February is the traditional month of love, when Cupid gets busy. So here is a timely short Valentine's treat. Curl up on the sofa, make a mug of something soothing, maybe have just a little chocolate nearby and take a break with one of our favourite writers, Jessica Hart!

The Billionaire’s Blind Date

Jessica Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘COME on, Mum … we’re going to be late!’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming …’ Nell scrabbled feverishly through her bag, checking to see that she had everything she needed. She had been so forgetful recently, and it had all been such a rush this morning that if she wasn’t careful she would have to go to the meeting this afternoon without any make-up on, and that was the last thing her confidence needed right now.

Ah, there was her comb. At least she’d be able to do something about her hair when she got to the office. Now, where was her cosmetic bag? Had she left it in the bathroom after all?

‘Mu-um …’ sighed Clara.

‘I’ve got to get myself a decent bag,’ Nell muttered to herself. ‘I can’t find anything in here … Oh!’

She broke off in consternation as the bag slipped from her grasp and landed with a splat on the doorstep, spilling keys and pens and tissues and lipsticks and the odd coins that always seemed to be lurking in its depths onto the path.

Clara bent to help pick them all up. ‘Mum, what is the matter with you at the moment?’ she asked, ten going on forty-five. Anyone would think that she was the mother, and Nell her awkward child. ‘You’re not usually this muddled.’

‘I’m not that bad, am I?’ asked Nell absently, shoving everything back into her bag. There was that compact mirror she had been looking for everywhere.

‘You lost your keys the other day.’

‘That could happen to anybody,’ Nell protested as they headed down the pavement at last.

‘And when you came to pick me up at Charlotte’s the other day, you went to the wrong house although you’ve been there millions of times.’

‘The doors were the same colour.’ Nell tried to defend herself, but Clara hadn’t finished.

‘And you forgot that Sophie was coming last Saturday.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised before Clara could come up with any more examples of what a bad mother she was.

Her daughter was right, though. She wasn’t usually this vague. ‘There just seems to be a lot to think about at the moment,’ she tried to explain. ‘I’m not really settled into my new job yet.’

It was true that moving jobs had been more stressful than she had imagined, but that wasn’t the real reason she was so unsettled at the moment, was it? Deep down, Nell knew that what had really thrown her was being reminded about P.J. after all these years.

It was all Thea’s fault. Nothing had been the same since she had got in touch with P.J.’s sister on some internet site. There was no need for people to go contacting old school friends, Nell thought crossly as she waited with Clara at the lights. It just made you remember all the things you had tried so hard to forget for the last sixteen years.

P.J. was part of her past. He had gone to the States, she had stayed here. They had both moved on. She hadn’t thought of him for years. Well, not very often, anyway.

Sometimes she didn’t think of him for weeks at a time.

But now he was back.

‘Guess who’s back in town?’ Thea had said, bursting with news, and Nell had been taken aback at the way her heart had clenched at the sound of his name.

‘Janey says he’s been incredibly successful,’ Thea told her. ‘Something to do with electronics. We should have known. He always was a bit geeky, wasn’t he?’

‘He wasn’t geeky,’ Nell objected, annoyed. ‘People just used to say that because he was clever.’ She defended him, just as she had all those years ago.

‘I wish we’d known just how clever,’ said Thea. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t stick with him, Nell. According to Janey, he’s practically a billionaire now.’

P.J., a billionaire? Nell couldn’t get her head round the idea. In her mind he was still the P.J. she had loved, a bit gawky, very young and very lanky, with that thin, intelligent face and the unexpected smile. The thought of him as a thrusting tycoon was vaguely unsettling. It didn’t fit with her image of him at all. She had always pictured him as a scientist rather than a businessman.

But then, she had never imagined that she would become a struggling single mother, either.

‘Janey says that he’s not with anyone at the moment,’ Thea went on, oh so casually. ‘You should get in touch.’

‘That would look subtle, wouldn’t it?’ Nell said sarcastically. ‘Hi, P.J., I haven’t been in touch for sixteen years, but I’ve just heard that you’re incredibly rich, so I wondered if you fancied meeting up?’

‘You could say that you’d just heard that he was back in London,’ Thea suggested. ‘You wouldn’t need to mention the rich bit.’

‘No, and of course P.J. would never guess that I knew that he had all that money, him being so stupid and all!’

Thea sighed. ‘It wouldn’t be like that with P.J. It’s not as if you’d be a remote acquaintance coming out of the woodwork. You were engaged once, after all.’

‘That just makes it worse!’ said Nell, recoiling from the very idea.

Her sister looked at her speculatively. ‘It’s a shame. You two were always good together. Still, maybe Janey will tell him that you’re divorced, and he’ll get in touch with you.’

Nell doubted it very much. P.J. had been nicer about Simon than she deserved, but no one liked being rejected, and presumably now that he had made his millions he had no trouble finding a girlfriend.

Good luck to him, she thought. He deserved his success, but his life and hers were worlds apart now. It was nice to know that he was well and successful, but there was no point in thinking about him anymore, she decided. She would put him out of her mind completely.

Absorbed in her thoughts, Nell didn’t realise that the green man was beeping at the lights until Clara dug her in the ribs. ‘Wake up, Mum!’

Nell started, and let her daughter bustle her across the road. Really, she must pull herself together. She was supposed to be looking after Clara, not the other way round.

Clara was eyeing her thoughtfully as they turned down a side street. They had walked to school so many times now that they followed the route automatically. Nell was sure that she could do it in her sleep.

‘Are you nervous about your date tonight?’

Nell sighed. She had been so busy thinking about P.J. that she had forgotten all about her blind date. ‘I wish I’d never agreed to go,’ she grumbled. ‘I don’t know why I let you and Thea bully me into these things!’

‘It would be nice for you to have a boyfriend.’

‘Clara, I’m thirty-seven! I’m too old for boyfriends.’

‘You’re not,’ said Clara loyally. ‘You’re not much older than Thea, and she’s just got married.’

That was unarguable. Her sister had been thirty-four when she’d met Rhys, and ready to give up on ever finding the right man for her.

‘Sometimes you just have to wait for fate to put the right person your way,’ said Nell, thinking that fate had done the best it could twenty-one years ago. It wasn’t fate’s fault that she had been too young and too silly to recognise the right person for her.

Not for the first time she wished that her daughter weren’t quite so interested in adult relationships. It was hard to explain some of the complexities to a ten-year-old, but from a very small child Clara had been fascinated by people and why they behaved the way they did.

She had been hardly more than a baby when her father had left, and took having divorced parents in her stride, but Nell really wanted to give her the example of a loving relationship, so that she could see that it was possible for adults to live together and be happy. That was the main reason why she had let Thea talk her into making an effort to meet men again, but so far her blind dates had not been a success, to say the least.

There had been Neil, who had, according to his own confession, thrived on a double life, Nick with the appalling table manners, Paul who had talked about himself all evening, and Lawrie, the latest disaster, who had spent the entire date describing his red sports car, apparently believing that it would be enough to make any woman fall at his feet. Thea had assured her that tonight would be different, but Nell wasn’t convinced.

‘I never really had boyfriends even when I was young,’ she told Clara now. ‘I married your father when I was twenty-one and before that there was only—’

She stopped. Somehow she had ended up back at P.J. It was uncanny the way all her thoughts seemed to lead back to him, in spite of the fact that she had decided so utterly and definitely that she absolutely was not, no way, going to think about him anymore.

‘Oh, look at that puppy,’ she said quickly as a scatty Labrador with huge paws and an eager expression gambolled along the pavement towards them, towing its owner in its wake.

‘Ah-h-h … cute …’ Clara cooed and let the puppy slurp at her fingers, quivering in ecstasy at all the attention, but the moment it had been dragged on its way she fixed a beady look on her mother, who had just begun to hope that she had been successfully distracted.

‘Only who?’

‘Only who what?’ Nell prevaricated. Clara was a darling, but sometimes she could be just a little too perceptive and persistent for comfort.

‘You said you’d only had one boyfriend before Dad,’ Clara reminded her.

‘Oh, yes, that’s right,’ she said as carelessly as she could. ‘Just a boy I knew at school.’

‘What was his name?’

‘P.J.,’ she admitted reluctantly.

‘What, like in pyjamas?’ said Clara, unimpressed.

‘Yes.’ Nell was conscious of a slightly defensive tinge to her voice. She had thought of P.J. as P.J. for so long that the initials no longer seemed odd to her.

‘Why was he called that?’

‘His real name was Peter John Smith,’ she explained. ‘He used to say that using his initials was the only way he could make himself sound interesting.’

Clara looked puzzled. ‘Was he really boring, then?’

‘No, he wasn’t boring.’ Nell couldn’t help smiling as she shook her head. P.J. had been a lot of things, but never boring.

His image rose before her, long and lanky, with that humorous, beaky face and eyes that were blue and very alert. P.J. would never have made it as a model, that was for sure, but he had been kind and clever and funny, and everybody had liked him.

‘He was … nice,’ she told Clara. ‘He was very easy to talk to. We had good fun together.’

The other girls had mooned over the better-looking boys in the year above, but P.J. had been much more fun. And it wasn’t as if he had been exactly ugly. He had had a stubborn jaw and laughing eyes and an unexpected, slightly lopsided smile that would suddenly make him seem much more attractive than he actually was.

Without meaning to, Nell sighed. If only she couldn’t remember him quite so vividly.

‘What happened?’ asked Clara. ‘Did you have a fight?’

‘No.’ Nell hesitated. It was hard to explain what had happened when she couldn’t even explain it to herself now. ‘We’d been going out since I was sixteen and he was seventeen. We’d been away to different universities and … well, I suppose we’d started to grow apart.’

They had been so young, too, she thought. She had been just twenty-one, and desperate to get married and have a family, while P.J. had wanted to wait. It had begun to seem as if they were just staying together out of force of habit.

‘And then I met your father …’

She trailed off, remembering how glamorous Simon had seemed at the time. A few years older, he had had all the swagger and sophistication that P.J. had lacked, while she had been too naive to realise that kindness was worth so much more than sophistication, or that good looks and self-confidence counted for little compared to someone you could rely on absolutely.

Like P.J., in fact.

‘Your dad swept me off my feet,’ she told Clara.

And he had. Simon had promised her everything she had ever wanted … and then spent the next eight years crushing her bright hopes one by one.

Clara swung her bag thoughtfully. ‘Do you wish you’d married P.J. instead of Dad?’

‘Of course not.’ Nell stopped dead in the middle of the pavement, and gave her daughter a hug. ‘If I hadn’t married Dad, I wouldn’t have you. How could I possibly be sorry about that?’

She couldn’t let Clara think that she ever regretted the choice she had made. Her marriage to Simon hadn’t been a success, but they had had Clara, and she was worth everything.

‘It’s all a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t think P.J. even remembers me now.’

Somehow it was a depressing thought. Nell made herself push it away and squared her shoulders mentally. It was ridiculous the way she had let thoughts of P.J. unsettle her recently. She had been fine when she’d thought he was in the States, but, really, what difference did it make if he was back in London or not? It wasn’t as if she mixed with a wealthy crowd, let alone with billionaires, so she was hardly any more likely to bump into him.

So she might as well put him out of her mind. Again.

The trouble was, her life just wasn’t big enough at the moment. That was the only reason P.J. suddenly seemed so important. Thea was right, she needed to get out there and meet someone new, or failing that take up a hobby. Basket-weaving, or train spotting or something … There must be some interest out there for her. There was no use hankering after what-might-have-beens.

They crossed the last road and turned into the busy street where Clara went to school. There was still a cluster of parents and children at the gate, so they weren’t too late, thank goodness.

Nell glanced at her watch. She might get the earlier tube after all. It would give her time to pick up her suit from the dry-cleaner’s and get changed and made up before she had to face her boss. Eve was always banging on about the importance of professional image, and she wouldn’t think much of Nell in old track-suit pants, faded sweatshirt and trainers, with a naked face and hair all over the place. This would be the morning she had slept through her alarm.

This was better, thinking about work instead of about P.J., Nell congratulated herself. A motorised wheelchair was buzzing busily towards her along the pavement, and, her mind still on not thinking about P.J., Nell stepped automatically out of the way.

Only to misjudge the kerb and stumble into the road, right into the path of a passing car. There was a glancing blow on her arm and a squeal of brakes, but all Nell could see was her daughter’s white, horrified face.

‘Mum!’

The car practically stood on its nose and Nell reeled away from it, feeling sick with shock at the narrowness of her escape.

‘It’s OK … I’m OK …’ she said as Clara flung herself at her, and she hugged the little girl tightly to reassure her.

A car door slammed and quick footsteps came towards them. ‘Are you all right?’ a male voice asked, sharp with concern. ‘I didn’t hit you, did I?’

Clara pulled herself away from her mother and turned on him furiously, venting her fright in shrill anger. ‘You should be more careful! You could have knocked her over!’

Nell braced herself for a mouthful of abuse. A lot of drivers would react aggressively in a near accident, and it had been her fault, after all. Fortunately, this man seemed to take in Clara’s distress and was calm enough not to take out his own fright on a little girl.

‘Yes, I could,’ he said to Clara, sounding almost as shaken as Nell felt. ‘I’m really sorry. I wasn’t expecting your mother to step out into the road like that, but that’s no excuse, I know.’ He turned to Nell, who was rubbing her arm. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No, I … I …’ She trailed off in disbelief.

He looked just like P.J.

Older, tougher, more solid, but yes, exactly like P.J. He looked like him, he even sounded like him, but clearly he couldn’t be P.J. That would be too weird. Coincidences like that just didn’t happen. It was just that she’d been thinking about him.

Nell shook her head slightly to clear it. Perhaps she had been knocked over after all and was having some bizarre out-of-body experience? But he was staring back at her and the blue eyes that were uncannily like P.J.’s widened with incredulous recognition.

‘Nell?’ he asked in a tentative voice.

‘Hello, P.J.,’ she said weakly.

CHAPTER TWO

P.J. STARED at her, trying to take in the fact that it was actually Nell. Janey had been doing her best to drop her name into every conversation they had had since he had come back to London, and he had been disturbed by how vividly he could remember her.

Nell was divorced now, Janey had said pointedly. Why didn’t he give her a ring?

P.J. had been hesitant. It wasn’t as if he had been pining for Nell all these years, but the memory of the look in her eyes as she gave him back his ring still had a surprising power to hurt. The raw pain had faded to the merest twinge now, of course, but he didn’t want to go through that again.

Still, the idea of seeing her again had both intrigued and unnerved him, and he had been thinking about it more than he should have done. That was probably why he hadn’t been concentrating as well as he should, until she had stumbled out into the road in front of him.

And now here she was, his first love, his lost love, standing in a busy London street, while the passersby, hopeful at first of some gory incident, had quickly lost interest and were now surging impersonally past them once more, oblivious to the fact that his world had just turned upside down.

Nell.

She was older, of course, and thinner, he thought, and she had lost the golden bloom that had so entranced him as an adolescent. There was a wariness and a weariness in the lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there before, but it was unmistakably Nell. She had the same wide grey gaze, the same sweetness in her expression, the same air of deceptive fragility.

‘Nell …’ He ran his hands through his hair a little helplessly. ‘This is bizarre … I always hoped I’d bump into you again one day, but not literally! Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?’

Nell looked down at herself as if to check, becoming aware for the first time of a dull throb in her ankle. She must have wrenched her bad foot as she’d tried to right herself.

‘I think my arm just caught your wing mirror,’ she said, feeling more shaken by coming face to face with P.J. than by the accident.

It was disconcerting to find him so familiar, and yet so changed. She had been right in thinking that he would grow into his looks, but she hadn’t expected him to turn into quite such an attractive man. Where the young P.J.’s face had been thin and beaky, now it was strong and angular. His neck and shoulders had broadened as he had thickened out with age, and he had acquired a solidity and a presence that was almost unnerving, but the crooked smile and the blue dancing eyes were just the same.

‘Let me see.’ Unaware of the train of her thoughts, P.J. took her arm and felt it gently. ‘It doesn’t seem to be broken, anyway.’

Nell was unaccountably flustered by the feel of his hands, and miserably conscious of her bare face, and scruffy clothes. If fate had wanted her to meet P.J. again against all the odds, it could at least have waited until she was looking more presentable.

‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ she said almost sharply, and pulled out of his grasp, only to wince as she stepped back onto her twisted ankle.

‘You’re limping,’ said Clara protectively. ‘It’s your bad foot, too.’ She cast P.J. an accusing glance. ‘She broke it last year.’

‘And now I’ve made it worse. I’m sorry …’ P.J. looked enquiring, and Nell had no choice but to make the introduction.

‘This is my daughter, Clara,’ she said. ‘Clara, this is—’

‘P.J.,’ supplied Clara before she could finish. She looked assessingly at P.J. as she held out her hand, and quite suddenly she smiled, as if he had passed some rigorous test. ‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hello, Clara.’ P.J. shook her hand gravely, but his eyes twinkled. ‘It’s nice to meet you, but I’m really sorry I had to nearly knock your mother over to do it. We’re old friends.’

‘I know,’ said Clara. ‘Mum was just telling me about you. She said you were nice.’

P.J. glanced at Nell, his eyes warm with amusement, and to her chagrin Nell could feel herself blushing.

‘We were just talking old boyfriends and how I met you at school,’ she said as casually as she could. She didn’t want him thinking that she spent her days boring on about him. ‘Clara doesn’t believe that I was ever that young, of course!’

‘Oh, she was,’ P.J. told Clara with a grin. ‘She was the prettiest girl in the school. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, I can tell you!’

Clara beamed approvingly at him, and Nell’s heart sank. Her daughter was an incurable matchmaker, especially since she had taken such a successful hand in her aunt Thea’s affairs the previous year, and now she had evidently decided that it was time that her mother had some romance in her life, too. It was clear that she was eyeing P.J. up as prospective candidate.

Heaven only knew what she would say if she discovered that P.J. was not only eligible but rich enough to solve all her mother’s financial problems without even noticing a blip in his bank account! She had to nip her plans in the bud right now, Nell decided.

‘Clara, we’re going to be really late,’ she said quickly. ‘We’d better get on.’ She turned to P.J. ‘Nice to see you again, P.J.,’ she said with a bright smile and what she hoped was an air of finality.

If P.J. heard it, he ignored it. ‘Let me give you a lift,’ he said.

‘There’s no need,’ Nell said firmly, and pointed to the school gates. ‘We’re just going along here.’

‘What about your ankle, Mum?’ Clara put in. ‘You won’t be able to walk on it. How are you going to get to work?’

‘I’ll be fine when I get to the tube.’

‘Where do you work?’ asked P.J.

‘In the city,’ said Clara, disregarding Nell’s attempt at a quelling look. ‘It takes ages to get there,’ she added, blatantly fishing.

P.J. didn’t disappoint her. ‘Oh, well, that’s easy, then,’ he said. ‘I’m going that way myself. I just have to drop off the kids first.’

Kids?

Jolted out of her annoyance at the way the two of them were calmly organising her life for her, Nell turned belatedly to where a car with sleek, expensive lines was pulled up, half on, half off the pavement. Three small, curious faces were staring through the back window at them.

Three? And this was the man who hadn’t been ready for children at all! An extraordinary mixture of emotions—none of them explicable—churned around in Nell’s chest. Surprise, regret, disappointment, and worst of all something that felt suspiciously like jealousy.

She didn’t know why she was so taken aback. Why shouldn’t P.J. have married and had a family just as she had? What had she expected? That he would have spent the last sixteen years pining for her?

Janey had told Thea that he was single at the moment, and somehow it had never occurred to Nell that he might be divorced, like her. She had always thought of P.J. as someone who would make a commitment and stick by it, no matter what.

Of course, Thea might have misunderstood. Why not accept the more obvious explanation? Nell asked herself. That P.J. was happily married with three gorgeous children, and a phenomenally successful career, while she was single, with one gorgeous child, and her career was best not thought about too much.

‘It won’t take long,’ P.J. was saying. ‘Their school is just round the corner.’

Nell knew the one. It was an extortionately expensive private school, the kind of place she would never have been able to send Clara, even if she and Simon were still married. Not that expense would be an issue for P.J. now. You only had to look at that car and the immaculately tailored suit he was wearing to know that he could afford whatever he wanted.

He had a very different life from her now, that was for sure. Not that it made any difference to her, Nell reminded herself. There was no reason for her to feel prickly and defensive the way she suddenly was feeling for some reason.

‘Really, there’s no need for you to give me a lift,’ she said shortly, and saw Clara looking puzzled at her tone. ‘I’m quite capable of walking, and anyway, the tube is much quicker than sitting in traffic. Thank you for the offer, but we really should go. Come along, Clara.’

Sadly, her attempt at a dignified exit was ruined by the way her ankle buckled the moment she tried to take a step.

‘Mum, you can’t walk,’ cried Clara, obviously exasperated by her mother’s stubbornness. ‘Don’t be silly!’

‘Clara’s right,’ said P.J., and gave Nell a smile that made her heart do an alarming somersault. ‘You always used to be so sensible, Nell. Don’t tell me you’ve changed that much!’

‘You have,’ she said without thinking.

‘I’m sixteen years older and wearing a suit,’ he acknowledged, ‘but otherwise I’m just the same. I’m not suggesting you get into a car with a stranger. We used to be friends.’

And lovers …

The unspoken words hung in the air, and for Nell it was like a series of pictures flicking through her mind. P.J. reaching confidently for her hand, smiling as he drew her towards him. Lying by the river in the long, sweet grass, drowsy with sunshine, feeling the tickle of a feather on her nose, opening her eyes to see him leaning above her with that wicked grin. P.J. turning up at her door, half hidden behind a huge bunch of roses, when she passed her finals; holding her as she wept and wept for a lost dog.

‘Come on, Nell,’ he said with a smile that told her he remembered just as much as she did. ‘Get in the car and stop being silly like Clara says!’

Clara giggled and hugged Nell, evidently taking it for granted that the matter was now decided. ‘Bye, Mum. See you tonight.’ She turned brightly to her new ally. ‘Bye, P.J. Don’t let Mum do anything she shouldn’t!’

‘Goodbye, Clara.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after her.’

Nell shook her head ruefully as her daughter ran off, school bag bumping against her back. ‘That girl …!’

‘She’s great,’ said P.J. ‘I like children with personality.’

‘She’s got that all right,’ said Nell with feeling.

‘Well, she’s issued her instructions, and I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if she finds out that you haven’t done as you were told!’ He held open the passenger door. ‘Come on, in you get.’

It would be ridiculous to refuse now, and she could hardly run off with her ankle like this. With the distinct feeling that she was being managed, and not at all sure that she liked it, Nell limped over to the car and got in. Turning with a little difficulty, she smiled a hello at the children in the back.

‘Jake, Emily and Flora,’ said P.J., pointing affectionately at each one. ‘Kids, this lady I almost knocked over is an old friend of mine, Nell Martindale.’

It was odd hearing her maiden name again. ‘Nell Shea now,’ she reminded him.

‘Of course. Sorry.’

P.J. switched on the engine abruptly. He had forgotten Simon Shea there for a moment. Of course Nell had taken his name. She had been besotted with him. Stupid to think she would have changed it back.

‘We’re divorced, but I kept Shea so that I’d have the same surname as Clara,’ she said, almost as if she could read his mind.

‘Oh. Sure.’

P.J. felt a bit better for some reason. He checked the mirror and pulled out into the heavy traffic as Nell engaged the children in conversation, discovering that they were nine, seven, and five and a quarter respectively, that they didn’t mind school but that they all hated Mrs Tarbuck, who shouted at them if they were naughty.

Nell had always been good with children, he remembered, and had longed to have a baby of her own. He was the one who had resisted the idea, thinking that they were too young and that there would be plenty of time to start a family. More fool him, he thought bitterly. While he had still been hesitating, Simon Shea had swept Nell off her feet with his easy promises.

P.J. was a quick learner. After that, he had seized every opportunity that had come his way. It had led to astonishing success and wealth beyond anything he had ever been able to imagine, but somehow none of it had ever quite compensated for the bitterness of that first hard lesson.

In the back seat, the children were still chatting happily to Nell about the contents of their lunch boxes.

‘It sounds yummy,’ said Nell, thinking what engaging children they were. They didn’t look exactly like P.J., but there was a definite family resemblance and Jake, the boy, had the same alert blue eyes. Would their children have looked like this if they had married? she wondered a little wistfully.

‘But I don’t like banana,’ little Flora was grumbling, sticking out her lower lip. ‘Mummy always makes me have one. She says I have to have a bit of fruit, but I don’t see why I should.’

‘I’m afraid I make Clara have fruit every day, too,’ Nell confessed to Flora’s disgust. She might not like the idea of P.J. having a wife, but on some things mothers had to stick together.

‘Here we are.’ P.J. pulled up outside the school and opened his door to get out. ‘Out you get.’

The three children scrambled out of the back seat and he stooped, giving the girls a kiss and Jake an affectionate tweak on the nose, and then they were gone, running into school with their friends.

‘They’ve forgotten us already,’ he said wryly to Nell as he got back into the car, and she nodded, grasping at the chance to fill up this first moment when they were alone with polite chit-chat.

‘Clara’s like that. The moment she meets up with her friends, she’s completely absorbed in their own world. I’m sure she never gives me a thought when she’s with them.’

P.J. sent her a sidelong glance. ‘You should be pleased that she’s not clinging to you. You want your child to grow up well balanced and independent, don’t you?’

‘Of course, but sometimes it’s a little hard when you spend your whole life thinking about them and you realise it’s all one way.’

‘That’s your job as a parent, isn’t it?’ he said with a lopsided smile. ‘And Clara’s the kind of child who’ll go far. She’s got charm in spades.’

‘When she wants to use it,’ said Nell in a dry voice. ‘She’s like her father that way,’ she added without thinking.

‘Ah, yes, Simon,’ said P.J. evenly. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s well. He’s got a new wife and a new family now, though, and I don’t see much of him.’

‘Janey told me that you were divorced,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. It must have been hard for you. I know how much you loved him.’

Had she loved Simon, or had she just been carried away by an illusion? Nell wondered. It was hard to remember now.

‘You were right,’ she said abruptly.

‘I was right?’ P.J. glanced at her in surprise. ‘What about?’

‘You said that Simon didn’t really know me, so he couldn’t really love me. You said I didn’t really know him, so I couldn’t trust him. You said he’d break my heart and leave me … and he did.’ Nell’s smile was twisted. ‘I think you’re fully entitled to say “I told you so!”’

‘Nell …’ P.J. wished he could say something to help, but he couldn’t think of anything. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last, quite simply. ‘I shouldn’t have said those things to you. I was just lashing out because I was raw and bitter. I suppose I wanted to hurt you because you’d hurt me, but I swear I never wanted to be proved right.’

‘I know. I’m sorry, too,’ said Nell quietly. ‘I never wanted to hurt you, P.J., but I know that I did.’

‘Hey, I survived.’ The corner of P.J.’s mouth turned up in his crooked smile as he tried to lighten the atmosphere, and Nell found herself remembering with piercing clarity exactly what his lips had felt like against her skin. Shivering a little, she turned away.

‘I can’t say I thought so at the time,’ he admitted, hoping to take some of the sadness from her expression, ‘but it didn’t take long for me to realise that it was all for the best.’ He hated the thought that she had spent years feeling guilty about the way their relationship had ended. She had had enough to bear without that.

‘Oh?’ Nell kept her eyes on the car ahead as they inched towards a busy junction. Naturally, she was pleased to know that P.J. hadn’t been heartbroken, but surely he ought to have had some regrets?

Or had he been wanting to end things himself, so that her decision had come as a huge relief? For some reason, that thought was worse than feeling guilty about the way she had hurt him.

‘You were right, too,’ P.J. told her, one eye on the traffic, the other on Nell’s suddenly rigid profile. ‘We’d been together too long, and our relationship was stale. It was time for us to be braver and get out there on our own. If we’d got married then, we would have been tied down with a mortgage and babies straight away. We would never have gone to Africa or done all those things we’d planned to do, would we? We’d still be there, regretting the opportunities we’d missed, and resenting each other for it. I certainly don’t think I’d have taken the risks I did to start my company if I’d had a family to think about.’

They had made it to the junction, and P.J. waited, looking for an opportunity to cut across the traffic. Nell studied him sideways under her lashes as he concentrated on driving. The set of his jaw was achingly familiar, and the line of his cheek and the curl of his mouth made her feel hollow inside.

He could have been hers. They could have spent the last sixteen years loving and laughing. They could have gone to Africa, and taken any babies with them. They would have been able to do anything as long as they were together. It wouldn’t have had to end in bitterness and resentment the way P.J. thought it would.

‘So you think it all worked out for the best?’ she asked.

CHAPTER THREE

AN ONCOMING car flashed its lights, and P.J. pulled out, easing the car in the long line of traffic and lifting a hand in acknowledgement. ‘Yes, I do.’ He glanced at Nell. ‘Don’t you?’

‘I’m sure you’re right about us,’ she said quickly, in case he thought she had more regrets about their broken engagement than he did.

‘But?’ he prompted.

Nell sighed. ‘But when your marriage ends in a mess, it’s hard sometimes to think that it was all for the best.’

‘I can imagine,’ said P.J., contrite. He hesitated. ‘Does it still hurt?’

‘About Simon?’

He nodded, keeping his eyes firmly on the road ahead.

‘Not really. Not now. At the time it was horrible,’ she told him, surprised at how easily she had slipped back into the way of talking to P.J. about the things she would normally keep to herself. ‘But by the end it was just such a relief not to have to pretend and argue anymore.

‘I didn’t want Clara to grow up with us shouting at each other,’ she said, remembering how Simon had lied and blustered and finally left. ‘It wasn’t how I imagined having a family,’ she went on a little sadly. ‘I’d dreamt about giving my children a loving home with two parents but … well, it didn’t work out like that, and I think it’s better this way. At least Clara has a “normal” life when she’s with Simon and Elaine.’

‘How often does she see her father?’ asked P.J. after a while.

‘Not as often as she needs.’ Nell watched a young man walking along the pavement, a small boy perched, delighted, on his shoulders. The sight of a father being tender and loving with his children always gave her a pang, thinking about how uninterested Simon had been with Clara.

‘Simon’s not a cruel father. He pays his maintenance for Clara on time, and he does his duty by her … but that’s just what it feels like, a duty. It’s as if she’s a tiresome obligation now that he’s got a new family. And I don’t think Elaine feels comfortable with Clara. She’s always changing the arrangements when Clara is due to go over there, and they never include her in their family holidays.’

‘That’s hard,’ commented P.J.

‘I don’t mind not being part of Simon’s life anymore,’ Nell tried to explain, ‘but I do mind for Clara. She’s always been an incredibly sensible child and she never complains, but she’s only ten.’

‘I can’t imagine having a daughter like Clara and not wanting to spend as much time with her as possible,’ said P.J., stopping at a pedestrian crossing.

‘I know. That’s why I—’ Nell caught herself up just in time. She had been about to tell P.J. about her efforts to find a man who would be a better male influence in Clara’s life, but that would be taking confidences a bit too far. P.J. had only been back in her life for a matter of minutes, and a girl had her pride, after all.

‘Why you what?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

P.J. sent her an uncomfortably searching glance. ‘You’ve never thought about marrying again?’

Nell had never liked his habit of being able to follow her train of thought even when she was trying to be her most inscrutable.

Nell thought about asking him if he had any idea how difficult it was to find someone new when you were in your thirties, and had a child, and couldn’t afford to go out, and in any case were too dog-tired after working all day and then looking after your daughter to dream about anything more exciting than a hot bath and an early night. And that was before you started looking at the single men who were available!

‘No,’ was all she said in the end, though.

It was definitely time to change the subject. ‘What nice children Jake and Emily and Flora are,’ she said, and meaning it. ‘You must be very proud of them.’

‘I am,’ said P.J. ‘Although I must admit that I haven’t really had that much to do with them over the last few years.’

Nell couldn’t help staring at him. How could he sound so casual about not spending enough time with his own children? She would have expected that P.J., once he became a father, would take his role very seriously.

‘Their mother deserves all the credit for bringing them up, I think,’ he was saying. ‘She doesn’t get as much support as she should.’

Nell’s brows drew together. ‘In that case, perhaps you could do a bit more to help her?’ she suggested coolly.

‘I’d like to,’ said P.J., ‘but it’s difficult … and I have got a business to run.’

That had always been Simon’s excuse too, she thought bitterly. ‘I haven’t got time,’ he had used to say. ‘I can’t afford to take time off. I can’t support you and Clara unless I work, can I?’ His job, it seemed, was always more important than giving his daughter some attention.

‘Oh, well, if your business needs you …’ she said, not bothering to disguise her sarcasm, and P.J. looked at her with a puzzled frown.

‘It probably doesn’t need me as much as I’d like,’ he admitted.

‘Does it need you more than your children?’

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