The Wedding Proposal

by Sue Moorcroft

  He shook his head. ‘I mean … I don’t know what I mean. You took me by surprise.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Elle said again. ‘She’s living in the Sea Creek Hotel, and you’re living here on the boat with me, and you’re surprised she’s not happy?’

  Frowning, Lucas took a huge bite of his breakfast, gazing out of the window at Fallen Star, one of the vessels lying between them and the bridge.

  Elle waited for him to chew and swallow. But when he took another bite without responding, she put her roll down. ‘Maybe she should come and live on the boat with you.’

  Lucas swallowed. ‘She doesn’t want to.’

  ‘Or you go and share with her.’

  ‘She doesn’t want that, either.’

  ‘Then,’ Elle took a deep breath, ‘Loz and Davie said I could live on Seadancer. Maybe I’d better do that. While Kayleigh’s visiting, anyway.’

  ‘So our living arrangements only matter to Kayleigh when she’s around to see them? If you move to Seadancer, logically it should be until one or other of us leaves the island.’ He raised his eyebrows. When he did that, he looked a little like his mother when she felt it necessary to be particularly direct about something, and Elle’s memories of Fiona in that mode were not fond.

  ‘Then maybe I should,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not comfortable with upsetting Kayleigh.’

  His eyes flashed. ‘Bullshit. If you don’t want to share the boat with me, don’t, but at least be honest about it.’

  ‘You and your honesty!’ Elle found herself suddenly on her feet, banging her thigh on the table, knocking the ketchup bottle noisily on its side. ‘Honestly, I’m not comfortable with upsetting Kayleigh.’

  ‘Kayleigh’s not upset—’

  ‘Hello,’ said an amused voice from the doorway. ‘Sorry to butt in on your early-morning spat.’ And there was Kayleigh, silhouetted against the streaming sunlight, gazing at them both curiously. ‘Why are you arguing about me?’

  Slowly, Elle subsided into her seat, face flaming. ‘I think you might prefer it if I move off the Shady Lady.’

  The chords on Lucas’s throat stood out but he said nothing.

  Kayleigh sauntered right into the saloon, dropping her bag onto a sofa. ‘Why?’

  Embarrassed to the point of inarticulacy, Elle’s words tripped and stumbled. ‘I f-feel you’ve been hinting that you don’t like us sh-sharing the boat.’

  ‘I haven’t been hinting that.’ Kayleigh sat down beside Lucas, bumping him with her hip so that he moved up and gave her more room. He fixed her with a glower.

  Kayleigh’s eyes flicked from Lucas to Elle. ‘You two make me laugh.’

  ‘Laugh?’ Elle began.

  What she might have said next was lost when Lucas’s phone began to ring and he scrabbled it from his pocket with a growl. ‘Now’s not a good time,’ he snapped at his caller. Then, ‘What?’ He listened for several moments, before exploding: ‘What a typical, half-arsed, lunatic Charlie-type plan.’

  Despite her frustration, Elle found herself grinning. Lucas was so often exasperated with his brother, Charlie. And Charlie was so good at winding him up. If Elle had ever wished for a sibling, it would have been for a brother like Charlie. He was so unlike the rest of his family, not just because of his dark red hair and freckles but because of his low-maintenance, accepting, unambitious, larky nature.

  Lucas’s voice rose. ‘It doesn’t look as if I have much choice. Does it?’ With a stab of his finger, he ended the call and looked up at his audience. ‘My idiot little brother is nearly here in a taxi from Malta International Airport.’

  Elle’s heart gave a glad squeeze. She cried, ‘Charlie’s here?’

  At exactly the same time that Kayleigh shouted it even more loudly.

  ‘Didn’t you know he was coming?’ added Elle, trying not to feel a teeny pinch of jealousy that of course Kayleigh would know Charlie, and was beaming all over her face just at the sound of his name. She’d bet that Kayleigh got on with Fiona and Geoffrey better than Elle had, too.

  Not that that would be hard.

  Lucas grimaced. ‘Even Charlie didn’t know he was coming. The restaurant where he works had an after-hours kitchen fire and has been closed down for a few weeks, so he promptly went online and booked himself a flight.’

  He pushed his fingers through his hair as a taxi approached up the marina access road, nosing its way towards them. ‘Here he is. Bloody nuisance.’

  But then he and Kayleigh were both out of their seats and bumping shoulders in the doorway in their haste to be the first with their greeting.

  Elle watched through the open doors as Charlie climbed out of the taxi and dropped a big red squashy holdall to the ground while he fished for his wallet to pay the driver. He didn’t look to have changed much since Elle had last seen him, still nearly as tall as Lucas but softer and less grim.

  Lucas called some exasperated remark.

  Then Kayleigh was bounding into Charlie’s arms and Charlie was swinging her around as if she was the person in the world he most wanted to see.

  Suddenly shy of intruding, for several seconds Elle hung back. But then she realised that Charlie would come on board the Shady Lady and it would look strange for Elle to have been sitting in the saloon and ignoring him.

  So she followed in the wake of the others, stepping down onto the bathing platform and hesitantly onto the quay.

  Charlie halted in mid-hug. ‘Elle?’ he breathed, incredulously.

  In the sudden silence, Kayleigh looked from brother to brother, amusement in her eyes.

  Lucas looked uncomfortable. ‘Elle’s living on the boat,’ he mumbled.

  Charlie’s eyes widened. He stared at Lucas. ‘Aren’t you living on the boat?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s … We’re not—’ Lucas ground to a halt.

  ‘It was Si-Simon.’ Elle paused to swallow her stutter. ‘He took it into his head to agree to each of us living here for the summer, but didn’t tell the other one what he’d done.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ marvelled Charlie, eloquently. ‘As a joke?’

  ‘No, as a matchmaking exercise,’ burst in Kayleigh. And began to laugh.

  Suddenly Elle discovered her sense of the ridiculous and let out a giggle. ‘I don’t think he realised that Lucas had a girlfriend.’

  Picking up the holdall that he’d dropped, Charlie raised interested eyebrows at his brother. ‘I didn’t know he had, either.’

  Elle looked from Lucas to Kayleigh to Charlie. ‘Of course he has,’ she said, blankly. ‘It’s Kayleigh.’

  Charlie gave a short laugh. ‘Kayleigh’s not his girlfriend. She’s mine.’ As if to prove it, he dropped his bag and yanked Kayleigh into his arms for an enthusiastic kiss.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Elle could only gaze at Lucas. ‘What?’

  Lucas looked as if he wished he could untie the Shady Lady and sail her far away. ‘Um—’

  Kayleigh snuggled her cheek against Charlie’s shoulder. ‘I’m over here for a European-wide conference about children with cancer, which takes place next week at a hotel in Qawra. Charlie didn’t think he’d get time off work and I had holiday to take so I thought I’d come early and let Lucas show me the sights.’ She grinned. ‘When I arrived, Lucas got all embarrassed and said he might have let you think I was his girlfriend, so would I at least not tell you that I’m not.’

  ‘I never actually said that Kayleigh was my girlfriend.’ Lucas was uncharacteristically defensive. His eyes slid from Elle’s. It was the only time she’d known him not be able to meet her gaze. ‘I said I was expecting a girl. You assumed we were in a relationship. I didn’t tell a single lie.’

  Elle gaped at him. Then her eyes began to prickle. ‘But you let me think it. Why did you let me make that assumption? Why ask Kayleigh to go along with
it?’

  ‘I suppose it was convenient,’ he began, slowly, ‘in the same way that it was convenient for you to let Oscar believe I was your boyfriend when you wanted to fend him off.’

  Humiliation rose up to roar its fury in her ears. ‘But I didn’t need fending off! I was off! And dishonesty from you, Lucas? The man who always said that lies of omission are as bad as lies of commission? The one who had the cheek to call me secretive? Why the hell did you create such an elaborate deception?’

  Finally, Lucas looked at her properly, at her trembling lip, her fists clenched impotently at her sides. His gaze seared into her tear-filled eyes. ‘I suppose I must have really wanted to hurt you.’

  Elle spent the day somewhere. Lucas had no idea where she was, but he was all too aware that she wasn’t on the boat.

  When she’d turned and walked woodenly away, along the waterfront towards Sliema, he’d stared after her, his words ringing in his ears, not having the first idea how to call them back, replace them, explain them or to wipe the pain from her face.

  ‘That was shitty,’ Charlie observed candidly. ‘Kayleigh, why did you go along with it?’

  Kayleigh’s habitual smiles had vanished. ‘Lucas let me assume that he was trying to get her to show she wasn’t over him so that he could do something about it. Lucas, if I’d known that you were going to use me as petty vengeance, I would have told you to stuff it. That’s so not you.’

  ‘No,’ he managed, huskily. ‘It was shitty.’

  ‘You need to apologise. And not to us.’ Charlie picked up his luggage. ‘Where’s your hotel, Kay?’

  Yesterday evening’s dive to put Advanced Open Water Diver candidates through their paces in dark waters lit only with head lamps and flashlights, followed by a few scant hours in a bar and a night on Vern’s inadequate sofa, had made Lucas weary. But being found out in his uncharacteristic deceit was heavy on his mind. He lay on the double bed in his cabin, waiting equally fruitlessly to fall asleep or to hear Elle’s footsteps, staring at puffs of white cloud through the skylights, listening to the sounds from the road and voices of people passing along the quayside.

  He felt shaky and queasy. And it wasn’t anything to do with not having eaten more than a bite or two of breakfast.

  If this horrible, slimy feeling of self-loathing was how being dishonest felt, he wondered that anybody was ever anything but honourable.

  Misleading Elle hadn’t been planned. But that first day, when he’d found her standing on the quayside with her suitcases, looking just so fucking horrified and aghast to find him on the boat, he’d lost hold of his composure. I’m expecting a visitor, soon. A girl. The words had flowed from his lips without him considering where he was going with them. But the dismay on her face had given him so much satisfaction that She’s Charlie’s girlfriend had somehow stuck on the wrong side of his lips.

  He’d told himself that he wasn’t telling any actual lies. That he was just avoiding the humiliation of revealing that, since Elle, he’d operated a catch-and-throw-back policy while he nursed wounds that refused to heal.

  Hadn’t he just intended to give himself time to turn over in his mind what Elle’s recoil from his words could have meant? Kayleigh had formed a handy barrier, a refuge from his own feelings and from the necessity of deciding on action and taking it.

  Kayleigh had asked if he was being honest with himself. But now he was alone in his cabin with Elle’s haunted face hanging before his eyes alongside Charlie’s disillusion and Kayleigh’s accusation, he knew that he hadn’t been honest with anyone. Until today, when he’d told Elle he’d just wanted to hurt her. That had definitely come straight from his heart.

  And did him no credit.

  He moved restlessly. Lucas was used to being largely at peace with himself. He might not agree with others, they might not agree with him, but usually he was confident that he was in the right.

  Usually.

  Loud laughter jumped him from a sleep he couldn’t remember sliding into, but, as the skies were dark above the skylight, he seemed to have slept for a good portion of the day.

  The marina could be noisy, especially if the kiosk’s patrons were playing bingo or watching an important football match on the TV that hung on the wall.

  But the laughter that had dragged him from sleep was Elle’s.

  Too glad to worry about his hair being on end or that he’d slept in his clothes, he jumped up the steps to the saloon and out onto the Shady Lady’s bathing platform.

  A few yards away, Elle, Charlie and Kayleigh were gathered with Loz and Davie, Loz being her usual one-woman conversation machine.

  Elle glanced across at the boat. Her gaze caught on Lucas’s for a still moment. Then she looked away.

  OK. So he’d been put in his place. Lucas could take his punishment like a man. He sat down on the cockpit seat to wait.

  For twenty minutes, the merry knot of people entertained one another without apparently feeling the need to include, or even acknowledge, Lucas. Gales of laughter greeted anecdote after anecdote, passers-by regarded the happy group with curiosity.

  Elle took her full part in the conversation, laughing, shoving Charlie playfully. She wasn’t wearing the clothes she’d stalked off in this morning. From somewhere she’d procured a black maxi dress slit up both sides and decorated with flamboyant golden flowers. In the lights that lined the quay the dress looked amazing with her hair, which tumbled loose over her shoulders.

  Finally, Loz and Davie began to say their goodnights, catching hands as they prepared to stroll off in the direction of Seadancer. ‘Seven o’clock, tomorrow!’ Loz called back. ‘See you then.’ No invitation for Lucas.

  With reluctance, it seemed, Elle turned towards the Shady Lady. Charlie already had one arm occupied with Kayleigh, but he threw the other around Elle’s shoulders. Both Charlie and Kayleigh said things to Elle that Lucas couldn’t hear. Nor her response. But the trio kept on coming up the quay until they broke apart to cross the gangplank onto the Shady Lady. To pass into the saloon without acknowledging Lucas would necessitate them officially blanking him.

  Incredulously, for a wild instant, he thought they would.

  Then Elle stopped right in front of him. Close up, he could see from the glitter in her eyes and the hint of looseness in her movements that she and alcohol were no strangers this evening.

  She regarded him solemnly. ‘I’ve decided I’m still speaking to you. I thought about going to live on Seadancer and pretending you didn’t exist, but I’m not going to.’

  Lucas glanced at his brother, who was standing behind Elle, arms loosely about Kayleigh. Kayleigh was watching Elle, not Lucas.

  He returned his attention to Elle. ‘Good. Any particular reason?’

  Her hair blew into her face. She reached up and gathered it up into a blonde stream all over one shoulder. ‘I made my plans for living here and I’m not going to change them because you’ve been an arse,’ she explained amicably. ‘I suppose you thought you owed me a bit of payback, and even if you’re wrong, I can see that making me think that you were all loved up would be tempting. It’s like doing this, isn’t it?’ She thumbed her nose inelegantly. ‘Or saying “up yours”. No reason to it, no logic, it’s wrong, but you do it, because somehow it makes you feel better.’

  Her brows arched. ‘It’s almost comforting to know that even Saint Lucas can fall prey to mean, small deceits.’ Looking pleased with her speech, she took a step towards the cabin door.

  Then swung back. ‘But, if we’re going to be civilised, I don’t want to talk about this any more. You did your thing. We’re both over it. Let’s move on.’

  ‘Do I get to speak?’ he asked, mildly.

  She tilted her head thoughtfully. ‘Do you really need to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  With a sigh, she backtracked, flumping down on
the seat beside him. ‘What?’

  He turned his head to maintain eye contact. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She stood up. ‘Good.’

  Then she sat down again. ‘What’s the difference between a woman and a dog?’

  He went along with it. ‘Don’t know. What the difference between a woman and a dog?’

  ‘It’s easier to find a nice dog.’ She laughed, rising slightly unsteadily.

  His eyes followed her. ‘I would have thought you’d tell that joke against men.’

  ‘About a man … it’s a crocodile.’ And this time she made it through the door and out of sight.

  Charlie and Kayleigh hovered. ‘We’re still talking to you, too,’ Charlie confirmed kindly.

  Unwillingly, Lucas smiled. ‘Good to know.’ The two brothers gazed at each other.

  After a moment, Kayleigh said, tactfully, ‘I’ll go see if Elle’s all right.’

  Charlie sat down next to Lucas. ‘She’s been OK. Kayleigh rang her to find out where she was and we stayed with her most of the day. We did some retail therapy in a glitzy shopping mall.’ He pointed vaguely towards Sliema. ‘Then we went for ice cream and drinks, which sort of segued into dinner and drinks, and we happened to meet Loz and Davie wandering back in this direction, so Elle introduced us, and we all stopped at a bar for more drinks.’ Charlie sighed. ‘Why have you been such a dick?’

  Lucas tipped his head back, closed his eyes. ‘I thought I’d try it. Everyone else seems to.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  Lucas shook his head. ‘Can’t see the attraction.’

  Charlie hesitated. ‘Look, Lucas, I think Elle understands that what’s past is past, without you going to stupid lengths to show her that you want there to be no chance of you getting it on again. The water has gone under the bridge; you don’t have to piss in it.’

  After Charlie had collected Kayleigh from Elle’s cabin and they’d disappeared along the waterfront in the direction of the hotel, Lucas sat for a long time out in the night air. The traffic had begun to thin and only a few stop-outs strolled beside the slack black water of the marina that flickered with reflected gold.