Misleading Engagement. Marjorie Lewty

      “I suppose we’re friends now, aren’t we?” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN EPILOGUE Copyright

      “I suppose we’re friends now, aren’t we?”

      “Of course we are,” Mark said quickly, but she had a strange feeling that a wary look had come over his face. “And a very good friend you are, too,” he added.

      

      That defined their relationship perfectly, Anne thought with amusement. She mustn’t read anything into that kiss. Well, she didn’t intend to, did she?

      Marjorie Lewty was born in Cheshire, England, and grew up between there and the Isle of Man. She moved to Liverpool and married there. Now widowed, she has a son, who is an artist, and a married daughter. She has always been drawn to writing and started with magazine short stories, then serials and finally book-length romances, which are the most satisfying of all. Her hobbies include knitting, music and lying in the garden thinking of plots!

      Misleading Engagement

      Marjorie Lewty

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘ONE video camera, four cassettes, six batteries, one tripod, off-camera mike and stand, headphones, on-camera light...’ Anne counted each item aloud as she arranged them on the worktop in her editing suite—or what she preferred to call the pantry. It had always been the pantry, since she’d been a little girl raiding it for biscuits when she’d got home from school.

      She reached down into the cupboard for her holdall and, as usual, her glasses slipped down her nose and fell onto the vinyl-tiled floor. Cursing roundly, she picked them up, examined them for damage and, when reassured, stuck them back on her straight little nose. Roll on contact lenses! She’d promised herself if this wedding job today went well and the clients paid up promptly, to get rid of the hated glasses for ever.

      As she finished packing all her gear into the holdall she heard a faint plop in the hall and walked swiftly through the old-fashioned kitchen to the front door, hoping that it was a reply to her advertisement. But it was only the local paper. Picking it up, she carried it to the kitchen table and spread it out at the small ads page. She always checked carefully on her advertisement. There had once been a mistake in the phone number and she had worried about the jobs she might have lost.

      She looked down the columns. Yes, here it was:

      Anne Grey—videos. Weddings, parties, all social occasions captured on video to show in your own home. Top-class work guaranteed. Artistic presentation. Moderate fees.

      Her phone number—correct!—followed.

      Breakfast now. She made coffee and sat down to enjoy a leisurely breakfast of toast and Marmite. The wedding was timed for one o’clock and she planned to be at the church a full hour before the guests started to arrive. She had paid a preliminary visit to the church, which was situated in a village about twenty miles away from her home in a south Warwickshire spa town, to take shots of the architecture and get the vicar’s permission to set up her gear inside the church. There were a lot of roadworks going on, and it had taken her nearly an hour to drive there yesterday, but there was plenty of time before she needed to start out today.

      She picked up the paper and folded it back at page six, where announcements of forthcoming weddings and social events appeared. This was Anne’s happy hunting-ground. At first she had had to nerve herself to approach possible clients direct—it had taken a good deal of courage to ring a doorbell and announce herself and practise what amounted to touting for business—but she found that most people were polite, and some even interested in her sales spiel.

      She didn’t realise that they were perhaps more interested in the neat young woman herself, with her slender figure, her thick mane of pale gold hair, more often than not scraped back in a bunch at her neck, and her brilliant, dark blue eyes smiling behind glasses which seemed too large for her small face. In time she had conquered her natural diffidence and had picked up several jobs by this method. If she was going to make a success of running her own business she would have to learn to be setf-assured—she had soon found that out.

      There were no weddings announced for the week to come, but on the next page she found something which interested her even more. Under the heading WEDDING OF THE WEEK appeared a piece about the wedding she was booked to video today.

      The wedding of Sir William Brent’s daughter, Elizabeth, to Mr Andrew Foulkes of London will take place on Saturday June 9th at St John’s Church, Offleigh. The photograph on the left shows the happy young couple at their engagement party last December. Also in the picture is Mr Mark Rayne, who is to be the best man. Mr Rayne is a writer and has recently become engaged to Miss Trudi King, the well-known model, who is seen here with him.

      There was more about the reception for two hundred guests, which would be held at Sir William’s residence, and about the bridesmaids and the names of some of the important guests, but Anne was studying the photograph.

      There would be no difficulty in capturing on tape the radiant happiness of the good-looking young bridal couple. They were standing with their heads together, champagne glasses raised to each other in a toast and obviously sharing some private joke.

      But the other couple held Anne’s attention. Even in the newspaper photograph it was plain that they were both stunningly attractive. The girl was sitting on a sofa in an elegant posture, her long dark hair flowing round her lovely face, and the man was leaning over her, smiling adoringly, one hand on her shoulder. He was dark too, and looked as if he would like to eat her up, Anne thought with a chuckle.

      She studied the picture for several minutes before she remembered the time and looked at her watch. Goodness, she must hurry now, not waste time gazing at a picture of a gorgeous man.

      In her bedroom she got out the charcoal-grey suit and dark turquoise blouse she always wore for weddings. Her tutor at college had advised her always to wear dark, inconspicuous clothes when she was working at a wedding, so that she could fade into the background.

      As she pulled off her jeans and top she looked down with a pang at the ring on her left hand with its tiny cluster of diamonds and thought fleetingly that it would be nice if it were she who was dressing in a white bridal dress with a veil and bouquet. But there wasn’t any chance of that.

      When Keith had ended their engagement at Christmas, when she’d had to back out of going to a party with him because her father hadn’t been well enough to be left, she had tried to pull off her ring but had found it was stuck tight. She had caught her hand in a car door a few weeks previously and the swelling that remained had still