much, I can’t believe you love me!’
‘I think I’ve loved you ever since I walked into the kitchen at Wirrindago and found you looking down your nose at me,’ said Guy.
‘I thought you were awful,’ Lucy admitted. ‘I couldn’t wait for you to leave…and look at me now!’
He hesitated. ‘No regrets about going back to Australia, then?’
‘No,’ said Lucy. ‘But I think I might be going back some time soon. It turns out that Meredith is in love with Hal, and she’s sold her house so that she can go back to Wirrindago to be with him.’
‘Hal and Meredith…?’ A slow smile spread over Guy’s face as he considered it as a new possibility. ‘Do you think that’ll work?’
‘Do you think
‘Yes,’ he said immediately, smoothing her hair lovingly away from her face. ‘It will if we’re prepared to work at it, to love each other and remember to have fun. And it would be hard not to have fun with you, Lucy. I only have to look at you and I want to smile.’
‘That doesn’t sound as if you take me very seriously,’ said Lucy, only half-joking.
‘But I do,’ he said, and his gaze was very steady. ‘It’s true that I resisted you at first. I did my best to pretend that I wasn’t smitten. I told myself that I didn’t need a scatty blonde, but the more I got to know you, the more I realised that there’s so much more to you than your capacity to have a good time.’ He smiled at her, very tenderly. ‘Even at the rodeo, when you wanted to stay at the party, you came back with me because you’re a girl who keeps her promises.’
‘I am.’ Lucy rolled on top of him, pressing her lips to his throat. ‘I’ll promise you anything you want!’
‘Really?’ He brightened. ‘In that case, will you tell my mother to stop hassling me about getting you back?’
She laughed down at him. ‘I will.’
‘And will you promise to love me for ever?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Lucy sighed. ‘I will, I will.’
Guy’s eyes were very blue as he gazed up at her. ‘Will you marry me, Cinders?’
Lucy held his face between her hands and looked lovingly down into his eyes. ‘I promise,’ she said, and kissed him.
Jessica Hart
