Appointment at the Altar

completely separate conversations. Their mouths said one thing, their eyes the opposite.

‘Your jokes are terrible.’

‘You’re not that pretty, you know, Cinders,’ said Guy, drawing her closer.

Lucy’s throat was so tight by now that she could hardly speak. She didn’t think she could go on much longer. ‘I hate you,’ she whispered against his cheek.

‘I hate you, too,’ said Guy, and turned his head so that their lips could meet in a long, tender kiss of farewell.

Lucy let herself hold him one last time. Her arms slid around his back and she clung to him while she kissed him in a way that she hoped told him better than words ever could how much she loved him.

Her heart cracked when at last she made herself step back and out of his arms. Guy resisted for a moment, as if he didn’t want to let her go, but then his hands dropped and she was free.

‘Thank you, Guy,’ she said, her voice wobbling horribly. ‘Thank you for everything.’

And then she turned and walked away from him, as fast as she could, before she could change her mind.

‘Lucy!’ Imogen looked up in delighted surprise. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you! Does this mean you’ve come back?’ she added hopefully.

‘No.’ Lucy felt terrible. She had only been back at Dangerfield & Dunn a matter of seconds and already three people had told her how pleased they were to see her back. ‘I’ve just come in to collect my stuff.’

‘Oh.’ Imogen’s face fell. ‘I was hoping you’d have changed your mind. It’s not the same here without you.’

‘I was only here for about a month!’

‘It felt like longer. We all miss you, and I’m sure Guy misses you, too,’ Imogen went on. ‘He hasn’t been the same since. I mean, he’s still lovely and he’s always friendly, but it’s like now he’s trying, and before he didn’t have to.’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard you two had split up. You seemed so perfect for each other. What happened?’

‘We just agreed that it wasn’t going to work out,’ said Lucy after a moment.

‘That’s what Guy said.’ Imogen sounded dissatisfied. ‘No one can understand it, though. You were so obviously meant for each other!’

Lucy smiled painfully. ‘We weren’t really, Imogen. We might have looked OK together, but we’re very different people. I’m not the right girl for Guy.’

She had been reminding herself of that continually over the past three weeks. Guy was a serious person, and he needed a serious wife. Not someone who didn’t know how to laugh, but someone responsible, someone intelligent and steady who knew herself and knew Guy. A grown-up.

She had never really grown up, Lucy realised. She had just played at life, and she had been lucky because she had been able to get by doing that. But falling in love with Guy had taught her that sometimes having a good time wasn’t enough. She could have spent the past three weeks with him. They could have made love every night and laughed during the day, and it would have been wonderful, but it wouldn’t have lasted.

And loving Guy, really loving him, her heart would have broken when it was over.

Lucy had made her decision. If she wanted to spend her life with him, the way she so desperately did, she was going to have to prove that she was more than just a temporary girl. She was going to set up her own business and make it a success and accomplish something on her own. And then, only then, would she go back to Guy.

He might not like the new Lucy. He might prefer fun and frivolity. He might not be interested in forever, whatever she had done. But Lucy was prepared for all of that. Deep in the core of her, she knew that whatever happened with Guy, this was something that she had to do for herself.

It didn’t mean that it was easy. Missing Guy was a dull, constant ache in the pit of her stomach. She had done her best to keep busy, throwing herself into her new job and finding out about how to set up her own business as an events manager, but she hadn’t realised what a gaping void he would leave in her life.

‘I don’t understand what the problem is,’ Meg had said, exasperated, dragging Lucy away from the computer where she had been researching websites until her eyes were out on stalks, because anything was better than letting herself think about Guy.

‘You’re miserable,’ Meg told her sternly as she handed her a glass of wine. ‘You want him. It sounds as if he wants you. He’s straight, single, good-looking and obscenely rich and, let me tell you, guys like that do not grow on trees! There are millions of women out there who would snap him up in a moment, including me, and if you mess around like this he’ll be up for grabs.’ Meg shook her head. ‘If you lose him, Lucy, you’ll only have yourself to blame. Just ring him!’

‘I can’t,’ Lucy said, holding the glass to her chest with both hands as if for comfort. ‘It would be like admitting that I wasn’t serious when I said I wanted to prove myself. He’ll think that I’ve given up already, just like I’ve always done before.’

‘You don’t have to give up the business. You just want to see him-or are you going to try and pretend that you don’t?’

‘No. I want to see him so much it hurts, but I’m afraid that, if I do, I’ll lose my focus,’ she said. ‘I’ll just want to be with him, and I’ll slide into my old ways and let him look after me, and it’ll be lovely for a bit, and then Guy will get bored.’

‘Why should he?’

‘Because I’m not…oh, I don’t know how to explain it…it’s as if I’m not properly formed,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m all froth and fun. Guy deserves someone more than that, and maybe I can offer more than that; how will I ever know if I don’t try and find it? And I think Guy understands that. At least, he didn’t try and talk me out of it, and he hasn’t rung,’ she said. ‘If he really cared, he could have rung me.’

‘Maybe he’s just confused by what you want-like me,’ said Meg, but Lucy had stuck firm for once.

Part of her was hoping that her feelings for Guy would go the way of her other loves, and that if she didn’t see him for a while she would start to forget him, but it hadn’t worked like that. The longer they were apart, the more she missed him.

Lucy knew Meg thought she was mad. She knew quite well that men like Guy-tall, handsome and rich-were a fantasy for an awful lot of women, but it wasn’t the fantasy she wanted. It was the real Guy. The Guy who let his mother grumble at him while he quietly got on with making her life easier. The Guy who had been a surfer. The Guy who made people laugh.

Guy, whose kiss turned her bones to honey and whose smile made her heart turn over.

That was the Guy she missed. She missed the warmth of his presence and the laugh in his voice and the way the world felt brighter and better and clearer when he was there.

‘I’d better go,’ she said awkwardly to Imogen as she glanced at her watch. ‘I told Sheila I’d be there by now.’

In fact, she had made a point of checking with Sheila that Guy would be out when she came to collect the things she had left in her office before the party. She didn’t want to run the risk of meeting him and seeing all her fine resolutions crumble to dust.

It didn’t take long to empty her desk, although it was still surprising how much stuff she had managed to accumulate in a month. Sheila gave her a box and into it went a pair of gloves she’d thought she’d lost, assorted cosmetics, photographs, a couple of books she had never got round to reading, her camera-what was that doing there?-a half-eaten packet of biscuits, a box of tissues, some change and a pot plant that Imogen had given her to celebrate having an office to herself for the first time ever.

Lucy allowed herself one last nostalgic look round, and then she went to say goodbye to Sheila.

Carrying her box, she pressed the button for the lift and stared ferociously ahead, trying not to cry. ‘Come on, come on,’ she muttered, desperate in case anyone came along to share the lift.

At last it arrived and, to her relief, it didn’t stop until the ground floor. Lucy hoisted her box up into her arms, waited for the lift to settle and took a step forward as the doors slid open.

And there stood Guy.

Lucy’s whole body seemed to leap with joy at the sight of him, but she stood stock still, as if rooted to the floor of the lift, torn between shock and relief, elation and dismay.

‘Lucy!’ Guy seemed equally stunned by coming face to face with her so unexpectedly and a couple of other people waiting to get in looked from him to Lucy and then to each other, and then by tacit consent moved tactfully aside to wait for one of the other lifts.

Guy swallowed. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you,’ he said at last, eyes blue and hungry as they devoured her