CHAPTER ONE
Bella, hon,
Alex has this friend he’s been doing business with.
Single … Gorgeous … Clever … Loaded …. And he’s really up for meeting you. I know you’re not keen on blind dates, but I’ve met him and I think he’d be perfect for you. So what do you say?
x Phoebe
PS—What are you doing for your birthday?
HOW long did it take to type ‘Over my dead body’ and ‘Burrowing beneath my duvet’? Bella wondered, re-reading the email that had just landed in her in-box and glancing up at the clock.
Seeing that she had ten minutes before her two o’clock appointment was due, she swivelled back, shook her head in bemusement, and hit the reply button.
What planet was Phoebe on? Not keen on blind dates? That was the understatement of the century.
How could her so-called friend have forgotten the endless nights they’d spent dissecting the disastrous blind dates Bella had been on in the last six months or so?
How could Phoebe possibly have forgotten about the man who’d showered spittle over her every time he opened his mouth? The man who’d spent the entire evening addressing her cleavage? Or the man who, after insisting they go Dutch at a restaurant he’d invited her to, had got his calculator out to apportion the service charge?
Clearly Phoebe was so deliriously happy with Alex and so wrapped up in wedding plans that her memory had short-circuited.
Ignoring the sharp pang of envy at her friend’s whirlwind romance and her subsequent state of bliss, Bella frowned. She was the first to admit she was eager to settle down—spending one’s childhood trailing after a mother who’d had a racy, unstable, and, at one particularly low point, criminal past as well as a morbid fear of stagnating could do that to a woman—but she wasn’t desperate. Or at least not that desperate.
And frankly, she thought tartly, if this friend of Alex’s was as gorgeous, clever and as rich as Phoebe claimed, why was he still single? What was wrong with him?
As for celebrating her birthday, well, what was there to celebrate about that?
Once, when she’d been twenty-five, someone had asked her where she thought she’d be in ten years’ time. She’d blithely replied, saying that on top of the multimillion-pound business, she’d have the husband, the family and the security she’d always longed for. She’d had no doubt whatsoever that it would happen.
But had it? No. Here she was, about to turn thirty-five and still single, without even a whiff of the boyfriend on the horizon, let alone the peal of wedding bells and the pitter patter of tiny feet. The last thing she wanted was to celebrate her failure on that front.
Bella resisted the urge to throw herself onto the floor and wail. Where had it all gone wrong? She was reasonably attractive. Interesting. Fun. And not entirely devoid of brain power. So why was she still sitting there, gathering dust, on an increasingly empty shelf?
It wasn’t even as if she were particularly fussy. She didn’t require a full head of hair or a six-pack in a husband. She didn’t need fireworks and spectacular sex. She didn’t demand five-star holidays or dinners in the finest restaurants the world had to offer.
All she wanted from a man was a desire to commit. To her. Well, that and an ability to keep bodily functions more or less under control, which possibly did narrow the field somewhat. But was a decent man really too much to ask for?
Bella sighed, planted her elbows on her desk and stuck her chin in her hands, and considered her position.