Christmas Eve Marriage (HQR Classic) Read online

  Thea followed more slowly and was greeted by a warm hug from her father who, as expected, had driven the car for the still-incapacitated Nell. ‘Hello, love. You don’t look too happy for someone who’s just had two weeks in Crete.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She hugged her father back, feeling awful because over his shoulder she was trying to catch a last glimpse of Rhys. It was no good, anyway. He had already gone.

  ‘I’m just tired,’ she told him as he let her go. ‘We had a very early start.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got some news that might make you feel better,’ said Nell, kissing her sister.

  Right then, the only thing that could make Thea feel better was to see Rhys pushing his way through the crowds towards her, but she managed a smile for Nell.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Harry rang.’

  Harry. How odd. He had been the beat of her heart for over a year, and when she had left for Crete she would have given everything she possessed to know that he would contact her sister.

  And now…now she couldn’t remember why it had mattered so much.

  ‘Really?’ she said, wanting to sound thrilled for Nell’s sake, but obviously not being convincing enough. Nell looked puzzled, as well she might, having put up with months of Thea obsessing about Harry.

  ‘Poor Thea, you are tired, aren’t you?’

  ‘What did Harry say?’

  ‘That he had been trying to phone you but couldn’t get a reply, and that he was worried about you. I did point out that he had had two months to ring you and he hadn’t, so it was a bit much to start worrying about you now. In the end, I told him that you were fine and on holiday, so if he wanted to talk to you he was just going to have to wait. I didn’t think it would do him any harm after all the waiting around he’s made you do.’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Thea with a twisted smile. Harry must have been worried if he had rung Nell. The two of them had never got on, and he wouldn’t have appreciated getting the sharp end of a devoted sister’s tongue.

  ‘You know I’ve never had much time for Harry,’ said Nell, ‘but he did sound suitably apologetic, and so desperate to get hold of you that I guess that he’s got something to say that you’ll want to hear. I told him that you would be back today, so he’ll probably ring you later.

  ‘I hope that’s OK,’ she finished, looking understandably anxious at Thea’s lack of enthusiasm. By rights, Thea should have been dancing around the airport shouting and singing with relief.

  ‘Of course.’ Thea smiled widely until her jaw ached to show just how happy she was. ‘Thanks, Nell. I just hope he doesn’t ring until I’ve had a chance to catch up on my sleep.’

  If only sleep was all she needed. Thea went to bed that night hoping that she would wake up and realise that she had just been confused, and that away from the bright light and hot hillsides of Crete Rhys would seem as distant and unreal as Harry had done when she was there.

  Only it didn’t work like that. In a last burst of summer, just in time for the start of school, London was hot and sunny, but for once the glorious weather wasn’t enough to lift Thea’s spirits.

  She woke the next morning with a leaden sense of despair. Post-holiday blues, she told herself firmly. It was Monday and she had to go back to work, sunshine or no sunshine. No wonder she was depressed.

  But that didn’t account for the rawness of her heart or the aching sense that a vital part of her was missing. Thea talked and smiled, and agreed with everyone at work that, yes, the weather in Crete had been great and that she had had a wonderful holiday, but inside she felt completely numb.

  She tried telling herself that she would get over Rhys the same way she had got over Harry, but it was different this time. When Harry had decided to leave she had felt miserable and hurt and disappointed at the way things had worked out, but there had always been that glimmer of hope too to console her.

  She hadn’t felt desolate without Harry, the way she was desolate without Rhys. She hadn’t had this terrible sense that life without him was empty and meaningless, the way it was empty and meaningless now, and the thought of the future, stretching inutterably bleak and lonely before her, hadn’t been unendurable, the way it was unendurable now.

  By the end of the week Thea was exhausted by the simple effort of getting from day to day, and she was beginning to feel desperate. She couldn’t go on like this. Surely she would start to feel better soon.

  Dutifully, she took her photos in to be developed, but when she went to pick them up she realised that she couldn’t bear to look at them, so she sent them to Clara instead.

  ‘They’re wonderful,’ Nell said when she rang up to thank her. ‘It looks so beautiful, and it was great to see Sophie and Rhys after hearing so much about them from Clara.’

  Rhys. Just the sound of his name was enough to make Thea flinch with longing.

  ‘Why don’t you come over for supper?’ Nell went on. ‘There’s so much to talk about!’

  The two sisters had always been close and it didn’t take Nell long to realise that there was more amiss with Thea than the shock of going back to work when she saw her.

  ‘Is it that bloody Harry again?’ she demanded fiercely. ‘Didn’t he ring after all that?’

  ‘Yes, he rang,’ said Thea, remembering how odd it had been to hear Harry’s voice again.

  ‘What did he have to say for himself?’

  Thea let out a long breath. ‘He wanted to try again. He said that he loved me.’ Once, less than a month ago, his call would have been a dream come true, but when Harry had rung she had found herself doodling as she listened to him.

  ‘He said that he had had plenty of time to think over the summer and that he realised that he had had trouble cutting himself off from Isabelle when their relationship ended.’

  ‘Well, that’s one way of describing being kept dangling on the end of a string, I suppose,’ said Nell sarcastically.

  ‘According to Harry, Isabelle has found someone new to lean on, so everything would be different for us now.’

  Nell sniffed, profoundly unimpressed. ‘I suppose you realise that as soon as her new guy takes off she’ll be snapping her fingers for Harry again?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Thea with a tired smile, and Nell put down her glass and looked at her sharply.

  ‘So what did you say?’

  ‘I said that I thought it was too late and that I wasn’t going to settle for being second best any more.’

  What she hadn’t told him, but what she had thought, was that meeting Rhys had made her realise that she wanted to be loved and needed for herself, that she wanted to be essential to the man she loved, not just a diversion or a fall-back position.

  Nell sat back, looking relieved. ‘Good for you!’

  ‘Aren’t you going to say “I told you so”?’ asked Thea wryly.

  ‘That’s the last thing you want to hear when things go wrong,’ said Nell, ‘and I should know! People said it to me often enough when Simon left,’ she added with a touch of bitterness.

  ‘But I can’t pretend I don’t think you made the right decision telling Harry where to get off,’ she went on. ‘I couldn’t see that he was ever going to make you happy.’

  ‘No, I know that now.’

  Nell looked concerned at the flatness in Thea’s voice. ‘Are you OK? Not regretting it?’

  ‘No.’ Thea shook her head. ‘I’m fine. I’m just…tired, I suppose.’

  ‘You can’t still be tired! You’ve been back a week—’ Nell broke off, her face clearing. ‘It’s Rhys, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Thea feebly, but her face must have given the game away.

  ‘Come on, Thea.’ Her sister shook her head at her own obtuseness. ‘I should have clicked before, but I thought you were still wrapped up in Harry. Clara’s done nothing but talk about Sophie and Rhys all week. She told me all about your engagement.’

  ‘It wasn’t an engagement,’ Thea protested. ‘We were pretending, as Cla
ra knows perfectly well.’

  ‘Pretending to be in love is a dangerous game,’ said Nell. ‘It’s got a nasty habit of turning into the real thing without you noticing!’

  ‘Why didn’t you warn me about that before I went to Crete?’ said Thea miserably.

  ‘Well, I thought you’d be too busy looking after my daughter to get involved in mock engagements with strange men,’ teased Nell, but Thea couldn’t even muster a smile. ‘Look, what’s the problem, anyway? He looks really nice in the photos and Clara likes him a lot. She thinks he’s perfect for you.’

  ‘I think he’s perfect for me too. It just doesn’t work the other way round. I’m not perfect for Rhys.’ To her horror, Thea heard her voice crack on his name, and she put a hand up to cover her trembling mouth.

  There was nothing she could do about the hot tears scalding her eyes, though, and Nell pushed back her chair quickly and came round to give her sister a comforting hug.

  ‘Hey! Come on, it can’t be that bad!’

  ‘It is,’ wept Thea, losing her battle against tears. ‘What’s wrong with me, Nell?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with you!’

  ‘Then why do I keep falling in love with men who can’t love me back?’

  ‘How do you know Rhys doesn’t love you?’ asked Nell, handing over a box of tissues.

  Thea took one and blew her nose noisily. ‘He doesn’t want to get involved. He told me he didn’t have the time or energy for a proper relationship.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Nell looked sceptical. ‘Spending two weeks with you and doing everything together doesn’t strike me as the right way to go about not getting involved!’

  ‘It was just a holiday thing, and anyway nothing happened, not really. We were just friends, and now…Oh, God, I miss him so much, Nell!’ Thea dissolved into fresh tears and her sister patted her back absently, her expression slightly puzzled.

  ‘Give him a ring if you miss him.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Why not? You just said you were friends. Friends are allowed to ring each other.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ said Thea indistinctly through another tissue. ‘Rhys made it clear that his priority is to spend time with Sophie. He would feel guilty getting emotionally involved with anyone else when the whole point of him coming home was to be with his daughter and try and make up for the time he’s lost. He thinks he needs to concentrate on her for the time being, and I can’t argue against that, can I?’

  Nell wasn’t looking convinced. ‘It’s all very well in theory, but I can’t see that devoting his entire life to his daughter is particularly healthy in practice. And once you’ve got used to having someone to be with, even if you are just pretending, you’re going to miss them when they’re not there any more. Anyway, from what Clara told me, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he got in touch with you.’

  ‘He doesn’t have my number.’ Thea scrubbed at her face with a tissue. ‘He didn’t even ask for it.’

  ‘He looked pretty competent to me,’ Nell pointed out. ‘I don’t think finding out your number would be much of a challenge for him.’

  ‘If he’d missed me, he would have called by now,’ said Thea with one of those ragged sighs that came after crying. There was no use in getting her hopes up. ‘He won’t ring.’

  That was Friday evening, and on Saturday Thea let herself into her flat and dumped a load of carrier bags on the kitchen floor. She had spent most of the morning fighting her way around the supermarket and had suddenly understood why everybody else hated it so much.

  Thea had always secretly enjoyed pushing her trolley up and down the aisles, tossing in whatever happened to catch her eye, but today she had been completely lacking in inspiration. Even the cheese counter had failed to cheer her up.

  Typical! All those years longing for her appetite to desert her, and now she was too miserable to enjoy the fact that for once in her life comfort eating had lost its appeal.

  Her fridge had never looked so spartan. Thea finished unpacking the last of the bags and decided to go wild and celebrate with a glass of mineral water. Perhaps this was the start of a new, healthier her, and she would look back in years to come at this miserable weekend as a turning point in her life? She might screw up her face in an effort to remember why she had been so unhappy and why Rhys had mattered so much.

  There, now she was beginning to think more positively, Thea congratulated herself. She was letting herself imagine a time when none of this would matter. That had to be a step in the right direction. She was well on the way to recovery.

  The light on her answer machine was flashing, and she pushed the play button idly as she found a glass and unscrewed the top of the water.

  ‘Thea, it’s Rhys. I got your number via Sophie and—’

  Thea jerked involuntarily at the sound of his voice, spilling water everywhere, and she leapt for the machine to save the message and play it again.

  ‘…I got your number via Sophie and Clara, and eventually your sister, who sounds very nice. I wanted to ask you a favour, and wondered if you could give me a ring when you get in?’

  He had left his number and signed off with a simple, ‘Hope to talk to you soon.’

  Thea listened to the message three times, her hand shaking so much that she couldn’t write down his number properly. The figures staggered over the page as if some drunken spider was in charge of her pen, and all the time her heart sang, It was him, it was him! He called me!

  Her knees felt quite weak by the time she had finished, and she had to sit down, staring down at the piece of paper clutched in her hand.

  So much for being well on the way to recovery! The sound of his voice was all it had taken to put her right back at square one.

  Unable to help herself, Thea reached out and played the message once more. It wasn’t exactly lover-like and he hadn’t said anything about missing her, it was true. But he had thought about her, he had called her! Thea’s spirits, their downward spiral abruptly halted, were now zooming sky-wards once more.

  What was this favour he wanted to ask? Once more her finger pressed the play button, convinced that she might have missed something vital the first ten times she had listened to it. But no, it was infuriatingly uninformative. He had a favour to ask, and he wanted her to ring him.

  If she wanted to find out what it was, the obvious thing would be to ring him, wouldn’t it?

  She rang Nell instead.

  ‘Didn’t I say he’d ring?’ her sister greeted her. ‘He sounds absolutely lovely, I must say. We had quite a chat.’

  ‘Nell, if you said anything about me…’

  ‘Of course I didn’t,’ Nell soothed her. ‘I just said that I’d heard a lot about him from Clara. I did say that I was sure you’d be pleased to hear from him, though. Now, why are you ringing me and not him?’

  ‘I’m just so nervous,’ confessed Thea. ‘I’m terrified I’ll say something stupid and make a mess of it.’

  ‘What’s there to make a mess of? He asked you to ring him. Call him back, listen to what he wants and if this mysterious favour is a reasonable one—and it probably is, as Rhys sounds a reasonable man—all you have to do is to say OK. And then you’ll get to see him again, which is what you want. If he wants you to do something unreasonable, you just have to say no. You might not get to see him in that case, but if he’s being that unreasonable you probably won’t want to, will you?’

  Right. Funny how easy it was to think clearly when it wasn’t your heart that was hammering in your throat, or your stomach churning with nerves. Thea stared at the phone when Nell had rung off and concentrated on breathing calmly. Several times she reached out to pick it up once more, only to snatch her hand back at the last minute as her nerve failed her.

  OK. More deep breaths. In, out. In, out. Pick up phone. Dial number.

  Thea listened to Rhys’s phone ring. Once, twice, three times. He was out. Was she going to have to go through this all over again, or could she cope with leaving a me
ssage? Oh, God…

  ‘Rhys Kingsford.’

  Her hands were so slippery by this stage that she almost dropped the phone when he answered.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said stupidly. Not that he would recognize who ‘me’ was with her voice wavering up and down like a demented duck. ‘Thea.’

  ‘Thea!’

  She could almost hear him smile, and he sounded so warm and so strong and so familiar that the terrible jitters began to subside somewhat.

  ‘It’s good to hear from you,’ he was saying. ‘Thank you so much for ringing back. How are you?’

  ‘Oh…fine, fine,’ she lied. ‘How about you?’

  They exchanged rather stilted chit-chat for a bit. Thea asked about Sophie, and going back to work, and whether he’d had his photos developed, while what she really wanted to ask was whether he’d missed her, if he remembered kissing her, if he thought he could ever bring himself to love her.

  ‘You mentioned a favour,’ she said at last, desperate in case she ended up blurting one of them out anyway.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rhys slowly. ‘I feel a bit awkward about it, to tell you the truth. I’d rather explain face to face, if possible. Look, I don’t suppose you’re free any time this weekend?

  Not the time to start playing hard to get, thought Thea.

  ‘When were you thinking of?’

  ‘Any chance of this evening?’

  It was nice of him to sound dubious. Any self-respecting girl would be out partying of a Saturday evening, but Thea had long abandoned her pride as a lost cause.

  ‘Fine by me,’ she said.

  They agreed to meet at a wine bar Thea knew, about halfway between them. ‘See you there at seven, then,’ said Rhys as he rang off.

  That only left Thea six hours to dither around and let the jitters build up all over again.

  It was no use pretending that he had sounded remotely lover-like. He hadn’t said anything about missing her, so whatever Rhys had in mind it clearly wasn’t a proposal of marriage or a suggestion that he might whisk her back to his house and ravish her.

  Shame.