Just for the Rush

by Jane Lark

  ‘I was going to say it when we’d planned to come up here in the spring, and since then there’s never been a moment that felt like the right time. Not when you’ve had to do so much to help me out. But then I made up my mind that I was going to wait until we got up here…’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  ‘I’d get down on one knee, Ivy, but I can’t… But…’ He pulled something out from the inside pocket of his jacket. Something white… a tatty serviette. He held it in his palm and unfolded it and in the middle of it was a diamond ring.

  It was the napkin I’d written on when we’d come up here last Christmas – the one contracting him to be my lover.

  I looked up and met his gaze – his blue eyes said a thousand things. ‘Will you marry me, Ivy? I want you to know how much I care about you. I know this is still pretty quick and you may want to wait and be sure you’re not tied to an invalid before—’

  I covered his lips with my fingertips to stop him talking. ‘Don’t be stupid, Jack. I don’t care about what you can and can’t do. You’re still you. I want you to get back to normal for your own sake, because I love you. But I love you however you are. I will marry you. Yes.’

  ‘Ivy…’ He looked up at the sky.

  The dawn light reached from one horizon to the other now the sun had risen fully.

  He looked back down at me. ‘I can’t even begin to find the words to tell you how good you make me feel.’ He grinned, then looked up again and thrust his good arm in the air. ‘Woohoo!’

  I laughed at him and his foolishness as he looked down and held my fingers, then slid the ring on. ‘It looks beautiful on you, and it’s waited a long time to get on that finger.’ His gaze lifted to my face. ‘You look beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Before he let my hand go, I took the serviette that was now scrunched up in his palm. ‘You kept it.’

  ‘A contract is a contract.’

  ‘Yeah, but you wrote one after this.’

  ‘I didn’t keep that one. If you ever want to revoke it, you’ll have to try and prove it in a court that you reneged on me with no evidence.’

  ‘Oh, Jack, you’re crazy.’ I wrapped my arms around his neck and his hands settled at my waist. ‘I need to write you a new one now, anyway. I will be your lover, and your partner and your wife. Do you think John will draw it up for us formally – that I contract myself to you forever?’

  ‘Yes. He’ll put anything you want in writing if you pay him, but that’s called a marriage contract, Ivy, and when we’re married I’m going to hold you to it.’

  ‘And I’ll hold you to it.’

  ‘You’ll have my commitment, you’ll have everything I can possibly give you. You have my heart and my broken bones.’

  He picked me up then, the idiot, stumbled around a half circle and nearly fell.

  When he dropped me down, I grabbed his arm to steady him. ‘Let’s sit on a stone and look at the view for a while.’

  We did that, but afterwards we went down to Keswick and got hot chocolates loaded with cream and marshmallows and then walked beside the lake, and then went for a ride on the ferry. I wouldn’t forget this day. It was going to be one of my best memories.

  While we rode on the boat I rang Mum and Dad.

  Dad said, ‘Oh, he finally got around to it, then? He asked my permission the day I met him.’

  I laughed.

  He’d been waiting that long.

  Then I rang Milly, who was quietly thrilled – quietly because she didn’t want to overdo the excitement in front of Steve, who still blamed me for Rick going mad.

  Then Jack rang Daisy, and when I nodded at him, told Daisy she would definitely be my bridesmaid.

  We were going to be happy.

  Chapter 38

  When the organ started playing I turned to look down the aisle. She was late, but it was the bride’s right to be late, and yet my heart was playing a tune of its own, worrying that something had happened to her. She kept going on about how she loved the way I made her heart race – she was making mine beat today for all the wrong reasons. It felt like a heart attack.

  When I’d married Sharon it had been with a day’s notice, in a register office, wearing what we’d worn to go to a club, and it had been quick, impulsive and stupid. This wedding had taken a year to plan. We’d chosen to get married in Keswick, a year to the day after I’d proposed. Everything beyond the place, though, and my suit – black tails – had been Ivy’s sole choice. It was her fairytale wedding, and mine, because I only needed her to make it that.

  Daisy walked up the aisle holding a basket of white flowers, wearing a pink dress that made her look like a beautiful little Disney princess. She’d stayed with Ivy and her mum and dad last night, and Ivy’s friend Milly, with the promise of a thorough pampering and being treated like a grown-up with the other girls as they’d had their nails and hair done.

  Milly walked behind Daisy, wearing a deeper pink, and then two meters behind them, Ivy. Her dress was less traditional: it was a soft white, which angled across her chest, leaving one shoulder naked as it clung to her body – but from her waist it flared with a gradual increase in volume, so when she walked it flowed around her legs. She was so beautiful, but the most stunning thing that I could see through the short veil she wore was that she’d changed the colour of her hair; it was dark.

  I watched her, transfixed as she followed Daisy and Milly.

  When Daisy got to the front I glanced down and winked at her. She gave me the biggest, happiest smile before moving to sit in a pew beside Mum. I looked up as Milly took the bouquet from Ivy.

  My hands itched to lift Ivy’s veil as her dad walked her forward. She smiled at me through the sheer fabric. Her hair was pinned in curls, with a few thin ringlets kissing her neck.

  The vicar said something and whether I was supposed to or not, I couldn’t help it, I stepped forward and lifted her veil, folding it back over her hair so I could see her face. Her makeup was sensitively done, in natural colours. which made her skin glow and her lavender eyes even more prominent – her dark hair, against her pale skin, made her eyes a dozen times more striking. I liked it. ‘Your hair,’ I whispered.

  ‘I thought it was time I got a little more conventional.’

  ‘I like it, but I liked you unconventional just as much.’

  The vicar coughed.

  I looked up and smiled.

  When Ivy said, ‘In sickness and health,’ she squeezed my hand.

  Tears blurred my vision, because she knew what that meant. She’d endured me sick, in moodiness and impatience. But she’d pulled me through it with hours of sweaty yoga.

  I pledged my life to her in return.

  ‘I now pronounce you man and wife!’

  For whatever it was worth. Richer. Poorer. Sickness. Health. To have and to hold. She was mine and I was hers…

  I was the happiest man alive. Love pulled like an anchor in my stomach holding me near her.

  Chapter 39

  ‘This is one part of our wedding I wish you had not persuaded me into.’

  ‘Jack…’ I hoped he wasn’t going to back out on me. ‘It’s what everyone does these days—’

  ‘So you said.’

  ‘And I didn’t persuade you. It was a fair trade. And I don’t want to stand up for the first dance and sway, it looks stupid.’

  ‘I’ve learnt the dance; you don’t have to pitch it. I’m honouring the bargain. But expect me to be red the whole time we are doing this. My friends are here. Half of them are from private school, and my family…’

  ‘They’ll be impressed.’

  ‘They are going to laugh.’

  I braced the back of his neck. ‘Don’t think about them, look at me. Do it for me.’

  ‘I am doing it for you, and the weekend of awesome naughty, nasty sex I get as the trade-off… be prepared to have a bottom as red as my face, I’m going to smack you so hard.’

  I leant and whispered in his ear, ‘Put your all into it
and I’ll let you spank me for all you’re worth, as long as you kiss the pain away after.’

  ‘Oh God. Giving my all.’

  My hand fell to his shoulder. I’d picked my wedding dress for our dance. ‘Ready?’

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  A year ago, he could never have done this – it was testimony to how far he’d come. We were going to dance a foxtrot. I was smiling at him as the DJ called us into the middle of the floor. He was in on it, but no one else was.

  He started playing Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’, and the lights were turned off, so the room was only lit by the blue sparkling lights from a glitter ball.

  This was my wedding. It had been dreamlike, but the church and the dinner had slipped past too fast. Yet I had a lifetime to follow, with Jack.

  His hand held mine, low at my side, as my other hand rested on his shoulder and his other hand was at my waist as we swayed to the song. We smiled at each other as if this was all we intended to do.

  We’d rehearsed this dozens of times. He didn’t want to do it in front of anyone but we’d had fun learning the steps and the lifts with a dance teacher. We’d spent half the time laughing. It had taken him longer to get the steps because his injuries slowed him down, but he’d done it. Like he could climb now, albeit not quite like Spiderman – he was less agile – but he could climb anything he wanted. He did always use a rope now, though, because he didn’t trust himself completely.

  I trusted him.

  ‘Ready,’ he whispered in my ear, and then he gave the DJ a nod. The guy blended the slow beat of ‘Thinking out Loud’ with the violin which began ‘Real Love’ by Clean Bandit and Jess Glynne and Jack span me around a few times in a low-key way without changing the position of our arms. People who’d been talking and not watching looked over at us.

  I stopped looking at the crowd and looked into Jack’s eyes, smiling, as the piano and the cello played. Jack lifted my arm into the formal hold and we moved into the structured steps of the foxtrot, racing across the floor. People started standing up as the beat suddenly flared, and then Jack did the first lift just gripping my waist and holding me up, before letting me slide down his body.

  We did an intricate set of steps across the floor, chest to chest and legs moving in unison as we skipped out the steps. Then Jack spun me in a sharp turn before we did another set of intricate steps, then we stopped and spun again. He lifted me up and I wrapped myself sideways around his body as he turned, before he set me down and span me on the floor.

  When I got up, we went into another intricate set of steps, going from one corner of the floor to another, not looking at anyone but each other.

  I loved every moment of it, and I felt like a real dancer when I clung to his neck in the last move and he spun me so I lifted off the floor with my legs and my skirt flaring out.

  When we stopped, we stared at each other, like two love-addicted idiots. The room broke into applause, wolf whistles and shouts.

  ‘I guess I did it right,’ Jack breathed hard.

  ‘You did it right. You do everything right.’

  ‘Daddy! Dad! I want to dance like that.’ He turned around and picked Daisy up, to give her a heart-racing turn in the air. He had us both addicted to the rush of loving him.

  Also by Jane Lark

  Jane’s Contemporary Romance Novels

  I’m Keeping You

  I Still Love You (A Free Novella)

  I Need You

  Just You

  I Found You

  Jane’s Historical Romance Novels

  The Reckless Love of an Heir

  The Secret Love of a Gentleman

  The Dangerous Love of a Rogue

  The Desperate Love of a Lord (A Free Novella)

  The Scandalous Love of a Duke

  The Lost Love of a Soldier

  Capturing the Earl’s Love (A Free Novella)

  The Passionate Love of a Rake

  The Illicit Love of a Courtesan

  About the Author

  Jane Lark is a Kindle bestselling author and a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional Historical and Contemporary romances. She loves writing intense relationships and she is thrilled to be giving her characters life in others’ imaginations.

  www.janelark.co.uk

  @JaneLark

  About HarperImpulse

  HarperImpulse is an exciting new range of romance fiction brought to you from the women’s fiction team at HarperCollins. Our aim is to break new talent from debut authors and import the hottest trends from the US, bringing you the very best in romance. Whether that is through short reads for your mobile phone or epic sagas that span the generations we want to proudly publish romance fiction that gets everybody talking.

  Romance readers, come and meet the team at our website www.harperimpu‌lseromance.com, our Facebook page www.facebook.com/HarperImpulse or follow us @HarperImpulse!

  Writers, we are simply looking for good stories! So, what are you waiting for? To submit, e-mail us at romance@harpercollins.co.uk.

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