Beyond Compare. Penny Jordan
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I do,’ Jan agreed wryly. As a well-known London interior designer, she had a good cross-section of clients, but her least favourite was the type of couple just described by Holly.
‘All our old crowd will be there. Rosamund and I were in the same class. I didn’t like her then,’ she added inconsequentially, and then said woefully, ‘What I can’t understand is why he didn’t say something before. He must have known that I was expecting him to propose to me.’
‘Men can be cowards about things like that,’ Jan told her gently, repressing a faint sigh. For a very attractive and intelligent young woman, Holly seemed to have a blind spot where the facts concerning the average male of the species was concerned. Jan had already elicited during the twelve months that Holly had worked for her that her newest protégé had very little experience of the male sex.
A sheltered childhood had been the reason: elderly parents, now retired to New Zealand to live with their son and his family. Jan knew that Holly’s parents still owned a house in the village where Holly had been brought up. She went home to check on it periodically, and at the moment it was let on lease.
‘But he could have said something,’ she stressed again.
‘He should have said something,’ Jan agreed, ‘but I suspect he lacked the courage. How long has he been involved with this Rosamund?’
‘He didn’t say. It can’t have been long. She never comes to London and he…’ She paused, frowning, remembering how often in recent months he had not been available for their normal dates. ‘It must have started when we went home at Christmas. You remember, I told you. We stayed with his parents.’ She made a face. ‘I’ve never really got on with his mother. I don’t think she thought I was good enough for him. Heaven knows what Drew must be feeling,’ she added inconsequentially.
‘Drew?’ Jan questioned, used to Holly’s seemingly illogical thought processes.
‘Yes. Drew Hammond. He and Rosamund have dated since they were at school, just like Howard and me. I thought they would have married years ago. He’s bound to be devastated. Mind you, I always thought they were an odd couple. Rosamund likes the social scene and plenty of glitz, and of course her parents encourage her. Her mother wants to join the local county set. Drew isn’t a bit like that. He’s a farmer… Very down to earth.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ Jan commented. ‘I like down-to-earth men.’
‘Oh, everyone likes Drew, but he’s hardly the stuff to make your pulses race.’
‘Well, if you feel you have to put in an appearance and congratulate the happy couple, I suggest you do so dressed for the occasion. Plenty of glitz and to-hell-with-you glamour!’ she elucidated when Holly looked questioningly at her.
‘I haven’t bought a new dress in ages. I was saving up for…’
Her lower lip trembled and Jan said hastily, ‘No more tears, love. You’re better off without him, honest. I never liked him. Look, we’re fairly quiet this week. Why don’t we both take half a day off tomorrow and go shopping? I need something new myself. Luke’s got an important client to entertain next week, and he wants me to dazzle him with glamour.’
Luke was Jan’s husband. A solid, dark-haired man of medium height with a smile that could raise female temperatures at fifty yards. Holly had initially found his very male sexuality slightly intimidating, a fact that hadn’t escaped Jan. Her new employee’s shyness had come as a pleasant change after a succession of very forward young women who had spent more time flirting with her husband than doing their work. As an accountant, Luke had a major interest in his wife’s business, but he also had other clients—important and very wealthy clients, as Holly knew.
Two days later, her new dress carefully packed away in its nest of tissue paper, Holly climbed into her small car for the journey north to Cheshire.
The last time she had made this journey had been with Howard when they went home last Christmas. Now it was October. Next year he would be marrying Rosamund. She wanted a June wedding, he had told Holly, sublimely unaware of her own feelings.
Her small foot depressed the accelerator slightly. Surely he must have known how shocked she would be? They had always been a couple, right from leaving school. She had followed him to university and then later to London, both of them working and thriving on the busy atmosphere of the capital. All right, so maybe he had treated her casually at times—breaking dates, forgetting to phone—but his job as a salesman took him abroad at short notice. Anyway, their relationship was of such long standing and so secure… So secure, in fact, that she had lost him to someone else. To that scheming, horrid Rosamund Jensen with her baby-blue eyes and blonde curls.
Holly flipped her own dark bob back off her face with a defiant gesture. She hadn’t slept properly since Howard had broken the news to her, and she had lost weight. Still, that was no bad thing. She wasn’t plump, precisely, but there was no way she was as ethereally slender as Rosamund. But Howard couldn’t love her, she reflected stubbornly. He was just dazzled by her… dazzled by her parents’ wealth as well.
She bit her lip, remembering how shocked she had been to hear him reeling off an impressive list of Rosamund’s parents’ possessions. The villa in Spain, the boat, the cars… Howard, of all people, who had always been so amusingly witty about people like the Jensens.
Well, she might not have wealthy parents, she might not have blonde hair and blue eyes and stand five foot nine in her bare feet, but in her new dress, the vivid red silk showing off her curves, the skirt just short enough to be cheekily eye-catching, she would at least have the self-confidence to pretend that she was. However, as she drove, her full mouth drooped and her hazel eyes grew pensive. What hurt most of all was that Howard had said nothing to warn her. Not one word. No, he had let her continue to believe that he loved her. And that hurt, but, womanlike, she found excuses for him, blaming her own thoughtlessness in not realising that something was wrong, in not giving him the opportunity to be honest with her.
But she hadn’t given up yet; she would get him back. He would soon grow tired of Rosamund and her parents, she reflected fiercely. So fiercely, in fact, that a fellow driver, overtaking her, fell back in startled confusion, thinking the frown was for him and rather startled to see it on such a pretty and feminine face.
While she might be naïve where the male sex was concerned, when it came to the practicalities of life, and especially where they involved her career, as Jan had noted with approval, Holly was totally competent.
She had planned her trip home to Cheshire with the same meticulous attention to detail with which she planned her working days.
She had over a month’s holiday due to her, having volunteered to work all through the summer when the rest of the small staff wanted time off, partly because Howard had also been too busy to take a holiday, and partly because it was her nature to want to be helpful to others. She had seen how busy Jan was, and since they had now entered a period of pre-Christmas calm Jan had been quite happy to agree to Holly’s making a long weekend of the trip.
The small village had no hotel, but the local pub let rooms occasionally, and since Holly was well known to the landlord and his wife they had quite happily agreed to put her up.
She left London after the rush-hour had eased, conscientiously ringing Jan first to check that no rush job had occurred between her leaving the office the previous evening and setting off this morning.
‘If I had just two more girls like Holly, running this business would be a doddle,’ Jan commented to her husband when she replaced the receiver. ‘She’s a real treasure, and not just because she’s a first-rate artist.’
‘Mmm… with quite a flair for design as well.’
‘You know there must be a good-sized untapped market in the north for our kind of service. I’ve been thinking… wonderingif we should perhaps consider opening up somewhere like Chester, and putting Holly in charge.’
‘Expanding,