Appointment at the Altar

by Jessica Hart

  ‘You can’t make your sister’s dreams come true,’ said Guy. ‘She has to do that for herself. We all have to do that.’

  Lucy mustered a smile. ‘Well, I’m working on mine,’ she told him.

  ‘You are?’ He stopped and looked at her. ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve decided that I’m going to make a career for myself in events management,’ she told him brightly. ‘I’m going to set up my own company.’

  There was a tiny pause. ‘Good for you,’ said Guy.

  ‘I’ve even picked up a client tonight, and several people have asked for my card.’

  ‘That’s great. No, I mean it,’ he said, as if hearing the flatness in his voice. ‘I think you’ll do brilliantly.’

  ‘So it looks as if it’s time to move on.’ Lucy was breathing very carefully. ‘It’s probably time we had that argument, in fact.’

  ‘What argument?’

  ‘The one that makes you realise that I’m the last woman you’d want to spend your life with, and makes me throw my non-existent ring back in your face.’

  ‘Oh, that argument.’ They had walked some way from the marquees, but the night air was alive with the sound of voices and laughter, a mocking counterpoint to the tension pooling around them. ‘If that’s what you want,’ said Guy in a hard voice.

  ‘Well…it’s what we agreed,’ she said, swallowing the lump in her throat.

  His eyes looked into hers. ‘What are we going to argue about?’

  ‘I…I guess I could complain about the way you flirt with other women,’ she tried to joke, but he didn’t smile back.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Or you could say that I’m too frivolous and silly for you.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘Then perhaps we could just decide that we’re incompatible.’

  ‘Are we?’

  Lucy made herself look away from his gaze. ‘I think so, Guy,’ she said painfully. ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ she tried to explain. ‘You know who you are. You know what you want to do. I feel as if I need to find myself, do something for myself.’

  She paused. ‘When I came to your office that time, you told me to finish organising this party. Finish something, you said, and I realised that I’d never done that before. This is the first project I’ve seen through to the end. I just drift along, never getting to grips with anything…I don’t really know who I am or what I can do,’ she told him. ‘I need to find that out on my own.’

  Her voice was starting to wobble and she took a deep breath. ‘I want you to know, though, that the last few weeks have been some of the happiest I’ve ever had-and I’ve had lots of happy weeks. I’ve really enjoyed working for Dangerfield & Dunn, and I’m more grateful than I can say for the opportunities you’ve given me. And…and it’s going to break my heart to say goodbye,’ she finished in a rush.

  ‘Then why say it?’ asked Guy.

  ‘Because I need to know if what I feel for you is real,’ she said, meeting his eyes fully at last. ‘Or is it just like what I felt for Kevin? I could tell you that I loved you, Guy; how could you ever believe me, even if you wanted to hear it? How can I be sure of it myself? I want to find a way to prove it to myself. Can you understand that?’ she asked anxiously.

  He sighed. ‘In a way,’ he said at last. ‘I understand that you need some time to work things out for yourself, anyway. So…’He took her hands and found a smile. ‘We’d better have that argument, then. You go first.’

  Lucy’s smile wavered but she pressed her lips together to stop it falling apart. ‘Guy, you’re a horrible person,’ she said, her eyes on his.

  ‘And you’re no fun,’ he replied. His clasp was warm and steadying and it was as if they were having two completely separate conversations. Their mouths said one thing, their eyes the opposite.

  ‘Your jokes are terrible.’

  ‘You’re not that pretty, you know, Cinders,’ said Guy, drawing her closer.

  Lucy’s throat was so tight by now that she could hardly speak. She didn’t think she could go on much longer. ‘I hate you,’ she whispered against his cheek.

  ‘I hate you, too,’ said Guy, and turned his head so that their lips could meet in a long, tender kiss of farewell.

  Lucy let herself hold him one last time. Her arms slid around his back and she clung to him while she kissed him in a way that she hoped told him better than words ever could how much she loved him.

  Her heart cracked when at last she made herself step back and out of his arms. Guy resisted for a moment, as if he didn’t want to let her go, but then his hands dropped and she was free.

  ‘Thank you, Guy,’ she said, her voice wobbling horribly. ‘Thank you for everything.’

  And then she turned and walked away from him, as fast as she could, before she could change her mind.

  ‘Lucy!’ Imogen looked up in delighted surprise. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you! Does this mean you’ve come back?’ she added hopefully.

  ‘No.’ Lucy felt terrible. She had only been back at Dangerfield & Dunn a matter of seconds and already three people had told her how pleased they were to see her back. ‘I’ve just come in to collect my stuff.’

  ‘Oh.’ Imogen’s face fell. ‘I was hoping you’d have changed your mind. It’s not the same here without you.’

  ‘I was only here for about a month!’

  ‘It felt like longer. We all miss you, and I’m sure Guy misses you, too,’ Imogen went on. ‘He hasn’t been the same since. I mean, he’s still lovely and he’s always friendly, but it’s like now he’s trying, and before he didn’t have to.’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard you two had split up. You seemed so perfect for each other. What happened?’

  ‘We just agreed that it wasn’t going to work out,’ said Lucy after a moment.

  ‘That’s what Guy said.’ Imogen sounded dissatisfied. ‘No one can understand it, though. You were so obviously meant for each other!’

  Lucy smiled painfully. ‘We weren’t really, Imogen. We might have looked OK together, but we’re very different people. I’m not the right girl for Guy.’

  She had been reminding herself of that continually over the past three weeks. Guy was a serious person, and he needed a serious wife. Not someone who didn’t know how to laugh, but someone responsible, someone intelligent and steady who knew herself and knew Guy. A grown-up.

  She had never really grown up, Lucy realised. She had just played at life, and she had been lucky because she had been able to get by doing that. But falling in love with Guy had taught her that sometimes having a good time wasn’t enough. She could have spent the past three weeks with him. They could have made love every night and laughed during the day, and it would have been wonderful, but it wouldn’t have lasted.

  And loving Guy, really loving him, her heart would have broken when it was over.

  Lucy had made her decision. If she wanted to spend her life with him, the way she so desperately did, she was going to have to prove that she was more than just a temporary girl. She was going to set up her own business and make it a success and accomplish something on her own. And then, only then, would she go back to Guy.

  He might not like the new Lucy. He might prefer fun and frivolity. He might not be interested in forever, whatever she had done. But Lucy was prepared for all of that. Deep in the core of her, she knew that whatever happened with Guy, this was something that she had to do for herself.

  It didn’t mean that it was easy. Missing Guy was a dull, constant ache in the pit of her stomach. She had done her best to keep busy, throwing herself into her new job and finding out about how to set up her own business as an events manager, but she hadn’t realised what a gaping void he would leave in her life.

  ‘I don’t understand what the problem is,’ Meg had said, exasperated, dragging Lucy away from the computer where she had been researching websites until her eyes were out on stalks, because anything was better than letting herself think about Guy.

 
; ‘You’re miserable,’ Meg told her sternly as she handed her a glass of wine. ‘You want him. It sounds as if he wants you. He’s straight, single, good-looking and obscenely rich and, let me tell you, guys like that do not grow on trees! There are millions of women out there who would snap him up in a moment, including me, and if you mess around like this he’ll be up for grabs.’ Meg shook her head. ‘If you lose him, Lucy, you’ll only have yourself to blame. Just ring him!’

  ‘I can’t,’ Lucy said, holding the glass to her chest with both hands as if for comfort. ‘It would be like admitting that I wasn’t serious when I said I wanted to prove myself. He’ll think that I’ve given up already, just like I’ve always done before.’

  ‘You don’t have to give up the business. You just want to see him-or are you going to try and pretend that you don’t?’

  ‘No. I want to see him so much it hurts, but I’m afraid that, if I do, I’ll lose my focus,’ she said. ‘I’ll just want to be with him, and I’ll slide into my old ways and let him look after me, and it’ll be lovely for a bit, and then Guy will get bored.’

  ‘Why should he?’

  ‘Because I’m not…oh, I don’t know how to explain it…it’s as if I’m not properly formed,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m all froth and fun. Guy deserves someone more than that, and maybe I can offer more than that; how will I ever know if I don’t try and find it? And I think Guy understands that. At least, he didn’t try and talk me out of it, and he hasn’t rung,’ she said. ‘If he really cared, he could have rung me.’

  ‘Maybe he’s just confused by what you want-like me,’ said Meg, but Lucy had stuck firm for once.

  Part of her was hoping that her feelings for Guy would go the way of her other loves, and that if she didn’t see him for a while she would start to forget him, but it hadn’t worked like that. The longer they were apart, the more she missed him.

  Lucy knew Meg thought she was mad. She knew quite well that men like Guy-tall, handsome and rich-were a fantasy for an awful lot of women, but it wasn’t the fantasy she wanted. It was the real Guy. The Guy who let his mother grumble at him while he quietly got on with making her life easier. The Guy who had been a surfer. The Guy who made people laugh.

  Guy, whose kiss turned her bones to honey and whose smile made her heart turn over.

  That was the Guy she missed. She missed the warmth of his presence and the laugh in his voice and the way the world felt brighter and better and clearer when he was there.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said awkwardly to Imogen as she glanced at her watch. ‘I told Sheila I’d be there by now.’

  In fact, she had made a point of checking with Sheila that Guy would be out when she came to collect the things she had left in her office before the party. She didn’t want to run the risk of meeting him and seeing all her fine resolutions crumble to dust.

  It didn’t take long to empty her desk, although it was still surprising how much stuff she had managed to accumulate in a month. Sheila gave her a box and into it went a pair of gloves she’d thought she’d lost, assorted cosmetics, photographs, a couple of books she had never got round to reading, her camera-what was that doing there?-a half-eaten packet of biscuits, a box of tissues, some change and a pot plant that Imogen had given her to celebrate having an office to herself for the first time ever.

  Lucy allowed herself one last nostalgic look round, and then she went to say goodbye to Sheila.

  Carrying her box, she pressed the button for the lift and stared ferociously ahead, trying not to cry. ‘Come on, come on,’ she muttered, desperate in case anyone came along to share the lift.

  At last it arrived and, to her relief, it didn’t stop until the ground floor. Lucy hoisted her box up into her arms, waited for the lift to settle and took a step forward as the doors slid open.

  And there stood Guy.

  Lucy’s whole body seemed to leap with joy at the sight of him, but she stood stock still, as if rooted to the floor of the lift, torn between shock and relief, elation and dismay.

  ‘Lucy!’ Guy seemed equally stunned by coming face to face with her so unexpectedly and a couple of other people waiting to get in looked from him to Lucy and then to each other, and then by tacit consent moved tactfully aside to wait for one of the other lifts.

  Guy swallowed. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you,’ he said at last, eyes blue and hungry as they devoured her face.

  ‘Sheila said you’d be out,’ Lucy managed, clutching her box to her chest. At least it was something to hold on to while her heart was hammering like a mad thing and her knees felt so weak that she was afraid she might crumple to the floor at any minute.

  ‘I was supposed to be at a meeting, but when I got there-’

  The doors chose that moment to assume that anyone who wanted to get in would have done so and began to close. Guy leapt forward to stop them, holding them back with a hand.

  ‘It was cancelled. Some family crisis,’ he said, without taking his eyes from her face. ‘Why am I telling you this, anyway? I’m babbling like an idiot just because you’re here…!’

  ‘I came to get my things,’ said Lucy unsteadily. It was just like the last time, when two completely separate conversations were going on at the same time. She couldn’t tear her eyes from his. It was just so good to see him, to hear him, to be near him again.

  No, no, this isn’t right! Her mind struggled desperately to regain control of the situation. You can’t give in yet. Remember all that stuff about proving yourself? Well, do it. Say goodbye and go.

  ‘Did Sheila know you were coming? She didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I asked her not to,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be easier if I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lucy just shook her head and Guy stepped into the lift. ‘Why, Lucy?’ he persisted.

  Get on with it! Lucy’s mind ordered, and she made to step past him with the box in her arms. ‘I should go,’ she said feebly, but he was blocking the way.

  ‘I don’t want you to go. I miss you too much.’

  Behind him, more people were heading to the lifts and veering away at the last minute as they realised that a scene was in progress. ‘I’ve got a new job,’ said Lucy, her voice wobbling ridiculously. ‘I’m committed to that now.’

  ‘I’m not talking about work,’ said Guy, sounding almost angry. ‘I miss you. I can’t concentrate on anything. I don’t want to eat, I can’t sleep. Look at me, I’m a mess!’

  ‘Guy, this just makes things harder…’

  ‘What does? Seeing you? Talking to you? It doesn’t feel harder to me. Sitting at home, missing you, that’s what feels hard.’

  ‘It is for me,’ she said, stung into a response at last. ‘I knew it would be like this!’ she said wildly. ‘I knew I’d see you and I’d just want to give up everything just to be able to touch you, but I can’t do that.’

  A smile hovered around Guy’s mouth suddenly. ‘Why don’t we touch and then talk about what you have to give up?’ he said, taking the box from her and putting it on the floor.

  ‘Don’t joke about this!’ Lucy turned her head away, biting her lip. ‘I’m serious. I’m trying to change my life here, and you’re not helping.’

  ‘Lucy,’ said Guy as the doors closed behind him, cutting them off from the interested crowd. ‘What is it you want to change?’

  ‘Me,’ she said. ‘I’ve always been a temporary person. I have temporary jobs and temporary relationships, but I don’t want that any more. I want a real job and a real relationship. You were the one who told me that I always had to be rescued, Guy, and you were right. I’ve spent my whole life relying on other people one way or another. Well, now I want to do something for myself. I want to set up my own business, and make a success of it.’

  ‘Why would touching me change that?’

  ‘Because I would get distracted. I love you, and I know you won’t believe me,’ said Lucy almost crossly, ‘but I do.’

  A smile started at the back of his eyes.
‘Usually if you love someone, touching is good,’ he said as he took her hands, but she pulled them away.

  ‘How long for, though?’

  ‘How about for ever?’

  Lucy stared at him. The lift doors, tired of waiting to be told which floor to go to, sighed open once more, but neither Lucy nor Guy noticed the interested looks of the small crowd that had gathered.

  ‘You can’t want me for ever,’ she said unsteadily.

  ‘Can’t I?’ Guy pretended to consider the matter. ‘Do you know, I think I can. I think I do.’

  ‘But…’ She swallowed. ‘I’m not a serious enough person for you.’

  ‘Lucy, you are a serious person,’ he said, repossessing her hands. ‘You’re warm and funny and loyal and brave, and you have a gift for happiness and enjoying life that is worth more than any qualification, any career, any profit margin on a business! You don’t pretend to be anything you’re not-unless it’s my fiancée, of course!-and people like you because of that. Who was it everyone turned to in a crisis when you were on reception here? Who got on and sorted things out for Sheila when her father was ill? Who gave up a job she loved for a sister she loved more?’

  With a sigh, the doors closed again.

  ‘But those things aren’t…’

  ‘Aren’t what? Aren’t important? They are, Lucy. You don’t need to prove yourself. You just need to be yourself.’

  His hands were warm and sustaining around hers. Longing to believe him, Lucy’s fingers curled around his in spite of herself.

  ‘I wanted to prove that I really did love you,’ she confessed. ‘It’s hardly any time since I told you I was in love with Kevin, and this feels so, so different…but I can’t see how you could believe me that it was true.’

  ‘You don’t need to prove anything to me, Cinders,’ said Guy. ‘How can you prove that you love someone? Love isn’t a deal. You can’t say, I’ll love you if you’re like this or you do this, and you can’t test for it. All we can do is love each other and believe in each other, and maybe when we cut our golden anniversary cake we can say look, there’s the proof, but we can’t do that now. We just have to trust each other, and trust in how we feel.’