Appointment at the Altar

by Jessica Hart

  And Guy, she hoped.

  Guy…Lucy smiled and chatted and did her best to seem like any other radiant fiancée, but inside she was reeling. When had it happened? When had he become the very centre of her existence? When had his presence, the smile in his eyes and the touch of his hands and the turn of his head, become as necessary to her as breathing?

  Sipping her champagne, Lucy was feeling a little sick. It was as if everything that she had believed true about herself had been swished away, leaving her hollow and slightly giddy.

  Guy. How long had she wanted him? Needed him? Loved him?

  It wasn’t just the way he looked, it was the man he was, Lucy thought. A man who was so much more than she had realised when she had dismissed him so casually in Australia. She knew him better now. She knew how patient he was with his mother, how generous to his staff. He was a man tough in negotiations, kind to cleaners, friendly to waiters, charming to all. No wonder everyone loved him.

  They didn’t love him the way she did. But how could she tell Guy that? Only a few weeks ago, she had been insisting that she loved Kevin. He would never believe her if she confessed how she felt now-and why should he? He knew that she had spent her whole life tumbling from one enthusiasm to another. Of course he would assume that loving him was just another passing infatuation for her.

  It wasn’t, though. Lucy knew that, deep in her core-a part of herself she hadn’t even known existed before. Always before, she had tumbled joyfully into imagining herself in love, but this time it was different. This time she was almost scared by the intensity of the feeling. This time she had to see past the romance of falling in love with someone wonderful to some hard truths.

  First of which was the fact that Guy wasn’t in love with her.

  And why should he be, after all? All she had done for him was snipe at him, let him rescue her and then pitch him into an embarrassing situation that might yet jeopardise an important merger.

  Lucy cringed inwardly when she thought of how casually she had treated Guy, how carelessly she had taken his help for granted. How could she ever hope that he would love her? She wasn’t a serious person. She had never stuck at anything, had never made a success of anything. She had just drifted around, having a good time. Guy deserved more than that.

  Maybe she deserved more than that, too.

  What was it that Guy had said about having higher expectations of herself? He had changed, he had fulfilled his potential, and she could, too. He had offered her a chance with this new job, and that would be a start. So what if it was only temporary? After she had kept her promise to Hal, there was no reason why she shouldn’t find a career of her own. No reason why she couldn’t make something of herself, and prove to herself as much as to Guy that she was someone worth loving.

  Someone was clinking a knife against a glass and gradually the hubbub in the room diminished in response. Lucy found herself pushed towards a dais where Guy was standing next to George. They were both looking for her and, as she emerged at the front of the crowd, Guy smiled in a way that made her heart stutter. He’s playing a part, she reminded herself, taking the hand he held out and letting herself be drawn into the circle of his arm

  She needed to play a part too, although hers was more difficult than his. Guy just had to pretend to be in love with her. She had to pretend that she was pretending, but be convincing at the same time. It was the least she could do after landing him in this mess. Guy had made it clear that no one here should guess that their engagement wasn’t real, and she wouldn’t let him down.

  So Lucy smiled and let herself relax against Guy, sliding her arm around his waist. George embarked on a speech, but she hardly heard a word of it, too aware of Guy, of the lovely solid warmth of him beneath her hand, of the new terrifying knowledge of how much she wanted everyone else to vanish so that she could turn into him, hold him closer, press her lips above his collar and kiss her way up his throat. She wanted to burrow into his sureness and his strength, to lose herself in his touch and his taste…

  There was a burst of clapping as George got to the end of his speech at last. Glasses were lifted to a chorus of ‘Lucy and Guy’ and then Guy was stepping forward to reply. Lucy was intensely grateful that she wasn’t being called upon to string two words together. It was all she could do to keep her smile in place while her body jumped and twitched with the need to crawl all over him.

  Guy had let go of her waist, but he kept a firm hold of her hand. Lucy let her fingers curl around his, hanging on to his reassuring warmth and steadiness, and tried to cool the fever humming in her blood.

  ‘I want to thank you all for your good wishes and for being here this evening,’ he said. ‘I know Lucy is as touched as I am.’ He glanced down at her and she nodded her agreement, even managing a smile when all she wanted to do was to shout, Forget about them! Lay me down on the floor here and make love to me!

  ‘To be honest,’ Guy went on with a disarming grin, ‘realising that we want to spend our lives together has been almost as much of a surprise to us as it must have been to you. Tonight is the first time it has really seemed true, and that’s thanks to you. Being together feels very new to both of us, but it feels right too, and it’s wonderful to know that so many people are happy for us. Neither of us will forget this evening, will we, Lucy?’

  ‘No.’ She would certainly never forget, thought Lucy. She would never forget the moment when she’d realised how much she loved him.

  ‘So thank you all, very much,’ Guy finished, and there was another storm of applause, followed by a peculiarly expectant silence.

  Still dazed by his nearness and her own desire, it took Lucy a moment to realise what they were all waiting for. When she did, her eyes met Guy’s and her heart turned over. He knew what they wanted. The smile deepened in his eyes, spreading over his face as he bent his head towards her, and there was an almost audible sigh of release from everyone watching as his lips touched hers and he kissed her at last.

  The touch of his mouth sent a jolt of response through Lucy. The earth seemed to shift beneath her feet and the hand that wasn’t curled tightly around his came up instinctively to clutch at the lapel of his jacket and keep herself steady. It felt so good, so sweet, so right to be kissing him that she forgot that they were being watched by the entire staff of Dangerfield & Dunn and gave herself up to the sheer relief of being able to kiss him back.

  Guy must have felt her yielding against him. His arm tightened around her and for a moment his kiss was hard and hungry. Lucy’s body flared in response to its fierce insistence and she pressed closer, oblivious to the watching crowd, to anything but the feel of his lips on hers, the taste of his mouth, the strength of the arm encircling her.

  To anything but the fact that he was Guy and she loved him and she was in his arms.

  It felt so wonderful that when Guy made to break away she made an inarticulate murmur of protest and held on tighter, but if she had forgotten the others watching with avid interest, he clearly hadn’t. One last hard kiss and he had lifted his head so that he could look down into her face. He was smiling but the blue eyes held an arrested expression and all Lucy could do was stare back at him, dizzy with wanting him.

  The next moment he had looked away, still smiling, to lift a hand and acknowledge the cheers. How did he do that? Lucy wondered wildly. How could he seem so normal? His bones clearly hadn’t dissolved, his head wasn’t reeling, his body wasn’t humming in angry protest at the abrupt end to that kiss.

  Because it had just been a kiss to Guy, Lucy realised, slowly coming to her senses. Why would it be anything else? And right now he was probably wondering why she had been kissing him back so lovingly. There was pretending and there was pretending, he would be thinking. She could practically see his mind clicking, raising an internal eyebrow as he inevitably came up with the right conclusion. Guy might be a lot of things but a fool wasn’t one of them, especially not where women were concerned.

  Lucy didn’t want Guy to know that s
he had fallen in love with him. She didn’t want to see him withdraw slightly, to be embarrassed or to explain, very kindly, that he hadn’t meant anything when he’d kissed her. She didn’t need him to tell her that. To Guy, she had never been a serious person, and if you weren’t a serious person, you didn’t get treated seriously. Lucy could see that now.

  Well, that was all going to change, and when it had changed they would see how he felt about kissing her then.

  In the meantime, she needed to persuade him that she had simply been playing along in her role.

  With an enormous effort, Lucy stiffened her legs and made herself move out of the safe circle of his arm, her smile bright as she waved and blushed the way a real fiancée would.

  ‘Well, that didn’t go too badly,’ said Guy as he settled into the back of the limousine with a barely suppressed sigh of relief. They had finally managed to extricate themselves from the celebrations, which looked set to carry on without them, and Guy had insisted on giving Lucy a lift back to Meg’s.

  ‘What’s everyone going to think if they see me hopping into my car while my fiancée plods off to the tube?’ he had said when Lucy had tried to protest that it wasn’t necessary.

  It had been a long day and Lucy had to admit that she wasn’t really in the mood for the long trek home. It was a relief just to be able to sink back into the luxurious leather and close her eyes against the aching awareness of Guy beside her, the planes of his face thrown into relief by each streetlamp that they passed.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked in concern.

  Lucy forced a smile. ‘I’m fine. A bit tired, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s been quite a day, hasn’t it?’ Guy shook his head, half-smiling. ‘I think we managed to brush through it all right, though. Everyone seems utterly convinced that we really are engaged.’

  ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ she agreed, keeping her voice deliberately light. ‘You should have been an actor.’

  ‘You were good, too,’ said Guy, and his eyes rested on her mouth. ‘That kiss was really very convincing.’

  ‘I wondered if I might have overdone it a bit,’ said Lucy as casually as she could, although her heart was thumping painfully with the memory. ‘I wanted everyone to think that I was besotted by you.’

  ‘You succeeded. You even had me convinced!’

  ‘Maybe I should take up acting, too. That’s a career I haven’t tried.’ Lucy gazed out of the window. It was funny how her mind could nod approvingly at her words while her body raged in furious denial. Stop with all this pretending, it seemed to be saying. Just tell him how you feel, and then throw yourself into his arms. What are backseats and dark windows for?

  Lucy made herself ignore it. ‘I do feel bad about deceiving everyone. They were all there for you tonight.’

  ‘And for you,’ said Guy. ‘You’ve only been at the bank a matter of weeks and already everybody knows you. I watched you tonight, Cinders. You were brilliant. You seemed to be having such a good time. You’ve got a real ability to light up a room.’

  No, that’s you, she wanted to say. ‘We’re quite a team when we get going, aren’t we?’ she said lightly instead.

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy without taking his eyes from her face. ‘I’m beginning to think we are.’

  There was a short silence. It seemed to reverberate around the car, and Lucy ran her tongue over suddenly dry lips as her gaze skittered away from his. Leaning forward, she peered out of the window. ‘The traffic’s terrible,’ she said, rather proud of how cool she sounded. ‘Why don’t I get out here and you can go straight home?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Guy. ‘But it might be easier if you’d think about moving in with me for a while. It would look a lot more convincing if we were living together, and it would save a lot of travelling time whenever we go out.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ said Lucy.

  ‘You’d have your own room, of course.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Lucy didn’t know how to tell him that living with him would be torture. How could she be with him every evening and not touch him, not tell him that she needed him, that she loved him? The only way that she was going to get through this was to keep some distance between them.

  ‘I like living at Meg’s,’ she told him. ‘I’d rather keep some privacy.’

  ‘You’re not worried that everyone will wonder why you’re choosing to live with Meg rather than the man you love?’

  Lucy could tell from his voice that he was amused. ‘Perhaps they’ll think that I’m saving myself for my wedding night,’ she suggested, but Guy shook his head.

  ‘They’re not going to think that, Lucy.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they only have to look at you to know that you’re the kind of girl who does everything wholeheartedly. You’re not a girl who stops and has a good think before she commits herself. You’re not sensible and prudent and careful. When a girl like you falls in love, she does it completely. She doesn’t sit at home and save herself.’

  Lucy drew a breath and met his eyes squarely. ‘Maybe I’m not a girl like that any more,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’ve changed.’

  Meg looked at her as if she were mad when she tried to explain why she didn’t want to move in with Guy. ‘That alien really did a number on you, didn’t it?’

  Lucy had told her the truth about the supposed engagement, and had done her best to keep her feelings for Guy out of it, but, as she had feared, Meg had zoomed in on that straight away.

  ‘I don’t understand why you don’t go and live with him,’ she said. ‘Come on, something’s bound to happen if you’re both there in the dark. Guy won’t be able to keep his hands off you. If you ask me, he fancies the pants off you already.’

  ‘I don’t want him to fancy me.’

  Meg stared at her. ‘I thought you were in love with him.’

  ‘I am, that’s just the point. I want him to love me-me, not some pretty girl who happens to be conveniently in his flat.’

  ‘Well, he will when he gets to know you.’

  Lucy sighed. ‘That’s the trouble. I’ve started to wonder what there is to know. Am I just pretty, frivolous Lucy West, always up for a laugh, or is there more to me? And if there is, what is it? I think I need to find out, Meg,’ she said, looking at her baffled friend. ‘If I don’t know who I am, how can Guy, and if he doesn’t know me, how can he love me?’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten the Sheldons’ party tonight, have you?’

  Lucy jumped as Guy appeared at her office door, and her heart performed a set of spectacular gymnastics. She had spent the past week avoiding him as much as possible, and when she did have to speak to him about anything, she had been cool to the point of frostiness.

  Desperate not to let him guess the depth of her new, scarily powerful, feelings for him, she had retreated behind a barrier of cool aloofness that had Guy amused at first, then obviously puzzled. It had been a relief when Sheila had returned and she could throw herself into organising the fund raiser. She was given her own office, which helped, and, although Lucy missed the charge of Guy’s presence, it was easier not to have to spend the whole time clamping down on her feelings, or bracing herself against the urge to reach out for him and tell him she loved him.

  It helped that the work was so interesting, too. She was excited by her plans for the party, and the fact that she only had three weeks to make it work added a burst of adrenalin. Lucy was determined for it to be a success. It felt as if this was her chance to prove something-to Guy and to herself.

  ‘No, I haven’t forgotten,’ she said when her heart had stopped showing off and was accepting a rapturous round of applause. Breathe in, breathe out. See, she could do it. ‘I’ve been worrying about what to wear.’

  The invitation had said ‘black tie’. ‘Which means you go for glamour, big time,’ Meg had said when consulted. They had been through Meg’s entire wardrobe, but in the end nothing had been suitable and Lucy had blown half her salar
y that lunchtime on an outfit that she would never have dreamt of wearing even a month ago.

  ‘I want to look like a grown-up,’ she had told the girl in the shop, and she was now the proud possessor of her very first little black dress and the most glamorous shoes she had ever owned.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll look great,’ said Guy. He paused, looking at her as if he wanted to say something else, but in the end he just told her that he would pick her up at eight.

  ‘You look fab,’ said Meg admiringly when Lucy came downstairs that night. ‘Guy won’t be able to keep his hands off you.’

  The problem was likely to be the opposite, Lucy thought when Guy turned up in a dinner jacket. The most ordinary of men looked better in the austere black and white, and the effect on Guy, who was more handsome than he ought to be at the best of times, was devastating. The sight of him made Lucy’s knees buckle and her stomach looped the loop crazily before it landed, panting and squirming helplessly, deep inside her.

  Guy whistled when he saw her. ‘You look all grown-up,’ he said.

  But, as soon as she walked into the party, Lucy’s confidence in her appearance evaporated. The little black dress that she had been so pleased with, that had felt such an extravagance, suddenly seemed to have ‘chain store’ stamped all over it. Every other woman there was beautifully dressed, their tiniest accessories costing at least five times what Lucy had paid for her entire outfit.

  It was like being in a parallel universe. It wasn’t that the other guests weren’t pleasant, but Lucy was used to parties where everyone was crammed into a narrow hallway or an even smaller kitchen, where the music was so loud that her ears buzzed for days afterwards, and she could barely see who she was talking to, let alone hear them.

  At the Sheldons’ party a string quartet played quietly in the background, discreet waiters circulated with trays of canapés and champagne, and the guests conversed in a civilised manner. There was no shouting, but no loud laughter either. Lucy felt Guy sigh beside her.