Christmas Eve Marriage (HQR Classic) Page 14

  Still, she would see him; that was what mattered. Thea’s senses sang at the prospect. She kept picking things up and putting them down again, forgetting what she had meant to do with them, unable to settle to anything.

  Then there was deciding what to wear. That took ages. Naturally, she didn’t want to look as if she was trying too hard, but on the other hand, what if the whisking and ravishing scenario materialised after all? She needed to make a bit of effort.

  Reluctantly, Thea laid aside a flirty little skirt and opted for black trousers instead. At least they were well cut, and one advantage of the last miserable week was the fact that they fitted quite comfortably now. She would wear them with a pale pink cardigan that she had picked up for a song in the sales. It hit just the right note between classy and sexy, and had that irresistible softness that practically screamed touch me.

  She saw Rhys as soon as she walked in the door that evening. He was sitting at a table, looking brown and self-contained, and somehow more definite than everybody else in the bar. Thea’s jangling nerves stilled abruptly at the sight of him, and she filled instead with that wonderful sense of certainty she had felt in Agios Nikolaos. He was the man she loved and he was waiting there for her. For now that was all that she wanted.

  Rhys got to his feet as he spotted her, and his expression made her feel ten feet tall. She smiled.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Thea, you look…wonderful!’

  They faced each other, suddenly uncertain of the most appropriate way to greet each other and, after a moment, Thea leant forward and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Rhys.’

  A masterly understatement, if ever she made one. Her eyes devoured him, hardly able to believe that he was there and solid. She longed to be able to burrow into him, to sink on to his lap and kiss the way they had kissed in Crete, but Rhys was already heading to the bar to get her a drink, and she had to sit down instead and get her hands firmly under control.

  She was very glad when he brought back a glass of wine. It gave her something to hold on to, and stopped her hands from wandering towards him of their own accord.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot,’ said Rhys, sitting next to her, tantalisingly close, but not close enough to touch.

  Thea’s heart lurched. Maybe she had it all wrong? Maybe he was thinking along ravishing lines after all?

  ‘Oh?’ she said unsteadily.

  ‘I wondered if you’d heard from Harry since you got back.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said again, in a very different voice. ‘Yes, yes, I did actually, but…’ She trailed off. How could she explain to Rhys about Harry? He would never believe that she could have changed her mind so quickly and so completely.

  He was waiting for her to finish, a look of concern on his face. ‘It didn’t work out,’ was all she said in the end.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded as if he meant it.

  ‘Honestly, I’m fine about it,’ said Thea, summoning a bright smile to prove her point. ‘Nell keeps telling me that it’s all for the best, and I think she’s right.’

  She wondered about reassuring Rhys that she was heart whole and fancy-free, but decided that it was too much of a heavy hint. Surely he would have got the point that Harry was out of the picture, in any case, which left it wide open for any move he might want to make.

  ‘Tell me about you, anyway,’ she said when Rhys gave no sign of following up the opening she had offered. ‘What’s this favour you mentioned? Don’t tell me you haven’t been able to fob Kate off on the dinner party front?’

  Rhys gave a twisted smile. ‘This time it’s not really Kate that’s the problem,’ he said. ‘It’s Sophie.’

  ‘Sophie?’ Thea echoed incredulously. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, she’s fine,’ he said hastily. ‘She’s just…well, prolonging our engagement, I guess you could say.’

  ‘Prolonging…?’ She stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  Rhys took his glass of beer and moved it around the table, as if making a pattern with the wet ring it left.

  ‘It’s all my fault, really,’ he said. ‘As expected, Kate told Lynda all about you but, instead of asking me about it, Lynda questioned Sophie. I should have realised she’d do that,’ he added with a sigh.

  ‘What did Sophie say?’

  ‘She said it was all true, and that she really liked you. She certainly gave Lynda to understand that we were very serious. She told her that I was going to buy you a ring and that we were planning to get married at Christmas. They must have picked up more of our conversations than we realised.’

  Thea grimaced slightly. ‘How did Lynda react?’

  ‘She was straight on the phone to me, demanding to know what was going on. I’d planned to tell her that there wasn’t anything serious between us, and that if she asked I’d just say we’d decided to call it a day, but…Well, the truth is that I didn’t want her to be able to accuse Sophie of not being completely honest. I should never have put her in that position to begin with.’

  ‘So you played along?’

  He nodded. ‘At first I thought it would just be for another couple of weeks and then we’d go back to the original plan.’

  Thea looked at him. ‘It sounds like there’s a “but” coming?’

  ‘There is,’ said Rhys. ‘Now Lynda wants to meet you.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE’S been quite insistent about it,’ Rhys went on ruefully, ‘and I’m running out of excuses. That’s when I wondered if you would consider coming along and having a drink with Lynda, and pretending that you really are engaged to me for one more night.’

  ‘So that’s the favour?’

  ‘That’s the favour,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to ask you, especially when you must still be upset about Harry, but it really would just be for one evening. It doesn’t need to be a whole evening either. Just an hour or so would do.’

  An hour or so. Was that all she was going to have with him? Thea’s heart contracted. He seemed very keen to keep it short. But then, she didn’t want to spend an entire evening with his ex-wife either, did she?

  ‘Perhaps we could have dinner afterwards,’ Rhys went on, and her spirits did an abrupt U-turn in mid nosedive. She could practically hear the squeal of slamming brakes and then the revving as they roared upwards once more.

  OK, so it wasn’t a passionate declaration of love, but at least they would be alone together. That had to be a step in the right direction.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ she said.

  His face lit up. ‘You mean you’ll do it?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Thea. ‘It’s a bit late for me to object to pretending on principle, don’t you think? Anyway, I’d like to see Sophie again. It’ll be like old times. I’ve missed them,’ she added lightly, wanting to say, I’ve missed you, but not quite daring, not yet.

  Rhys looked at her, as if remembering how she had been in Crete, bare feet resting on the terrace wall, tousled hair tumbling to her shoulders, her skin luminous in the starlight.

  ‘So have I,’ he said.

  The meeting with Lynda was eventually arranged for that Wednesday. Rhys and Thea agreed to meet at South Kensington station and catch the tube out to Wimbledon together after work.

  This allowed Thea to spend Monday and Tuesday agonizing over the eternal question of what to wear. Kate would have told Lynda how hopelessly scruffy she had been in Crete, so she was determined to make an effort to look smart for once. It was going to be intimidating enough meeting the beautiful, successful, talented Lynda as it was without feeling her usual mess as well.

  How come she had never possessed one of those outfits that were supposed to go effortlessly from day to evening? Thea chewed her thumb as she contemplated her wardrobe, depressed by the utter lack of anything remotely stylish that she could wear to the office, to have a drink with Lynda and then move on to dinner with Rhys. It was a pity he had already seen th
at pink cardigan.

  In the end, she threw money at the problem and bought a little grey suit in her lunch hour on Tuesday. She had never owned anything classic before, and she was quite pleased with the effect, although she nearly lost her nerve when presented with the total. Still, it would have been silly not to take the ivory silk top that went so perfectly with it at the same time, and the shoes made sense too. Didn’t they say you should always buy a complete outfit?

  Thea scribbled her name and decided to worry about paying for it later. What was the point of having a credit card if you couldn’t use it in an emergency like this?

  Anyway, it was worth it, she thought, admiring herself in the mirror on Wednesday morning. She should have tried the classy look before. It was just a shame she didn’t have that lovely glossy blonde hair you could sweep up into a chignon. A mop of brown curls didn’t have quite the same effect.

  The downside was putting up with everyone in the office gawping at her as if she had never worn a skirt before. She got a bit sick of people telling her how smart she looked and then asking what was up, and her boss claimed to have hardly recognized her, which was a bit much given that she was sitting at her usual desk and he could only see her top half anyway.

  She realised what he meant, though, when she saw Rhys that evening. She hardly recognized him, either. It was raining and she was sheltering inside the entrance, shaking out her umbrella, when she saw him running across the road. He was wearing a dark grey suit and tie, which surprisingly suited his austere features, but made him look very different from the lean, brown, outdoors man she remembered from Crete.

  Conscious of a quite ridiculous feeling of shyness, Thea waved as he reached the ticket barriers and looked around for her.

  ‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘You ran right past me!’

  ‘I didn’t recognize you,’ said Rhys, just as her boss had. He looked her up and down, taking in the suit and the elegant new shoes, and mentally comparing her to the woman he had known in Crete, with her bright, creased sundresses and casual tops. ‘I’ve never seen you in a suit before. You look…quite different.’

  ‘Do you know, I was going to say exactly the same thing to you,’ Thea confided, and felt that moment of shyness evaporate as he managed to grin and grimace at the same time.

  ‘I hate wearing a tie,’ he said, running a finger around his collar. ‘I never needed one out in the desert. I forgot that coming back to London would mean putting on a suit every day.’

  Thea eyed the constant stream of people heading purposefully into the station, determined to get home out of the rain as soon as they could. ‘I don’t suppose you did a lot of commuting in the Sahara either.’

  ‘No.’ Rhys sighed a little. ‘I can’t say that I enjoy it, but then who does?’

  And it meant that he could see Sophie. If it hadn’t been for her, he would be out under the vast desert sky, in the heat and the space and the light. He belonged out there, not here in a suit and tie, with crowds pushing past them to get through the ticket barriers, puddles on the floor and the dank smell of wet coats.

  For the first time Thea realised what he had given up to do the right thing by his daughter. She wished she could find a way to tell him that she admired him without sounding patronising, but in the end all she could think of to do was to lay a hand on his arm.

  ‘Sophie’s worth it, though, isn’t she?’

  Rhys looked down into Thea’s warm grey gaze. ‘Yes, she is,’ he said, covering her hand with his own and tightening his clasp.

  The suit might be different, but those light greeny-grey eyes were still the same, and they had the same transfixing effect on Thea, who felt herself melting inside, just the way she had in Crete. For a moment the two of them might have been back there, isolated in a private bubble from the rush hour crowds jostling around them.

  It was Rhys who was jolted back to reality by a bump from a passing commuter. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ he said as he slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a little box. ‘I bought you a ring to wear this evening.’

  ‘That’s not necessary, surely?’ she said awkwardly.

  He shrugged. ‘I thought I might as well get something. It’s the kind of detail that Lynda notices. Here, see what you think.’

  Thea had little choice but to take the box from him. Opening it slowly, she saw the simple ring inside and her throat tightened.

  ‘Sapphires,’ she said, managing an unsteady smile.

  ‘Did you think I’d forget?’

  She glanced at him, knowing that they were both remembering that conversation on Kate’s terrace. ‘It seems a long time ago, doesn’t it?’ she said a little sadly.

  There was a tiny pause.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ asked Rhys, nodding at the ring.

  What did it matter what she thought of it? Thea wondered. It was only for this evening. She looked down at the box where the sapphires gleamed against a plain gold band.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, and meant it.

  ‘Try it on,’ he said, taking the ring out of the box and sliding it on to her finger. ‘I hope it fits. I had to guess at the size.’

  It was a little loose, but not too bad. Thea bit her lip. It was impossible not to think of what it would feel like if this were for real, if he had bought her the ring because he loved her and needed her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, and not just to provide an extra detail to convince his ex-wife.

  ‘Rhys, I—’ She stopped at the sudden realisation that they were being watched.

  ‘Aah!’ A plump woman nudged her companion as she spotted the ring on Thea’s finger, and they both stopped to stare openly.

  Within a matter of seconds, it seemed, Thea and Rhys had attracted a curious crowd. Some were watching in the hope of a sentimental scene, some were evidently up for any diversion from the usual routine, while others were simply staring because everybody else was staring.

  ‘Say yes, darlin’,’ shouted a wag from the crowd and there was a ripple of laughter.

  It was such an absurd situation to find themselves in at a tube station in the middle of a wet rush hour that Thea couldn’t help laughing.

  Rhys’s lips were twitching too. ‘I think you’d better say yes,’ he murmured, ‘or we might never get out of here!’

  ‘Oh, all right, then,’ said Thea loud enough for everyone to hear, and there was such a cheer that she began to think there might be something to be said for public proposals after all.

  ‘Go on, give her a kiss!’ someone else suggested and others took it up. ‘Yes, give her a kiss!’

  Thea’s eyes met Rhys’s. ‘You started it,’ she said, sotto voce.

  A smile hovered around his mouth. ‘And it would be a shame to disappoint them, wouldn’t it?’ he said as he reached out and gathered her into his arms.

  A barrage of whistles and clapping broke out, but Thea hardly heard it. She melted into his kiss, flooded with a dazzling sense of coming home. It was so wonderful to be close to him again, to be able to kiss him back and feel his arms around her. Her own arms slid of their own volition beneath his jacket and tightened around his back, holding him close so that she would never have to bear to let him go.

  But she had to, of course. ‘Come on, move it along here.’ A bad-tempered official managed to push his way through the crowd at last and tapped Rhys on the shoulder. ‘Find somewhere else to get engaged, mate,’ he said to a chorus of boos. ‘You’re blocking the entrance here.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Rhys let Thea go and acknowledged the cheery crowd that was reluctantly dispersing with a lifted hand and a wry smile. ‘I think we’d better go,’ he said to Thea.

  Somehow she found her travel pass, got through the barrier and down the steps to the platform. She felt utterly boneless—it was a surprise to find that she could stand up at all on her own, let alone walk—and so woozy that she was practically reeling along the platform. She was very glad Rhys was there beside her, the one fixed point in a
swirling, spinning world.

  ‘Well, at least we provided them with some entertainment,’ he said dryly as they found a space to wait for the train.

  ‘It was quite funny, really,’ Thea managed.

  He glanced at her and then away. ‘Very funny,’ he agreed, but not as if he found it very humorous.

  They had to wait for ages for the Wimbledon train and, when it did arrive, it was packed. Thea didn’t mind. She got to stand pressed up against Rhys.

  ‘Do you want to hold on to me?’ he asked as the doors squeezed shut and everybody held their breath.

  Well, there was a question. Thea wondered what he would say if she told him that she did, she wanted to hold on to him for ever.

  Except she knew what he would say, didn’t she? He might be very nice about it, but essentially he would say what he had said in Crete, that for now the only person he wanted to hold on to was his daughter.

  So she just nodded and took the opportunity to lean against him while she could. He was holding on to the overhead rail with one hand, his body braced against the lurching of the train, which meant that she could put an arm around his waist and balance against him.

  It was a disappointment when a whole lot of passengers got off at Earl’s Court. They found seats side by side. Thea stared up at an advertisement for cheap flights on the internet and tried not to think about reaching out for his hand, climbing into his lap, making him kiss her again…

  The doors hissed open once more. They were only at Fulham Broadway. Thea sighed and fiddled with the unfamiliar ring on her finger. They couldn’t sit in silence all the way to Wimbledon.

  She cleared her throat. ‘I presume we stick to the same story as before? About how we met and what I was doing pursuing you out to Crete?’

  ‘I think that would be best, don’t you?’ said Rhys, who seemed annoyingly relaxed and not at all like someone who was longing to get her on her own so that he could kiss her properly in private.

  ‘Is there anything I should know before I meet Lynda?’

  ‘She can seem a little intimidating sometimes,’ he said after thinking about it for a few moments, ‘but that’s just her manner. Don’t let her put you off.’