‘Bloody hell, babes – please, no more perfume,’ Dominic Heath grumbled. ‘You’ve bought out the entire duty-free shop as it is! You’re fucking bankrupting me.’
Gemma ignored him and reached for a purple bottle of scent. ‘Ooh, look, it’s your ex-wife’s new scent, Positively Posh!’ She paused to squeeze the atomizer and took an appreciative sniff. ‘It’s nice. It smells like freesias and roses.’
‘It ought to smell like disappointment and an empty wallet,’ Dom retorted, ‘because that’s all I ever had when we were together.’
‘That’s not what Keeley said,’ Gemma pointed out as she put the bottle back on the shelf. ‘She said you were always borrowing money from her—’
‘Never mind that,’ Dominic cut in, annoyed. ‘Can we talk about something besides my cow of an ex-wife?’
‘Fine.’ She dumped her purchases on the counter in front of the till and fixed him with a gimlet eye. ‘Let’s talk about our wedding, then.’
Dominic let out a long-suffering sigh and handed over his AmEx black card to the clerk at the till. ‘I told you, babes, I’m leaving all that wedding crap up to you.’
‘It’s your wedding, too,’ Gemma pointed out, ‘and so I need your input. I mean it, Dom,’ she warned him as she gathered up her purchases and thrust them into his arms, ‘this isn’t only about me, you know. You’re the groom. You have certain responsibilities.’
‘Responsibilities? Like what? I say ‘I do,’ slap a ring on your finger, get bladdered afterwards, and have an X-rated honeymoon with my new bride. Job done.’
‘There’s a bit more to it than that!’ she snapped. ‘There’s the wedding toast, and choosing a best man, and then there’s your boutonnière—’
‘All right, all right,’ he grumbled. ‘No need to go on about it endlessly. We’ll talk about it on the jet.’
Normally, ‘the jet’ referred to Dominic’s private Lear. But since it was side-lined with mechanical problems, they’d been reduced to flying to Inverness for the holidays on a commercial flight. They were flying first class, of course, Gemma consoled herself as she trailed after Dominic into the VIP lounge, but still...it wasn’t the same as having your own private plane, was it?
No. It bloody well wasn’t.
‘And what about our children?’ she added when they were seated in side-by-side, heated massage chairs.
‘Hmm?’ Dom murmured, his eyes half closed and his thoughts lingering on that morning’s Page Three girl. Candi, her name was, and her tits had been very sweet indeed...
‘I want kids. Two. Possibly three,’ Gemma mused, ‘a girl, a boy, and another girl. Rafaella, I think, and Dylan, and Phoebe.’
‘Dylan? I’m not naming my kid Dylan! That’s a naff name,’ Dominic objected. ‘I’m not wild about Phoebe, either. I’ve got an Aunt Phoebe, and she’s a right bitch.’
‘And we’ll need to get the baby registered for Wetherby as soon as it’s born,’ Gemma went on, oblivious. ‘The waiting list is miles long.’
‘What? Is the waiting list so long we’ve got to register the baby for school before it’s even in bloody utero?’ Dominic demanded. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘That’s what we have to do if our baby’s to have a proper education.’
‘Poor little mite. Not even conceived yet, and the wheels are already in motion.’
‘Are you saying I’m wrong to want our baby to have a proper education?’
‘No. I’m just saying that you barely got through the local comprehensive, Gems, and I ‒’ he paused ‘‒ well, I’m not exactly a Man Booker prize candidate, am I?’
‘Maybe not,’ she agreed, ‘but you’re a famous rock singer, with lots of fans and hit records to your credit.’
‘And lots of dosh, too,’ he added with a satisfied smirk. ‘Don’t forget that.’
‘But we don’t know if little Rafaella or Dylan or Phoebe will have your artistic talents, do we? So we need to make sure they receive an excellent education.’
‘I had an excellent education,’ Dom pointed out, ‘and it didn’t do me much good.’
‘That’s because you didn’t apply yourself. And you wanted more out of life than being the next Locksley heir.’
‘True,’ he agreed, and sat up. ‘Well – at least the old man’ll be happy to know he’ll soon have a little heir-in-waiting in the old bun-warmer. He’s always banging on at me and Liam, wanting to know when we plan to produce a grandchild.’
Gemma leant forward and brushed her lips against his. ‘We can get started on making a baby tonight, if you like,’ she murmured, and smiled seductively.
‘How about sooner, babes, like...on the plane?’
Gemma giggled. ‘And tell our little girl or boy that they were conceived in an airplane loo? No!’
‘Why not? We can christen the kid...Lufthansa. Or Ryanair. Or if it’s a girl, EasyJet.’
Gemma slapped his hand away from her thigh. ‘I want our baby to be conceived in romantic surroundings, Dom, in a canopy bed piled with blankets, with a roaring fire in the fireplace, and snow coming down outside... not inside an airline loo, balanced atop a stainless-steel sink with a faucet up my arse.’
‘Every detail can’t always be perfect, you know,’ he grumbled. ‘What’ll you do ‒ post a picture to FacePage before we do the deed? I can see it now: ‘Look, everyone ‒ here’s the bed where Dom and I are about to conceive little Lufthansa’? Or maybe you can add a new relationship status – ‘currently being roundly shagged’?’
‘Oh, do shut up,’ Gemma said crossly as she picked up her mobile and thumbed through her text messages. ‘I’m not that bad.’
‘No. You’re worse. You’re obsessed with social media. The only way I can get your attention lately is to send you a bloody text message.’
But Gemma didn’t hear him. She was too busy posting a status update to FacePage to notice.
Thank God they haven’t cancelled the flight, the woman thought as she shoved her laptop into the already crowded overhead bin and squeezed into the last remaining seat in economy class. Otherwise I wouldn’t get to Scotland until after Christmas.
She glanced out the window. Snow fell steadily and had just begun to cover the Tarmac. Another hour of this and all flights out of Heathrow would be cancelled.
A family came down the aisle and sat across from her. The mother settled into a seat with her little girl beside her, and her husband sat just in front with their son. The girl had ginger hair and was perhaps nine or ten, complaining about the injustice of being denied a promised sweet. Her brother ignored her and played a game on his father’s mobile phone.
The woman reached for her iPod and earphones. Thank God for noise-blocking technology. She had far too much work to be doing to sit here and listen to children complaining and video games beeping and parents shushing their little darlings for two-plus hours.
Still, as she busied herself drafting a few notes on her mobile before the flight attendant asked them to shut off all electronic devices, her glance strayed once again to the girl and her brother. They were cute kids, she thought. For a moment – just for a moment – she allowed herself to imagine having a little ginger-haired girl, or a tow-headed little boy, of her own...
She pressed her lips together and turned her thoughts back to the matter at hand. Work. She had plenty to be doing, she reminded herself firmly, and a deadline to meet. She forced her attention back to her mobile screen.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The little girl just behind her was kicking the back of her seat in time as she sang a (very loud) CBeebies song.
She let out a long, aggrieved sigh.
Bloody deadlines. Bloody economy. Bloody children.