Page 7 of Wilder at Heart
Normally, I’m totally fine with this stuff. Turning up to an engagement party alone. Working the room. Being a fly on the wall. And helping with any big or small issues that may occur, so Miles and Saoirse can completely relax and enjoy their special evening with their family and friends.
I just wish tonight wasn’t also the night I come face to face with the love of my life and his new girlfriend.
Oh God. Even thinking that word makes me sick to my stomach.
I gave him everything. Nine years of my life. My fucking cherry, for God’s sake. He was the second person I snogged at uni, a few weeks after I got over the mortification of my drunkentryst with Theo ‘Romeo’ Montague, and unlike Mr I-Only-Kiss-Girls-Who’ll-Go-The-Whole-Way, Jonathan was my safe place. My dream come true.
Tall. Blonde.Gentlemanly(yep, he really is Theo’s opposite). Generous. Good-natured. Pretty much the human equivalent of the golden labradors I had planned for us.
Because, believe me, I had many, many plans for us.
My plans included but were not limited to a Georgian rectory in the Cotswolds, complete with wisteria, an AGA, the aforementioned golden labs, and three children. Two boys and a girl.
They did not include a woman called Lucy coming along and turning Jonathan’s head, making him believe he’d been short-changed with me. Making him believe she was more his ‘type’. I’ve even—and it kills me to say this—heard they’re looking at houses in the countryside.
Obviously, he didn’t tell me he wanted a boob upgrade. Or a posher girlfriend. He’s not stupid. But, when he was breaking up with me, he told me she didn’t henpeck him, and she gave him a quiet life, and that made me cry.
I didn’t henpeck him. I just knew better than him what was best for him. For us. That was all.
I still do. And I’m determined to make him see sense. I’m not giving up on the man of my dreams that easily.
The engagement partyis up on one of the roof terraces of the Montague Hotel in Knightsbridge. The terrace is at the back of the hotel, overlooking Hyde Park, and it’s breathtaking. This is a serious piece of real estate. Miles’ team at the hotel has done thevast majority of the work for this evening, taking a huge chunk of the work off me. I can relax.
In theory.
It’s a glorious evening. Shade sails straddle the space, offering protection from the late sunlight as it fades, and torches and hurricane lanterns have already been lit. What I didn’t appreciate was that the terrace is off one of the penthouse suites, which has been cleared of most of its furniture in case of rain. Apparently, it’s the same suite Miles and his daughter Bea lived in when their house was being refurbished, and it’s where he met Saoirse.
It’s where they fell in love.
Those two arecute.
In stark contrast to Miles and Saoirse’s love story, my own love life is a total fucking disaster, and that fact is about to be brought home to me this evening. I wish Elle was here to keep me company, but she’s too nice to come. By which I mean that if she showed up with her boyfriend, they’d completely overshadow the happy couple, and Elle would never pull a stunt like that.
Because, in the years since we left Cambridge, my gorgeous BFF Elle Hart has become an obscenely famous, award-winning actress, including an Oscar, for God’s sake. And only last week, she and her now boyfriend, the Hollywood superstar Josh Lander, were on every front page on the planet after he grovelled live onThe Gordon Kay Showand admitted that he should never have dumped her on Twitter five years previously (you think, Josh?) and that she was the love of his life.
So now, on the weekends, I have to endure a guy whose face Elle and I both had on our bedroom walls when we were at school walking around our house half-naked and trying to hump my friend against the kitchen counter.
I mean, it’s a high-quality problem. I realise that. And I’m unbelievably lucky that Elle insisted I move in with her when Jonathan broke up with me. Especially because, generous angel that she is, she only lets me pay for utilities and won’t accept a penny of rent for my room in her indecent townhouse in Notting Hill because she knows I’m saving every penny for a deposit on a flat of my own. She really is one in a million.
She even lets me borrow her clothes, because she has a massive dressing room of designer stuff that’s gifted to her. The whole gifting thing is slightly out of control, and I get far more excited about it than her, which is why she insists on an open-wardrobe policy.
Which is also why I’m wearing a stunning powder-blue wool crepe shift by Emilia Wickstead this evening that would probably cost four figures to buy. It features a slashed neck at the front that tapers into a low V at the back. It’s ladylike and beautifully cut, and it makes me feel like someone of value. A force to be reckoned with. And God knows, I need that tonight. Elle insisted on FaceTime that I armour up, and boy, am I glad she did (she may also have pushed a pair of horrifyingly beautiful Malone Soulier heels on me).
So really, I’m incredibly fortunate. Elle and Josh are up in Elstree during the week filming the TV adaptation ofGrosvenor, which is only my and Elle’s favourite romance book series of all time. But it means there’s no one to have my back when Jonathan appears with Lucy.
Holy shit.
Her boobs enter the terrace a couple of seconds before the rest of her does. I’m wearing a padded bra to enhance my natural B-cups. But still. I’ve always had a hangup about having smallish boobs, and it adds insult to injury that my gorgeous Jonathan, the man I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with, has his face buried betweenthoseevery night.
Ugh.
I’m so fixated on Lucy’s boobs that I don’t really look at her face. Or Jonathan’s. But being the mature, well-bred type he is, he doesn’t do what most people would do and try to pretend he hasn’t seen me. Oh, no. He makes a veritable beeline for me, leading her by the hand in my direction once he’s greeted Miles and Saoirse.
His big hand rests on the bare skin of my upper arm as he stoops to kiss me (he really is tall), and I can’t help inhaling the clean, comforting smell of him.
He kisses one cheek, then the other. ‘Hello, Nor.’
He pulls away. As Olivia Rodrigo would say, he looks happy and healthy. Good for him.Lucyclearly agrees with him. He has the beginnings of a dad bod under his navy blazer. Seven years off the rugby pitch, and a lot of that muscle has turned to… Not fat. More like, softness. I’ve always loved his large, soft, but solid body. I’ve always felt so safe, so secure in Jonathan’s arms.
