Read the book: «Birthday Bride»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS that girl again.

David’s mouth turned disapprovingly down at the corners. He watched her hesitate, checking the seat number on her boarding card. She was tall and slender, with a swing of ash-blonde hair and an air of assurance that made her oblivious to the fact that she was blocking the aisle with that ridiculous bag of hers. He had thought her silly and superficial before, but now something about the way she stood there, holding up a patient queue, grated on David’s nerves. There was an arrogance about her that reminded him all too bitterly of Alix.

She was pretty enough, David allowed grudgingly, if you liked that smart, superior look. Personally, he preferred girls with sweeter expressions and a more feminine wardrobe. This one was dressed with undeniable elegance in neutral colours—cool trousers, a silk top and a loose, unstructured jacket with the sleeves pushed casually up her arms. She would have looked much softer in a pretty dress, David thought, although, if she was anything like Alix, soft was the last word anyone should use to describe her.

Her eyes were moving slowly along the overhead lockers, studying the illuminated numbers, and David glanced at the empty seat beside him with a sudden sense of foreboding. He looked up just as her gaze dropped, and their eyes met with a jarring sense of recognition. With grim amusement, he saw that she was no more pleased to discover who she was to be sitting next to than he was.

Claudia was more than not pleased. She was dismayed. A frantic morning finishing off at work, a chaotic trip to the airport, a seven-hour flight from London and now she not only had to entrust her life to a plane that looked as if it was held together with sticky tape and bits of string, but she had to find herself sitting next to that supercilious, sarcastic man who had made her feel such a fool at Heathrow!

For one wild moment, Claudia considered asking the stewardess if she could change seats, but the rows behind looked pretty full, and there was an uncomfortably acute look in those cold grey eyes. She had a nasty feeling that he knew exactly what number was printed on her boarding card. If she made a fuss and insisted on moving, he would think that she was embarrassed to sit next to him, and Claudia had no intention of giving him the satisfaction of knowing that he had put her out of countenance.

Anyway, why should she let herself be intimidated by him? He was just some businessman, and a pretty charmless, humourless one at that. She would simply ignore him, she decided.

Hoisting her bag more firmly over her shoulder, Claudia stalked down the gangway. Sure enough, 12B was the empty seat beside him, but just as she prepared to settle down in haughty silence the man pulled out a report and ostentatiously buried his head in it. He could hardly have made it clearer that he didn’t want to talk and was intent on ignoring her!

Claudia’s lips thinned. There was something about this man that got under her skin. She had been the one who wanted to do the ignoring, but there was no point if he was just going to be grateful for her silence! No, it would be much more satisfying to see how far she could irritate him, and Claudia had only to look at the implacable set of his jaw to know that the best way to do that would be to make it impossible for him to ignore her as he was so intent on doing. After two and a half hours of conversation as inane and frivolous as she could make it, he would be regretting that he had ever opened his mouth at Heathrow!

The prospect was enough to curve Claudia’s mouth into a satisfied smile. Perhaps she would enjoy this flight after all!

‘Hello again!’ she said brightly, and plumped herself down beside him.

Intensely suspicious of her smile, David gave a brusque nod and grunted some sort of greeting before pointedly turning his attention back to his report. Surely even she could take a hint like that?

Apparently not. ‘It’s quite a coincidence bumping into each other like this, isn’t it?’ she went on in the same chirpy voice, and David sighed inwardly. ‘I didn’t realise you were going to Telama’an as well.’

She bent forward to push her bag under the seat in front of her, and David was conscious of a subtle breath of fragrance as the blonde hair swung and shimmered distractingly at the edge of his vision.

‘Why should you?’ he said, trying to keep his eyes on the report and hoping that his repressive tone would be enough to make her realise that he was in no mood for conversation, but Claudia, delighted to see that his jaw was already tightening with irritation, refused to take the hint.

‘I just assumed you would get off the plane in Dubai,’ she said chattily. ‘You know how it is when you speculate about your fellow travellers.’

‘No,’ said David, but she pretended that she hadn’t heard.

‘I just couldn’t imagine you in a place like Shofrar,’ she told him, settling herself back in her seat and slanting him a provocative look from under her lashes.

‘Why ever not?’ he said, goaded into a response just as he had decided to ignore her completely.

‘Well, Shofrar sounds such an exciting place,’ said Claudia, who was congratulating herself on her strategy. This was much more fun than sitting in frosty silence!

David scowled at her. ‘Why don’t you come right out and say that you think I look too boring to be going there?’

‘Oh, but I don’t mean that at all.’ She pretended to flutter. She opened her eyes wide, and David, making the mistake of looking into them, was annoyed to notice that they were huge and extraordinarily beautiful, a smoky, smudgy colour somewhere between blue and grey.

‘It’s just that Shofrar sounds so wild and undeveloped and wonderfully romantic,’ she was wittering on, and with something of an effort David dragged his gaze away. ‘When I saw you at Heathrow, I thought you looked too conventional for the country.’ Claudia put a hand to her mouth in mock dismay. ‘Oh, dear, that sounds rude, doesn’t it? I didn’t mean it to be,’ she lied. ‘Steady and reliable are probably better words than conventional. You looked, you know, like the kind of man who would never give his wife any cause to worry and would always ring her if he was going to be late.’

David was unreasonably nettled by this tribute. Steadiness and reliability were qualities he had always valued, but this girl made them sound stolid and dull. She made him sound stolid and dull.

‘I don’t have a wife,’ he said with something of a snap. ‘And it may interest you to know that I have travelled extensively in Shofrar, and certainly more than you have if you think it is wonderfully romantic. It’s a hard country,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s hot and it’s barren, with poor communications and no facilities for tourists. You’re the one who’s going to find herself out of place in Telama’an, not me. I may look conventional but I know the desert and I’m used to the conditions. You’re too spoilt—oh, dear, that sounds rude, doesn’t it?’ He mimicked her tone with uncomfortable accuracy. ‘I meant spoilt by luxurious living, that’s all. I think you’re going to find Telama‘an something of a shock.’

‘Really?’ It was Claudia’s turn to eye him frostily. ‘And what makes you think that I haven’t been to Telama’an before?’

‘I’ve seen what you carry around in that bag of yours,’ said David, nodding his head down at the shoulder bag that was squeezed under the seat in front of her. ‘Nobody who had been anywhere near a desert would dream of packing a fraction of all that junk!’

Claudia bit her lip. She was beginning to wish that she hadn’t tried to provoke him. Why couldn’t he have been a decent, tactful, chivalrous type of man who wouldn’t dream of mentioning that embarrassing incident at Heathrow?

She had been sitting opposite him in the departure lounge as they waited by the gate. There had been some delay in boarding, and the other passengers were milling around in frustration. Babies had cried, children had squabbled, ground staff had muttered into their walkie-talkies, but the man opposite her had just sat reading through papers with a stillness and concentration that completely ignored the hubbub around him.

He had rather ordinary brown hair and one of those austere faces that didn’t give anything away, but Claudia, fascinated by his air of cool self-containment, had noticed a decidedly stubborn set to his jaw and an inflexible look about his mouth. She was secretly ashamed of the fact that the take-off always made her rather nervous, thinking that she ought by the age of twenty-nine to be blasé about jumping on and off planes, and although she was doing her best to seem cool and unconcerned she had found it oddly reassuring to watch the man working so quietly and competently in the midst of such chaos.

What would it be like to be that calm? Claudia was used to the frenetic activity of a television production company, and she thrived on panic and pressure. This man didn’t look as if he knew the meaning of panic. He would probably be hell to work with, she’d decided. Efficient, yes, but deadly boring.

For some reason, Claudia’s eyes had strayed back to his mouth. Well, maybe not exactly boring, she amended reluctantly. No one with a mouth like that could be really boring. It looked cool and firm, almost stern, but with an intriguing lift at the corners that made her wonder what he would look like if he smiled...

It was then that he had looked up, and Claudia had found herself staring into a pair of wintry grey eyes whose expression had sent the colour surging up her cheeks. Too late, she’d realised that she had been staring at him. He’d leant forward.

‘Is something the matter?’ he asked with careful restraint.

‘No,’ she said.

‘My hair hasn’t turned blue? There isn’t any smoke coming out of my ears?’

Claudia pretended to check. ‘No.’

‘Then perhaps you could tell me what it is about me that has been fascinating you so much for the last twenty minutes?’

The withering tone deepened the flush in Claudia’s cheeks. ‘Nothing! I’m not the slightest bit interested in you! I was just...thinking.’ Even to her own ears she sounded sullen and defensive.

‘In that case, could you please think by staring at someone else? I’m trying to work, and it’s not easy to concentrate with two great eyes boring into me.’

Claudia was amazed to discover that he had even noticed. So much for his powers of concentration! ‘Certainly,’ she said huffily, and got to her feet. ‘I had no idea that sitting quietly minding my own business would be so disturbing! I’ll go and stand in a corner and close my eyes, shall I? Or will my breathing be too distracting for you?’

The man looked profoundly irritated. ‘I don’t care what you do or where you do it, as long as you stop looking at me as if you’re deciding whether to have me for lunch or not.’

‘Lunch?’ Claudia attempted a scornful laugh. ‘I’m afraid my tastes run to something a little more substantial! You might do for a mid-morning snack, or perhaps a little something to have with a cup of tea!’

If she had hoped to rile him, she failed dismally. He looked at her incredulously for a moment, then shook his head as if deciding that she was too stupid to bother with any further, and returned his attention to his papers. Claudia felt about two inches high.

Furious, she made to stalk off in high dudgeon, but the bag she hoisted onto her shoulder was so overloaded that the strap snapped under the strain, and, to her horror, it crashed to the ground right at the man’s feet.

She wouldn’t have minded if he had jumped. She wouldn’t have minded if he had clicked his tongue or looked startled or shown some kind of reaction, but he didn’t even look up. Instead, he looked at the bag for about five seconds without saying anything, and then carried on reading. He could hardly have made it clearer that he thought she was too tedious and silly to merit any attention at all.

What if he thought she was deliberately trying to get him to notice her? The idea galvanised Claudia into action, and she dived to pick up the bag by its broken strap. It had landed on its bottom, which was fortunate, but that was where her luck ended. She hadn’t realised that the zip was open, and as she grabbed the strap at one end the whole bag tilted, upturned, and the contents that she had shoved in frantically while the taxi waited to take her to the airport spilled out over the man’s shoes.

To Claudia, it all seemed to happen in ghastly slow motion. Lipsticks, mascara, perfume, hairbrush, mirror, sponge toe dividers for painting toe-nails, the whole panoply of cosmetics, in fact, as well as mints, Biros, her purse, a camera, a travel plug, her Filofax, sunglasses, spare films, a novel, tissues, emery boards, a tiny, knitted teddy bear she had carried around with her since she was a child, keys, old credit card receipts, an earring she had been looking for for ages, dog-eared photographs, a cheap brooch Michael had once given her as a joke, even a change of underwear for the flight... all scattered with gay abandon around the man’s feet and under his seat.

Claudia closed her eyes. Please, she prayed, when I open them again, let it not have happened! But when she steeled herself to unscrew her eyes the man was still sitting there, still surrounded by her debris while the empty bag dangled uselessly from her nerveless hand.

With a sigh, he laid his papers on the seat beside him and bent to retrieve her bra from where it had caught on his shoe. Holding it between his fingers, he proffered it to Claudia. ‘No doubt you’ll need this,’ he said.

Mortified, she snatched it from his hand. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. Falling to her knees, she began scrabbling beneath his seat, desperately trying to scoop everything back into the bag, but humiliation was making her clumsy, and half of them spilled out again. To make matters worse, instead of moving away to another seat, the man bent to help her, handing her cosmetics and sentimental mementoes with a lack of comment that was somehow more crushing than any sarcasm.

‘Flight GF920 to Dubai and Menesset is now ready to board.’ To Claudia’s intense relief the tannoy crackled into life at last and there was a general stirring of anticipation as the first-class passengers and families with children were invited to board.

‘Please, there’s no need to bother,’ she said through gritted teeth as the man glanced up at the announcement. What was the betting that he was travelling first class? ‘You go on. I’ve got everything now, anyway.’

He straightened, put his papers into his briefcase with an insulting lack of haste compared to her own scramble to refill her bag, and pulled his boarding card from his jacket pocket. He was travelling first class, Claudia noted bitterly. Nodding a curt farewell, he turned towards the departure gate, only to stop and stoop to pick up yet another lipstick that had rolled along the floor.

“Nights of Passion’.’ He read the end as he handed it back to Claudia. ‘You won’t want to lose that one, will you? You never know when you might need it.’

And with that final, quite unnecessary shot of sarcasm he walked off, leaving Claudia staring resentfully after him and thinking, much too late of course, of any number of crushing retorts that would have put him in his place.

At least he was flying first class, she reassured herself, so there was no danger that she would find herself sitting next to him, and in all likelihood he would be getting off in Dubai anyway. Claudia didn’t like feeling ridiculous, and she was glad to think that she would never again have to set eyes on the one witness to her uncharacteristic lack of poise.

In fact, she could pretend that it had never happened... until she got onto this crummy little plane and realised that she was going to have to spend two and a half hours sitting next to him! Typical of her luck this year, Claudia thought glumly. Being twenty-nine had been no fun at all and it looked as if her very last day in her twenties was going to run true to form. Perhaps she would wake up tomorrow on her thirtieth birthday and find that things had changed?

Blowing out a tiny sigh, she cast the man a resentful glance from under her lashes. There had obviously been no good fairy at her christening! If there had been, she might have organised an attractive, charming man who would while away the last hours Claudia could get away with calling herself young. Instead, she was landed with someone dour and middle-aged. He must be at least forty, she decided dismissively, so used to thinking of the forties as a vague time in the future when she would be galloping through middle age on her way to a bus pass and a Zimmer frame that it came as something of a shock to realise that as from the next day, he would only be ten years older than her.

He didn’t look as if he was on the verge of cashing in his pension, it had to be said. Claudia studied him a little closer. There was a solidity about him, a balanced, assured air, as if he had grown into his looks and was completely at ease with himself. It was just a pity his expression was so formidable. He would be really quite attractive if he smiled.

She eyed him half speculatively, wondering how he would respond to a little light flirtation, but when her gaze stopped at that implacable mouth she decided not to waste her time trying. There was something decidedly unflirtable about the way he sat there reading that boring report with its endless graphs and lists of figures.

But then, she had always liked a challenge, hadn’t she?

Claudia reached for the safety card tucked into the seat back in front of her and pretended to study it while she planned her strategy. She didn’t hold out too many hopes of getting a smile out of him, but it would be fun to prise as much information out of him as possible. If he thought he was going to be able to ignore her for two and a half hours, he had another think coming!

‘This plane looks awfully old,’ she said, casting around for a way to restart the conversation after his ungentlemanly reference to the incident at Heathrow. ‘Do you think it’s safe?’

‘Of course it’s safe,’ said David without looking up from his report. He might have known she wouldn’t shut up for long! ‘Why on earth shouldn’t it be?’

‘Well, it’s so old, for a start,’ said Claudia, plucking at the tatty material covering the seats. ‘Look at it! This kind of décor went out in the Sixties! Where’s this plane been since then?’

‘Flying perfectly safely between Menesset and Telama’an, I should think.’ Very deliberately, David made a note in the margin to remind her that he wasn’t distracted that easily. ‘What’s wrong with the plane? Apart from the worrying fact that you don’t like its colour scheme, of course?’

Claudia looked around her as the plane began to roll backwards from the chocks. There were only about forty other passengers, their seats arranged in pairs on either side of the narrow aisle. ‘I didn’t realise it would be so small,’ she confessed.

David turned a page like a calculated insult. ‘Telama’an isn’t a big place,’ he said with a kind of bored indifference.

‘I hope it’s big enough to have an airport,’ Claudia snapped, irritated by his lack of reaction. ‘Or are they going to kit us out with parachutes and push us out when we’re over the right spot?’

He did glance at her at that, but it was such a withering look that she wished she had never tried to divert him from his report in the first place. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘There’s been an airstrip there for years, but this is about the biggest plane that can land there at the moment. It’ll be different when the new airbase is completed, of course. Telama’an is one of the more remote regions of Shofrar, but it’s strategically important and the government are keen to develop the area. At the moment, there’s nothing but a dusty little oasis in the middle of the desert, so the local sheikh wants a complete infrastructure: an airbase, roads, a water supply, power... it’s a huge project.’

Oh, dear, one of those men that lectured instead of answered! Claudia sighed. ‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ she said, fanning herself with the safety card and trying not to think too much about the take-off as the plane taxied slowly down the runway.

‘I should do. We’re the contracting engineers on the project.’

She half turned in her seat to look at him in surprise and dawning consternation. ‘But GKS Engineering are the contractors, aren’t they?’

For his part, David eyed her with deepening misgiving. What did this silly woman have to do with GKS? ‘How do you know that?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘My cousin’s married to the senior engineer on the project...Patrick Ward. Do you know him?’

David’s heart sank. Of course she would have to be going to visit the very people he would normally spend most time with in Telama‘an! Was there to be no getting away from her? ‘Yes, I know Patrick,’ he said reluctantly. ’And Lucy.’

‘Oh, well, I’ll tell them I met you,’ said Claudia, who had not missed the reluctance in his voice and who had perceived an opportunity to achieve at least one of her objectives. ‘What’s your name?’ Let him get out of that one!

‘David Stirling,’ he admitted after a tiny pause.

‘I’m Claudia Cook,’ she introduced herself, although he hadn’t asked. Peeping a glance at him from under her lashes, she wondered whether she should force him to shake hands, but decided against it. It had been achievement enough to get a name out of him, and, looking at that jaw, she didn’t think that David Stirling was a man she would want to push too far. Better to stick to the inane conversation line; it was a far more effective way of needling him!

‘So you’re an engineer as well, are you?’

‘Of sorts.’ David was cursing his luck. Not only was he doomed to spend the next two and a half hours sitting next to her, but he couldn’t put her in her place as he was longing to do. He was very fond of Lucy and Patrick, so he could hardly tell their guest to shut up and mind her own business. It was hard to believe that there was any connection between them, though. The Wards were one of the nicest couples he knew, while this girl was a ghastly intrusion from some other life altogether.

In spite of himself, he found himself glancing at her. She had beautiful skin—either that, or she was very cleverly made-up. Probably the latter, David decided. Those lashes were too long and thick and dark to be natural with that pale gold hair, and he could see how she had outlined her eyes with a fine pencil.

He had a sudden, bitter picture of Alix at the mirror in his bathroom, her mouth pursed in concentration and one finger holding her eyelid steady as she carefully drew a line above her lashes. David was unprepared for the way the memory could still hurt. Alix had taught him a valuable lesson, and he was wary still of girls like her.

Girls like Claudia Cook.

She would be in marketing, he guessed, or perhaps something in the media. Some job that enabled her to kiss people extravagantly and run around with a clipboard feeling important. She would go to parties and claim to be exhausted by work, although she probably spent most of her day on the phone without producing anything more tangible than a date for lunch or an agreement to talk later.

David smiled grimly to himself. Oh, yes, he had met girls like Claudia before, and he was in no danger at all of being impressed!

The plane had turned, poised for a moment at the end of the runway before hurtling itself down the tarmac and heaving itself into the air at the last moment. Claudia sucked in her breath and concentrated on breathing evenly. David Stirling would only sneer if he thought she was nervous, and she was not going to give him the satisfaction of making a fuss!

Still, it was a relief to hear the tell-tale ‘ping’ of the ‘no smoking’ sign being switched off, and as the plane levelled out she turned back to David, only to catch his eyes straying back to his report. She couldn’t have him concentrating on his work, could she, now?

‘Are you based out in Telama’an like Patrick?’ she asked, all eager interest.

‘No,’ said David through his teeth. The graph danced up and down on the page beneath his eyes. Those wide eyes and that gushing voice didn’t fool him for a minute. He knew perfectly well that she had set out to be deliberately provocative for some reason. Well, he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of rising to the bait again. She would soon get bored with cold courtesy. ‘I spend most of my time in the London head office.’

‘Why are you going to Telama’an now?’ Claudia persevered.

He drew a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm. ‘I’ve got a series of extremely important meetings to attend,’ he said tightly after a moment. ‘We’re coming to the end of the first phase of the project, and we want to persuade the government to award us the contract for the next major stage, but there are several other big firms in the running, so we’re up against some tough competition.

‘The final decision rests with the local sheikh, who is a cousin of the Sultan and who’s been given overall responsibility for the project, but he’s not an easy man to deal with. After months of requesting a meeting, he’s finally offered us the chance to give him a special presentation the day after tomorrow, and it’s absolutely vital that I get there as soon as possible to brief the rest of the team before the meeting. However, it does mean that I must check these reports, so if you’ll—’

‘Well, that’s a coincidence!’ Claudia interrupted before he could complete his excuse. ‘It’s absolutely vital that I get there by tomorrow as well.’

‘Really?’ he bit out. ‘And why is that?’

She leant towards him confidentially. ‘It’s my thirtieth birthday tomorrow, and I’m going to a party to meet my destiny!’

David looked at her with incredulity. ‘Your what?’

‘My destiny.’ Claudia hoped she looked suitably soulful. ‘Years ago a fortune-teller told me that I wouldn’t get married until I was thirty, and that I’d meet my husband somewhere where there was a lot of space and sand.’

‘So you thought you’d just get on a plane to the desert on the off-chance that you’d bump into some poor unfortunate man?’ David didn’t even bother to hide his disbelief and she smothered a smile as she opened her eyes wide.

‘Oh, no. I know exactly who he’ll be. The fortune-teller told me that the initials J and D would be very important, so I’m sure I’ll be able to recognise him at once. Lucy’s going to throw a party so that I meet him on my birthday and all I have to do is get there by tomorrow!’

He snorted. ‘You’re not trying to tell me that Lucy believes any mumbo-jumbo about predictions? I’ve always thought of her as an intelligent woman!’

‘She was there when my fortune was told,’ Claudia told him solemnly. ‘We were only fourteen and it made a big impression on her,’ she added, omitting to mention that both girls had burst giggling out of the tent and Lucy had teased her unmercifully for years afterwards about having to wait until she was thirty before she got married.

At fourteen, thirty had seemed impossibly remote. She had never dreamt that she would actually ever get to be that old, or that she wouldn’t be married long before. When she had met Michael, she had even joked with Lucy about thwarting fate and tying the knot at twenty-nine.

Except that Michael hadn’t wanted to commit himself in the end—at least not to her—and now here she was, a day short of thirty and just as unwed as the fortune-teller had said she would be.