Sign of the Times (46 page)

“What happened?” she asked Maria.

“It’s OK now,” her friend told her.
 
“It was an accident.”

The Press had been moved back not long after Holly went down, much to their chagrin. They were already writing the by-lines.
  
It had certainly turned out to be a more eventful launch than expected. Holly Jameson was full of surprises.

*

Lucy went out to fetch the newspapers.
 
For once she wasn’t the newsworthy one. Obviously there was little news in Glasgow the previous day, as her sister had made the front page in one of the main dailies.
 
“Lover launched at book launch!” cried one, indicating that Holly’s fiancé had tackled her Italian lover.

“Venetian Nightmares” was the cry of another.
 
“Italian Stallion” was the lower class comment of a cheap tabloid.
 
Holly was distraught. Her career down the toilet.

“Not necessarily,” chirped Lucy. “Should help sell more books. Apart from in my case, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

“Oh Luce,”
wailed
Holly, reading about the bust up at the City Chambers.
 
“What am I going to do?”

“Sit it out,” her sister said, with a knowing look.

When the phone rang, Holly didn’t want to answer it.
 
Lucy, also loathe to pick it up, for her own reasons, reluctantly accepted it was her turn.
 

“Hello?” she asked warily, half-expecting it to be a newspaper.

“Hi,” she said cordially, once the speaker had identified themselves.
 
“Sure, she’s right here.”
 

“It’s your publisher,” she mouthed, as she handed over the phone.

“Hello,” Holly said tentatively, unsure if she was about to have her contract curtailed.

“Hi, Holly. How you doing?”

“Been better.”

 
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

Taking a deep breath, she said, “the bad news, may as well get it all over at once.”

“OK, the bad news is there is no bad news. The good news is Amazon have received a record number of advance orders for the book.
 
Same story with the booksellers. Seems that your net worth went up overnight. Sensation sells.”

Consoled by the fact that her career apparently wasn’t in tatters yet, she thanked her publisher and fibbing, agreed to get tucked into the champagne.
 
She hadn’t heard from Tom, nor Dario.
 
She’d gone over with Lucy a thousand times last night, what she wanted, what she felt. She still didn’t know. There was only one way to find out. She needed to see them both, separately. She dialled Tom’s mobile.

They arranged to meet in town.
 
A neutral place.
 
He was sitting in the coffee shop when she arrived.

“Hi,” said Tom uncertainly.

“Hi,” said Holly, seating herself without making any move to kiss him.
 

“So,” they both said at the same time.

“So,” said Holly, a second time. “Where do we start?”

“Did you sleep with him?” Tom came straight to the point.

“No,” she answered honestly.

“Did you want to?” he asked next.

“I don’t know, maybe,” she replied with equal candour.

“I have something to tell you,” he confessed and he told her about Shirley and how the problems he’d been having with his company, had led up to it.
 
Holly already knew Tom had set a private investigator on the track of one of his employees for corruption and that finally he’d been arrested and was now going to be tried in court.

When he had finished, Holly paused as if trying to sort out her thoughts and then said, “Don’t you think this is all a sign?”

Stubbornly Tom said, “No.”

“Tom,” Holly said soothingly, “I don’t think we’re meant to get married.”

“Holly, don’t say that,” Tom was visibly distressed. “I love you,” he finished unnecessarily.

“Sometimes it’s not enough. Would you have had feelings for Shirley, if you loved me one hundred percent? No. Would I have been remotely interested in Dario, if I loved you as I should? I don’t think so.”

“Holly, what are you saying?” Tom was fearful.

“I think we need a break to see how we feel.”

“You want to be with him,” Tom accused.

“No, Tom, that’s not what I’m saying, but we need a few months apart. We shouldn’t have any secrets from each other.”

“So you want to call off the wedding?” Tom asked.

“At the very least postpone it. Wouldn’t you want to be sure?” Holly said.

Tom didn’t trust himself to answer.

“I’m going to move into Lucy’s in the meantime. She needs me anyway.”
 
Standing up
,
she kissed him gently on the cheek.

“Goodbye, Tom.”

Dario was waiting in the conservatory of his hotel, sipping a cappuccino.
 
He rose to kiss Holly, when she approached, but she waved him away.
 
She sat hands folded in front of her, body language not encouraging.
 

“Well, at least you are here,” Dario said finally.

“Yes, I’m here, Dario,” she said fatalistically.

“Should I be happy?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“Have you left Tom?”

She looked at his nose, which was still swollen and bandaged, courtesy of the Royal Infirmary and said, “Yes.”

Dario smiled, as much as his broken nose would allow.
 
“Then you think there are possibilities for us.”

“No.”

Dario was taken aback.

“No? But you have left Tom.”

“Yes, because there is no point being with someone who is perhaps not the right person.”

“Tom is not the right person?”

“I don’t know.”

“Am I?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe if we had met under different circumstances, at a different time, but since you came into my life, it has been chaos. I need order, not chaos.”

“We could fix that.”

“I think we missed our time, Dario. Maybe it could have been, but things are too complicated.”

“I like complicated.”

“Well, I don’t. I came to tell you, it’s over, before it begins.
 
I’m sorry.”

“Holly, don’t do this. Give us a chance.”

“Dario, I don’t even know how I feel.
 
I’m going to have a break from men for a while, see how things work out.
 

He tried repeatedly to convince her, but Holly’s mind was made up.
 
She left soon afterwards, tears swimming in her eyes.

*

Back at Lucy’s, Holly sat at the computer, opened a new Word document and typed One Hundred Paths Through Andalucia, then clicked on the BA website and booked herself a one-way ticket.

Note from the author:

Coming Oct 2012

The Dating Game

Workaholic recruitment consultant Gill McFadden is sick of her friends trying to match-make for her.
 
Up until now her love life has been a disaster and she’s going through a drier spell than the Sahara desert.
 
Seeing an ad on a bus one day, she decides to visit Happy Ever After dating agency.
 
Before long she is experiencing laughs, lust and… could it be love?
 
But like everything in Gill’s life, nothing is straightforward and she ends up wondering exactly who she can trust.

I hope you enjoyed Sign of the Times. Since publication I have been asked for a sequel, which I have now decided to write, just not yet.

You can follow me on Twitter at Susan_Buchanan or visit my Facebook page –
www.facebook.com/susan.buchanan.author
.
 
I also have a writer’s blog where you can join me in the progress of my next novel, The Dating Game, due for ebook release late 2012.
 
For fellow writers, the blog also contains some writer’s tips. www.susancbuchanan.blogspot.co.uk

Bye for now, Susan