The Bride's Baby Read Free Page B

McFarlane was having a bad day. Slow, slow…‘In all shapes and sizes,’ she finished carefully.
    He said nothing.
    ‘With a c-coloured flame projector,’ she added, unnerved by the silence. ‘It’s really quite…’ she faltered ‘…spectacular.’
    He was regarding her as if she were mad. Actually, she thought with a tiny shiver, he might just be right. What sane person spent her time scouring the Internet looking for an elephant to hire by the day?
    Whose career highs involved delivering the perfect party for a pop star?
    Easy. The kind of person who’d been doing it practically from her cradle. Whose mother had done it before her—although she’d done it out of love for family members or a sense of duty when it was for community events, rather than for money. The kind of person who, like Candy, hadn’t planned for a day job but who’d fallen into it by chance and had been grateful to find something she could do without thinking, or the need for any specialist training.
    ‘And a “field of light”?’ he prompted, having apparently got the bit between his teeth.
    ‘Thousands of strands of fibre optic lights that ripple in the breeze,’ she answered, deciding this time to take the safe option and go for the straight answer. Then, since he seemed to require more, ‘Changing colour as they move.’
    She rippled her fingers to give him the effect.
    He stared at them for a moment, then, snapping his gaze back to her face, said, ‘What happens if there isn’t a breeze?’
    Did it matter? It wasn’t going to happen…
    Just answer the question, Sylvie, she told herself. ‘The c-contractor uses fans.’
    ‘You are joking.’
    Describing the effect to someone who was anticipating a thrilling spectacle on her wedding day was a world away from explaining it to a man who thought the whole thing was some ghastly joke.
    ‘Didn’t you discuss any of this with Candy?’ she asked.
    His broad forehead creased in a frown. Another stupid question, obviously. You didn’t become a billionaire by wasting time on trivialities like confetti cannons.
    Tom McFarlane had signed the equivalent of a blank cheque and left his bride-to-be to organise the wedding of her dreams while he’d concentrated on making the money to pay for it.
    No doubt, from Candy’s point of view, it had been the perfect division of labour. She’d certainly thrown herself into her role with enthusiasm and there wasn’t a single ‘effect’ that had gone unexplored. It was only the constraints of time and imagination—if she’d thought of an elephant, she’d have insisted on having one, insisted on having the whole damn circus—that had limited her self-indulgence. As it was, there had been more than enough to turn her dream into what was now proving to be Tom McFarlane’s—and her—nightmare.
    A six-figure nightmare, much of it provided by the small specialist companies Sylvie regularly did business with—people who trusted her to settle promptly. Which was why she was going to sit here until Tom McFarlane had worked through his anger and written her a cheque. Even if it took all night.
    Having briefly recovered her equilibrium, she felt herself begin to heat up again, from the inside, as he continued to look at her and she began to think that, actually, all night wouldn’t be a problem…
    She ducked her head, as if to check the invoice, tucking a non-existent strand of hair behind her ear with a hand that was shaking slightly.
    Tidying away what was a totally inappropriate thought.
    Quentin wasn’t the only one in danger of losing his head.
    The office was oddly silent. His phone did not ring. No one put their head around the door with some query.
    The only sound for what seemed like minutes—but was probably only seconds—was the pounding beat of her pulse in her ears.
    Then she heard the rustle of paper as Tom McFarlane returned to the stack of invoices in front of him and started going through them, one by one.
    The