me for weeks! Awful business.” She toys with her hair before she adds, “At least you had someone to distract you once you left the auditorium.”
Chris Hampshire.
“What’s the deal with him? No one seemed exactly happy to see him. Well, other than that supermodel looking girl who couldn’t take her hands off of him.”
“With Chris Hampshire there’s always a supermodel looking girl who can’t take her hands off him. That’s the way he is. Charismatic and adored.”
I think of his good looks and smooth demeanor. The guy’s definitely got it going on. “So, what’s the story with you and him? Seb told me things ended badly between you.”
She lets out a heavy sigh. “Back when we were at Cambridge, I met and fell in love with him. We were together for a year, and I thought he was The One. He’s so charming and handsome, and we had so much fun together. He would tell me I was the one for him and he couldn’t imagine life without me. I was totally deluded. I wanted a fantasy that was never there in the first place.”
“I get it. We’ve all fallen for guys who have turned out to be something other than they seem.”
“Well, Chris was definitely that.”
Greg, the friendly café owner I’ve chatted with to a couple of times, delivers us our coffee and cookies. “Enjoy, ladies,” he says with a beaming smile.
With Greg gone, Jilly takes a sip of her coffee and says, “The problem with me and Chris was that the only thing we really had in common was we were both in love with him.”
I chortle. “Oh, Jilly, I’m sorry. It must have been hard running into him like that last night.”
“It was a bit of shock. You see, he, ah, he left me at the altar.”
My eyes bulge. “As in he left you at the altar on your wedding day?”
She presses her lips together and nods. “It wasn’t my happiest moment.”
“I know about those,” I mutter under my breath, my mind darting to that gut wrenching moment when Sebastian sent me home from Dating Mr. Darcy. “That’s so horrible.”
“It was all a bit silly, really,” she says with a shake of her head. “We should probably just have had a mad affair and left things at that. But the problem is, he’s like catnip and Jilly finds him extremely hard to resist.”
“I can see that.”
“Oh?”
“I mean, he’s handsome and flirty. A lot of girls go for that.”
“Indeed. Sebby was marvelous at the time. He is an incredibly loyal person, you know, Emma.”
I nod and smile, feeling the warmth of our love. “He is.”
“When things between Chris and I ended, your darling fiancé stepped in and told him never to come near me again. He was awfully heroic. I half expected him to challenge Chris to a duel to protect my honor.”
I give her a sardonic smile. “But then you remembered this is the twenty-first century, right?”
“Right.”
“What did he say? Do you know?”
“No clue. All I know is Sebby made everything okay for me, and I’ll always hold him dear.”
“He’s a good friend to you.”
“He is. And as for Chris Hampshire, he may be handsome and fun and charming and nice to chat with in bars at the opera, but he’s not one of the good ones, as they say.”
“Oh, I think I got that message loud and clear.”
“Good.” She takes a bite of her cookie. “My goodness. This biscuit is fab,” Jilly pronounces after her first mouthful.
“I know, right? These remind me of home. I would go out with Penny—she’s my business partner and best friend—and we would eat these amazing chocolate chip cookies at our favorite coffee house whenever we had a problem to solve.” I think of how many cookies I ate after I thought Sebastian had dumped me. It’s a miracle I can still fit into my Timothy leggings, to be honest. “These are almost as good.”
“Well, I think they’re splendid. I don’t usually eat carbs, as I said. A treat for me is to have butter on my cauli rice.”
“Cauli rice?”
“Cauliflower. Awfully nutritious. You should try it sometime.
“Sure,” I reply, thinking I’ll just stick with regular old rice. I take a bite of my own cookie, enjoying its crunchy, gooey, chocolatiness. “I wanted to talk to you about the whole Sebastian’s family thing.”
“You have my attention. Go on.”
I look around the café to check no one is listening. Not that I expect them to, of course, but they are a well-known family