Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

But the conclusive life-altering event of that fatal holiday had been the dreadful car accident that had left Pippa’s mother dead and put her father into a wheelchair. Tabby’s father, Gerry Burnside, had got drunk and crashed a car full of passengers, shattering the lives of all his friends. Pippa had been much closer to her mother than she had ever been to her harsh and demanding father and she had been devastated by her mother’s sudden death. Before the crash her father had been a science teacher and an active sportsman and he had never managed to come to terms with his disability.

Furthermore, as a young man Martin Stevenson had wanted to be a doctor but had narrowly missed out on the exam grades required. From the hour of Pippa’s birth, her father had been determined that his daughter should live out his dream of becoming a doctor for him and she had been pressed into doing her academic best from a very early age. But the consequences of that appalling car accident, which had also claimed the lives of Tabby’s father, Hilary’s parents and both Jen’s and Pippa’s mothers had traumatised Pippa and she had had to tell her father that she could not face a career in medicine.

The cruel intensity of her father’s disappointment had been almost more than Pippa’s conscience could bear and his bitterness had been terrible to live with. For nearly six years afterwards, Pippa had nonetheless been her parent’s main carer. But, no matter how hard she had worked to please him with high grades in the economics degree she’d pursued and with tender care of his needs at home, he had never forgiven her for turning her back on the chance to become a doctor. Pippa remained wretchedly aware of what she saw as her own shortcomings. She was totally convinced that the really gutsy woman whom she wanted to be would have been fired by an unquenchable desire to study medicine after that car accident rather than put off for life and convinced that she was too soft to last the course.

When she made herself remember just how much she had once adored France, she could hardly credit that she had not visited the country of her own mother’s birth since that tragic summer. She had even made excuses to avoid attending Tabby’s wedding. Thankfully, however, Tabby’s husband, Christien, brought his wife over to London on regular visits, so Pippa had been able to maintain contact with her friend. But wasn’t it really past time that she came to terms with her mother’s death and visited Tabby and Christien at Duvernay, the Laroche family’s beautiful château in Brittany? How often had her friend invited her? Her conscience twanged. Shouldn’t she spend at least part of the holiday she had to take with Tabby in France?

‘Oh, no, this is the day you close at lunchtime and I completely forgot!’ Pippa groaned in dismay when Hilary, having met her at the door of her tiny apartment took her across the passage into the hairdressing salon, which was strikingly silent and empty. ‘For goodness’ sake, why didn’t you remind me that it was your half-day?’

Hilary was small and slim with enormous grey eyes and spiky blonde hair that had the very slightest hint of blue to match her T-shirt. Only a year Pippa’s junior, she actually looked barely eighteen and she grinned. ‘Are you kidding? Do I look that patient? You’re finally going out on a date and I can’t wait to find out who the bloke is!’

Pippa stiffened. ‘There’s no bloke. It’s the big party for the new MD tonight—’

‘But you were all out of breath on the phone and I thought you were excited—’

‘Not excited…upset,’ Pippa conceded jerkily. ‘I bombed out at work, I fell flat on my face—’

‘What on earth—?’

‘I didn’t get the job,’ Pippa muttered in a wobbly undertone and then the whole unhappy story came tumbling out.

Hilary listened and tried not to wince while she dug into a cupboard in the tiny staff room and poured Pippa a stiff drink from the brandy someone had given her at Christmas.

‘I don’t touch it, you know I don’t…’ Pippa attempted to push the glass away.

‘You’re as white as a sheet. You need a boost.’ Hilary pressed her down into a seat by the washbasins and deemed a change of subject the best policy. ‘So you want to knock ’em dead in the aisles at Venstar tonight—’

‘Some chance!’ Wrinkling her nose at the taste, Pippa drank deep and the unfamiliar alcohol ran like fire down into her cold, empty tummy. Like the warmth of her friend’s sympathy, however, it was a soothing sensation and she was incredibly grateful that she had ignored her father’s withering sarcasm and had attended her first school reunion just a few months earlier. After Tabby had made a permanent move to France, Pippa had been delighted to meet up with Hilary again at the reunion and learn that the blonde also lived in London. After that tragic car accident, their paths had been forced apart and Tabby and Pippa had lost touch with Hilary and with the fourth member of that teenage friendship, Jen Tarbert.

‘Even blindfolded, you could knock ’em dead,’ Hilary repeated with determination, trying not to think unkind thoughts about Pippa’s deceased father. However, it was an unfortunate truth that even when Pippa had been a child her parent had been a domineering bully with a wounding tongue and he had done a real hatchet job on his daughter’s self-esteem.

While Hilary washed her hair, Pippa remembered to ask after her friend’s kid sister, Emma. ‘How’s she doing?’

Hilary chattered on happily about the teenage sister she adored before saying, ‘Will you let me do your make-up too?’

‘If you don’t mind…’

‘Why would I mind? I love doing faces!’

‘Well, you can only do your best—’

‘With a bone structure as good as yours, I would hope so.’ Hilary watched Pippa stiffen and sighed before she pressed another brimming glass of brandy into the redhead’s hand, told her that she was far too tense and hustled her upstairs to her cluttered apartment.

‘I’ll have to rush home to get changed,’ Pippa remarked.

‘You haven’t got the time. You’ll be late enough as it is.’ Hilary hurried into her sister’s bedroom and plundered the packed wardrobe there to emerge with a strappy dress in a glorious shade of turquoise.

‘I can’t borrow anything that belongs to your sister!’ Pippa protested.

‘Emma decided that this made her look too old and you know how picky teenagers are…there’s no way she’ll ever wear it now.’

‘I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a style like that,’ Pippa muttered.

‘Lighten up, Pippa,’ Hilary urged in a pained tone. ‘You’re young and you can wear just about anything with your figure. It’s not a revealing dress, so what are you worried about?’

In Pippa’s opinion any garment that bared her shoulders, her thin arms and the sheer pitiful tininess of her breasts was much too revealing. Yet, her friend was being so kind and supportive that she was reluctant to reject her generosity. Both women wore the same size in shoes but, yet again, there was a great gap betwe

en their personal preferences. Hilary adored shoes with high heels whereas Pippa rarely wore heels because she already stood five feet eleven inches in her bare feet. A pair of three-inch high gold beaded sandals were set beside the dress and then Hilary showed her guest into the bathroom to enable her to take a shower before her transformation commenced.