Jessica Hart - Appointment at the Altar

Lucy let Guy do that, and watched the two of them as they talked. They made a good couple, she couldn’t help thinking, both witty, intelligent, good-looking and charming. She really wanted to dislike Saskia, but she found herself admiring her instead and feeling deeply inadequate in comparison.

It was clear that Saskia was what Meredith would call a serious person. She was clever, attractive, successful, interesting and what was worse, she seemed genuinely nice. As Bill Sheldon’s daughter, she evidently came from the same privileged background as Guy, but Lucy gathered from the conversation that she was a successful corporate lawyer in her own right.

Guy ought to be with a woman like Saskia, Lucy realised dully. She was surprised that he couldn’t see it for himself. How could he look at her standing next to Saskia and not compare them? On the one hand, a mature, capable, beautiful woman, and, on the other, herself: scatty, cheaply dressed, unqualified, not a single accomplishment to her name. You look all grown-up , Guy had said and, although she had been pleased at the time, now she wondered if it meant that he normally thought of her as an adolescent, someone young and silly instead of the competent twenty-six-year-old she could be if she tried.

It was time she grew up.

The evening seemed endless. Lucy smiled brightly and chatted and longed for it to be over. It was a huge relief when Guy suggested they go.

‘Are your shoes up for a walk?’ he asked when they got outside. ‘It’s too nice an evening to go straight home, and I could do with a bit of air. Do you mind?’

They headed through Covent Garden and down Long Acre into Trafalgar Square, not touching, not talking much either, but Lucy was intensely conscious of Guy by her side, of his easy stride, of the familiar set of his shoulders and the hard, exciting angles of his face. The fuzzy light from streetlamps cast a protective blur over everything, hiding her expression, and her blood hummed with awareness and a kind of sadness. She couldn’t imagine many more occasions when she would be alone with Guy like this.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Guy said as they walked down the steps in front of the National Gallery. ‘I know tonight wasn’t much fun, but you did brilliantly. You charmed the pants off Bill Sheldon and his crusty old cronies. I was proud of you, even if you’re not really my fiancée.’

‘I felt horribly out of place,’ Lucy confessed. The evening had been a depressing reminder of just how little she belonged in Guy’s world.

‘You didn’t look it,’ said Guy. ‘You looked fantastic.’ He stopped at the bottom of the steps and Lucy faltered to a halt as he turned to face her where she stood, a couple of steps above him so that their faces were on the same level. ‘You still do,’ he said.

His voice, very deep and very low, set Lucy’s heart drumming painfully in her chest, and the look in his eyes made her pulse boom so thunderously that she could barely hear. Trafalgar Square was thronging with people, even at this time of night, and there was a steady stream of traffic heading down to Big Ben, but standing there on the steps Lucy felt as if the two of them were quite alone in the heart of the city.

‘Th-thank you,’ she stammered, only to catch her breath as Guy reached out and put his hands at her waist to draw her down the last step towards him.

‘I’d really like to kiss you,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all night, ever since you opened the door wearing that dress. No, longer than that. Since the last time I kissed you. Can I kiss you again?’

‘I don’t…don’t think that…would be a very good idea,’ Lucy managed with difficulty. She had forgotten how to talk properly. Her voice was staggering up and down the scales, and she kept taking a breath in the wrong places so that her words came out sounding most peculiar.

And all the time Guy’s hands were sliding warmly around, pulling her into his body, making it even harder to think.

‘Why not?’ he murmured, kissing the side of her neck, and she shivered.

‘Because…because…’ Lucy’s senses were reeling and her mind seemed to have given up on the effort required to string a few coherent words together.

His lips were drifting tantalisingly along her jaw. ‘That’s not a good enough reason,’ he said, teasing laughter rippling through his voice.

‘Why kiss me, then?’ she asked unsteadily.

‘Because…because…’ His mouth was very close to hers now. ‘Don’t you want me to?’ he whispered.

That was unfair. He must know that every fibre of her was screaming Yes! Yes! Kiss me now! Kiss me for ever! Lucy swallowed. ‘It’s not that, it’s just…’

‘That you don’t want to admit that you do want me to?’ Guy murmured against her mouth, and Lucy couldn’t hold out any longer.

‘Yes,’ she said, and felt his lips curve in a smile the moment before they possessed hers.

She melted into him, winding her arms around his neck and parting her lips so that she could kiss him back the way she had longed to do. It was bliss to be able to taste him, to tangle her fingers in his hair, to press against all that lovely, lean, muscled strength while her body sang and her senses spun and everything in her screamed out for more.

‘Lucy,’ said Guy breathlessly as he came up for air. ‘Lucy…’ He took her face between hands that were not quite steady, his eyes dark and urgent. ‘Come back to the flat with me.’

Lucy was trembling. ‘No,’ she said and that tiny word was one of the hardest things that she had ever had to say. ‘No, that really wouldn’t be a good idea.’

‘Are you going to pretend that you don’t want to again?’ he asked, frustration edging his voice.

‘No,’ she said shakily. ‘There’s not much point in denying that I want to, but I’m not going to. We’re working together, Guy. I’m leaving soon. What’s the point in getting involved?’

‘We could have a good time together.’

No, because I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you.

But of course Guy wasn’t going to say that. She wasn’t the kind of girl he would marry. She was a fun girl, a girl to have a good time with. A temporary kind of girl who had temporary jobs and temporary boyfriends and moved on.

Now temporary wasn’t enough-now she wanted forever.

Furious with herself for having hoped for even a nanosecond that he would say that he loved her, Lucy pulled away.

‘You were the one who told me I should grow up, Guy. You said I could be more than a party girl. You told me I could change,’ she said. ‘Well, I have, so don’t complain now because you’d actually rather I still just cared about having fun. It’s too late for that now.’

LUCY took a deep breath and knocked on the door of Guy’s office.

‘Come in.’

He was sitting behind his desk when she went in, looking distant and abstracted, but the blue eyes sharpened at the sight of her.

‘Lucy,’ he said. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

She hadn’t been alone with him since he had taken her home from Trafalgar Square, and the kiss had never been mentioned again. Lucy had tortured herself all weekend, imagining how things would have been if she had gone home with Guy as he had wanted, but she knew that she had made the right decision. It would have been wonderful, and, yes, they might have had fun for a couple of weeks, but when the party was over, what then? She needed more than fun now.

‘Sheila said that you could spare me a couple of minutes.’ Her heart was lodged high and tight in her throat, making it hard to speak.

‘Have you got a problem with the organisation of the party?’