Free The Bride's Baby by Liz Fielding

leather armchair.
    ‘The Duchamp family owned the house for generations,’ she prompted when he didn’t respond. ‘It’s their coat of arms on the gate.’
    ‘Really. Well, that covers the Duchamps. What’s the story on the Smiths?’ he asked, remembering a Smith with that hallmark English aristocratic cool and a voice that told the world everything they needed to know about her class, background.
    A Smith with silvery-blue eyes that not only looked as if they could cause chaos if they had a mind to, but had gone ahead and done it.
    Pam shrugged. ‘Presumably Lady Annika married a Mr Smith.’
    ‘For his money rather than his name, apparently, since she chose not to relinquish her own.’
    For a moment there, when the word charity had been invoked, he’d found himself on the back foot but he quickly rallied. These people stood for everything he loathed.
    Privilege, inherited wealth, a belief in their own innate superiority.
    People for whom charity meant nothing more than another social event.
    For a while he’d been dazzled too. Then completely blinded. But he had both feet firmly back on the ground now.
    ‘It’ll take more than playing charity queen to get Lady Annika back inside Longbourne Court,’ he said.
    ‘Well, actually Lady Annika—’
    ‘I mean it,’ he cut in, not interested in her ladyship. ‘Give the Ribbon mob a donation if you think they’re doing a good job, but get rid of her. And her Fayre with a y and an e.’ He snorted with disgust. ‘Why do they spell it like that?’
    ‘Beats me,’ she replied, ‘but I’m afraid you’re stuck with it. Even if it wasn’t far too late to ungive permission, I wouldn’t. Celebrity magazine are covering the event—which is why we need a dress rehearsal so that they can get photographs. Your conference centre is about to get the kind of publicity that money just can’t buy.’
    ‘You didn’t know I was planning a conference centre.’
    ‘Oh, please! What else are you going to do with it? Live here? On your own? Besides, our favourite architect, Mark Hilliard, sent me a sheaf of forms from the Planning Department.’
    ‘He didn’t waste any time!’ Then, realising that Pam was looking at him a little oddly, ‘Which is good. I stressed the need to get on with it when I spoke to him.’
    ‘Oh? You managed to find time to speak to your architect.’
    ‘It was a matter of priorities. The sooner we get started on this, the better.’
    ‘In that case, the publicity is good news.’
    ‘You think? This may come as a surprise to you, Pam, but the people—the women —who read gossip magazines, who go to Wedding Fayres, spelled with a y and an e, do not organise conferences.’
    ‘I arrange conferences,’ she pointed out.
    ‘You are different.’
    ‘Of course I’m not. And I never miss an edition of Celebrity. ’
    ‘You’re kidding?’
    ‘Am I?’ She didn’t bother to reassure him, just said, ‘You’re nothing but an old-fashioned misogynist at heart, aren’t you, Tom?’
    ‘You can’t get around me with compliments—’
    ‘And maybe the teeniest bit of a snob?’
    ‘A snob!’ On the contrary, he was the self-made man whose bride-to-be had decided that, once spending his money—egged on by her old school chum, Miss Smith—had lost its novelty, and the mists of lust had cleared, he wasn’t good enough to marry.
    ‘An inverted one,’ she elaborated, as if that was any better.
    ‘I’m a realist, Pam.’
    ‘Oh, right, that would be the realist who fell off the edge of the earth six months ago, leaving me to hold the fort?’
    ‘Which disproves your misogynist theory. If I disliked women, why would I leave you in charge while I took some much needed time out? Unlike you, I don’t take three holidays a year. And why would I have appointed you as my CEO in the first place? Besides, I kept in touch.’
    ‘Because I’m damn good at my job,’ she said, answering the first two parts of his question. ‘But, for your