Christmas Eve Marriage (HQR Classic) Page 3

  Still, that was no reason not to look her best. She would feel more herself when she was properly dressed. But in what?

  ‘Dress or skirt and top?’ Thea held the alternative outfits up for Clara’s inspection when her niece appeared, still dripping from the pool.

  Clara considered. ‘The dress is pretty, but it’s all creased.’

  ‘Linen’s supposed to look a bit creased,’ said Thea, relieved to have had the decision made for her. Clara had her mother’s taste and even as a very little girl her opinion had been worth having.

  Tossing aside the skirt and top, she rummaged around in her case for a pair of strappy sandals. ‘It’s part of its charm.’

  ‘Are we going out?’

  ‘Didn’t Rhys tell you? He’s giving us a lift to the supermarket in that town we passed.’

  Clara eyed her aunt suspiciously. ‘Why are you getting dressed up to go shopping?’

  ‘I’m only putting on a dress!’ Thea protested.

  ‘And you’ve got lipstick on.’

  Trust Clara to notice that. ‘I often wear lipstick. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Rhys is nice, isn’t he?’

  It was Thea’s turn to look suspicious at the airy change of subject. ‘He seems nice, yes.’

  ‘Do you think he’s good-looking?’

  ‘He’s OK,’ said Thea. Nothing like Harry, of course, but yes, definitely OK.

  She didn’t want Clara matchmaking, though. Her niece didn’t like Harry and was tireless in suggesting alternative boyfriends—encouraged by her mother, Thea thought darkly. If Clara got it into her head that Rhys would do for her aunt, she would be shameless in promoting their relationship, and Thea could foresee huge potential for embarrassment.

  ‘Sophie says he’s really cross the whole time,’ Clara was continuing artlessly, ‘but he didn’t seem cross to me. He’s got lovely smiley eyes.’

  Thea didn’t feel like admitting that she had noticed his eyes herself. ‘Really?’ she said discouragingly instead.

  ‘Maybe he could be your boyfriend?’ Clara suggested, evidently deciding to go for the direct approach after all. ‘Sophie says he hasn’t got a girlfriend.’

  Thea filed that little piece of information away to consider when her niece’s gimlet eyes weren’t fixed upon her.

  ‘I’m not looking for a boyfriend,’ she said firmly. ‘You know I’m still in love with Harry. You don’t get over somebody just like that.’

  Clara set her chin stubbornly. ‘Rhys would be much better for you than Harry,’ she said, sounding so like her mother that Thea was quite taken aback.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m afraid he’s not really my type,’ she said, wishing that Clara would go so that she could check her make-up.

  Just because Rhys wasn’t her type didn’t mean she should let standards slip.

  ‘I think you should give him a try. I’m sure he’d be nicer to you than Harry.’

  ‘Clara, we’re going shopping not embarking on a new relationship, all right? And if you dare say anything like that to Rhys or Sophie, I’ll…I’ll be very cross,’ she finished in a threatening voice that had absolutely no effect on her niece, who grinned and skipped out of the room to change out of her wet swimming costume.

  Without making any promises at all, Thea noticed.

  Rhys had hired a sturdy 4x4 which dwarfed the tinny little model Thea had driven up the road in the small hours. She eyed its gleaming exterior nervously. It looked like an expensive car to repair.

  ‘Did I do any damage last night?’

  ‘Barely a scratch, in spite of all that noise,’ said Rhys, giving the bonnet an affectionate slap, much as he might pat a horse. ‘She’s solid as anything. It might be worth checking your own bumpers, though.’

  ‘I’ll do that when we get back,’ said Thea vaguely, with no intention of doing anything of the kind. She would worry about any damage when she returned the car. For now, she would be quite happy if she didn’t have to go anywhere near it for the next two weeks.

  Thea enjoyed the drive much more than she had expected to. It was wonderful not having to worry about the lack of safety barriers or the precipitous drops, or being responsible for getting the car round each of the tortuous bends. She could sit back, relax and enjoy the view.

  Or she would have been able to if only she could stop her eyes drifting over to Rhys. He was an incredibly calm and reassuring driver. Unlike her, he didn’t get his gears muddled up. He didn’t shout at the car or swear or panic about which side of the road he was supposed to be driving on. He just sat there, hands sure and steady on the steering wheel, and Thea felt utterly safe in a way she never had with Harry, who drove a flash model and couldn’t bear to have another car on the road in front of him.

  Rhys was the kind of person you wanted to be sitting next to on a plane when both pilots went down with some mysterious disease and all the passengers were left to panic. Thea had seen a late-night movie like that once. Everyone flapped around and in the end the heroine had to get the plane down, but if Rhys had been there things would have been different. He would have taken over the controls and calmly landed the plane.

  Of course, it wouldn’t have made for such an exciting movie.

  On the other hand, if the director added in fizzing sexual tension between Rhys and the heroine, who probably bore an uncanny resemblance to Thea herself, it might work. The two of them could end up shut in a room together—quarantine, Thea decided, blithely disposing of all the other passengers—and someone would have made a mistake so there was just a double bed and neither of them would have any pyjamas with them, naturally, and Rhys would say, Well, no point in wasting it, is there? At which point she…

  Good grief, what was she thinking about? Thea jerked herself back from the brink of fantasy just in time. For a moment there she had felt quite…hot.

  This getting-out-of-a-rut business was doing very odd things to those hormones of hers. From having their interest piqued earlier over breakfast, they were now standing up, putting on their lipstick and patting their hair into place, ready for action.

  Down, girls, Thea told them sternly. Concentrate on the view instead.

  Fortunately, Clara was chatting away with her usual disarming friendliness in the back seat. Thea herself felt too shaky to carry on a conversation. It was all she could do to stare unseeingly out of the window and will her hormones to relapse into lethargy once more.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be there soon.’ Rhys’s voice made her start.

  ‘What?’

  He smiled. ‘You’re looking a bit nervous. The worst of the road is over now.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Yes.’ Thea cleared her throat. ‘I suppose I was a bit nervous.’

  That was true enough, but it wasn’t about the lack of safety barriers.

  Once at the supermarket, they split up. Sophie trailed listlessly behind her father, responding to his suggestions about what she would like to eat with her usual hunched shoulder.

  ‘Whatever,’ was all she would say, while Clara and Thea puzzled over the Greek alphabet.

  ‘We’ll just have to go by the pictures,’ said Thea, tossing what she hoped was a tin of tuna into the trolley. It was either that or pilchards.

  ‘I think Rhys really likes you,’ whispered Clara in a stage whisper. ‘I saw the way he was smiling at you in the car.’

  ‘Shh!’ Thea glared at her, pointing frantically to indicate that Rhys and Sophie might be in the next aisle.

  ‘We should invite them to dinner,’ Clara pursued in the same stage whisper, ignoring her.

  Thea closed her eyes briefly. ‘Clara, I really don’t think—’

  ‘To thank them for breakfast and giving us a lift,’ Clara added innocently. ‘I’m sure Mum would say we should.’

  She would, too. ‘We’re on holiday. We don’t want to spend a lot of time cooking,’ said Thea, conscious that she was fighting a losing battle.

  ‘I’ll help you. We just
need to make something simple. Sophie says her dad’s always going on about how he likes home cooking, but he can only do about three things himself. He’d probably really like it if you cooked something for him.’

  In the end, Thea gave in to shut Clara up. She knew quite well that her niece had visions of whisking Sophie away so that she and Rhys would be left sharing a romantic dinner for two on the terrace in the dark, with just the stars for company.

  Put like that, it didn’t sound too bad, did it? Thea’s hormones rustled with something dangerously like excitement at the thought. They were completely out of order today.

  Besides, Clara was right. A meal in return for all Rhys’s help was the least she could offer. She would make the invitation very casual. If he didn’t want to come, she would have done her duty and she could tell Clara that Rhys wasn’t really interested.

  But when she mentioned it, as casually as she could, Rhys didn’t even put up a token show of reluctance. ‘That sounds great,’ he said. ‘We’d like that, wouldn’t we, Sophie?’

  ‘Better than eating with stupid Damian and Hugo,’ she muttered.

  Thea raised her brows at Rhys, who was looking uncomfortable at his daughter’s lack of manners. ‘Damian and Hugo?’

  ‘The two boys in the other villa,’ he explained. ‘The Paines are here for three weeks as well. They’ve been very hospitable all week, a little too hospitable as far as Sophie’s concerned. They’re always asking us over for meals.’

  ‘You don’t like them either,’ said Sophie sullenly.

  ‘That’s not true,’ he protested, although not very convincingly, Thea thought.

  They were sitting at a taverna in the village square, under the shade of an enormous plane tree. The shopping had been safely stashed in the car, and Thea was starving again. When Rhys had suggested lunch she had agreed with alacrity and had ordered souvlaki and chips with an enormous Greek salad, reasoning that it was too late to start pretending that a lettuce leaf was all she usually had for lunch, with perhaps a low fat yoghurt if she was indulging herself.

  ‘Well, Clara and I are very honoured that you’d rather eat with us than Hugo and Damian, Sophie,’ she said lightly, and Sophie hung her head.

  ‘Yes, I would. Thanks,’ she mumbled from behind her hair.

  ‘It’ll be great,’ said Clara. ‘Can Sophie and I go shopping?’

  ‘Shopping?’ Thea stared at her niece. ‘Where?’

  ‘They had some postcards at the supermarket.’

  Thea strongly suspected that Clara was concocting an excuse to leave her alone with Rhys, but she could hardly accuse her of that now. She contented herself with a meaningful look.

  ‘All right, but don’t be too long, and stay together.’

  ‘OK. Come on, Sophie.’

  She bore Sophie off on a wave of enthusiasm that poor Sophie was powerless to resist, and Thea and Rhys were left alone.

  There was a slightly awkward silence. For some reason Thea’s nerve endings were on alert, only amber so far, perhaps, but with those treacherous hormones egging them on Thea couldn’t discount the alarming possibility that they would suddenly switch to red alert and start shrieking like an intruder alarm at a high security facility.

  Desperately, she gazed around the village square but, stare as hard as she might at the whitewashed walls and the dusty geraniums straggling out of painted oil barrels and the gnarled old men sitting morosely in the shade, her attention was fixated on Rhys.

  He was sitting next to her at the small square table, resting his forearms tantalisingly close to hers on the checked plastic tablecloth. Thea was acutely aware of the soft, dark hairs by his broad wrist, of the unpretentious watch, and the square, capable hands, and her fingers tingled with speculation about how it would feel to lay her own over them.

  The very idea made the breath dry in her throat. Something was very wrong, she thought, confused. Her body appeared to have forgotten that she was pining for Harry. It was Harry whose warm skin she wanted to touch.

  Only yesterday, Harry had dominated her thoughts, and now when she made the effort to conjure up his handsome face all she could see was Rhys, turning his head to smile at her, the sunlight in his eyes.

  Thea felt as if the earth beneath her feet had suddenly started to crumble. She was just tired, she told herself desperately. How could she be thinking clearly after less than four hours’ sleep? She would be fine after a siesta.

  The waiter brought a little jug of retsina, and Thea tried not to stare at Rhys’s hand as he poured, but her own was unsteady as she picked up her drink and their eyes met as they chinked glasses. She must get a grip.

  Looking quickly away, she reached out for a fat green olive. ‘Is it true what Sophie said?’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘That you don’t like our neighbours? What are they called again…the Paines?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Rhys looked a little uncomfortable. He swirled the liquid in his glass as he picked his words with care. ‘They’re very…kind,’ he said at last.

  ‘But?’

  He grimaced. ‘They’re just a bit much, I suppose. Especially Kate. She’s one of those women who believe everybody ought to be part of a couple, and seems to take the fact that I haven’t married again as a personal affront. I’m not sure where she thinks I would have found a suitable wife in the Sahara!’ he added dryly.

  ‘Oh, God,’ groaned Thea. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve come all the way to Crete to end up next to the kind of people who think being single is just a deliberately selfish attempt to throw out the seating plans for their dinner parties?’

  The creases around Rhys’s eyes deepened in amusement. ‘Oh, you’ve met them, then?’

  Glumly, Thea helped herself to another olive. ‘They’re part of an extended sub-species, copulus smugus, otherwise known as smug married couples.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, well, I suppose forewarned is forearmed,’ she went on as she discarded the stone. ‘I’ll be ready for pitying looks and questions about why I haven’t married and advice about not leaving it too long to have babies, because time’s ticking away, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t believe you’d get those kind of comments very often,’ said Rhys, and she stared at him.

  ‘Why not?’

  He looked a bit taken aback by her vehemence. ‘Well…I don’t know. I’d just assumed that someone like you would always be with somebody.’

  Someone like you. What did that mean?

  ‘No, I seem to be a serial singleton.’ Thea picked up her retsina and drank morosely.

  The truth was that even when she had been with Harry she had never really felt part of a couple. She had kept waiting for someone to point a finger and say, Who do you think you’re kidding? You’re just playing at having a man.

  Rhys was studying her vivid face over the rim of his own glass, noting the cloud of soft brown hair, the smoke-grey eyes, the generous curve of her mouth and the lush body. ‘You surprise me,’ he said.

  Thea hadn’t been expecting that. Startled, her eyes veered towards his and then skidded away. That smiling green gaze of his was unnerving enough at the best of times.

  He was only being polite, anyway. What else could he say? Lose a couple of stone and do something about your hair, and you might be in with a chance?

  She sipped her retsina, willing the faint colour across her cheekbones to fade. ‘At least you’re divorced,’ she said. ‘I’ve always assumed that would be better. And you’ve got a child, too. You don’t need to prove you’re normal!’

  ‘Don’t you believe it!’ said Rhys with a twisted smile. ‘Kate is on a mission now to fix me up with another wife. Every time we go over for a meal she tells me about another “awfully nice” friend of hers she thinks I would like.’

  ‘Can’t you just not go?’

  ‘It’s difficult. The Paines are friends of Lynda’s—that’s how we ended up here. I haven’t been back in London that long, and the summer holidays seemed like a good opportunity to take Sophie away an
d spend a proper chunk of time together. It suited Lynda, too. She had some conference or something to go to, so we agreed that I would have Sophie for three weeks.’

  ‘It’s a very isolated place to spend three weeks,’ commented Thea. ‘I think I’d have taken her to somewhere more lively.’

  Rhys nodded ruefully. ‘That’s what I should have done, but I didn’t even think about going to a resort. I thought a beach would get really boring. You can’t just lie in the sun for three weeks.’

  Couldn’t you? Thea looked at him. He was obviously one of those hearty ten-mile walk before breakfast types who always liked to be doing things. The art of lying on a sunbed and flicking through magazines with nothing more strenuous to do than contemplate what to eat and drink next would be quite lost on him. Shame, really.

  ‘If I’d been a more hands-on father I’d have known what Sophie would like.’ Rhys was frowning down at his glass. ‘As it was, Lynda told me that the villa here was available because the friends who were originally coming out with the Paines had dropped out.

  ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ he went on, lifting his eyes to Thea once more, obviously trying to justify the decision to himself. ‘I thought that if the Paines were friends of Lynda’s, Sophie would know the children and be able to play with them, but as it turned out they’ve got absolutely nothing in common.

  ‘Meanwhile, Kate and Nick are desperate to look after us. Lynda obviously confides in Kate—she seems to know an unnerving amount about my marriage and divorce—and because they’re friends, short of being outright rude, I can’t get out of it.’

  ‘It sounds a bit of a nightmare,’ said Thea sympathetically.

  ‘It is,’ said Rhys, reaching for the jug of retsina and topping up her glass. ‘Kate’s impervious to hints that I’m quite capable of looking after myself. She went on and on about all these single friends of hers she wants to introduce me to when we get home, and I could foresee endless dinner parties if I didn’t put a stop to it. Eventually I just told her I had met someone special already and that I was committed to her.’

  Thea was conscious of a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she didn’t want to analyse. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Have you?’