Page 65 of The Wedding Proposal

So he went along with Elle’s wishes, keeping to his own space while she updated them on her mother’s condition.

Even after Charlie and Kayleigh headed off to a romantic restaurant on the bastions of the silent city of Mdina he strolled back to the Shady Lady decorously at Elle’s side as if nothing had changed between them.

They prepared dinner together and he nibbled her neck a couple of times, rewarded by her relaxing, laughing, rubbing her curves against him in the confined area.

But when they went up to the flybridge to eat in public view, he did no more than let his bare leg rest discreetly against hers beneath the table as they dined on cheese with Maltese bread and big dark red tomatoes, and all the leafy stuff that she seemed to like so he went along with.

As the rapid twilight descended and the lights began to cast their golden squiggles in the creek he watched her take a draught of wine. And then that tight, shut look stole across her face again. His heart dipped.

So when she put on a smile and said, ‘It seems only fair to give you part two of the Ricky saga,’ he found himself shaking his head.

She stopped, confusion bringing down her blonde brows.

‘You’ve probably told me enough,’ he said, gently. ‘I’ve been thinking it over all day and come to the conclusion that we can leave most of it behind us.’ Relief blazed in her eyes and he congratulated himself on making the right decision.

He knew everything he needed to know. Except for — A vision rose in his mind: Elle standing very still in the street outside her office, a man almost as close to her as he could get, talking vehemently into her upturned face. Seconds had passed, five, ten, then Elle had spun on her heel and disappeared back through the revolving door. The man had stared after her. And smiled. Lucas had found his breathing coming so hard that it blurred his vision, making him unsure how to interpret what he’d seen.

He reached across the table for Elle’s hands. ‘There’s only one thing I do need to know. Something that would affect the present.’ He kept his gaze on her, letting her read his eyes. ‘It might not be fair to ask and I probably shouldn’t, but I’ve grown up enough to know my own frailties. If I don’t ask it, the question will always fester. Is it OK to ask you?’

Her face was very still. Then she nodded, jerkily, her gaze fixed on his.

He drew in a breath. ‘Were you seeing anyone else when you were with me?’

Visibly, new tension entered her body. Her voice emerged huskily but her gaze never wavered, blue and true. ‘Are you asking if I cheated? Not once, not to any extent!’

A mixture of relief, joy and regret made his heart beat heavily. ‘So I just fucked everything up by viewing what were obviously your wedding issues as suspicious. I saw you outside your office building talking to a guy I didn’t know, and somehow turned that into you having an affair.’

Her hands gripped his as if she were clinging on to wreckage in the middle of a large and hostile ocean. ‘We fucked everything up,’ she countered, fiercely. ‘Neither of us dealt well with the pressures caused by needing to get married to go to America. But back up. You say you don’t need to know about my past — but don’t trust me enough to believe I could speak to a man you don’t know without cheating? If you want me to tell you about that, now’s definitely the time—’

‘No!’ She jumped at his vehemence, but he’d just seen sickeningly clearly that he could have spent the past four years with Elle, rather than without her, and all he wanted now was to find a way to go forward. ‘You’ve told me the only thing I need to know. Let the rest go, Elle. And I will, too. I apologise for not trusting you. I’m sorry that I used to get in your face. I’m working on respecting your way of doing things rather than trying to manoeuvre you into my way.’

It took several moments for her to soften a degree or two. She managed a tiny smile but it looked like an effort. ‘Do you mean I have to get used to you not saying exactly what you’re thinking?’

He gave a twisted grin, relieved to see the relaxed Elle breaking through. ‘I’m not sure I’d go as far as that.’

Her eyes glittered in the lights from the quay and she opened her mouth as if she were going to say more. Much more. As if truth was going to bubble out of her like molten lava.

Instead, she leaned over the table and kissed his mouth, long and deep. She didn’t seem to care who saw her do it, either.

Welcoming the passion, the heat, he silently reaffirmed his decision not to ask for more. Definitely. As it was, he’d almost asked one question too many.

But . . . what the hell had she been going to say?

Chapter Twenty-Two

Elle felt as if she’d spent the last years encrusted in concrete. But last night had blasted it to smithereens. She’d made an honest attempt to explain what else had happened with Ricky and Lucas had stated that he didn’t need to know. Apart from having her fidelity questioned, which she was trying hard to make allowances for, uncomfortably aware of her secrets, she could float as high as the Maltese sky.

Her euphoria wasn’t even dimmed by the kind of morning at Nicholas Centre that would usually have made her doubt her suitability for volunteering.

The two ‘children’ in question, both bigger than Elle, were the swearing duo from the previous day. Elle understood that their behaviour probably cloaked self-esteem issues or fear and that the troubled and vulnerable used challenging behaviour to disguise their real feelings. But it still wasn’t fun to be shouted at and a perfectly good keyboard slammed to the table over and over as anger blazed in the bigger lad’s eyes.

The trigger was that Elle had addressed him in English.

It was only a friendly, ‘So, tell me what you’re doing?’ designed to encourage the boys to interact with her rather than disrupt the whole room. But it was met with a hail of Maltese and only a few words intelligible to her — several swear words, which she’d picked up pretty quickly over the last weeks — and ‘English!’ accompanied by emphatic spitting on the floor.

Turning to three other lads who were huddled blamelessly around another computer, she repeated her casual enquiry and was relieved to receive a more courteous response. ‘We’re playing a sim, Football Manager.’

Her ‘That’s great, can I watch for a while?’ was almost drowned out by fists hammering on desks and heels drumming on the floor from the other end of the island layout. Not a promising situation, considering she was soon supposed to begin a workshop on designing posters and flyers.

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