True Colours by Fox Vanessa

Author:Fox, Vanessa [Fox, Vanessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Vanessa Fox
Published: 2012-02-27T23:00:00+00:00

TWENTY SIX

‘Thank you so much for the flowers.’ Caroline’s voice, jarring like an inexperienced violinist tuning up, was dripping with sarcasm. Tearing himself away from the series of doodles he had been creating in the margins of his desk calendar, one hand reaching to massage his pounding head, Sebastian adjusted his mobile against his ear and thought fast. Was she ringing because he’d forgotten to send her flowers (why should he have remembered??) or because she didn’t like the ones she’d got, assuming them to be from him?

They’d hardly spoken since lunch yesterday, had hardly spoken at all during the meal. A tense affair, the idiot wedding planner gushing about lilies, about organza, about pink champagne, his grandfather appearing blissfully unaware of any tension, smiling at Caroline like she was Helen of Troy, occasionally reaching out to pat her arm which was resting on the table beside him, the Wingfield Sapphire displayed to its maximum advantage.

‘Weren’t you listening to anything I said yesterday?’ Without waiting for him to answer Caroline barrelled on. He was tempted to say ‘I heard you loud and clear…’ but she didn’t give him a chance, ‘I very clearly said that I hated yellow, and obviously if I don’t like yellow any fool would know that I wouldn’t be keen on orange either...’ Any fool? Yellow and orange? ‘…and to be honest, parrot flowers are quite grotesque.’

Parrot flowers? Then the penny dropped; Joss. Joss loved parrot flowers…Joss must have sent them…but how on earth did she know they’d had a row? Sebastian suddenly realised that she had stopped speaking, the silence growing between them like a vacuum.

‘Sorry, I missed the bit about the yellow…’ it sounded hopeless, even to him, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Caroline didn’t answer but let out a sharp breath like an escape of steam from a piston. Sebastian tried again, ‘You know flowers aren’t really my thing…’

‘I’d noticed.’ Her retort was short and piercing. He winced.

‘I hope you’ve done a bit better with the rest.’

The rest? The rest of what? The rest of the flowers? Hardly. Glancing towards the door of his office, willing Joss to come in and rescue him, Sebastian said the only thing he could think of, finding himself using the exact phrase that that fool in Cannes had been spinning out for the past six months:

‘Of course darling, everything’s under control.’

Perhaps it was the empty tone in his voice that she picked up on, or maybe she found the choice of words as shallow as he had done, but her reply came out in a hiss.

‘You’ve forgotten – you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about do you?’

There was a pause while Caroline waited for him to react. He didn’t; still didn’t know what he’d done wrong, what she was talking about.

‘How could you?’ Caroline’s voice was rising, ‘So, who sent the flowers? Oh my God, it was Joss wasn’t it? That woman’s mad; she’s just the type to think I’d like those hideous parrot things.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.