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
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
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 fiancee 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 fiancee 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.
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.’
‘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?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Guy. ‘But it might be easier if you’d think about moving in with me for a while. It would look a lot more convincing if we were living together, and it would save a lot of travelling time whenever we go out.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ said Lucy.
‘You’d have your own room, of course.’
‘It’s not that.’ Lucy didn’t know how to tell him that living with him would be torture. How could she be with him every evening and not touch him, not tell him that she needed him, that she loved him? The only way that she was going to get through this was to keep some distance between them.
‘I like living at Meg’s,’ she told him. ‘I’d rather keep some privacy.’
‘You’re not worried that everyone will wonder why you’re choosing to live with Meg rather than the man you love?’
Lucy could tell from his voice that he was amused. ‘Perhaps they’ll think that I’m saving myself for my wedding night,’ she suggested, but Guy shook his head.
‘They’re not going to think that, Lucy.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they only have to look at you to know that you’re the kind of girl who does everything wholeheartedly. You’re not a girl who stops and has a good think before she commits herself. You’re not sensible and prudent and careful. When a girl like you falls in love, she does it completely. She doesn’t sit at home and save herself.’
Lucy drew a breath and met his eyes squarely. ‘Maybe I’m not a girl like that any more,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’ve changed.’
Meg looked at her as if she were mad when she tried to explain why she didn’t want to move in with Guy. ‘That alien really did a number on you, didn’t it?’
Lucy had told her the truth about the supposed engagement, and had done her best to keep her feelings for Guy out of it, but, as she had feared, Meg had zoomed in on that straight away.
‘I don’t understand why you don’t go and live with him,’ she said. ‘Come on, something’s bound to happen if you’re both there in the dark. Guy won’t be able to keep his hands off you. If you ask me, he fancies the pants off you already.’
‘I don’t want him to fancy me.’
Meg stared at her. ‘I thought you were in love with him.’
‘I am, that’s just the point. I want him to love me-
‘Well, he will when he gets to know you.’
Lucy sighed. ‘That’s the trouble. I’ve started to wonder what there is to know. Am I just pretty, frivolous Lucy West, always up for a laugh, or is there more to me? And if there is, what is it? I think I need to find out, Meg,’ she said, looking at her baffled friend. ‘If I don’t know who I am, how can Guy, and if he doesn’t know me, how can he love me?’
‘You haven’t forgotten the Sheldons’ party tonight, have you?’
Lucy jumped as Guy appeared at her office door, and her heart performed a set of spectacular gymnastics. She had spent the past week avoiding him as much as possible, and when she did have to speak to him about anything, she had been cool to the point of frostiness.
Desperate not to let him guess the depth of her new, scarily powerful, feelings for him, she had retreated behind a barrier of cool aloofness that had Guy amused at first, then obviously puzzled. It had been a relief when Sheila had returned and she could throw herself into organising the fund raiser. She was given her own office, which helped, and, although Lucy missed the charge of Guy’s presence, it was easier not to have to spend the whole time clamping down on her feelings, or bracing herself against the urge to reach out for him and tell him she loved
