Miranda's Big Mistake - Jill Mansell [156]
THE ONE!!! mouthed Miranda, jabbing an astonished finger at Chloe.
`-then I'm happy for you. And when we fly over to London next month I' d love to meet her. So tell this Chloe how you feel and fix something up, will you? I can't wait to meet the girl who made my little brother finally fall in luuurve…'
There was the sound of merry laughter, then a click as the message ended.
Miranda gazed at Chloe in wonderment.
`I don't believe it. This is… incredible! And he's done it, hasn't he? He's already told you, and you're both looking so smug and smirky and disgustingly happy, it's obvious you feel the same way about him.'
Imagine, all this stuff had been going on and they hadn't even had the decency to so much as hint at it before now. Outrageous! Miranda made a brave stab at sounding suitably outraged, but she couldn't pull it off. Her heart wasn't in it. She was happy for them too, dammit.
Fenn and Chloe, who'd have thought it for a moment? But the weird part was, when you did actually think about it, it made absolute sense.
The baby, flailing her feet and fists, opened her long-lashed eyes at last and gazed up at Miranda.
`Blimey, she really does look like you!' Instantly smitten, Miranda picked her out of the crib and held her up to the light for closer inspection. Solemn navy-blue eyes, white-blonde
hair like a dandelion clock, strategically positioned dimples designed for flirting, and a fabulous pouty rosebud of a mouth with a streamer of saliva trailing down..
`So cute when babies do it,' said Miranda, ducking out of the line of fire, `so unattractive on grown men.' She kissed each dimpled cheek in turn. `Oh, look at those eyebrows… isn't she just fab? I can still be her mad aunt, can't I? Missing the birth doesn't mean I'm disqualified.' A thought belatedly struck her and she turned to Fenn. `So where were you when all this was happening? Pacing up and down outside smoking an imaginary cigarette?'
`I was in the delivery room.' Fenn couldn't conceal his pride.
`He stayed all the way through,' said Chloe, reaching for his hand.
`Talk about jumping in at the deep end.' Miranda goggled. `It must be love.'
`It is.' Fenn gave Chloe's fingers a squeeze. `I've asked Chloe to marry me.'
Good grief.
`And they haven't even had sex yet,' Miranda told the wide-eyed baby in her arms. `Honestly, some people do things a funny way round, don't they?' Abruptly, she looked up. `You haven't even told me her name. What are you calling her?'
Chloe shook her head. `We haven't decided.'
Miranda noted that `we' with secret delight.
`Something that goes with Lomax,' said Fenn.
Miranda ruffled the baby's dandelion-puff hair and beamed at the pair of them.
`I've got it. You can call her L'Orйal.'`No sense of adventure, that's what you've got,' Miranda told Fenn, lifting a beaming Mattie out of her car seat and weaving her through the air like Superman. `I still think you should have called her L'Orйal.'
`That's why I'm marrying Chloe and not you,' said Fenn `Now, any more cases to bring out, or is that the lot?'
Florence and Tom were off on the cruise of a lifetime flying from Heathrow to Miami before boarding ship an(spending the next thirty days sailing in indecent luxury around the Caribbean. Fenn and Chloe had come over to Tredega Gardens to see them off. Mattie, now seven weeks old, flashed her toothless grin at everyone she clapped eyes on, captivating even the taxi driver who was loading the cases into the boot
Miranda held Mattie, wrapped up in her scarlet snowsuit against her shoulder. Bending her head and breathing in the smell of just-washed infant, she watched Fenn help Florence out of her chair and into the back of the cab. In less than two months he had acquired a live-in lover and a baby, both o whom he adored beyond measure. It suited him, too; he had never looked happier.
Sometimes, Miranda was beginning to discover, doing things the wrong way round turned out - mysteriously - to be the best way after