Last-Minute Bridesmaid. Nina Harrington

to deliver me home safe and sound—not even Sam. Go for it, Kate. He won’t let you down. Be brave.’

      * * *

      Brave? Brave was fine when she was with her pals but it was a very different matter sitting in the passenger seat of Heath’s sports car an hour later.

      Alone. With Heath Sheridan.

      Listening to his warm deep voice chatter on about the lecture he was planning to attend the next day. The radio was tuned to popular music, the brightly lit streets spun by and it seemed only minutes between leaving Amber’s third dad’s house and pulling up onto the pavement outside Kate’s grandfather’s shop. Her brain was spinning to come up with something clever and witty and eloquent to say. No chance! Breathing was hard enough, never mind talking.

      Heath must think that she was a complete idiot. It was so humiliating.

      And now he was opening the car door for her. If she was going to say something this was the time.

      ‘Thank you, Heath,’ she choked through a throat as dry as the Sahara as she took his hand, locked her knees together and swung her legs out of the car with as much decorum as she could manage and lifted her chin. ‘It was very kind of you to bring me home.’

      His reply was to wrap one arm around her waist, push the car door closed with the other and half support her all of the four steps to the front door of the shop. Then wait until she had fished her key out of her tiny evening bag.

      It was heaven and she sneaked a cuddle before he laughed out loud and whirled her around. ‘You are most welcome, lovely lady. Any time.’ And before she could reply he had lifted her gloved right hand to his lips and kissed the back of her knuckles. ‘It was my pleasure.’ He wrinkled his nose up and winked at her. And slowly, slowly, slid his hand from hers and half turned to go.

      He was leaving. Heath was leaving. No!

      Which was when she did it. Kate Lovat, doing-okay-but-not-likely-to-win-any-prizes high school student, trainee fashion designer and glove aficionado extraordinaire, stepped forward, grabbed the lapels of Heath’s jacket with both hands, raised herself as high as she could on tiptoe, closed her eyes and kissed him on the mouth. Hard.

      The startled and strangely delighted look on his face when she did squint her eyes open made her whirl around, turn the key in the door and hurl herself inside before she had to face him.

      ‘Goodnight, Heath,’ she whispered as she pressed her back to the door, heart thumping and lungs heaving. ‘Goodnight. And very, very sweet dreams.’

      ONE

      Eleven years later.

      Heath Sheridan was going to kill her.

      He was going to jump up and stomp around and scowl and say that he knew that he had made a huge, huge mistake trusting her with something as important as making the bridesmaid dresses for his dad’s wedding.

      Kate Lovat lifted her left arm and squinted at her wristwatch for the tenth time in the last five minutes, then winced, sighed out loud and joggled from foot to foot.

      Amber had warned her that Heath hated people being late to meetings. Hated it.

      After all, he wasn’t some heart-throb student any longer. Heath Sheridan was a serious publishing executive running his own media empire. He might have turned up late for that Valentine’s Day dance, but this was different. This was business.

      And she was now officially, undeniably, without doubt, late.

      As in already ten minutes late. And that was allowing for the fact that her grandmother’s watch always ran slow.

      If only she hadn’t bumped into Patrick, the friend she shared her loft with, on her way out.

      Of course Pat wanted to check that he hadn’t left anything behind in the studio, and then they’d got talking about his leaving party and then Leo had arrived to organise the photo shoot and...she’d finally escaped almost thirty minutes later. But it had always been the same. She was hopeless when it came to her friends.

      Simply hopeless.

      Just like her business management skills.

      Good thing that she was a goddess when it came to the actual tailoring.

      Kate slumped into the corner of the carriage of the rush-hour train on the London underground with both arms wrapped so tightly around her precious dress box that whenever the carriage lurched to one side, she lurched with it.

      Today, of all days, the tube was slow leaving every single station on the route from her lowly design studio to the posh central London address for Sheridan Press. It seemed to be teasing her and the faster she willed it to go, the slower it went.

      She had given up apologising to the other passengers after the first few times she had crashed into them and braced herself against the grubby glass partition instead.

      The fact that she was too vertically challenged, as her friend Saskia called it, to reach the plastic loop swinging above her head was entirely immaterial when every lurch and rattle of the train seemed to be calling out in a sing-song tune the word late, rattle, late, late, rattle, late. Taunting her.

      But it didn’t matter. She had worked so hard on these dresses and they were lovely.

      She would make Amber proud of her and prove to Heath and the wedding guests and their friends, hairdressers, postmen and anyone else they knew, how fabulously professional and creative she was and that they should choose Katherine Lovat Designs to create all of their future outfits.

      With a bit of luck this wedding would be exactly the type of promotional opportunity she had been looking for. The first three dresses had already been delivered to the bride and the fourth and final dress had been finished right on deadline. Just as she had promised it would be.

      Now all she had to do was go out into a thunderstorm and deliver the final dress—and she would be done.

      Kate glanced down at her damp high-heeled peep-toe ankle boots and crunched her toes together several times to get the circulation going again.

      Okay, maybe they weren’t the most sensible footwear in the world for trudging through city streets on the way to make a special delivery, but it shouldn’t be raining in July. It should be sunny and warm and the pavements dry enough to walk on without being in danger of being drenched from passing cars.

      The train slowed but Kate’s pulse started to race as she peered out at the curved tile walls as they pulled into the tube station.

      This was it. She swallowed down a lump of anxiety and nervous tension the size of a wedding hat, and then she lifted her chin and turned on her trademark bright and breezy happy smile.

      Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. Everything is fine in Kate land.

      No problems at all.

      The lease on the warehouse studio which she rented with Patrick had not just doubled in cost in the last year, Patrick had not just decided to leave London and move to Hollywood as a wardrobe assistant in the movie business and, biggest of all, she was totally, absolutely not nervous about meeting the man she was on her way to see at that minute.

      Heath Sheridan was Amber’s ex-stepbrother. That was all. And her silly teenage crush was over years ago!

      So what if she had pounced on Heath the last time that she had seen him? They had both kissed a lot of other people since then. He was bound to have forgotten that embarrassing little incident...wouldn’t he?

      She had never seen Heath since that night and he certainly hadn’t got in touch with her. But of course that was the autumn his mother had been taken ill and coming back to London wasn’t included in his plans.

      No. This was a straightforward business transaction. Heath needed the last of the four bridesmaids’ dresses today and was willing to pay extra to have it delivered in person.

      Why should