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So Tilda found herself in a bizarre situation of being secretly engaged to a man she had been used to seeing most working days but now barely saw at all.
As for any influence she might once have had, now she had none.
She didn’t miss Ezio’s presence in her life,obviously, but she was conscious of a massive gap that had opened up—which was not the same thing at all. While she had been cast into the wilderness, he was probably fitting in a lot of pre-marital sexto slake his animal urgesbefore he got lumbered with her.
If this was what thenowwas like, what were the next six months going to be like...and after? Quickly tiring of moping around aimlessly, she made herself think about the future. She needed a plan. Sure, when the marriage ended she would not be poor, but there was no way she was going sit around doing nothing.
There were things that she’d always thought she would like to do if she had either the time or the money and now she was about to have both.
In that awful time after their parents had died, and Tilda had been left trying to comfort her grieving brother and be a parent, there had not been a lot of time to think about whatsheneeded and not a lot of accessible help out there.
There had been dark moments, lonely moments, but she knew there were people who had it a lot worse than she did. They had the house, the memories and the financial cushion of a small insurance pot that had supplemented her first pay cheques. Not everyone was so lucky.
A chance encounter at a bus stop as she’d helped a girl load her mum and the older woman’s wheelchair onto the bus had brought home how much worse her situation could have been. The girl, barely older than Sam, had been acting as her disabled mum’s main carer and going to school.
She remembered thinking how good it would be to be in a position to help all those people like that girl, and for that matter people in the situation she had been in—people in situations where they were isolated and alone. At the most basic, provide someone to talk to, or point them in the right direction to access to available funding, a support network.
She remembered thinking that if she had the money and the time she could have made it happen.
Well, now she had both.
As she put down the phone after hanging up on Saul Rutherford, she felt a glow of achievement. She’d taken her first step towards the future she had envisaged.
She hadn’t planned it. She had rung him to thank him in person for the massive bouquet he’d sent her to congratulate her on her future wedding. But it was Saul who had turned the quick courtesy call into something else when he had proceeded to ask her straight out, with zero subtlety, if she minded that Ezio was cheating on her. Tilda had not been thrown. She had not worked with Ezio for four years for nothing; she could think on her feet.
She had assured him calmly that the stories circulating were malicious and untrue. Crossing her fingers, she’d felt only the tiniest flicker of guilt when she’d said she trusted Ezio with her life. She must have sounded sincere because he had apologised.
Well, it wasn’t a total lie. If she were to be stuck in a burning building, or facing down a gang of knife-wielding, drug-crazed thugs, she wouldn’t doubt Ezio’s ability to rescue her...or that he would.
He was one of those men, the heroes of this world, who best functioned, and in fact thrived in fact in, high-stress scenarios... They were rumoured to struggle with life in the real boring, mundane world, though Ezio seemed to have that under control too.
Trusting him with her life—yes. Trusting him with her heart was another matter. Luckily, hearts had not been mentioned in any of the copious documents she had read before she’d signed away the next six months of her life.
She had told an apologetic Saul she was not the least offended and then had asked him for his advice. He’d been generous with it, and equally generous when he’d offered not just useful contacts he’d made when setting up his own charity, but a very generous donation.
The upcoming marriage was keeping the lawyers busy. She had stopped envying them their workload. She was no longer adrift, she had a purpose and she had a future waiting for her when her six-month marriage secondment, as she liked to think of it, was over.
So, while she was immersing herself in her new venture, she was quietly crossing off the twenty-eight days on her calendar before the day ringed in red arrived, pretending she was totally cool with it.
Even though anything important to do with the wedding had been taken out of her hands, there were a lot of incidentals, and then there were the practicalities. If Sam settled and was happy at the Greek school, she planned to take somewhere small in Athens and become fully involved in the charity.
It might be an idea to learn the language, though harder for her than Sam. It was never an ego-enhancing idea to compare herself with her brilliant brother, who made things look easy.
The prospect of not going back to the local school meant Sam was looking happier than she’d seen him in an age. Considering she had worried about selling the idea to him, it was ironic that if she’d backed out he’d never forgive her—though that wasn’t fair, as he had told her that if she changed her mind he’d be fine with it.
But his reaction when she said she wasn’t changing her mind spoke volumes. She wasn’t backing out and if she did there was nowhere much to go back to. She was committed, and the physical evidence of her commitment was sitting on her finger.
She held her hand up to the light. The engagement ring had been couriered over to her that very morning, a massive square emerald surrounded by black diamonds. It fitted perfectly.
Shewas the one who didn’t fit!
‘It’s here!’ Sam yelled, watching out for the limo that was taking them to the registry office. ‘You should see the curtains twitching. Not really,’ he added as Tilda walked up behind him, looking worried.
At the front door they both paused, Sam looking smart and scrubbed in his new suit and suddenly looking almost as nervous as she felt.
‘You look very pretty,’ he said awkwardly.
Smiling at the brotherly compliment, she glanced down, smoothing the fabric of her recycled dress. It had still had the tags on and hadn’t even made it to the charity shop’s racks when she’d caught sight of the hand-sewn label. She’d bought it on the spot, drawn not just by the designer credentials but the simple empire line lifted by the hand embroidery around the neckline. Apart from needing a couple of inches taken off the length, it had fitted perfectly. She remembered thinking as she’d twirled in front of the mirror that all she needed now was somewhere to wear it.
