forget P.J. all over again.
The gallery was already crowded when she got there, the hubbub spilling out into the street. If only she didn’t have to face P.J. again! Still, with this crowd, there ought to be a good chance of avoiding him. She would go in, show her face to Eve, talk to a couple of people and then go. She had a previous engagement, after all. She couldn’t be expected to rearrange her entire social life around work.
A brief hope that her name might have been missed off the guest list died as she was waved through, so she accepted a glass of champagne and looked cautiously around for Eve.
Of course, the first person she saw was P.J. He wasn’t looking her way, but still the sight of him made her heart jolt painfully, and she jerked her glass, sending champagne slopping over the rim and down the front of her dress. Nell brushed herself down with a hand that was shaking slightly, and told herself to get a grip.
She risked another glance. Like many of the other men in the room, P.J. was wearing a dinner jacket, and the severe black and white tailoring made him look powerful and more distinguished than she had ever seen him. He was standing on one side of the gallery, talking to a dark, intense girl who was dressed in such a challenging way that Nell wondered if she was one of the artists.
He seemed absorbed in his conversation, and Nell let her eyes rest hungrily on him for a moment. It was as if everything about him were in sharp focus, the planes of his face, the set of his shoulders, the white cuff against his brown hand as he gesticulated, and her stomach clenched with longing.
Turning abruptly, she headed off in the opposite direction in search of Eve. There was such a press of people, none of whom seemed to be the slightest bit interested in the pictures and installations that lined the walls, that it was quite hard work pushing through them and when Nell had got as far away from P.J. as she could, she paused. She couldn’t see any sign of Eve.
What now?
The whole exercise was pointless anyway, Nell told herself. There was no way they were going to be able to talk properly to anyone in this crush. Perhaps she would just slip away now…
Glancing longingly towards the entrance through a break in the crowd, she found herself staring straight into a pair of familiar warm blue eyes that lit at the sight of her.
P.J. smiled at her, and Nell’s bones seemed to dissolve. Appalled, she spun on her heel before she had a chance to think and turned her back pointedly, desperate to break the effect of that glinting blue smile. Her instinct was to bolt for the entrance, but if he saw her leaving now P.J. would know that it was because of him.
Unseeingly, she stared at a picture on the wall instead, pretending to be absorbed in it. Surely P.J. would get the point and leave her alone now?
‘What do you think?’ His voice came from behind her and Nell jumped. How had he got across the room that fast? Why had he come at all? Couldn’t he see how hard this was for her?
Her mouth was dry, and she moistened her lips. ‘Think?’ she repeated stupidly. How could she think when he was standing right beside her, near enough for her to turn and lean into him, to rest against his broad chest and wind her arms around his back and cling to him as if he were her last refuge?
‘Of the picture,’ P.J. prompted.
‘Oh.’
With difficulty, Nell focused on the painting and discovered that she had been apparently absorbed in an extremely explicit male nude study. A wave of colour surged up her cheeks, but somehow she managed to keep her expression composed enough.
‘Interesting use of brushwork,’ she said stiltedly, and P.J. laughed.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve learnt to like contemporary art, Nell!’
‘I wouldn’t say “like,’” said Nell, ‘but maybe I’ve learnt to appreciate some of the things I wasn’t old enough to appreciate before.’
Their eyes met for a brief moment, and something flared in P.J.’s face, something that made Nell’s heart stumble, and she looked away almost fiercely, afraid that she had given too much away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
P.J. LOOKED at Nell’s averted face, letting his eyes rest on the pure line of her cheek and the pulse hammering in her throat, and he remembered her as a girl, sitting across a café table in Paris, her expression vivid as she talked and argued and laughed.
Even then he had marvelled that this beautiful creature was really his. That she would love him had seemed too good to be true, and when Simon Shea had swept in and taken her away part of P.J. had told himself that he had always known it couldn’t last. Why would a girl like Nell want to be with him, with his big nose and lanky frame and utter lack of sophistication?
She was still beautiful, still slender and somehow elusive, and as he watched her P.J.’s earlier confidence drained away. He felt twenty-two all over again, awkward and unsure, dazed by her nearness and gripped by the fear that if he tried to hold on to her, she would slip through his fingers and leave.
As she had.
She had John now. She was happy. Why would she want to start all over again with him? Look at her, sophisticated and desirable in a dress that clung in all the right places. It was a dress that made you think about how soft and warm her body would be beneath the soft, floaty material, how it would slide and slither over her skin, what it would be like to ease down the zip…
P.J. swallowed hard.
‘You look stunning,’ he said, aware that he sounded abrupt and almost angry, but unable to help himself.
‘Thank you,’ said Nell a little warily.
‘I hope John appreciates that dress.’
John? For a terrible moment, Nell couldn’t think who he meant, but then she remembered her blind date, and she clutched at the idea. John represented the future, P.J. the past. Pretending that she had already chosen the future would make it easier in the end to say goodbye to P.J. again.
‘John doesn’t think clothes are important,’ she said. It was the first thing that came into her head, and P.J. wasn’t impressed.
‘You don’t have to think clothes are important to appreciate a beautiful woman in a beautiful dress!’ he said. ‘He sounds a bit worthy for you, Nell.’
‘He’s a very nice man,’ she said a little defensively.
‘Not just a little boring?’ P.J. suggested.
‘Of course not,’ said Nell stiffly.
‘It just sounds as if he might be, that’s all.’
Nell glared, so irritated by his needling that she almost forgot that she knew absolutely nothing about John. ‘He’s not like that at all,’ she insisted, lifting her chin defiantly. ‘He’s great. He’s…kind and reliable and…clever…and he’s got a great sense of humour,’ she finished as if laying down a challenge.