The Wedding Proposal

by Sue Moorcroft

  OK, he still did.

  He found everything about Elle sexy. Her walk, the liquid grace of her body, the noises she made when—

  He clattered the beer bottle down on the table as if to shock his mind onto a safer track, just as she swept back into the cabin.

  For an instant, anxiety flashed across her face. Then the spark returned to her eyes. ‘I get that you’re angry. I’m angry, too. But remember that your tantrums don’t work on me.’

  He swallowed a sudden bubble of laughter. She still knew how to push his buttons, knew that he’d consider anything as petty as a tantrum beneath him. Righteous anger, that was another matter. He could do righteous anger. Right was his constant companion.

  He made his voice sweetly reasonable. ‘What’s the situation with Simon?’

  She dropped down on the seat, sighing her exasperation. ‘Faux surprise that us sharing the boat might be a problem. Enough sheepishness to make it obvious that he’s bullshitting. But he says that there are two cabins, so we ought to be able to make it work.’

  Lucas could envisage Simon over in California, safely out of the line of fire as he made mischief. ‘Did you tell him that we recognised his half-arsed plan as inept meddling?’

  ‘That’s about when he began to say that the call was breaking up.’ Folding her arms, she glared out of the window towards the cars nosing over the bridge to Manoel Island.

  Lucas sipped from his bottle. ‘Have a beer while you decide where you’re going to go.’

  The eyes she turned on him were both ice and fire. ‘Nowhere! I don’t have the income to find somewhere else and I don’t have a house to go back to. But you can go.’

  Eyes locking on hers, he managed, just, not to let her fury detonate an answering explosion in himself. ‘Just out of bloody-mindedness I wouldn’t, even if I did have a chance of finding somewhere for rock bottom rent now the season’s started.’ He waited a beat before adding, ‘And I’m expecting a visitor, soon. A woman.’

  Chapter Two

  Elle felt as if something was slowly dragging its way through the pit of her stomach. But she managed to say, ‘W-we’ll have to make sure we spare her any embarrassment.’ She hoped he would have forgotten that she only ever stuttered with emotion. There was no logic to her feeling so shocked by his revelation. He was hardly the kind of man to be celibate for four years. Before they’d met, Lucas had been a bit of a lad.

  And Elle had been married.

  There had been men for her since Lucas, of course. All right, only two, but that was ‘men’.

  ‘I have a personal code,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t have to remind me.’ She smiled, bitterly. ‘Few people are as decent, straight and honest as Lucas Rose. Ask anyone. Certainly ask Lucas Rose. That’s the way he is, the way he wants to be, and the way he no doubt has every intention of always being.’

  His voice was expressionless. ‘It’s a good way.’

  She sighed. ‘How about you point out which is my room, so I can get unpacked?’

  ‘It’s called your cabin.’

  ‘Thank you, Lucas. Yes, a room is a cabin. And the kitchen is the galley, the toilet is the head, the pointy end is the bow, the back is the stern and the upstairs is the flybridge. The gazebo thing over the flybridge is the bimini. I can read and remember the glossary of nautical terms on Wikipedia as well as the next person. Got it. Just tell me where I sleep and wash.’

  He pointed with his beer bottle to the steps beside the helm. ‘First door to the right—’

  ‘Starboard,’ she put in, before he could.

  ‘It’s the guest cabin. I’ve already occupied the master cabin. But I suppose we ought to toss a coin for it,’ he added, fairly.

  She wasn’t in the mood to be grateful. ‘I’m sure it will be fine.’

  Down the steps, she opened the narrow door and stepped down into the guest cabin. It contained two single beds, a narrow wardrobe and not a whole lot of anything else.

  ‘You can shove the beds together to make a double, if you want,’ he called after her. ‘The boat’s water tank has to be kept topped up so it would be good if you could keep your showers to under seven minutes. Regarding the loo, usual procedure is to use the toilet block on shore as much as possible.’

  ‘Simon explained all that. I think I’m capable of living on a safely moored boat with all modern comforts.’

  She went back out to the cockpit to fetch the first suitcase, and returned carefully down the steps and through the cabin door so as not to scratch anything. The Shady Lady wasn’t even three years old and she’d cost Simon megabucks. Or megaeuros, as he’d bought her in Malta.

  Once she’d fetched all of the cases there was absolutely no floor space. Ah. She hadn’t expected space to be the issue it had turned out to be. But two of her cases contained all she’d need for now, so, pretending not to be conscious of Lucas watching her from the saloon, she began back up the steps with one of the others.

  Lucas was in the same place but now there were two bottles of beer before him. He gestured to one of them in invitation. She stopped, suddenly parched. With her spare hand she swooped the bottle up, gulping half of it down in one go, enjoying the chill in her throat.

  Lucas’s glossy black hair slid over his eyes and he raked it back. ‘What are you going to do with that suitcase?’

  ‘Put it in the lazarette.’

  ‘My, you have been doing your homework.’

  ‘I always was a good student.’ She ignored the unsettling sensation of his eyes following her movements as she put down the beer and went through to open a hatch in the cockpit floor. The engine was down there but it was the big stowage space beside it, the lazarette, that was her target.

  ‘Do you want a hand?’ He didn’t move.

  ‘Nope.’ She managed to wrangle the suitcase into the depths without toppling in after it; then fetched the other and struggled that down, too. Out in the sun she began to appreciate the air conditioning of the boat’s interior. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and retreated to her cabin.

  The narrow wardrobe held nine hangers. Working rapidly, she hung up her summer dresses and folded shorts, skirts and tops onto the shelves. Underwear remained in the smaller case, which she stowed inside the larger and, ducking, because the ceiling of the cabin sloped, the helm seat being above it, squeezed onto the floor at the far end of the space between the beds. It could be her sea chest.

  She put her sponge bag in the bathroom. There was a complicated arrangement of doors and locks so that the bathroom could be shut off from the cabin or not. She chose not.

  Resolutely, she refused to remember the pictures Simon had sent her of the master cabin, the double bed built into the bow under skylights. The guest cabin of this gorgeous boat would do absolutely fine.

  In the saloon, Lucas still lounged, but now the beer bottle he contemplated was empty. ‘Did Simon give you a key?’

  ‘Yes. He sent it. You?’ An unnecessary question as he’d been living on board for a week.

  ‘He leaves one with Dad.’ He lifted his gaze. ‘Can you skipper the boat?’

  She grimaced. ‘No. I suppose you can?’

  ‘In theory.’

  ‘Are you going to move it while I’m ashore?’

  Sudden amusement lit his dark eyes. ‘Don’t give me ideas. It would be fun to sail off around the island, just to imagine your face when you found an empty berth where the Shady Lady had been.’

  Elle felt anger roll in her chest. ‘But is it in keeping with your rigid personal code? It sounds like deceit.’

  A scowl snapped the grin from his face. ‘The less you say about deceit, the better.’

  She snatched up her backpack, which contained the purse full of euros she’d bought in such a bubble of happiness last week, and dug out the map
and notes Simon had e-mailed. ‘The moral high ground is a pretty tenuous place to hang out, Lucas. It takes a lot of clinging on to. But I suppose you have just the right rigid, uncompromising, blinkered personality to carry it off.’

  She flipped open the map, turning it around to orientate herself as she marched out through the doors and off the boat, pretending to herself that the rough wooden gangplank had handrails (and wishing that it did) so that she could stride across with confidence.

  The sun beat at her through the already heated air but she disregarded it.

  Passing the toilet building, tucked between the end of the gardens and the outdoor dining area, she strode between the kiosk and the filling station, where a few cars were parked and a boat was up on large blocks of stone as if awaiting maintenance. Approaching the rush of traffic on the busy main road, The Strand, she became aware what an effective barrier the gardens provided between it and the tranquillity of the marina. She crossed into the shade and turned right along an uneven, busy pavement that served businesses and shops.

  According to Simon’s notes, she was heading for Sliema, which was full of shops, cafes and bars. Its present attraction was that it was empty of Lucas Rose.

  Lucas went out into the cockpit to watch Elle leave, squinting against the sun.

  His hands tightened into fists of frustration. He’d thought he was over the childlike habit of blabbing his first furious thoughts. Spinning on his heel, he headed back to the cool of the boat’s saloon. He shut the sliding door and snatched his phone from his pocket, selecting Simon from his contacts.

  When the call was answered he could hardly gather enough breath to form words. ‘What the fuck, Simon?’

  Simon sighed. ‘You don’t have to tell me. It was a wild idea, but Elle’s already made it clear that I’ve thrown you into a nightmare. I’m sorry. I thought you guys needed to talk. You never talked – you declared war and split up.’

  Lucas clenched his eyes shut. ‘Sticking us both aboard the Shady Lady was brutal. I feel as if someone switched the engines on while I was wrapped around one of the propellers.’

  Simon carried on as if Lucas hadn’t spoken. ‘I’ve never completely known why you split up. You never told me.’

  Silence. Lucas refused to let himself fill it with explanations. Some kind of residual loyalty to Elle, perhaps? Or his own massive overgrown pride that wouldn’t let him admit what he’d seen.

  ‘I’m not sure that even your parents know the whole story,’ Simon added, encouragingly.

  Lucas barked a laugh. ‘My parents don’t care why we split up. They only care that we did. They never hid their dismay over Elle’s past.’

  ‘I suppose that’s their privilege. I can’t say I thought their archaic attitude did them credit, and I told them that. Your father’s my big brother but that doesn’t stop him being a pompous butthead who needs to get his values straight. And your mother—!’ Simon halted, as if suddenly remembering who was on the other end of the phone.

  ‘Don’t hold back. You obviously feel strongly.’ But the fire of Lucas’s anger was beginning to burn down and he sank onto the nearest sofa, suddenly realising how shaken he was by Elle climbing aboard the boat as if she had a right to – OK, she did have a right to – shock and resentment at finding Lucas there written on every plane of her beautiful face.

  For several seconds, Simon was silent. Lucas could imagine him over in California, frowning as he gazed at the neat green grape vines ranked in the morning sun on the south-facing slope above the house.

  Simon was only a half-brother to Lucas’s father, Geoffrey Rose. Perhaps because he was a decade younger than Geoffrey, or maybe because his mother had been an exotic American rather than an ordinary Englishwoman, Simon had always been a cool uncle to Lucas and his brother, Charlie. Laid-back, feckless and fun, Simon bounced between the UK and the US, taking mad ideas into his head and acting on them. He’d fitted in well in California when he inherited a small vineyard from his mother’s family and rebranded it Rose Wines.

  Are you Rose white, Rose red or Rose rosé? the state-wide advertising ran. Lucas remembered vividly how he’d leaped at the chance to take up Simon’s offer of a sort of junior partnership, utilising his management and promo skills at marketing affordable wines to the Californian cool kids.

  He hadn’t foreseen that it would spell the end for him and Elle.

  At first Elle had been jazzed at the idea of a sun-filled life in the Rose Wines vineyard. Simon had always been high on her list of favourite people.

  Lucas, ploughing ahead with Project California, had quickly discovered that, without a sponsoring employer, it would be impossible for Elle to get a US work permit and social security card unless she was his wife. ‘So we’d better get married,’ he’d concluded, with logic but little finesse. Or romance. Or love. Or thought. Or sensitivity.

  Elle’s excitement had gurgled away and her eyes had become places of shadows—

  Simon began talking again, jerking Lucas back to the present. ‘I sure regret it. Elle’s upset and you’re upset, and it’s obvious that what I thought was a wacky way to give you a last-ditch chance to communicate was actually super-moronic meddling. Elle’s remained my friend throughout the last four years and I’d hate to think I’d endangered that.’

  Simon cleared his throat. ‘Here’s the way I’m looking at it, Lucas. I said that Elle could have the boat for the summer, and I said it months ago. She’s lost her job and—’ He paused. ‘Well, there’s nothing to hold her in the UK. Being able to live free on board made it possible for her to do something she wanted to do.

  ‘Then you suddenly got this contract in Malta and asked me if you could use the Shady Lady as if me saying “yes” was only a formality. I’d just arrived in England for a flying visit, jet-lagged, and I thought how fantastic it would be if everything came right for Elle, for both of you. And so I did say “yes”. But life isn’t a chick flick and I should just have told you that I’d promised the Shady Lady to Elle first.’

  ‘But I’m family,’ Lucas pointed out, mulishly.

  Simon’s silence was its own reply.

  Lucas reached for the beer bottle Elle had abandoned. Closing his eyes, he lifted it and drank, his lips where hers had been, because nobody could see him give in to the temptation.

  Once the cold liquid had eased the tightness in his throat, he said, ‘It would be a budget-busting pain to have to find a room or an apartment, now. The island’s heaving with tourists already.’ And he might as well confess. ‘I’ve told Elle I’ll be staying out of bloody-mindedness.’

  Simon growled in frustration. ‘Compromise and conciliation aren’t exactly your strengths, hey, Lucas?’

  Despite her fury at Simon – or at Lucas, she wasn’t sure – it took about three minutes for Elle to fall in love with Sliema.

  She found herself a table under a dark green umbrella outside a bar to watch the tourists strolling along the broad promenade beside Sliema Creek and tried to damp down her anger with a glass of the local beer, Cisk – pronounced ‘chisk’, she learned from a smiling Maltese waiter, whose English seemed as natural a part of his role as his white shirt and dark trousers.

  Sipping the cold golden brew, she gazed over the busy road to the sparkle of the sea, bobbing with boats and ferries in the sunshine. She soaked up the noise and colours, the novelty of being hot even in the shade, trying to lose herself in her carefully arranged new life and get past the shock of Lucas appearing like a grouchy spectre.

  Presently, the smell and sight of the food around on nearby tables reminded her that it was late afternoon and breakfast at Luton Airport was a distant memory. She picked up the menu and soon the waiter appeared beside her. ‘Would you like to order, madam?’

  ‘Is the pasta good in Malta?’

  He smiled. ‘Madam, we taught the Italians.’

 
; She laughed. ‘Carbonara then, please.’

  ‘And another drink?’

  She hadn’t finished her first, but she nodded. ‘That would be great.’ It wasn’t as if she was in a hurry to get back to the boat.

  And Lucas.

  Whose fathomless dark eyes had almost sprung from his head at Elle arriving just when he was expecting his girlfriend. The girlfriend was a heavy, cloying fact that she’d need to get used to.

  Her phone began to buzz. Simon the screen told her. For an instant, she considered dismissing the call. She couldn’t believe that Simon, Simon, would drop her into this horrible situation, wrecking her new beginning with the reminders of a terrible end. She let it ring several times before she answered.

  ‘I’ll pay your hotel bill,’ he offered, without preamble.

  Her heart softened to hear the guilt and remorse in his voice. ‘I couldn’t let you do that.’

  ‘I got you into this situation. I had a stupid fantasy that you and Lucas were still in love. I’ve just talked to him and it’s obvious I didn’t understand at all. I feel like a shit-heel.’

  Elle closed her eyes. Lucas must have made reconciliation sound about as attractive to him as dead dog soup. ‘Anyway, I’d never get into a hotel for months on end in high season, and if we could find an apartment it would be astronomical.’

  ‘But you should be making me suffer. I’ve been a two-faced conniving asshole.’

  Despite herself, she laughed. Over the last few years it had sometimes felt as if Simon were her only friend, one who cared what happened to her and whether she was sad or lonely. Co-workers came and went. Her father was taken up with Tania, his new, young, second wife. And her mother was … as she was. Incapable of caring about anything other than her own little world.