‘Every night is party night, babe,’ he said. ‘Don’t knock it.’
She watched as he took a seat at a table with a group of his mates and loudly ordered a full English. He might be here to get married but from all she’d seen he was still clearly living the life of a bachelor. She hoped Sabrina knew what she was letting herself in for.
Conrad was up and running with the reworked drinks plan. For some reason it gave her no sense of satisfaction to tick another thing off her to-do list. In fact the usual buzz she felt when a wedding was in full swing seemed to be missing today. She felt oddly deflated, as if she was just going through the motions and her job satisfaction had been sucked out of her.
‘You slept with him?’ he said, virtually as soon as she walked through the door. Mercifully the bar was empty at this time of day except for the occasional appearance of Lavington staff.
Her stomach lurched guiltily.
‘I didn’t say that.’ Bloody hell did he have some psychic ability?
‘You didn’t have to.’ He grinned. ‘It’s written all over your face.’
‘So you’re going to mix Peach Bellinis as the celebratory post-ceremony drink then?’ she said loudly over Conrad as one of the duty managers walked past the door and glanced in. She lowered her voice to an urgent hiss, ‘Do you think you could keep your voice down? The management have ears everywhere. If word of this gets out it’ll be instant dismissal.’
‘You should have thought of that before.’
‘I did think of that before. It just kind of went out of my head. It was late. I’d had a crappy day. I felt like the most unattractive, dull person on the planet. Luke Pemberton is right in the middle of the test wedding for my new job and he’s walking evidence that I really am the last tomato in the shop. That squishy one that looks OK at first but that bursts over everyone’s hands and gets put back when they get a closer look.’
Conrad pursed his lips in a moue of distaste.
‘Please! Do you need to be so graphic? Stop with the horrible food analogies.’
She grinned.
‘Sorry. I’m just trying to explain. Owen is just so great to talk to, not to mention an incredible flirt. Maybe I wanted to be with someone, just for once, where I didn’t come off feeling like the understudy.’ She sighed. ‘We kind of got into this mutual moment where we agreed we could do whatever we wanted and there’d be no comeback.’
Conrad fanned himself with a drinks mat.
‘That sounds extremely hot, darling.’
‘It was.’
So hot, her insides felt squidgy whenever she thought of it. In that moment, she really had been the real deal. That’s how he’d made her feel.
‘And is there?’
‘What?’
‘No comeback?’
She stared behind him at the glossy backlit bar, wishing she could answer with a resounding and truthful no.
‘I’ll have to let you know on that one. Right now I’ve got a wedding to run.’
Flowers…check. Beautiful arrangements of dusky pink and cream roses filled the ballroom. Registrar…check. String quartet playing a delightful range of background music…check. Chairs with their white linen covers and dusky pink bows slowly filling with wedding guests…check. Best man and bridegroom…
Amy glanced at the front row of chairs on the right hand side of the aisle, where if this day was going to plan Luke should now be sitting, ideally dressed in something a bit less rock-god than he’d worn thus far. Owen should be next to him with the rings in the pocket of a co-ordinating suit.
Best man and bridegroom?
The front row was empty.
She was good. She wasn’t about to panic.
She took a step back into the small bar adjacent to the ballroom, where guests could buy drinks and mingle prior to the ceremony and swept her eyes quickly around the room. No sign of either Luke or Owen. She checked her wristwatch. Only twenty minutes before Sabrina and her entourage of glossy attendants would be sweeping into the ballroom. Luke should have been here for at least the past hour, welcoming guests and getting ready for his bride.
She was calm. Punctuality wasn’t Luke’s strong point. And Owen was probably on the phone to one of his string of bars. Excuses, excuses…
Crossing the marble floored lobby at a moderate walking pace that screamed total control, she picked up one of the phones on the Reception desk and punched in the number of Luke’s room. It rang and rang. And only then did a hideous possibility cross her mind for the first time. Yes, she was the self-styled queen of wedding management, and she’d ironed out many a last-minute organisational problem in her time, but she’d never had a groom stand up a bride before. Not on her watch. Her stomach gave an unexpected nervous lurch.
Her mind sideslipped unexpectedly into an image of her small self in her pink meringue of a bridesmaid dress with flowers in her hair, trying to understand why her mother was crying her eyes out on what had been touted as the best day of their lives. The day when their little family-unit-in-waiting would become a reality. The day when her stand-in father, Roger, would become her proper dad. The image took her breath away and she pressed a hand to her chest and forced her mind to take focus.
She headed for the stairs, picking up speed, and nearly collided with Owen on his way down them two at a time. He was dressed in the same grey morning suit as the ushers, a dusky pink handkerchief in the jacket pocket, the neck of his crisp white shirt open and a dusky pink rose spray in his lapel. His dark hair was slightly tousled and he looked jaw-droppingly gorgeous, as if he’d just stepped from the pages of a glossy wedding magazine. He screeched to a halt in front of her.
Any flutter of attraction she might have felt at seeing him was completely squashed by the gravity of the situation.
‘What the hell is going on?’ she said. ‘Where is Luke? Half of London’s hip and trendy are waiting for him in the ballroom and Sabrina will be pitching up any second.’
‘You might want to sit down,’ he said.
CHAPTER 8
‘He says he can’t go through with it,’ Owen said as she followed him up the stairs in disbelief. ‘I was just on my way to find you, I thought maybe you could get through to him since you know each other.’
She stormed down the corridor behind Owen, the truth of the situation really grabbing her now, the implications growing and multiplying, filling her mind. The logistical nightmare of standing down the staff, of informing the guests that the wedding wouldn’t be going ahead, of consoling an inconsolable bride, all of it paraded through her head like a bad dream. Instead of just rubber stamping her new permanent job contract, her every move this weekend would instead be scrutinised by the management. She’d wanted this wedding to be absolute perfection – a showcase for her talent, and now the whole thing was unravelling. All these thoughts slapped into her brain full force as she strode into Owen’s hotel room. Luke was sitting on the sofa in his wedding suit with his fashionably dishevelled head in his hands. Clothes littered the room and there was an eye watering smell of expensive aftershave.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ she shouted, an unexpected surge of frustrated anger at the situation rising aggressively through her from nowhere, driving out her normal poised professionalism. ‘Sabrina will be walking up the aisle any minute and this wedding has to go smoothly, without a hitch. You can’t just drop out because you’ve got cold feet. What kind of monster are you? Get that jacket on, butch up and get down those stairs.’
He held up both hands in submission as she clapped them to her hips.
‘You can shout all you want, Amy. I can’t marry Sabrina now. Things have changed. It wouldn’t be fair. And I know your job is the be all and end all but I can’t get married just so you look good in front of your boss.’
Cold rage welled up from a place so deep she hadn’t known it had existed. All the old feelings of rejection and bitterness and broken hope. The unfairness of her mother’s shame and embarrassment and no one to shout at or ask for a
n explanation because Roger had simply disappeared with nothing more than a vague note of apology. The resentment rose up and Luke recoiled in amazement as she yelled at him.
‘It’s not about my job you idiot! Oh bloody hell! You cannot do this to her, do you understand me? You will break her.’ Her voice cracked with the force of it.
‘Let’s just all calm down, shall we?’ Owen said.
The surprise in his tone cut through her fury and she glanced sideways at him, seeing his raised eyebrows and lighten-up expression. She shook her head lightly as if to clear it, realising she might have gone a bit far. Her throat felt vaguely peppery where she’d raised her voice to rasping point.
‘I am calm,’ she snapped, lowering her voice and demonstrating the fact by sitting down on one of the chairs. She took some deep breaths, bewildered by her own depth of feeling about this. This was not her mother’s wedding. She had no personal stake in this. And Luke Pemberton, for all his shallow faults, was not Roger Corbett of twenty odd years ago.
That didn’t detract from the fact that his behaviour was outrageous. Her mind slipped back to the end of her own relationship with Luke, such as it had been. To his insistence that it hadn’t been serious.
‘I don’t know why I’m actually surprised,’ she said to Owen, exasperated. ‘He’s obviously a commitment phobic. He made it clear when we broke up that he was a free spirit who could never be tied down, when there I was thinking we could run and run and eventually get settled. My bad. I accept that. I chucked myself into work and let it confirm what I already knew - marriage in all its forms is a total waste of time. I thought he was living the free spirit dream when he legged it to London and never bothered keeping in touch. I couldn’t have been more gobsmacked when he turned up and told me freedom was all a load of bollocks and he was getting spliced.’ She shrugged. ‘This is just Luke reverting to type and to hell with the consequences.’
‘I am NOT a commitment phobic,’ Luke said. ‘Will you quit talking like I’m not here? You and I had a laugh Amy. It was never going to last. It was nothing personal. Commitment just never came into it. With Sabrina it’s different. I want more than anything to be married to her.’
The usual spike of inferiority rose in her stomach and she squashed it back down. She had absolutely no interest in Luke, she wanted nothing more than for him to get downstairs and get married to Sabrina. But there was still that sharp reminder that Amy wasn’t the kind of person who could attract that kind of lifelong love and security.
‘Well now’s your chance!’ she said. ‘Get downstairs! She’ll be the one in the white frock with a bouquet.’
‘I can’t,’ he said. His voice sounded strangled. ‘My recording contract’s fallen through. Finance problems with the record company. All new acquisitions are on hold. I haven’t even recorded anything yet. I only found out this morning.’ His head slumped back into his hands. ‘Sabrina won’t want me now.’
‘Mate, that sucks.’ Owen pressed a hand on Luke’s shoulder. ‘Have you got legal advice?’
Luke shook his head. ‘I’ve only just heard from my management company. I haven’t even thought what to do yet. I’ve spent so much money on the back of the signing…’
‘None of this actually means that Sabrina would want to pull out,’ Amy said. ‘Don’t you think she’d want to stand by you if you’re having problems?’
‘I can’t expect her to. Not now.’
His blanket assumption that he was somehow doing Sabrina a favour here brought a new surge of frustration. Amy leaned in towards him.
‘Listen to me, Luke. I know what I’m talking about.’
‘You don’t believe in marriage. Despite the insane irony of your career choice,’ he pointed out irritably. ‘So how can you possibly know what I’m talking about?’
She glanced at Owen. He was watching her intently.
‘Because I’ve been there,’ she said simply.
They were staring at her. She took a deep breath.
‘My mother was a single parent,’ she said. ‘Up until I was five years old. Then she met this amazing man. Good job, great attitude, wasn’t put off by the fact she had a kid. I don’t remember her ever being that happy, even now. Two years he was with us, just dating her for the first months, and then after a while he moved in. Everything was good. I knew it was, because they decided to get married.’ She looked down at her hands, remembering. ‘Everything was booked. The registry office, the town hall. Invitations went out. Sandwiches were made. There were flowers. Mum and I had beautiful outfits.’ She paused. ‘And he didn’t turn up.’
‘You mean…‘ Owen said.
She nodded.
‘He stood her up. Stood us up. And he didn’t just not turn up that day. When we eventually got home, he’d packed his stuff and gone. She never had a word from him beyond a note he’d left that said it was for the best.’ She pressed her lips tightly together. ‘It’s never for the best, though. Not when you do it like that. My mother was devastated.’
So was I, her mind added.
She looked at Luke.
‘I’m sorry for going off like that at you,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t really aiming it at you. I was just so frustrated because you might think you’re doing Sabrina a favour by backing out but you couldn’t be more wrong. You need to give her an explanation and let her have that choice.’
A long pause and then Luke spoke.
‘Where is she?’
Sweet relief flooded in. Amy stood up, hoping that Sabrina had heard of the concept of fashionable lateness.
‘She’s in the honeymoon suite. I’ll go ahead and get everyone else out and the two of you can talk.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me? Don’t you know it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?’ Sabrina’s incredulous voice was muffled but perfectly audible through the bathroom door of the honeymoon suite.
‘Angel, that’s just some old wives claptrap.’ Luke spoke soothingly, his mouth inches away from the keyhole. ‘We need to talk. This is serious. Please, just open up.’
Amy took a deep breath, closed the honeymoon suite door discreetly behind her and smiled her way soothingly through Sabrina’s entourage of bridesmaids. They stood bemused and squashed in a mass of pink and white tulle and satin in the ten-foot-wide corridor, where Amy had managed to usher them under enormous protest so that Luke and Sabrina could have a few minutes alone.
Downstairs, she stood at the front of the ballroom and announced to the bemused guests that there’d been a slight delay in the proceedings but that everything was under control, a round of drinks would be available in the bar and the ceremony would begin in half an hour.
‘Let’s hope half an hour’s long enough,’ she said to Owen as the guests began to file back into the bar and the string quartet launched back into their pre-wedding repertoire. ‘I’m heading out for five minutes before it all kicks off again. I need some air.’
She found herself hoping that Sabrina wasn’t with Luke for the kudos and wanted to marry him no matter what. She checked herself. This was getting a bit too close to happy ever after to sit well with her long ingrained cynicism.
‘Want some company?’
Her heart turned over softly. The day had spiralled into a nightmare but he’d been right there next to her, trying to help sort things out. A wistful pang slipped through her. She liked him. It wasn’t just about the sex. They understood each other. It would be so lovely to believe that this feeling could last but she knew better than that. She would be a fool to think this could possibly exist past this weekend. The whole reason it had been so perfect between them was the momentariness of it.
He walked out through the lobby with her. Regular hotel guests went about their business, checking in, taking coffee at the cosy groupings of sofas. She pushed a path through the revolving doors, conscious for that brief moment of his closeness before they were both ejected onto the sunny pavement. She took a left turn and walked slowly, loath to stray too far from the fro
nt door in case some other crisis kicked in.
‘What the hell made you want to work in weddings?’ Owen asked, strolling next to her. His hands were deep in his pockets and he was looking down at the pavement thoughtfully. ‘I mean, after what happened with your mother I could understand it if you never wanted to even think about weddings again, let alone organise them for a living. It all makes sense now, all that stuff about not believing in happy ever after. It must have been the most awful day. I saw those little nieces of Sabrina’s in there, in their dresses with their hair all done up. Isn’t all that stuff meant to be a dream for a little girl?’
She paused and leaned back against the smooth cream brick of the hotel wall, letting the afternoon bustle of the street pass them by. The sun was deliciously warm on her face.
‘It was. My dress was this pink thing. Covered in frills with a big satin sash. I remember I had my hair curled. I’d never had that done before and I was so excited.’ She glanced at him. He leaned on one shoulder against the wall, his expression sympathetic. ‘It wasn’t really about the day though. I don’t think it would have made any difference if it was the most expensive, rich wedding in the universe. It was what it was going to mean that counted.’
‘Your parents getting married.’
‘Roger wasn’t my real father.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘I’ve never met my real father, he left before I was born. I hated Roger at first but when I got used to sharing her with him I thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. Finally I was going to be like all my friends and have a proper mum and dad. Be part of a proper family.’ She swallowed. ‘I know it was years ago and all in the past but sometimes I still feel sorry for that little girl in the pink dress.’
He reached out and took her hand in his, threading his fingers through hers. It was nice. It didn’t have to mean the world. It was just nice that he wanted to make her feel better.
‘I wish I could have told Roger what he’d done to us by just making that autocratic decision not to give it a go. By disappearing without leaving a reason. You find yourself reading all kinds of things into it – if I’d behaved better might he have stayed, that kind of thing. That’s why I may have gone a bit overboard back there with Luke.’
Meet Me at the Honeymoon Suite Page 7