A Bride for Christmas Read Free Page B

‘So the offer to employ me for a year was window dressing to make me feel good about you guys taking over?’
    ‘I can’t employ you if you seriously like…’he stared around him in distaste ‘…fluff.’
    ‘The fluff’s Lorna’s’
    ‘Lorna?’
    ‘Lorna’s my mother-in-law,’ she said. She was speaking calmly, but he could see she was holding herself tightly on rein. ‘Lorna set this salon up forty years ago. She had a stroke eight years ago, and advertised for an assistant. I got the job and met Ben. Now it’s my business, but Lorna still puts in her oar. Lorna’s been incredibly good to me. If she wants pink, and the locals like pink, I don’t see why she can’t have it.’
    ‘Carver Salons are sleek and minimalist.’
    ‘Of course they are. So you’re here to toss the fluff?’
    ‘I’ll do the preliminaries,’ he told her. ‘That’s why I’ve come—to decide what needs to be done. By the look of it, we’ll start from scratch. We’ll gut the place. My staff will take over the rebuilding, and everything that comes after.’
    ‘But you’ll still employee me?’
    ‘We envisage a smooth transition.’
    ‘You’re employing me for local colour?’
    ‘I didn’t say that.’
    ‘You didn’t have to. I can’t see me fitting the image of a Carver Salon consultant.’
    ‘Have you ever met a Carver Salon consultant?’
    ‘As it happens, I have,’ she said, almost defiantly. ‘A year ago I had a…well, I needed a holiday, and my parents-in-law sent me to Paris. I wandered through your salon, just to see how the other half live. Only of course I wasn’t up to standard. I hadn’t been in the salon for two minutes before I was asked to leave.’
    ‘If my staff thought you were possible opposition, then…’
    ‘Now, that’s the funny thing,’ she said. She’d risen and moved over to one of the Christmas trees. The angel on top was askew and she started carefully to adjust it. Then she began to check the lights, twisting each bulb in turn, taking her attention from him. ‘They didn’t even ask why I was there,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I could have been there to talk about my wedding. I could have been there to make enquiries about anything at all. But I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and carrying a small backpack Lorna had given me.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘The backpack was pink. Anyway, they obviously sorted me as a type they didn’t want. They asked me to leave, and suddenly there was a security guard propelling me onto the pavement.’ She shrugged. ‘Given my opinion of Carver Salons, I should have told you to take your very kind offer to buy this salon and stick it. But of course it’s a very generous offer, and I need the money and the thought of me being in opposition to you is ridiculous.’
    There was a moment’s silence then. Guy thought about his Paris staff. They were the best. They ran weddings that were the talk of the world.
    They’d kicked this woman out. She must have been humiliated.
    Maybe he needed to be a bit more hands-on.
    He didn’t like to be hands-on.
    He thought suddenly of the first wedding he’d planned. He’d been home from college, where he’d been studying law—a career his parents had thought eminently suitable but which bored him stupid. Christa—the girl he’d been dating since both their mothers had organised them to their first prom—had been managing his social life, and that had bored him, too. Then Christa’s sister had announced her engagement to someone both families thought entirely unsuitable.
    Louise had wept on Guy’s shoulder. Without parental support, and with no money of her own, she’d been doomed to have a civil ceremony and go without the party she’d longed for.
    Intrigued, Guy had set to work. He’d painted cardboard until his hands were sore, transforming a small local hall into a venue that looked like a SoHo streetscape. He’d organised the local hotdog vendor to set up in a corner. The pretzel