Jessica Hart - Appointment at the Altar

There was a burst of clapping as George got to the end of his speech at last. Glasses were lifted to a chorus of ‘Lucy and Guy’ and then Guy was stepping forward to reply. Lucy was intensely grateful that she wasn’t being called upon to string two words together. It was all she could do to keep her smile in place while her body jumped and twitched with the need to crawl all over him.

Guy had let go of her waist, but he kept a firm hold of her hand. Lucy let her fingers curl around his, hanging on to his reassuring warmth and steadiness, and tried to cool the fever humming in her blood.

‘I want to thank you all for your good wishes and for being here this evening,’ he said. ‘I know Lucy is as touched as I am.’ He glanced down at her and she nodded her agreement, even managing a smile when all she wanted to do was to shout, Forget about them! Lay me down on the floor here and make love to me!

‘To be honest,’ Guy went on with a disarming grin, ‘realising that we want to spend our lives together has been almost as much of a surprise to us as it must have been to you. Tonight is the first time it has really seemed true, and that’s thanks to you. Being together feels very new to both of us, but it feels right too, and it’s wonderful to know that so many people are happy for us. Neither of us will forget this evening, will we, Lucy?’

‘No.’ She would certainly never forget, thought Lucy. She would never forget the moment when she’d realised how much she loved him.

‘So thank you all, very much,’ Guy finished, and there was another storm of applause, followed by a peculiarly expectant silence.

Still dazed by his nearness and her own desire, it took Lucy a moment to realise what they were all waiting for. When she did, her eyes met Guy’s and her heart turned over. He knew what they wanted. The smile deepened in his eyes, spreading over his face as he bent his head towards her, and there was an almost audible sigh of release from everyone watching as his lips touched hers and he kissed her at last.

The touch of his mouth sent a jolt of response through Lucy. The earth seemed to shift beneath her feet and the hand that wasn’t curled tightly around his came up instinctively to clutch at the lapel of his jacket and keep herself steady. It felt so good, so sweet, so right to be kissing him that she forgot that they were being watched by the entire staff of Dangerfield & Dunn and gave herself up to the sheer relief of being able to kiss him back.

Guy must have felt her yielding against him. His arm tightened around her and for a moment his kiss was hard and hungry. Lucy’s body flared in response to its fierce insistence and she pressed closer, oblivious to the watching crowd, to anything but the feel of his lips on hers, the taste of his mouth, the strength of the arm encircling her.

To anything but the fact that he was Guy and she loved him and she was in his arms.

It felt so wonderful that when Guy made to break away she made an inarticulate murmur of protest and held on tighter, but if she had forgotten the others watching with avid interest, he clearly hadn’t. One last hard kiss and he had lifted his head so that he could look down into her face. He was smiling but the blue eyes held an arrested expression and all Lucy could do was stare back at him, dizzy with wanting him.

The next moment he had looked away, still smiling, to lift a hand and acknowledge the cheers. How did he do that? Lucy wondered wildly. How could he seem so normal? His bones clearly hadn’t dissolved, his head wasn’t reeling, his body wasn’t humming in angry protest at the abrupt end to that kiss.

Because it had just been a kiss to Guy, Lucy realised, slowly coming to her senses. Why would it be anything else? And right now he was probably wondering why she had been kissing him back so lovingly. There was pretending and there was pretending, he would be thinking. She could practically see his mind clicking, raising an internal eyebrow as he inevitably came up with the right conclusion. Guy might be a lot of things but a fool wasn’t one of them, especially not where women were concerned.

Lucy didn’t want Guy to know that she had fallen in love with him. She didn’t want to see him withdraw slightly, to be embarrassed or to explain, very kindly, that he hadn’t meant anything when he’d kissed her. She didn’t need him to tell her that. To Guy, she had never been a serious person, and if you weren’t a serious person, you didn’t get treated seriously. Lucy could see that now.

Well, that was all going to change, and when it had changed they would see how he felt about kissing her then.

In the meantime, she needed to persuade him that she had simply been playing along in her role.

With an enormous effort, Lucy stiffened her legs and made herself move out of the safe circle of his arm, her smile bright as she waved and blushed the way a real fiancée would.

‘Well, that didn’t go too badly,’ said Guy as he settled into the back of the limousine with a barely suppressed sigh of relief. They had finally managed to extricate themselves from the celebrations, which looked set to carry on without them, and Guy had insisted on giving Lucy a lift back to Meg’s.

‘What’s everyone going to think if they see me hopping into my car while my fiancée plods off to the tube?’ he had said when Lucy had tried to protest that it wasn’t necessary.

It had been a long day and Lucy had to admit that she wasn’t really in the mood for the long trek home. It was a relief just to be able to sink back into the luxurious leather and close her eyes against the aching awareness of Guy beside her, the planes of his face thrown into relief by each streetlamp that they passed.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked in concern.

Lucy forced a smile. ‘I’m fine. A bit tired, that’s all.’

‘It’s been quite a day, hasn’t it?’ Guy shook his head, half-smiling. ‘I think we managed to brush through it all right, though. Everyone seems utterly convinced that we really are engaged.’

‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ she agreed, keeping her voice deliberately light. ‘You should have been an actor.’

‘You were good, too,’ said Guy, and his eyes rested on her mouth. ‘That kiss was really very convincing.’

‘I wondered if I might have overdone it a bit,’ said Lucy as casually as she could, although her heart was thumping painfully with the memory. ‘I wanted everyone to think that I was besotted by you.’

‘You succeeded. You even had me convinced!’

‘Maybe I should take up acting, too. That’s a career I haven’t tried.’ Lucy gazed out of the window. It was funny how her mind could nod approvingly at her words while her body raged in furious denial. Stop with all this pretending , it seemed to be saying. Just tell him how you feel, and then throw yourself into his arms. What are backseats and dark windows for?

Lucy made herself ignore it. ‘I do feel bad about deceiving everyone. They were all there for you tonight.’

‘And for you,’ said Guy. ‘You’ve only been at the bank a matter of weeks and already everybody knows you. I watched you tonight, Cinders. You were brilliant. You seemed to be having such a good time. You’ve got a real ability to light up a room.’

No, that’s you , she wanted to say. ‘We’re quite a team when we get going, aren’t we?’ she said lightly instead.

‘Yes,’ said Guy without taking his eyes from her face. ‘I’m beginning to think we are.’

There was a short silence. It seemed to reverberate around the car, and Lucy ran her tongue over suddenly dry lips as her gaze skittered away from his. Leaning forward, she peered out of the window. ‘The traffic’s terrible,’ she said, rather proud of how cool she sounded. ‘Why don’t I get out here and you can go straight home?’