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Chapter 21

"Oh my God," Donna screeched loudly, gawking at him. "You dog!"

John rolled his eyes and quietly sipped his beer while he was wondering why on earth he had been dying to talk to his best friend. He had known her for decades, he should have seen that reaction coming.

"John Smith fathered a kid while he was still married!"

"Yes," he growled, "and the adultery was consensual. Now can we get back to the real problem?"

Donna's features relaxed as she plopped down on the chair next to him and she reached into the six-pack he had brought to retrieve a bottle of beer for herself.

"Who knows about this?" she wanted to know, her voice now calmer. That was the Donna he needed to talk to. Calm, clever, kind Donna.

"No one," he replied quietly.

Again Donna's mouth fell open, but she quickly contained herself. "You haven't told Liz? Not even Missy? You tell Missy everything!"

John sighed. "Well, uhm, I sort of told the wedding planner."

The next thing that crossed his friend's face was a frown. "The wedding planner?"

"Susan came to see me right before I was going to meet with Clara. I was. . . I don't know, I just had to talk to someone. It helped. Clara was very kind and understanding."

Donna raised her eyebrows at him. "She understood that you consensually cheated on your wife and made a kid?"

He glowered at her in response, but his features soon softened when his mind wandered back to Clara and their conversations. By now she was much more than just a wedding planner to him. She was almost a friend. "Clara and I are very much alike, I think," John said thoughtfully.

"That's all very well, but what about Liz? Are you gonna keep this from her?"

"Yes," he replied instantly, but then felt the need to correct himself. "No."

His friend's eyebrows were raised even higher.

"I don't know," he admitted after a sharp intake of breath. "Liz is not going to understand it."

"Are you afraid she's gonna cancel the wedding?"

John snorted. If only. "No, I don't think anything is going to make her cancel the wedding," he explained and John knew that he was right. Liz was going to marry him and nothing could stop it and if it was up to her the ceremony would be the biggest England had seen since the last royal wedding. "But I think she might try to keep me from establishing a relationship with Susan."

"And that's what you want? Have a relationship with her?" Donna wanted to know. "I mean, you said she had a father. I wouldn't blame you if either of you said you didn't want anything to do the other."

"Of course I want a relationship with her!" John replied without even thinking about it further. "Susan is a marvellous young woman. And I'm not trying to be her father. I just want to get to know her."

"Then do that," his best friend told him and sipped her beer. "And once you got to know her better you can tell Liz and pretend you only just found out. After the wedding of course."

John frowned at her. "You're telling me to lie to my future wife?"

"I mean, you're technically lying to her already," she said with a shrug, but then his friend leaned forward a little, eyeing him closely. John could feel that the topic was about to shift. "How are the wedding plans going so far?"

After a long sigh, John emptied his beer and set the bottle back down. How was he going to explain all of this to Donna without sounding like a complete arse? It wasn't that he didn't want Liz to have a nice wedding, it was just that what she wanted seemed to be the complete opposite of what John wanted. "We're getting there," he lied eventually.

Yet Donna knew him too well as to believe him. "You're fighting over every detail, aren't you?"

The look John threw her seemed to be enough for Donna to understand, but it suddenly reminded him of something he had meant to ask her all evening. "You can dance, right?"

"If by dance you mean I took three classes in an attempt to meet a man, then yes, I can. Why?" she enquired. "I'm assuming you and Liz will take lessons before the big day?"

"It's not about that." John hesitated, knowing how strange it sounded. "I'm going to attend a wedding with Clara in a few weeks. She wants to take me to see whether I like the catering and the DJ, you know, gather some ideas."

"And you want to dance with her?" Donna's eyes widened a little and John spotted a tiny hint of amusement in them.

"I just don't want to make a fool of myself, that's all," he half growled.

Still, Donna didn't seem entirely convinced by the reason he gave her and she cocked her eyebrows at him. "Tell me, this wedding planner, what does she look like?"

John hesitated, for a moment quite taken aback by her question and he wasn't entirely sure was he was supposed to reply to that. "Uhm, she's quite small. Brown hair, eyes," he paused, lowering his gaze. "Pretty."

"Uh-huh," his friend hummed. "You're smitten with her."

He raised his head to look at Donna and found his friend smirking at him. "I am not!" he protested. "Clara is way too young for me."

"Keep telling yourself that," Donna chuckled. "You still have a tiny, little crush. Admit it!"

"No," John growled.

"It's understandable. I mean, she's young and pretty and nice and apparently, you have a lot in common. Except that she's your wedding planner!"

"Will you teach me how to dance or not?" John barked at her, irritated by the sudden topic shift. He wasn't smitten with Clara and he certainly didn't have a crush on her, a woman that was young enough to be his daughter. No, that was out of the question.

"Fine, I'll teach you," Donna agreed eventually.

"Thanks," John replied and reached for his beer, only to realize that the bottle was empty and it no longer served as a proper distraction. He didn't have a crush on Clara. He really, really didn't.

"Okay, let's see," Amy said. "Tea, phone, Jane Austen novel, blanket. Looks like you've got everything."

"I'm better already," Clara protested in a vain attempt to get her friend to back off. It was no use. "You can stop mothering me."

"Is your headache gone?" her friend threw her an expectant glance.

"Well, no." She sighed. "But it's better and look, I'm resting."

Clara pointed at her feet that lay on her sofa in a horizontal position, blanket draped over them. She had been resting for two whole days and slowly but surely she was started to get a little bored. And it didn't help at all that her hurting head kept trying to conjure up the memory of John and how he had taken care of her.

"Just checking," Amy replied.

Clara was about to open her mouth and tell her friend that all her worrying was entirely unnecessary when the phone next to her started to ring and tore her out of her thoughts. When she looked at the screen she recognized John's number. Swiftly, before Amy spotted it, Clara reached for the device and opened his message.

Hey, just wanted to ask how you're feeling? How's the head and ankle?

John

She couldn't help but smile at the message, but Clara also grew increasingly aware that her friend Amy was watching her. She quickly dropped the phone without even writing a reply.

"You should text him back," Amy told her. "Or he'll be worried and show up here."

Clara shot her friend a dark look in response.

"Unless you want him to show up here, in which case keep ignoring him."

"He doesn't even know where in this apartment complex I live," she argued.

However, Amy shrugged. "He does now after I filled out the form with your details on Saturday."

With a groan, Clara reached for her phone again and decided to reply to his message because somehow she knew that Amy was right and that if he got truly worried, he would visit her.

I'm getting better, thanks to you :) Resting like you told me to.

Clara

After Clara had locked her phone and discarded it on the table once again she suddenly found herself wondering what would happen if he indeed visited her. She would like that, wouldn't she? And that was exactly why it was a bad idea. Yet if John asked, Clara knew that she would never find it in her heart to say no.