Appointment at the Altar

‘That’s such rubbish,’ she said, not quite as firmly as she would have liked. ‘It makes it sound as if you…as if we…’

‘Are in love?’ Guy suggested as she trailed off, a little uncertain.

‘Well, yes…which we’re not, obviously,’ said Lucy, hoping that she sounded more convincing to him than she did to herself. ‘They’ve just made it all up.’

‘I know, but someone must have told them about us leaving together,’ he pointed out. ‘One tiny snippet of truth makes it harder to deny the whole story.’ He leant against Sheila’s desk and rubbed his jaw as he thought. ‘I think it’s probably best to ignore it,’ he decided after a while.

Lucy looked dubious. ‘What if anyone asks about it?’

‘Just say no comment,’ he said. ‘They’ll soon lose interest. There’ll be something or someone else to talk about tomorrow.’

‘That’s all very well if a journalist rings up, but what about everyone else?’ she asked. ‘I can’t say no comment if Imogen rings up and asks why I didn’t tell her that we were having a relationship.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘I would in her position,’ said Lucy. ‘No wonder she gave me that funny look this morning! She was great to me and we got to be good friends, and now all she’ll think is that I lied to her. And what about Sheila?’ It was getting worse the more she thought about it. ‘How’s she going to feel when she reads that I’m apparently your new PA? It’ll seem like I’ve walked off with her boss and her job!’

Guy sighed. ‘I’ll call Sheila and explain, and I suppose I’d better ring my mother, too, or there’ll be all hell to pay, but we can’t tell everyone the truth. That would just turn it into a bigger story. They’ll go back to whoever contacted them at first and start poking around and, before you know where you are, they’ll be asking why we would have lied to Frank Pollard in the first place.’

‘So we do nothing?’

‘I think it might be easier in the long run,’ he decided. ‘Let everyone think that we are having a relationship, but don’t confirm the engagement. You told the Pollards that we didn’t want to go public until Meredith gets back, so we’ll stick with that as an excuse for no announcement.’

‘That explains why we haven’t told anyone we’re engaged,’ said Lucy, ‘but it doesn’t explain why we haven’t told anyone we’re having a relationship in the first place.’

‘No one’s going to expect details, are they?’

‘Of course they are!’ Lucy stared at him in disbelief. ‘No woman would smile politely when she heard about a secret engagement and then not ask any more. Oh, so you’re not announcing your engagement yet? OK. Nice weather, isn’t it? No, she’s going to want to know how we met, when the relationship started, and why I didn’t tell anyone about it-and that’s just for starters. She’ll be asking how our relationship works, whose idea it was to get married, when the wedding is, what dress I’m wearing and how many bridesmaids I’d like.’

Guy was looking appalled. ‘Can’t you just tell them to mind their own business?’

She just shook her head. ‘That’s not how women work.’

‘Well, I’m not going into any of that stuff,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll admit that we’re having a relationship and that we’re going to get married, and I’ll say that we’re not making our engagement public for now, but that’s it. I’m not saying any more than that.’

Lucy looked sceptical. ‘If you can get away with it…but I don’t see how you can, unless you only talk to men for the next few days. Which, come to think of it, probably isn’t that hard when you’re an investment banker.’ She dropped into the chair as the implications of the article began to hit her properly. ‘What about your merger?’ she asked, and Guy sighed again.

‘I’ll just have to hope that Bill Sheldon doesn’t read the gossip columns.’

The words were barely out of his mouth before the phone on Sheila’s desk rang. Taking a calming breath, Lucy answered it, listened and then put the call on hold. She looked at Guy. ‘Would you believe me if I told you it was Bill Sheldon for you?’

‘You’re joking?’

Lucy shook her head. ‘Uh-uh.’

‘Oh, God.’ Guy’s eyes rolled up towards the ceiling, but he had little choice than to take the phone from her.

‘Bill, how are you?’ he asked, his cheerfulness sounding forced for once. ‘…Oh, you did? Yes, yes it is a bit unexpected…No, we haven’t known each other long…it’s all happened rather suddenly…’

A muscle was twitching in his jaw by the time he cut the connection and handed the phone back to Lucy.

‘That was Bill,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Calling to offer me his congratulations,’ he added, tight-lipped, ‘and obviously to find out why I hadn’t thought about mentioning you before.’

‘Couldn’t you just tell him to mind his own business?’ asked Lucy sweetly, quoting his own suggestion back at him, and had the satisfaction of provoking Guy into a glare.

‘He suggested that I take you along to some party he’s hosting with his daughter next Friday,’ he said thinly, ‘and when Bill Sheldon makes a suggestion like that in the middle of merger negotiations, it’s as well to agree that it sounds like a fine idea. So if you had any other plans for that Friday night, you can remake them!’

Lucy bridled. ‘Why does he want to meet me?’

‘He wants to know if I’m the man he thought I was,’ said Guy. ‘He’s got reason now to think I’m keeping something back. If I’m secretive about you, he’s thinking, what else am I hiding? So we’ll go, and convince Bill and everyone else who needs to know that what we have here is a whirlwind love affair and nothing else.’

Shaking his head, he turned towards his office. ‘My life was simple until I met you, Lucy!’

‘Sorry,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Well, we’re committed now,’ he said, resigned, ‘so we’ll just have to go with it, and in the meantime let’s try and do some work here.’

‘Right,’ said Lucy, swinging her chair round to face the computer. ‘Right.’

But it was hard to get much done when the phone rang off the hook. Friends, business colleagues, reporters…Was she the only person in London who hadn’t read the piece in the paper that morning? And, of course, they all wanted to know if she was Guy’s fiancee and PA, Lucy. It was easiest just to deny it and pretend that Lucy was unavailable, although obviously this didn’t work when Meg called.

‘I know you’re a body snatcher and are holding Lucy against her will,’ she said. ‘All that going to work early was a dead giveaway, but now I’m sure that you’re an alien, because my friend Lucy would never even think of getting engaged without telling me!’

It took Lucy some time to coax Meg out of her crossness. ‘It’s a long story,’ she said, deciding that she owed Meg the truth. She didn’t care what Guy said about not telling anyone else. ‘I’ll tell you all about it tonight, I promise you.’

The more the phone rang, the more Lucy realised quite what an awkward position she had put Guy in. She had had no idea that one tiny snippet of gossip could cause such a furore, and it was hard not to feel guilty about the way her careless comment to Frank had snowballed out of hand.

Still, things could have been worse, she tried to reassure herself. The story about their engagement might not be true, but it wasn’t as if it would hurt anyone. Neither of them was involved with anyone else, after all, and the interest wouldn’t last for ever. Sheila would come back, she would organise the fund-raising party and when that was over…

Yes, what then, Lucy? a little voice inside her enquired.

Well, then she would leave. Appalled by the way her heart sank at the very thought of leaving, Lucy pulled herself together. Leaving had always been part of the plan. She had obligations in Australia, a promise to Hal which she needed to fulfil. After that, she could decide what she wanted to do. She could get herself another job, a proper job, even.

And no doubt Guy would be relieved to have her out of his hair. He would marry eventually-someone glamorous and responsible, to make Bridget happy-and Lucy would become nothing more than a funny story he would tell at dinner parties.

She could just see him, leaning back in his chair, ready to entertain everyone. The blue eyes would be dancing. ‘I once had a PA with a rich fantasy life,’ he would begin, and he would have that undercurrent of laughter in his