A Bride For Christmas

CHAPTER FOUR

JENNY arrived at Guy’s guesthouse the next morning wearing clothing that said very clearly she was there to work. Plain white shirt, knee-length skirt, plain sandals. Guy emerged dressed in fawn chinos, a lovely soft green polo shirt with a tiny white yacht embroidered on the chest-Jenny bet it had to be the logo of the world’s most exclusive yacht club-and faded loafers. He looked at what Jenny was wearing and stopped dead.

‘The Carver corporation has a dress code,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong with this?’

‘It’s frumpy.’ It was, too. In fact, Jenny had worked quite hard to find it. There’d been an international lawn-bowls meet in Sandpiper Bay two years ago, and she’d helped organise the catering. The dress code for that had meant she’d had to go out and buy this sophisticated little outfit, and she hadn’t worn it since.

‘It’s my usual work wear,’ she lied. ‘Yesterday I was too casual.’

‘We were both too casual,’ he agreed, and she blushed.

Right. Get on with it.

‘So where do you want to start?’

‘I’ve come here to plan the refurbishment of the salon.’

‘That’s important. But there’s the little manner of two weddings…’

‘Leave the planning to me,’ he said, and she subsided into what she hoped was dignified silence. She was this man’s employee.

He’d kissed her. She should forget all about that kiss. She should…

Let’s not aim at the stars here, she told herself. Let’s just be a good little employee and put the memory of that kiss on the backburner.

But not very far back.

He was out of his depth.

They’d purchased three salons so far in this round of expansion. In each of those, Guy had visited early, taken note of the features of the building as they were, then brought his notes back to his cool grey office in Manhattan and drawn them up as he’d like them to be. With plans prepared, he’d sent a team of professionals to do his bidding, and six months later they’d opened as a Carver Salon.

Now, thanks to Lorna’s indiscretion, the Carver name would be used before he could leave his imprint.

He had to get rid of the fluff, and fast. Instead of sitting down, calmly planning for the future, he was trying to figure how he could get this place clear so if the media arrived to see the latest Carver Salon they’d see something worthy of the name. How to transform fluff to elegance in a week?

And how to ignore Jenny, sitting silently at her desk? She sat with her hands folded in front of her, a good little employee, waiting for instructions.

What was it about this woman that unnerved him?

Why was she so different?

He didn’t do relationships. He didn’t…

‘Phone Kylie,’ he said at last, goaded. ‘Tell her she’s having a Carver Wedding.’

‘I already have,’ she said meekly.

He was out of his depth. He needed help here.

‘I need your assistance,’ he snapped, and she nodded, ready to be helpful.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Jenny…’

‘Sir?’

‘Will you cut it out?’

‘Cut what out?’

‘I don’t know where the hell to start,’ he confessed, and watched as she struggled to keep the expression on her face subservient.

‘You’re asking for my input?’

‘I want some solid help here,’ he told her. ‘I assume you’re not just the girl who mans the desk? You’ve been running this place on your own since Lorna’s stroke.’

‘But you’re in charge. I’m waiting for orders.’

‘We need to get a dumpster,’ he said in exasperation. ‘Something to get rid of this lot.’

‘You have two weddings to organise before Christmas and you’re planning to redecorate the salon?’ she said cautiously. ‘Right.’ She lifted the phone. ‘I’ll order a dumpster.’

‘Dresses,’ he said, in increasing frustration. ‘We need to organise a wedding dress and attendants’ outfits.’

‘They might take some time,’ Jenny said, and started dialling.

He lifted the phone from her hand and crashed it down onto the cradle.

‘If I don’t get some solid help here I’ll-’

‘Sack me?’ she said, and smiled.

Damn the woman. He knew she was competent. He wanted to take her shoulders and shake her.

He wanted to kiss her.

That thought wasn’t helping things at all. His normally cool, calculating mind was clouded, and it was clouded because this woman was looking up at him with a strange, enigmatic smile.

This woman who was as far from his life as any woman he’d ever met. This woman who was up to her neck in emotional entanglements.

His employee.

He took a deep breath, turned, and paced the salon a couple of times, trying to clear his head. He knocked one of the bridal mannequins and spent a couple of minutes righting it.

He turned to Jenny and she was watching him, her eyes interested, her head to one side like an inquisitive sparrow.

Forget she’s a woman, he told himself. And forget she’s an employee. Let’s get this onto some sort of even keel.

‘Jenny, I’m out of my depth here,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

She stilled. The faint smile on her face faded. He’d shocked her, he thought. Whatever she’d been expecting it hadn’t been that.

There was a long silence.

She could keep up the play-acting, he thought. And she was definitely considering it. The role of subservient employee was a defence. He watched as indecision played on her face. Finally she broke. Her face was incredibly expressive, he thought. He saw the exact moment she put away the play-acting and decided to be up-front.

‘Two weddings,’ she said. ‘The biggest problem is the dresses. We need to get things moving. There are three local women with the capacity to sew fast and well.’

‘Contact them.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘They’re all up to their ears in Christmas preparations.’

‘Then what-?’

‘There are a couple of oldies I know who love baby-sitting,’ she said. ‘They have very quiet Christmases, so they may be prepared to help. Jonas Bucket had an accident at work some years ago and is confined to a wheelchair. He loves Christmas cooking. So if I…’

‘What are you talking about?’ He was lost.

‘Mary, Sarah and Leanne are my seamstresses,’ she said patiently. ‘Mary and Sarah have small kids, and Leanne’s having eighteen people for Christmas dinner. If I ask them to sew for me they’ll say no. But if I say I’ve already organised childminding and cooking and house-cleaning-and someone to set Leanne’s table-then they’ll jump at the chance to escape by sewing. Now…’

‘Now what?’ he said, stunned.

‘You’re the boss,’ she said, ‘but if I were you I’d sit down and write the menu for the Barret and Anna wedding. We need to get the food ordered right away. They’ve elected to do a Christmas theme, so we’ll keep it like that. Roast turkey and all the trimmings.’

‘For a sophisticated-?’

‘She did say pink tulle,’ Jenny said, though she sounded a bit less certain of her ground.

‘So she did,’ Guy said, thinking fast, and then looked up as the doorbell tinkled.

It was Kylie. She was dressed in pregnancy overalls with a white T-shirt underneath. With her face flushed with either nerves or excitement, and her blonde curls tied up in two pigtails, Guy decided she looked like one of those Russian Mazurka dolls. If you pushed her she’d topple over and then spring right up.

‘Hi, Kylie,’ Jenny said, and Guy winced. This woman was a client. His first Australian Carver Wedding…

‘Mum just rang me,’ Kylie said, with a nervous look aside at Guy. ‘She says Mr Carver’s agreed to do my wedding.’

‘He has,’ Jenny said. ‘But there’s no need to change your plans. We’ll do your wedding exactly as we’ve planned it.’

‘No,’ said Kylie.

There was a moment’s silence. ‘No?’ Jenny said at last, cautiously, and received a furious shake of her head in reply. ‘You don’t want a wedding?’

‘Of course I want a wedding,’ Kylie said. ‘Me and Daryl are really excited. But…’

‘But what?’ Jenny asked.

‘It’s Mum’s wedding,’ she burst out. ‘And Daryl’s mum’s. They’ve been at us for ever to get married, and of course we want to, but we didn’t want this. We thought maybe we’d just have the baby and then go somewhere afterwards and get married quietly. But from the minute we told them we were expecting they’ve been at us and at us, until finally we cracked. And that dress…Mum had you make it for me when I was sixteen. She chose it. Not me. Every week since then Mum gets it out and pats it. Do you know how much I hate it?’

‘No,’ Jenny said, stunned.

‘I can’t tell you,’ Kylie declared. ‘But I loathe it. I would have gone along with it. Fine, I said to Daryl, whatever makes them happy. But when Mum rang and said I could have a Carver Wedding I thought suddenly, A Carver Wedding! I could maybe have it like I want. Elegant. Sleek. Sophisticated. Something so when our kids grow up they’ll look at our wedding photos and think, Wow, just for a bit our parents weren’t assistants in a butcher’s shop. If you knew how much I hate pink tulle…’

‘Your six bridesmaids are in pink tulle,’ Jenny murmured.

‘Exactly.’ Kylie’s colour was almost beetroot as she desperately tried to explain herself. ‘It was bad enough when I was skinny, but now I’ll look like a wall of cupids coming down the aisle, with a sea of pink tulle coming after.’ She turned to Guy. ‘They say in the fashion magazines that you can perform miracles. Get me out of cupids and pink tulle. Please.’

There was a deathly hush.

‘We can’t,’ Jenny said at last. ‘Kylie, the dresses are finished. There’s less than a week to your wedding, and we have another enormous wedding to cater for on Christmas Day.’

The passion went out of Kylie like air out of a pricked balloon, and defeat took its place in an instant. She’d expected this, Guy thought. Her request had been one last stand, but defeat had been expected.

‘That’ll be for someone rich, I’ll bet,’ Kylie said, but it wasn’t said in anger. It was said as a fact, and there was a wealth of resignation in her voice. ‘Someone who can afford any wedding she wants and who has enough guts to stand up for it.’

Guy looked suddenly at the girl’s hands. They were scrubbed almost raw. There were jagged scars on two fingers.

‘You work in a butcher’s shop, Kylie?’ he asked her, and Kylie bit her lip.

‘Yeah. Morris’s butchers next door. That’s why I could come so quickly. But I should be back there now.’

‘You’ll work there after you’re married?’

‘Course I will,’ she said. ‘It’s Daryl’s dad’s shop, and there’s no way we can afford for me to stay home. We’re having a week’s honeymoon staying at Daryl’s auntie’s place. I’ll have another week off when the baby’s born. Then we’ll set up a cot in the back.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry. It was dumb to ask. I gotta get back.’

She sounded totally resigned, Guy thought. Accepting.

Jenny was watching him.

What had Kylie said when she first arrived? They say in the fashion magazines that you can perform miracles.

He couldn’t perform miracles. Of course he couldn’t. But…

‘Anna wants pink tulle,’ he said slowly, and Jenny nodded. She seemed…cautious.

‘That’s no problem. We can order more.’

‘But Anna will be more than happy with a kitsch wedding,’ he said. ‘Jenny, you said you have three through as he spoke. ‘From the sound of the fax they sent me, kitsch is exactly what she wants. And Anna has six bridesmaids.’

‘So?’

‘So we swap,’ he said, and his organisational mode slipped back into place, just like that.

Jenny’s presence-Jenny herself-had somehow thrown him off course. He’d been feeling out of control since yesterday, but suddenly now he’d slipped back behind the wheel, knowing exactly where he was going.

‘We’ll take Kylie’s wedding dress and bridesmaids’ dresses and we’ll alter them to fit Anna and her followers,’ he said. ‘Jenny, you said you have three dressmakers ready to go? Let’s get the measurements and get them started. Kylie, your bridesmaids…’

‘Mmm?’ She was staring, open-mouthed. ‘What’s kitsch?’ she said.

‘What your wedding was, and what it won’t be any more,’ he said. ‘My alternative bride and her friends will think it’s fun. It’s fun when you’re not forced into it. Do your bridesmaids all have little black dresses? The sort of thing you wear when you want to be elegant?’

‘Course,’ Kylie whispered, not seeing where he was going. ‘I mean, everyone has to have a black dress. For when you dunno what else to wear.’

‘Would they be upset to lose the pink tulle?’

‘You have to be kidding. They hate pink tulle as much as I do. Two of them are my sisters, and three of them are Daryl’s sisters, so they have to do what our mums say. The other one’s my best friend, and Doreen says the pink tulle makes her look like a Kewpie doll.’

‘Right,’ Guy said. ‘Let’s go for an elegant Christmas theme. Deep crimson and a rich, dark green.’

‘Seven dresses?’ Jenny said faintly.

‘Six bridesmaids in their lovely black dresses. It means they won’t have to spend a cent, and they’ll have already chosen something that looks great on them. There’ll be no one-style-suits-all disasters. They’ll wear their hair sleek and elegant-up if it’s long, in sophisticated chignons, or if it’s short I’ll arrange really good cuts. I’ll do it myself if need be. Black strappy shoes. The only colour about them will be a beautiful crimson and green corsage. That’ll bring in a tiny Christmas theme, which seems appropriate at this time of the year. I’ll get onto a Sydney florist this afternoon and organise the best.’

‘What about me?’ Kylie whispered. ‘And the men?’

‘Gangster-style suits and hats,’ Guy decreed. ‘We’ll hire them from Sydney or fly them from New York. What do you think?’

‘Gangsters?’ Kylie said, the beginnings of anticipation curving the sides of her mouth into a smile. ‘Hats and braces and white shoes?’

‘You’ve got it.’

‘Daryl will love it.’

Guy smiled. ‘Great. And you…’ He looked at Kylie for a long minute while Jenny watched in dumbfounded silence. ‘Kylie, let’s not try to disguise your pregnancy. Let’s be proud of it. I’m thinking pure white shot silk-Jenny, can we get shot silk?’

‘Sure,’ Jenny said, dazed.

‘A really simple dress,’ Guy said. ‘Shoestring straps and a low sweetheart neckline that accentuates those gorgeous breasts.’ Kylie started to blush, but he wasn’t distracted. He’d grabbed the pad beside the phone and was sketching. ‘Like this. Practically bare to the breasts. Softly curving into your waist, accentuating the swell of pregnancy, curving in again, and then falling with a side slit from your thigh to your ankles. I bet you have great legs.’

Kylie was staring at the sketch, entranced. ‘Daryl says…’ She subsided. ‘Yeah,’ she whispered. ‘My legs are…okay.’ The sketch was growing under Guy’s hands and she couldn’t stop watching. ‘Wow. That even looks like me. What are you doing to my hair?’

‘Piling it up in a thousand tiny curls on top of your head,’ he said. ‘The simplicity of your bridesmaids’ hair will accentuate yours. We’ll thread the same crimson and green though your hair-just a little. You’ll carry a tiny bouquet of fern and crimson rosebuds. And if you want…’

‘Wh-What?’ she stammered.

‘We’ll thread tiny silver imitation pistols through the ribbon of your bouquet. You’re a gangster’s moll. This is a shotgun wedding and you’ve got your man.’

Kylie stared. Jenny stared. Then, as one, they burst out laughing.

‘My mum will hate it,’ Kylie said when she finally recovered.

‘It’s a Carver Wedding. Take it or leave it.’

‘Oh, I’ll take it,’ Kylie whispered, smiling now through the beginning of unshed tears. ‘Yes, please.’

‘You’re a magician.’ Kylie had left them to spread her news. Guy was left with Jenny, who was staring at him as if he’d grown two heads.

‘I’m no magician,’ he said, but he was aware of a tinge of pleasure. It was a pleasure he hadn’t felt for a long time. And…was there also a tinge of excitement? He wanted to do this well, he thought, and when he tried to figure out why he knew that it had little to do with the reputation of the Carver empire. It was all to do with making Jenny smile.

And he had made her smile. She was definitely smiling.

‘I need to organise cars,’ he said, trying to move on.

‘There are limousines booked.’

‘Limousines won’t do. Transfer that booking to Anna’s, if you can. For Kylie we need to get Buicks, or something similar. We’ll take the theme right through.’

‘We’ll never get them locally.’

‘I’ll try Sydney.’

‘Kylie can’t afford-’

‘We’ll cover the cost ourselves,’ he said. ‘As the first Australian Carver Wedding, it’ll more than pay for itself in publicity. As for dress, we’ve done gangster-type weddings in my other salons, so gear shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll fly in costumes for the waiting staff.’ He paused. ‘I assume you have staff booked?’

‘Of course I have staff booked,’ she said, incensed. ‘This wedding is planned down to the last pew ribbon.’

‘We’ll use some of those resources for the Anna and Barret wedding. We’ll design the wedding for Kylie from scratch, and use the basis of Kylie’s for Anna’s. It’ll work. I’ll need to paint sets for the gangster setting. I’ll see if we can get a smoke machine from Sydney.’

‘A smoke machine…’

‘It creates the haze without the health risk. I should have everyone smoking either cigars or Gauloise, but I’ll bet you have laws preventing it.’

‘We do.’

‘There you go, then. A smoke machine it is. Now, let’s look at these dresses and see if any of them might fit without alterations.’

‘You’re good,’ she said, on a note of discovery, and Guy stopped making lists and glanced up at her.

‘You’re surprised?’

‘You said you could even cut hair?’

‘There’s nothing I haven’t been landed with in the years I’ve been building this business. I know my stuff, Jenny. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.’ He smiled at her look of scepticism. ‘You don’t need to worry,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll look after Kylie. The first Australian Carver Wedding will go off with a bang.’

‘It surely will,’ she said, awed, and then suddenly, as if she couldn’t help herself, she slipped out from behind the counter, took two steps forward and kissed him.

It was nothing like the kiss they’d shared last night. It was a kiss of gratitude, nothing more, and why it had the capacity to make him feel as if his feet weren’t quite on the ground he couldn’t say.

‘You’re making Kylie happy,’ she said softly. ‘Thank you.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ he said, or he tried to say it, but the words weren’t quite there. He was staring at Jenny as if…

He didn’t know what.

This wasn’t the type of woman that attracted him.

He hadn’t exactly been celibate since Christa had died. What had Jenny said? It was crazy, wearing the willow for someone for fifteen years. He hadn’t. Or maybe he had, but only in the sense that he never got emotionally involved. Where relationships went he used his head and not his heart. It did his firm’s reputation good if he was seen with A-listers on his arm. He chose glamorous women who could make him laugh, but who knew commitment was neither wanted nor expected.

But Jenny…

She was dressed like a prim secretary. Like a repressed old maid. Like something she wasn’t. He knew she wasn’t. Because otherwise why would his body be screaming that it wanted this woman-he wanted this woman?

She was a complication, he told himself desperately, and he’d spent his entire adult life making sure that he had as few complications in his life as possible.

‘I need to go check the facilities at Anna’s property,’ he said, and if he sounded brusque he couldn’t help it.

She grabbed her bag. ‘It’s in the hills, north of town.’

‘I’ll find it,’ he said, and she hesitated and then put her bag down again.

‘You want me to stay here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fine.’ Back to being subservient. ‘I’ll make lists of what’s needed.’ She hesitated. ‘That is, if you want me to?’

‘I want you to.’

‘Fine.’

What was it between them? What was this…thing? It felt like some sort of magnetic charge, with both of them hauling away from it.

‘Fine,’ he repeated, and he left-but some important part of him stayed behind. And he couldn’t for the life of him think what it was.