His eyes studying her face, Rhys said, ‘Alix, are you on the Pill?’
The flush deepened and she shook her head.
He sighed. ‘I thought not. You expected me, then, to take any precautions necessary?’
‘Well…yes.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you that I might not have anything? I didn’t expect this, and I’m not in the habit of sleeping with other women; so why should you expect it?’
Alix’s fingers tightened on the quilt and she looked away. Bitterness and disappointment filled her heart because she knew that she’d failed; the hunger had gone from Rhys’s eyes and she knew he wouldn’t make love to her now.
‘Well?’ Rhys said compellingly.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t—I didn’t think about that side of it.’
His eyebrows rose and there was a distinctly chill note in his voice as Rhys said, ‘Hardly a responsible attitude.’
‘We’ve been engaged for over a year,’ she burst out. ‘We’re in love, for heaven’s sake—or supposed to be. Why shouldn’t we go to bed together without—without being clinical about it? Why don’t we go to bed together at all, if it comes to that?’
Reaching out, Rhys went to put his arms round her, but Alix was so upset that for the first time in her life she shook him off. Taking no notice, Rhys took hold of her and made her look at him. ‘I thought we agreed that we would do this properly,’ he said soothingly as she began to cry. ‘Have a white wedding and a honeymoon that is a honeymoon, not be like so many other couples and already know everything there is to know about one another.’
‘I didn’t agree it, it was what you said. And why shouldn’t we go to bed together first? We might find that we’re incompatible.’
To her annoyance Rhys burst into laughter. ‘Us? Incompatible? You’re joking.’ And he hugged her, still laughing.
Alix had to smile, albeit reluctantly. ‘You wanted me just now.’
‘Of course I did. You’re beautiful. Beautiful enough to undermine all my good intentions.’
‘Not quite,’ she said with regret.
Rhys’s face sobered. ‘Do you really want our first time to be like this? Is this what you want to look back on; a mere hasty sexual encounter? Or a wedding night when we have all the time in the world to make love, tenderly, slowly, savouring every moment?’
Put like that, there was only one answer she could make, but Alix wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t rather have had it like this, an act of spontaneity and passionate hunger, something that neither of them could resist. ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she agreed.
‘Well, we have plenty of time to—’
‘No, we don’t!’ she broke in angrily. ‘I’m sick to death of you saying we have plenty of time.’ Raising her eyes she met his. ‘I want it soon, Rhys.’
He gave a thin smile. ‘That sounds ominously like a threat.’ She didn’t speak, just held his eyes, and he gave a shrug. ‘All right, urchin, you win. Go ahead and set a date—but just make sure it’s at a time when I have a few weeks free.’
CHAPTER FOUR
ALIX had scored a victory and ought to have been jubilant, but strangely didn’t feel that way. The dinner party wasn’t very successful; Todd and his wife, Lynette, appeared to have had a row earlier and she wasn’t doing a very good job of concealing it. She was sitting between Rhys and the other male guest and almost ignored Todd, instead openly flirting with Rhys. Alix, who was seated opposite, between Todd and the other man, was getting angrier by the minute, especially when Rhys made no attempt to rebuff Lynette and even danced with her and the other woman guest before he danced with Alix.
If Lynette hadn’t been the boss’s wife, Alix would have made a ‘keep off, this man is mine’ comment, but she had to just sit there and smile, which nearly killed her.
When they got in the car she was angrier with Rhys than she’d ever been before.
‘I’ll drive you back to Kent,’ he told her.
‘Don’t bother; I can take a train,’ she answered stiffly.
Rhys glanced at her, saw the mutinous set of her mouth. ‘Alix, you know I can’t stand women who sulk, so just——’
‘Then you shouldn’t have given me cause!’ she interrupted fiercely. ‘How dare you flirt with that ghastly woman?’
Rhys’s jaw hardened. ‘I wasn’t flirting with her.’
‘But you certainly weren’t stopping her from flirting with you. You even danced with her before me!’
‘So that’s what rankles, is it? If you were listening you would have heard her ask me for that dance because the tune was one of her favourites, and Todd wasn’t in the mood for dancing.’
‘No, because they’d had a row. Couldn’t you see that she was just using you because of it?’
‘No woman uses me, Alix—not even you,’ Rhys said shortly.
‘Is that why you did it, then; because I’d pushed you into finally setting a date?’
He didn’t openly admit it, but said, ‘I don’t like being coerced.’
‘Oh, really? Has it ever occurred to you that that’s exactly what you’ve been doing to me for the last eighteen months?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Rhys said tersely. ‘I always said that we’d get married once I took over from Todd. And what the hell is there to argue about anyway? You’ve got what you want. I’ve agreed to get married now even though I’ll still have to be away a lot and we won’t have the settled life that I wanted, that I’ve been working for.’
Rhys had the power to make her feel guilty, and she felt that way now. After all it wasn’t his fault that Todd had to stay in England for another year; it was that damn Lynette’s. Alix felt a profound hatred for the woman who had delayed her marriage, who had caused her to coerce Rhys, who had even dared to flirt with him right in front of her. She put the hatred aside, but stored it in her mind.
But pride made her say stiffly, ‘I’m sorry. If you don’t want to get married now you don’t have to. You don’t have to marry me at all if you don’t want to.’
‘Of course I want to marry you.’
‘Really? I’m beginning to wonder.’
‘Don’t be so damn childish.’
‘I am not a child!’ she declared angrily, sitting forward in her seat, her body tense.
Rhys swore under his breath. ‘Do we have to argue about this while I’m driving?’
‘Stop, then. Let me drive.’
To her surprise, Rhys did pull in to the side of the road. She went to open her door, to go round to the driver’s side, but Rhys reached out and pulled her roughly to him. ‘There’s only one way to deal with an argumentative chit like you,’ he said tersely, and put a hand behind her head as he took her mouth.
For a few moments she resisted him, tried to turn away, but his grip tightened and she had no alternative but to let him do what he wanted. Soon his kiss, as always, aroused her senses. Alix gave a small sigh and, abandoning the vain struggle, surrendered her lips to him. Her arms went round his neck and she was lost in the welcome forgetfulness of everything else except being in his arms.
‘Idiot,’ Rhys breathed against her neck when he at last released her lips. ‘Don’t ever say that to me again. Not want to marry you, indeed! You know you’re the only girl in the world I want.’
‘Oh, Rhys,’ Alix gave him a misty-eyed look. ‘We’ve had our first real fight.’
He gave a burst of laughter, but then grinned at her teasingly. ‘Let’s do it again—I’m enjoying making up.’
She gave a shudder. ‘No, definitely not. I don’t like it at all.’
‘OK, we won’t.’ Rhys put a finger to trace the outline of her lips, saw the questioning look in her eyes and said on a rather rueful note, ‘Yes, you can go ahead and set the wedding date. I’ve got parents and grandparents ganging up on me as it is; I can’t hold out against you as well.’
She gave him a troubled look. ‘Is it so bad, wanting to be married soon?’ And added, with difficulty, ‘I’m—I’m nearly twent
y-two, Rhys. I’m ready to be married or—or loved.’
His eyes were on her face, but his was in shadow and she couldn’t read his reaction. His finger grew still as he gazed down at her. ‘Yes, I suppose you are,’ he agreed on an odd note. ‘My little urchin, waking up to sensuality.’
‘You’ve made me feel like that. The way you kiss me…What you do to me. But it isn’t enough any more.’
Rhys made a small sound that was suspiciously like a sigh. ‘No, I suppose I should have seen that. Can you last out until this wedding is arranged?’
She smiled. ‘I might make it.’
‘Good.’ He kissed her lightly. ‘In that case——’
He broke off as someone rapped on the window, and turned to see a policeman standing by the car. Quickly Rhys lowered the window.
‘Do you know you’re parked on a double yellow line, sir?’
Rhys rose to the occasion magnificently. ‘I’m so sorry, Constable. You see, this lady has agreed to marry me, and I just had to stop and—er—show her how pleased I am.’
‘Just got engaged, have you?’ The policeman’s tone immediately softened. ‘Well, congratulations—but you’ll have to let her know how you feel somewhere that doesn’t have a yellow line.’
‘Yes, Constable. Thank you. We’ll move on at once.’
They managed to contain their laughter until they’d driven away, and for a while Alix felt happy again because she was young enough to think that quarrelling and making up afterwards was romantic. It was only when Rhys dropped her at her house and she lay in bed, going over the evening, that she realised that even though she’d got what she wanted, most of it had turned out to be a mess. She had made Rhys angry, which she’d never done before, and that made her feel terrible—guilty and unhappy. And she’d never actually hated anyone before, her own warm friendliness always having produced the same reaction in others, but now she found that her dislike of Lynette Weston couldn’t be dispelled. It was her fault that she had quarrelled with Rhys, and Alix found that she couldn’t forgive her for it.
She was still feeling low the next morning, but when she told her mother that Rhys had agreed to set a date her mother was over the moon. ‘Oh, thank goodness for that! I’ve already bought three wedding outfits and I thought I’d have to buy yet another because the styles have changed again. Did he say when, dear?’
‘No, just said arrange it when we liked but to make sure he was free at work.’
‘And when do you think that will be?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to have a look at his schedule when I go into work on Monday. Not for a couple of months at least, I shouldn’t think.’
‘Well, even that isn’t very long when you’re preparing a wedding. It will be difficult to hire a hotel at short notice; we’ll probably have to have a marquee in the garden. I’d better phone Joanne and ask her what she thinks.’
Alix left the two mothers talking on the phone and wandered out into the garden. Her father had put stepping-stones in the lawn leading up to the gate in the hedge, at first for her benefit, but they all used them now, going back and forth between the two houses, as close as any people who were not related could be, closer perhaps. Usually when Rhys was home Alix would run through the gate to find him, but today she lingered in her own garden, within sight of his bedroom window, sitting on the old swing, idly pushing herself back and forth.
The gate latch clicked and Alix looked round eagerly, but it was Aunt Joanne.
‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ Rhys’s mother said with a beaming smile. ‘I’m so glad we can go ahead with the wedding. I’ve come to discuss plans with you and your mother.’
‘Isn’t Rhys coming?’
‘No, he’s gone sailing with David and your father.’ She must have noticed the disappointment in Alix’s face, because she took her hand and said, ‘Men are really a great nuisance when it comes to weddings, Alix. They’re much better out of the way. All they do is want to invite old school chums they haven’t seen or heard from for the last thirty years, or else grumble about the cost. So long as they turn up at the church on time and wearing the right clothes, then we’re better off without them.’
She linked arms with Alix and they walked down to the house, where Alix’s mother was waiting. She said much the same thing, adding that men weren’t really interested in weddings and couldn’t wait to escape from all the preparations. So the three of them settled down to talk bridesmaids and dresses, found the guest list they’d originally made over eighteen months ago and brought it up to date. Ordinarily Alix would have loved it all, but she was still troubled about last night, and had wanted to see Rhys to reassure herself that all was well between them. Ideally, she would have liked to go sailing with him herself, just the two of them of course, and had more than expected him to suggest it.
With an inner sigh, she gave her attention instead to the wedding plans, although she found that her heart wasn’t in that, either. To Alix, their wedding-day would be the climax to the one ambition of her life, and she had wanted Rhys to share it all; it wasn’t very pleasant to think that he had gone out sailing, had ‘escaped’, rather than come and join in the discussions. After a while she said, rather impatiently, ‘It’s pointless making all these plans when we don’t have a date yet. I’ll phone you from work on Monday with some dates and then you can decide where to hold the reception.’ She stood up. ‘Excuse me. I think I’ll go into Canterbury and do some shopping.’
‘For a going-away outfit? Won’t you have a better chance of something stylish in London, dear,’ Aunt Joanne suggested.
‘Yes, probably—but I think I’ll go anyway.’
Canterbury was only twenty minutes way, but it took another twenty to queue for the car park; Saturday was always a busy day in the town, and, as it was so near the Channel coast, there were lots of French people over for the day, swelling the crowds. Alix wandered round the shopping precinct for a while, then went through the old stone arch, across the cathedral close, and into the huge, ancient building. There were tourists here, too, being taken round by the guides, but she found a seat in a quiet corner and looked down at the choir stalls leading to the high altar. It was here that she was to be married, if it could be arranged. And it most probably would be, as permission had been given to her father ages ago.
Alix had been here before to imagine what it would be like, had sat in blissful happiness as she pictured becoming Rhys’s wife at last. But today she couldn’t get back into that state of euphoric happiness no matter how hard she tried. She wished now that she had never given Rhys that ultimatum, because that, really, was what it had been. But she wished, even more, that she hadn’t been driven to it. Reality had started to creep into her dream, and Alix dimly saw that the rosiness of it had paled a little.
She sat there for some while longer, then went out into the town and rang her mother to say that she wouldn’t be home to dinner.
‘Are you all right, Alix?’ her mother asked on a concerned note.
‘Yes, of course. I’ve run into a couple of old school friends and we’re going to have a meal and then go on to a film or something. Don’t wait up for me.’
‘No, dear. Have a good time.’
But Alix might have known that her mother wouldn’t obey her; she was in the sitting-room, watching television, when Alix quietly let herself into the house around midnight.
‘I’m in here, dear.’
Alix put her head round the door, hoping to say a brief goodnight, but her mother beckoned her in.
‘What film did you see?’
Alix told her, truthfully, but had to lie about the imaginary friends.
Her mother gave her an intent look, but didn’t pursue it, instead saying, ‘Alix, is there something you want to tell me?’
‘Not that I can think of,’ Alix answered as casually as she could. ‘Mum, I’m really tired. I think I’ll——’
But, ‘Something that you ought to tell me, then?’ her mother pursued.
> Alix flushed, guessing what her mother was driving at. ‘I’ve already said no.’
Taking her hand, the older woman looked at her earnestly and said, ‘You and Rhys have been engaged for quite some time now; it wouldn’t be at all surprising if you’d—made a mistake. Is that why you’ve decided to set a date now? Why you don’t seem so happy about it?’
Her face scarlet, Alix stood up. ‘No, it isn’t.’ Adding on a burst of anger. ‘It would be a bit difficult to have made a mistake when we’ve never once made love!’ And she turned and ran out of the room, leaving her mother staring after her.
Afterwards, lying in her bed, Alix remembered the look of astonishment on her mother’s face, and thought rather indignantly that she would have been less shocked if she’d announced that she was pregnant! It took a moment for the contrariness of the idea to sink in, then Alix chuckled in amusement. Her parents had been the teenagers of the sixties and in some ways were far more broad-minded than her own generation. She had certainly been astounded to learn that she and Rhys had never made love; so was Alix, if it came to that.
Next day, Sunday, Alix and her parents had to go into Hampshire to visit an aunt, who was recovering from an operation. They had lunch on the way back, then visited a craft fair, because her mother was into that kind of thing, so it was quite late when they got home. It was Rhys’s last day at home, he had to go to Prague the next morning and expected to be away for at least a couple of weeks. Normally Alix would have gone round to his place to see him, but things weren’t normal and he had gone sailing without a word yesterday. So she decided to wait and let him make the first move.
After going up to her room to change, Alix lay on her bed, the CD player on low, reading a book, but listening for the phone. No call came but around nine o’clock there was a whistle outside her window. Quickly she opened it and saw Rhys standing below.
To Have And To Hold (Mills & Boon Vintage 90s Modern) Page 7