‘A shopfront on the beachfront shopping strip. It’s called Bridal Fluff.’

‘Bridal Fluff?’ He didn’t explode. His voice just grew very calm. ‘Did I hear right?’

‘Sure did. The ex-owner’s one Jenny Westmere. Widow. Apart from her dubious taste in naming her salon, she sounds competent. We’ve offered her twelve months’ salary to make the transition easier.’

‘There can’t be a transition from Fluff to a Carver Bridal Salon,’ he said grimly. ‘I’ll gut the place.’

He was turning into the main street now, and what he saw made him blanch. Bridal Fluff was indeed…fluff. The shopfront was pastel pink. The curtains in the windows looked like billowing white clouds, held back with pink and silver tassels. A Christmas tree stood in the window, festooned with pink and silver baubles, and a white fluffy angel smiling seraphically down on passers-by. The name of the shop was picked out in deeper pink, gold and silver. ‘What the…?’

‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ Malcolm said hastily, guessing what he was seeing. ‘We don’t need to give this woman any organisational role. We’re just keeping her on the payroll to keep the locals happy. Every other salon we’ve acquired, the previous owner has been so chuffed to be associated with the Carver salon that the takeover’s been a piece of cake. The bottom line is money. I’ve checked the books. I said it was a good buy and I meant it.’

‘And if it’s not…?’

‘If it’s not we’ll just have to wear it.’

Malcolm had worked with Guy for years. Guy’s reputation for dazzling event management left everyone he worked with stunned, but his personal reputation was for being aloof. Malcolm’s cheerful nature, combined with a brash business acumen that matched Guy’s, made them a formidable team. Together they’d built the Carver empire into the most lucrative events management chain in the world.

‘No need to fret,’ Malcolm was saying now, all breezy certainty. ‘You and Mrs Westmere will get on like a house on fire.’