The Making of Mia (38 page)

But despite being on a constant high because her magazine was doing so well, Jo still went to bed every night feeling like
something was missing from her life. As she hailed a black cab and told the driver to take her to Hakkasan, Jo thought about
her friends. Amelia – who was travelling around India sourcing material for the interior design company she had set up with
her mother – was sending coy emails about a man
she had met. Madeline had Dan and their baby son, and even Gable, who was still officially in a relationship with Violet Compton,
had found a discreet boyfriend who was happy to spend time with him out of the limelight. Only Lucy was still single, but,
unlike her, Jo now wanted to share her success with someone she loved. Despite having a bestselling magazine and an enviable
mortgage-free home in Primrose Hill, Jo found that her life still felt empty, and it was when she was eating supper alone
in her kitchen late at night that she wished she had someone to go home to. She wished she had a boyfriend. She wished she
had William.

As the cab pulled up outside the restaurant, Jo checked her reflection one final time. Her brunette hair had grown so long
that it nearly touched her waist, and despite putting on weight, Jo was comfortable with her size-twelve body. She looked
healthy, she thought, as she remembered how she had struggled to get down to a size ten. And not only that, she looked happy,
too. Tonight she was wearing a peacock-blue Yves Saint Laurent chiffon dress, and to co-ordinate she was in the silver Jimmy
Choos she had been wearing when she had told Joshua Garnet who she really was. They were fitting heels for a fitting evening
– one where she and her friends would celebrate running the best magazine in the country and toasting the end of
Gloss
.

Jo walked past the bouncer and down the red-lit stairs into Hakkasan, and she wove herself around the carved oriental screens
until she reached the table where her friends were sitting. As she did so she could feel the eyes of some of the other diners
on her, and she heard faint whispers of her name. For a second she heard the name ‘Mia Blackwood’ said in hushed tones, and
she smiled to herself. She was still Mia Blackwood, just as she had never stopped being Joanne Hill, and even though she now
wanted to be known just as Jo, she didn’t mind being called Mia. That name would always be
part of her, and it was part of her history.

‘We thought you’d never get here,’ Madeline said wryly, her face solemn in the midnight-blue lighting of the restaurant. Madeline
was in one of her black Chanel suits, and she looked every inch the publishing magnate. Jo felt ridiculously girlie when she
compared her outfit to Madeline’s, but she remembered that she wasn’t quite twenty-six and she didn’t need to be as grown-up
as Madeline was. ‘I’m assuming everything is falling apart now that I’m on my delayed maternity leave?’

Jo laughed as she struggled to hear Madeline speak above the music and loud chatter of the other diners. ‘As much as I’d love
to tell you that we’re not coping, I’m afraid that we are. Lucy’s fitted in well, as I’m sure she has told you countless times
already.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lucy laughed. ‘I always knew I was a better editor than Madeline was.’ Lucy was dressed in a tight dark grey Ungaro
dress and she had a red bow in her hair. As always, she looked incredibly stylish. She shot Madeline a pretend dirty look,
and grinned. ‘Especially considering how well I did with
Gloss
.’

‘And if you shut down
Cerise
like you did
Gloss
I will have to kill you,’ Jo said happily. As publisher, Jo had final say on everything that happened with the magazine,
but everything Lucy had done in the past two weeks had been brilliant.

‘You may want to kill me instead when you find out what I’ve done,’ Madeline said, and Jo looked at her business partner curiously.

‘Now, I know how much you hate not being in the office,’ Madeline began, as the rest of the table – made up of Madeline’s
partner Dan, Lucy and a couple of girls from the magazine – fell quiet, ‘but I have a present for you that you absolutely
have to accept, and it will involve not coming into work for a bit. When I first met you, Jo, I think it’s fair to say
that I didn’t have any time for you. I admit now that I was wrong to judge you on your looks, and because of everything that
we’ve both been through in the last few years, I think it is also fair to say that you gave as good as you got.’

Lucy laughed, and Madeline smiled as they both remembered their parts in Jo’s climb to power.

‘You have been more of a friend to me than I’d ever thought possible,’ Madeline continued. ‘Without you I never would have
seen my bastard ex-husband run his most popular magazine into the ground, and without you I may never have clawed my way out
of the black pit of depression I found myself in when Joshua left me.’

Madeline looked down at the table then, and Jo reached over and held her hand. Nobody could ever know what it had felt like
to be treated so badly by their husband, and Jo knew that Madeline had gone through some dark times following Jo’s promotion
to editor of
Gloss
.

‘Because you have been such a good friend to me, I have got you the one present that I know you’ve hankered after for all
these years.’ Madeline reached into her black Mulberry handbag and pulled out a cream envelope. Jo couldn’t think what Madeline
could have bought her, but when Jo opened the envelope she saw there were two plane tickets for a month-long holiday in Barbados,
with a hotel reservation at the Sandy Lane Hotel. In a million years Jo had never imagined that Madeline would give her a
present so extravagant, and she blushed a deep scarlet.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Jo began, wondering why Madeline thought she had always wanted to go to the Caribbean. Before
Jo could say anything else Madeline silenced her.

‘There’s one condition that comes as part of this present, but I’m not sure how you’re going to react when you find out what
it is.’

Jo gazed at Madeline, and a thousand ideas ran through her head. Did Madeline want to buy her out of the company? Jo wondered.
Or did she want Jo to buy her out? Jo’s brain was buzzing with excitement and panic, but luckily Madeline pulled Jo away from
her thoughts with a tiny cough.

‘The condition is that you have to go on holiday with one of my friends,’ Madeline said lightly, and when Jo looked even more
confused, Madeline decided to put her out of her misery. ‘He’s sitting at that table over there.’

Jo followed Madeline’s eyes with her own, and despite the blue lights of the room there was no mistaking the man who was sitting
alone at a table nearby. His dark blond hair was touching the collar of his navy blue jacket, and despite being the type of
man who was more comfortable being in a local country pub, he looked completely at ease sitting alone in a Michelin-starred
restaurant while surrounded by celebrities. His eyes penetrated Jo’s, and for a moment Jo felt as though a shot of pure happiness
had been fired at her from an imaginary Cupid. William.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, then?’ Lucy said casually, breaking the silence with her inquisitiveness, but before Jo
could say anything William had approached her and scooped her up in his arms. Jo felt as though every nerve-ending she had
was on fire, and as she leant against William’s chest she felt as though she couldn’t breathe – it was actually him, there,
in the flesh. William had hardly changed, and – if Jo was reading it right – his feelings for her hadn’t changed either. Jo
put her arms around William’s back and pulled him closer towards her, and he looked down at her tenderly.

‘Will someone bloody tell me what’s going on?’ Lucy said indignantly as she stared at Jo with her mouth open, but neither
Jo nor William heard her as they were completely and utterly lost in each other.

Madeline cleared her throat. ‘Lucy, this is William Denning,’ she said. ‘He’s the bestselling author of two novels, and his
latest one,
Fighting for Fame
, has been at the top of the bestsellers’ list for the past three weeks.’

Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, I know
who
he is, but how does he know Jo?’ she asked. ‘And why are they hugging each other like that?’

William and Jo pulled apart, and Jo was unable to look any of her friends in the eye.

‘William’s an old friend,’ she began, glancing quickly at a beaming Madeline before looking down at the floor so she’d not
have to catch anyone’s eye. ‘We worked together in a pub years ago, and, well …’ Jo trailed off and looked at William. The
last time she had seen him had been in the Charlotte Street Hotel, and the memory of him insulting how she looked still stung.
She wondered if William still felt the same way, and almost instinctively, he knew what Jo was thinking and cleared his throat.

‘The last time I saw Jo I have to admit I wasn’t particularly nice,’ he said, looking ashamed. ‘I was in a hotel being interviewed
by a gorgeous, glamorous blonde, and I was hating every minute of it. I was so blinded by my dislike of being interviewed
that I failed to see just who Mia really was,’ he said, and he turned to Jo and took her hand.

‘If I’d known that Mia Blackwood was you I never would have walked out of that hotel,’ William said. ‘But despite writing
about how awful London was, I still had to be there to promote my book. You can see why I couldn’t stand talking to magazines
that day, can’t you?’ he said ruefully, and Jo felt her heart thudding.

‘I thought it was all about me,’ she whispered. ‘I thought you despised Mia Blackwood for being a glamorous London journalist,
and even though I wanted to tell you who I was, I thought that if you’d known I’d had surgery you’d have
hated me even more,’ she whispered, and William shook his head vehemently.

‘I could never hate you,’ he said gently, ‘but I do want to get to know you again. It seems like you’ve been to hell and back
in the last few years, and I’ve missed out on an awful lot.’ Jo nodded silently, and prayed that the tears that threatened
wouldn’t spill on to her face.

‘Let’s start right now,’ she whispered to him, and Lucy clapped her hands together in glee.

‘If you’ll excuse us,’ William began, ‘we have several years of catching up to do, and I think it’s probably better if we
do it in private … especially considering the number of journalists sitting at this table,’ he joked. He turned to Jo and
gently touched her face. ‘Is that OK with you?’

Jo nodded and grinned at her friends, and William led her out of the restaurant, refusing to waste any time. At the top of
the stairs he turned to her, and he leant towards her in the seedy, run-down street. The sound of police sirens on Tottenham
Court Road whizzed past, and William waited until there was only the quiet sound of nearby traffic before speaking.

‘Before we catch up I need to ask you something,’ William said nervously, and Jo had a sudden flashback to a conversation
they’d had when she had admitted to being a virgin. She had told William then that she needed to be happy in herself before
she could embark on a relationship with him, but this time Jo knew there was nothing else in her life that she wanted to achieve.
Apart from William, she had everything she’d ever wanted.

‘Once upon a time you told me that you had three dreams,’ William began, holding Jo tenderly. ‘The first was that you wanted
to run the best women’s magazine in the country, and the second was that you wanted to be thin. Now, I’ve been following your
career since your exposé in
Vanity Fair
,
and there is no question that
Cerise
is the biggest women’s magazine in the country. Dream two – to be thin – has undoubtedly been achieved, because, Joanne,
I have never seen a girl as exquisite as you in my life.’ William let his eyes run over Jo’s stunning face, her long, softly
waved brown hair and her dramatic burlesque-style curves. William thought lustily about what Jo looked like under her expensive
dress, and he took a deep breath and stared into her eyes in order to compose himself. They were still the same vibrant green
that he remembered.

‘But what was my third dream?’ Jo asked, as William raised her hand up to his lips and kissed it so softly that Jo’s heart
began to thud underneath the chiffon of her dress.

‘You wanted to fall in love with someone who loved you back,’ William said softly, and as he brushed a tendril of hair away
from Jo’s face, he realised that even after all this time he loved her as much as he had always done. ‘If you’ll have me,
I’d like to make your final dream come true,’ he said, and Jo began to sob with happiness.

‘I never planned to ask you this on a street in London, but …’ Before Jo could realise what was happening, William produced
a rectangular velvet-lined box that opened to reveal tear-drop-shaped diamonds that hung delicately from a white-gold chain.

‘Joanne Hill, will you spend the rest of your life with me?’ William asked nervously, and as Jo looked at the diamonds she
knew that they mirrored the tears of jubilation that were currently falling from her face.

‘Only if you don’t demand that I change the way I look,’ Jo joked, and William stood and scooped her up in his arms.

‘I will always love you just the way you are,’ William said seriously, and as Jo began to kiss the man of her dreams she realised
she’d found her happy ending.

AN ORION EBOOK

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Orion

First published in ebook in 2011 by Orion.

Copyright © Ilana Fox 2007

The moral right of Ilana Fox to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.