The Notting Hill Diaries

The Notting Hill Diaries
Ripped & Burned
Sarah
Morgan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Ripped

Praise for bestselling author

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Burned

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Endpages

Copyright

Ripped

Praise for bestselling author
Sarah Morgan

‘Sarah Morgan puts the magic in Christmas’

—Now magazine

‘Full of romance and sparkle’

—Lovereading

‘I’ve found an author I adore—must hunt down everything she’s published.’

—Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

‘Morgan is a magician with words.’

—RT Book Reviews

‘Dear Ms Morgan, I’m always on the lookout for a new book by you …’

—Dear Author blog

SARAH MORGAN is the bestselling author of Sleigh Bells in the Snow. As a child Sarah dreamed of being a writer and, although she took a few interesting detours on the way, she is now living that dream. With her writing career she has successfully combined business with pleasure and she firmly believes that reading romance is one of the most satisfying and fat-free escapist pleasures available. Her stories are unashamedly optimistic and she is always pleased when she receives letters from readers saying that her books have helped them through hard times.

Sarah lives near London with her husband and two children, who innocently provide an endless supply of authentic dialogue. When she isn’t writing or reading, Sarah enjoys music, movies and any activity that takes her outdoors.

Readers can find out more about Sarah and her books from her website: www.sarahmorgan.com. She can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

To Katie, with love.

Have fun and be fearless. Xxxx

Chapter One

‘Dearly beloved,’ the priest droned, ‘we are gathered here today to witness—’

A mistake of massive proportions, I thought gloomily, holding my breath and sitting up straight in a bid to stop my bridesmaid dress splitting at the seams. Any moment now I was going to burst out of this pukey-yellow tube and the wedding would forever be remembered as the one where the bridesmaid exposed herself. Not that I was prudish. Far from it. I’d danced on plenty of tables in my time, but on an ideal day I’d prefer not to find myself revealing all Victoria’s secrets to Great-Uncle Henry.

Some girls went through their lives dreaming of being a bridesmaid. You heard people talking about it as if it were a life goal. I had a list of life goals. I wanted to build a robot, visit Peru (I’ve always had a thing about llamas), work for NASA. Bridesmaid? That was nowhere on my list.

My parents married when they were both twenty-one. They stood at the front of a church much like this one wearing ridiculous clothes they wouldn’t normally be seen dead in, made all the usual promises—have and hold, death us do part, blah, blah—and then divorced when I was eight. Which taught me one thing—that a wedding is just a party by another name.

Because my neck was the only part of me that could move without straining a seam, I turned my head and glanced sideways. Through a forest of fascinators and absurd hats that made me think of UFOs, I could see the door that led to a pretty private churchyard, now covered in a light dusting of snow. I was glad it was pretty because I was sure I was going to be there soon. Here lies Hayley, who exploded out of her dress at the most inconvenient moment of her short, very unsatisfactory life and promptly died of shame.

The tiny church was crammed with people and stuffed full of extravagant flower displays, the cloying scent of lilies thickening the air and mingling unpleasantly with the smell of perfume from the elderly aunts. My nose tickled and my head started to throb.

The priest was still droning on in a hypnotic voice that could have been recorded and sold for millions as a cure for insomnia. ‘If anyone knows any reason why these two may not be joined, speak now….’

Any reason?

Was he kidding?

I could have given him at least ten reasons without even revving up a brain cell.

Number one—the groom was a total bastard.

Number two—he’d slept with the bride’s sister and at least two of the bride’s friends.

Number three—it was three days until Christmas and who the hell was dumb enough to get married when they should have been rushing round buying last-minute presents?

Number four—it was far too cold to be wearing a strapless dress and at this rate I was going to be eating my Christmas dinner in hospital with a nasty bout of pneumonia.

Number five—

‘Hayley, are you OK?’ My sister Rosie nudged me in the ribs, increasing the strain on my dress.

Of course I wasn’t OK. We both knew I wasn’t fucking OK. That was why she’d agreed to come with me, but this was hardly the moment for sisterly bonding over margaritas. To be honest, if she’d passed me a margarita I wouldn’t have known whether to drink it or drown myself in it.

I was good at statistics and I could tell you right now there was a 99 percent chance this wedding was going to end in tears. Probably mine.

‘You should have said no when she asked you to be her bridesmaid,’ Rosie hissed. ‘It was a mean thing to do when everyone knows you used to date him.’

And there it was. Right there. Reason number five why the bride and groom shouldn’t get married. Because he’d once said he wanted to marry me.

I’d told him no. I didn’t want to get married. Ever. I’d never had ambitions to be a bridesmaid and I had even fewer to be a bride. I assumed if he loved me, it wouldn’t make a difference. I mean, what was the big deal about a wedding ceremony? It wasn’t as if it stopped people breaking up. All that mattered was being together, wasn’t it?

Apparently not.

Turned out Charles was very traditional. He was climbing the ladder in an investment bank in the city and needed a wife prepared to devote herself to the advancement of his career. I’ve always been crap on ladders. I tried explaining I was as excited about my own career as he was about his and his response had been to dump me. In a very public way, I might add, just so that no one was under any illusions as to who had done the dumping.

Admittedly it hurt to be dumped, but nowhere near as much as it hurt to admit I’d wasted ten months on a guy who wasn’t remotely interested in the real me.

I realized everyone in the church was looking at me accusingly, as if I’d come here on purpose to make things awkward. To somehow punish him for not choosing me.

Look again, I wanted to yell, and see which one of us is being punished.

What girl in her right mind would choose to turn up at her ex’s wedding dressed in the fashion equivalent of a giant condom?

Was it my fault the bride wanted to make a public declaration about which one of us the groom was marrying? And I knew I wasn’t exactly guilt-free in all this. I could have said no. But then everyone would have thought I was moping and broken-hearted and I had my pride.

That was the first thing Mum taught us—never let a man know you’re broken-hearted. Which might be why our dad didn’t stick around for long, but more on that later.

I could feel myself turn pink, which I knew had to look horrible against the pukey yellow. I think the fabric was officially described as ‘misty dawn’ but if I saw a dawn like that I wouldn’t put a foot out of bed.

Worst of all? He was looking at me. No, not Charlie—he hadn’t once glanced in my direction, the coward. The best man. Charlie’s friend from school, although they’d grown apart in recent years and the friend was now a super successful lawyer. To be honest I was a bit surprised he’d agreed to be best man, but Charlie had lost a lot of friends since he’d taken a job in the city and started only hanging out with people who were ‘useful’ to him.

The best man’s name was Niccolò Rossi and he was half Italian. And hot. Seriously hot. In the looks department this man had been gifted by the gods.

Unfortunately immediately after the gods had dished out super clever brain, dark good looks and an incredible body, they obviously decided too much of a good thing was a bad thing and withheld humour. Which was a shame because Nico had an amazing mouth. A perfect sensual curve that would probably look good in a smile. Only he never used it to smile. Never. And he wasn’t using it now as he looked at me. He clearly wasn’t amused to see me sitting there. I wasn’t amused either. It was probably the first time we’d felt the same way about anything. He lived in London. We’d met the same night I met Charlie and although we were always bumping into each other on the social circuit, we’d barely spoken. I knew he wasn’t my type. He disapproved of me and I was done with men who disapproved of me. Charlie hated the fact I was an engineer. He always wanted me to wear frilly dresses to compensate. No wonder we came unstuck.

Nico cast me an icy glance at the same moment I looked at him.

Bad timing.

Our eyes clashed. His were a dark, dangerous black and everything inside me turned to liquid.

I glared, taking my anger with myself out on him.

I hated that he made me feel this way. He didn’t like me. I didn’t like him. We were polar opposites. I was fun-loving, friendly and honest about my feelings. He was zipped up, ruthlessly contained and cold as the inside of my freezer. There had been moments over the past few years when I’d been tempted to leap on him with a blowtorch to see if I could thaw him out.

He’d given me a lift home in his car once when Charlie had been too drunk to walk, let alone drive. It was a night I’d tried to forget. We’d been celebrating my job, which for some reason had sent Charlie over the edge.

Nico drove a red Ferrari, just about the sexiest car on the planet, and he was ruthlessly tidy. There wasn’t a single screwed-up piece of paper in sight. No mess (although by the time he dropped me off there may have been traces of saliva where I’d drooled all over his car). His suits were Tom Ford, his shoes polished and his shirts a crisp, pristine white. But underneath that carefully polished appearance there was something raw and elemental that no amount of sophisticated tailoring could conceal.

I’d been wearing my favourite black dress that night and I remember he didn’t look at me once. Not even at my legs, which were definitely my best feature, especially when I dressed them up in four-inch stilettos (no pain no gain). He hadn’t bothered to hide his disapproval then and he wasn’t hiding it now.

His burning gaze lowered to my neckline and that sensual, unsmiling mouth tightened into a line of grim censure.

I wanted to stand up and point out that the dress wasn’t my choice. That it was yet another trick on the part of the bride to make sure I looked hideous. Quite honestly my breasts were too big for this dress and breasts generally weren’t on the guest list to a wedding. Mine were so big they could have qualified for separate invitations.

Nico Rossi obviously didn’t think they should have been invited at all.

Truth? I found him intimidating and I hated that.

I was a modern, independent woman. I’d never worn pink and I’d never had the urge to coo over strange babies in prams. My best subjects at school were Math, Physics and Technology. I was the only girl in the class and I always had better marks than the boys, which usually pissed them off, but I figured that was their problem not mine. I had a degree in aeronautical engineering and was working on a supersecret project to do with satellites. I couldn’t tell you more than that or I’d have to kill you and eat you and you didn’t need a degree in engineering to know there was no room in this dress for two people. I loved my job. It excited me more than any man I’d ever met. But that could have been because I constantly messed up my love life.

Every. Single. Time.

Honestly, how could an intelligent woman get it so badly wrong? I’d tried to apply data analysis methods to my dating history but failed to extract anything meaningful from the results except that getting it wrong hurt. I always seemed to end up compromising who I was, but that’s in the genes. Rosie and I watched our mum contort who she was for men who subsequently left her. As I said, we weren’t good at relationships, which was probably why I was sitting here single, watching my ex get married.

I breathed in the smell of this musty old church and thought about all the promises that had been made here only to be broken a few years down the line. And right there and then, I made a decision.

No more feelings.

Feelings just led to misery and I was done with misery.

Not that I’d ever been the sort of girl to wait by the phone, willing it to ring. God, no. If a guy played those games with me, I deleted him from my contacts. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t be hurt. And frankly, what was the point?

‘I’ve made a New Year’s Resolution.’ I risked the dress and leaned closer to Rosie. ‘And I’m starting right now.’

‘You’re never wearing pukey-yellow again?’ She eyed my dress. ‘Good decision.’

I ignored her. ‘I’m sick of romantic relationships. Why bother? I can go to the movies with girlfriends. I can chat with girlfriends. I can laugh with girlfriends.’

‘That’s your New Year’s resolution?’

‘Everything I need in life I can get from girlfriends,’ I hissed, ‘apart from one thing—’

Rosie coughed. ‘Well, you can—’

‘No, I can’t. I need a man for that part. But only that part. From now on I’m using men for sex. Nothing else.’

‘Well, as resolutions go, I predict that one is going to be a lot more fun than giving up chocolate.’

I could always rely on my sister for support.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was it was a brilliant idea. ‘I should have thought of it before.’ I was talking out of the corner of my mouth, trying not to attract glares from the elderly aunts. ‘Instead of trying to find a man who can make me laugh and is actually interested in me, instead of wondering what I can do for his career, I look for one thing. Sex appeal.’

‘If all you’re interested in is sex appeal, you could start with Nico Rossi,’ Rosie whispered. ‘He is scorching hot.’

Not just me then.

The problem was, I didn’t want to find Nico sexy. I didn’t want to think of him naked or wonder how it would feel to be kissed by him. He didn’t like me. It disturbed my sense of order and fairness that I should find him attractive.

I looked away, but not for long.

I couldn’t help myself. I sneaked another look. It was some consolation that every other woman under ninety was staring, too. If ever there was such a thing as raw sex appeal, Nico had it. He was the sort of guy that made you think about sin in a big way, which wasn’t a good thing when you were sitting in church with your breasts half exposed.

I couldn’t wait to get to the bathroom so that I could unzip my dress and give my ribs the freedom they deserved.

When was this wedding going to end?

Enough already.

Just say I do and go and live your lives until your realize what you should have said was I don’t.

But now they were staring into each other’s eyes and reciting handwritten personalized messages.

I promise to love you forever and cherish you.

I promise never to cancel your subscription to the sports channel.

(OK I made that one up but you get the point.)

I wriggled in my seat, wondering whether Nico Rossi spoke in Italian when he was having sex. He’d brought his younger sister to the wedding—a sleek, dark vision of slender perfection. She was poised and sophisticated, just like him. Every now and then she glanced at him adoringly, as if he were a god. It seemed unnatural to me. I mean, I loved my sister but there were plenty of days I wanted to poke her in the eye. But these were perfect people who would never show emotion in public. They probably never argued. They were the sort who believed marriage to be an exciting journey.

I was always sick on journeys.

Thanks to our parents’ less than stellar example, my sister and I were both equally screwed-up about relationships. Not that there weren’t men in our lives. Far from it. Men were always attracted by Rosie’s sweet, heart-shaped face and her pretty smile. They thought she was fragile and needed protecting. Then they discovered my sister had a black belt in karate and could break a man’s bones with one kick and they usually retreated nervously, licking their wounded machismo.

There was a guy once, but if I so much as thought his name she’d break my bones, too, so it was a subject I didn’t touch.

Just when I thought this wedding was never going to end, the priest benevolently told the groom he could kiss the bride. He’d been kissing the bride and half her friends regularly for the past six months without permission from anyone, but no one seemed to care about that.

I couldn’t help wondering if the kiss was for my benefit, to remind me what I’d turned down.

It was very Hollywood. No bumping noses or awkward moments. Scripted. The sort of kiss where you just knew they were thinking about how it looked on the outside, not how it felt on the inside.

There seemed to be an awful lot of tongue involved.

Rosie made sick choking noises next to me.

God, I loved my sister.

And then finally, finally, it was over.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

And my dress split.

Chapter Two

Oh fuck, so now I was naked. Not just wearing a condom, but a split condom, and suddenly no one was looking at the bride and groom—they were staring at me and I couldn’t exactly blame them because there was plenty to see. There were times when I was happy to be the centre of attention, but this wasn’t one of them.

Why oh why hadn’t I worn a bra?

I’d tried it, but it had shown through the cheap, shiny fabric, so I’d decided in the interests of vanity that if I had to wear this hideous dress at least my outline would be smooth and perfect.

Another bad decision. The dress had split down both side seams simultaneously, exposing me completely from the waist up. I felt like a half-peeled banana, but I probably looked like one of those women who turned up at stag parties and leapt out of cakes.

I was strip-o-gram bridesmaid.

Everyone was staring, transfixed by delicious horror, all deeply relieved it hadn’t happened to them. But it could never have happened to them. Only to me. My life had a habit of unraveling, only usually not quite as literally as this.

The snow and the draughty, under-heated old church had conspired to make my nipples stand to attention. I tried to cover them with my hands, but then I realized I was probably making it worse. Now I wasn’t just naked—I was touching myself.

For the first time in quite a few years, I prayed.

Kill me now.

Mum had always drummed into Rosie and me that we should wear clean underwear in case of an accident, although to be fair I don’t think this was the sort of accident she had in mind when she dished out that advice. I wished I’d listened, but I honestly hadn’t thought my underwear, or lack of it, was going to be an issue. Every unattached girl hoped she would score at a wedding, but I was a realist. No man was going to hit on a woman wearing a giant body condom. Don’t misunderstand me—I was all for safe sex. I insisted on condoms. It was just that I didn’t usually try and squeeze my whole self into one.

The dress was a horribly tight tube, floor length, which basically meant my legs were locked together. I couldn’t even run away. I was like a mermaid, but without an ocean to drown in. Escape would be a slow, shuffling, breast-bouncing affair.

Scarlet-faced, I tried to grab the misbehaving fabric and cover myself with that, but honestly it was like trying to cover Big Ben with a handkerchief.

Somewhere through the swirling clouds of embarrassment I heard Rosie snort. She was laughing so hard I knew she was going to be as much use to me as a non-alcoholic cocktail at a party. Rosie had a problem with laughter. She couldn’t control it. Watching her laugh usually made me laugh, too, but any desire to laugh was squashed by the look in ruthless Nico Rossi’s eyes.

While everyone else was gaping in horrified silence (and I can tell you they weren’t looking at my face) he strode across the aisle towards me, all broad shouldered and powerful like a warrior preparing to repel an invading army.

I waited for Rosie to leap to her feet and execute one of her incredible scissor kicks that would flatten him, but my useless sister was doubled up with tears pouring down her face and Nico was still striding. I guessed it would take a lot to flatten a man like him.

Just for a moment I shivered because whatever he lacked in the emotional warmth department, physically he was truly spectacular—stomach-melting, willpower-destroying spectacular. The sort of man you couldn’t look at without thinking about sex.

Dark, glittering eyes were focused on me like a laser-guided weapon programmed to destroy.

His role as best man was to support the groom and solve problems and right now I was the problem. Or at least, my breasts were. They were loose and free and I could tell from the look on his face he thought breasts like mine shouldn’t be allowed out without a permit.

The elderly aunts had their eyes averted, but the elderly uncles were staring at me, their bulging eyes reminding me of sea creatures. I saw sweat on their brows and was just wondering whether I was going to be responsible for adding more bodies to that pretty churchyard when Nico reached me. He removed his jacket in a smooth movement that made me think he’d be good at undressing women, and wrapped it around my shoulders. Actually ‘wrapped’ was too gentle a word for what he did, but either way my bouncing breasts were now safely buried under Tom Ford. His jacket felt warm. It smelled delicious. It smelled of him.

‘Move!’ It was a command, not a request and I opened my mouth to point out my legs were tied together, but his hand was on my back and he was propelling me down the aisle. Down the aisle. That’s right, I, Hayley Miller of 42 Cherry Tree Crescent, Notting Hill, was shuffling down the aisle with a man, something I always said I’d never do, except that I was doing it backwards and half-naked, so it probably didn’t count.

I staggered past a sea of faces, all with their mouths hanging open. They reminded me of a nest of baby birds waiting to be fed and I wasn’t just feeding them morsels of gossip—I’d given them a banquet. At least they wouldn’t need to eat at the reception.

And behind the fascinated horror was the delight some people felt when they witnessed someone else’s public humiliation. They’d be talking about this moment for weeks. Who was I kidding? Years. One thing I knew for sure—I was never trusting a condom again.

But I had more immediate problems to worry about.

I had no idea where we were going.

This was a small private church in the grounds of a stately home. England was full of that sort of thing and, since the credit crunch, even the very rich were looking for ways to supplement their income. Hiring out the dusty family chapel for weddings was a clever way of allowing less privileged folk to pretend for that one day of their lives that they actually lived like this. I didn’t think it was any more fake than exchanging vows and promises about loving each other forever and then splitting up a few years later. In other words, none of it meant anything, so why not go over the top? If dressing like an over-whipped dessert made you happy, then go for it I say (but for God’s sake get one that fits).

Everyone wanted to get married in this particular chapel, not for religious reasons but because the door was pretty and looked good in the photos.

‘Oh, God, the photos! What about the photos?’ I stopped dead, but he pushed me forward into a room and slammed the door.

It was just the two of us and the silence was really loud.

I looked around me and saw we were in a room with wood paneling and portraits of unsmiling dukes on unsmiling horses. In the corner was a perfectly decorated Christmas tree. No wonky home-made decorations like the ones Rosie and I used in our apartment, but designer perfection.

I was pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be here, but I guessed Nico wasn’t giving much thought to protecting the assets of our hosts. He was more interested in hiding my assets from the gawping guests.

What was I supposed to say?

What was the etiquette for a serious wardrobe malfunction?

I had a feeling ‘oops’ wasn’t going to cut it and asking for a needle and thread would have been like asking for a teacup to bail out the Titanic.

‘Er—nice jacket.’ And because I was wearing his jacket, he was in his shirtsleeves and I could see the swell of hard male muscle pressing against the fabric. His shirt was pristine white and I noticed his skin was golden, not pale and pasty like Charlie’s, and his jaw had the beginnings of a dark shadow. Thick, dark lashes framed eyes that were indecently sexy—the only thing that spoiled it was the dangerous glint of anger.

He dragged his fingers through hair that was usually smooth and sleek, exploded into Italian, and then switched language in midsentence as if realizing that if he wanted to insult me he’d better do it in a language I understood. ‘Cristo, what were you thinking choosing a dress that revealing?’

‘I didn’t choose it.’

‘Then you should have refused to wear it.’ His gaze was fixed on mine and didn’t waver.

Clearly he’d had no desire to ogle my bare breasts. I told myself that didn’t bother me.

What did bother me was the unconcealed look of disapproval on his handsome face.

I was sure he was a very successful lawyer. I didn’t even know which bit of the law he dealt with, but whatever he did I was sure he was the best of the best. I knew that if I were on the witness stand and he fixed me with that penetrating gaze I would have confessed to pretty much anything.

Yes, Your Honour, it’s true that on the twenty-second day of December I wore a giant condom to a wedding…. No, I had no idea I would be arrested for antisocial behavior—condoms are supposed to only have a 2 percent failure rate, but in my case it was 150 percent. Yes, I understand there were serious consequences. Wedding interruptus.

I wondered why he was so angry.

It wasn’t as if the groom had ended up with me. This episode could have just been labeled ‘narrow escape’.

Outrage started to simmer inside me. I was the victim of a cruel fashion crime, blameless in everything except my proportions and I wasn’t about to apologize for my breasts.

And anyway, I felt a bit funny inside. Not queasy exactly, but a bit dizzy and swimmy-headed. I thought it was probably hearing him speaking Italian. The only Italian I knew I learned from a menu and there was nothing sexy about Pizza Margherita even if you tried saying it in a sultry voice.

This man, however, was spectacularly sexy and everything that came out of his mouth made me want to grab him and do very, very bad things which was definitely off limits because Nico was the sort who was always ruthlessly in control of himself and behaved impeccably in public. I assumed lawyers weren’t allowed to misbehave.

‘Why the fuck are you here, Hayley? You are the master of bad decisions.’ He spoke through his teeth as if he were afraid that if he opened his mouth a tirade of insults would escape.

Frankly I was surprised to hear him say ‘fuck’.

But now he’d said it, I started thinking about it. Not the word, but the act. I couldn’t help it. Truthfully I’d been thinking about it long before he’d said that word. I doubted any woman could look at Nico and not think of it. Not love or romance, you understand. He wasn’t the hearts and roses sort of man. I couldn’t imagine him risking his suit by changing a nappy or rolling up his perfectly ironed sleeves to wash a greasy saucepan, but sex? God, yes. All it took was one look to know this man would know everything there was to know about hard, hot, sweaty sex.

For a wild moment I wanted to ask if he’d impart some of his knowledge, but then I remembered he’d just told me I made bad decisions. There was only so much abuse a girl could take in one day and I was right up to my limit. When you work in a male dominated profession as I do, you’re used to being judged. Most of the time I let it wash over me. If I threatened their masculinity that was their problem, not mine. Occasionally I fought back. Sometimes I took sadistic pleasure in surprising people, but I was damned if I’d allow myself to be told I made bad decisions by a man who never let himself go.