Page 92 of The Wedding Proposal

Elle gave Simon a hug. ‘It’s so fantastic to see you again.’ She beamed into his crinkling eyes. His dark hair might be silvering above his ears but there was something of the free spirit about him, despite all his business success.

Simon smothered a yawn. ‘It was worth it just to hear the story of you confronting your ex and enticing him into the open for the cops to handle. That must have been really hard. Confronting Ricky, confronting your past and your anxieties about him implicating you. It took guts.’

Elle answered his yawn with one of her own. She wanted to go to sleep but she wanted to talk to Simon more. ‘It felt as if it was time Ricky’s hold over me was broken. You’re so sweet. It’s hard to think of you as Geoffrey’s brother.’

Simon threw back his head to laugh. ‘I guess that’s supposed to be a compliment so I’ll take it as one.’

She giggled. ‘Sorry. I’m being rude about your family.’ She reached behind her head and freed her hair from its clasp, pushing her fingers through it and enjoying the sensation of the breeze whisking it around.

He gazed out across the moonlit gardens. ‘I understand from Geoffrey and Fiona that you and Lucas . . . ?’ He paused, delicately.

She swallowed. ‘It was looking good. But that was then.’

‘I get you.’ He nodded. ‘It’s not now. There’s no way back.’

Simon putting her fears into words made Elle feel as if her options were narrowing miserably. ‘Don’t you think so?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve talked to Lucas, because he’s not just my nephew, he’s my friend. We used to work together and I care a lot about him. He’d never told me that he suspected you of cheating, you know. I guess his pride got in the way. He explained how you feel he let you down not just by believing you might cheat but by not supporting you with his parents. He didn’t realise how that affected you. He feels real bad.’

She looked down at her hands. ‘They’re his parents,’ she acknowledged. ‘It’s difficult for him if they showed their love by trying to close ranks against someone they thought was wrong for him.’

‘That’s true.’ Simon sounded as if the thought had never struck him before. He clicked his tongue. ‘But he didn’t try hard enough to straighten them out about that. Then there’s the thing about you not being able to trust him with the truth. His bad, again.’

She sighed.

Simon sighed, too. ‘He’s still kicking himself about that — although I think you could have tried.’ There was only sympathy and compassion in his eyes. ‘But that’s history. I’m real sorry for my blundering, if well-meant, attempts to get you guys back together. I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t genuinely thought that you were eating your hearts out for each other and that past issues could be straightened out. Now that it’s obvious I was wrong, it seems as if all I did was cause you both more pain.’

‘Not all,’ she whispered, swallowing an enormous lump in her throat. ‘We had a fantastic couple of weeks—’ She stopped, unable to force out more words.

They sat in silence. Seadancer rocked rhythmically.

‘Lucas says that he sent you texts and tried to call you while you were in England. You froze him out a little, huh?’

She nodded, lifting her eyes to stare up at the moon, which hung high in the sky, silver and luminous.

‘Because he’d let you down?’

Shrugging, she listened to the cicadas whirring in the darkness to attract a mate. Eventually, she said, ‘I had a lot to deal with: my mother and the police. I needed a bit of head space.’

‘He told me about the space thing.’ Simon picked up his wine glass from the deck beside his feet and sipped from it pensively.

Elle thought about ‘the space thing’, the cabin that Lucas had emptied on board the Shady Lady so that Elle could move in and dictate who, if anyone, came into it. Knowing it was there had given her a tiny glow of relief that she hadn’t completely painted herself into a corner. A silence drew out. Elle allowed herself to think about that space. To picture herself in it, waking up with the skylights bright above her head. In the double bed.

‘But, anyway,’ she said, trying to sound casual, ‘you’ll be moving into the Shady Lady, won’t you? She’s your boat.’

‘No, I lent her to you and Lucas for the summer, because summer’s a busy time in a vineyard. This is just a flying visit and Loz and Davie have kindly put me up. Don’t give me a thought because soon I’m going to be on my way back to California. I told Lucas the very same.’

The breeze took her hair and tickled her cheeks with it. She turned to gaze at Simon, at the shadows that fell across his face in the deck lights. ‘You’re playing me, aren’t you?’

He laughed, eyes crinkling with mischief. ‘That phrase reeks of manipulation and cunning. I’m just a friend who cares about you very much and thinks you might need a little help to meet Lucas halfway.’ Sobering, he reached out and took her hand. ‘I care so much that I’ve abandoned my business and travelled for twenty-three hours at a cost of over two thousand dollars to “play you”. The rest is up to you.’

* * *

Lucas sat up on the flybridge of the Shady Lady. It was dark and the kiosk was closed, the gardens and quayside deserted. The stars were pinpricks in the night sky.

A noise made him turn his head. Along the quayside came a man and a woman. The woman’s blonde hair blew behind her. The man was tall and a little older. Each of them towed a suitcase, and it was the noise of the hard plastic wheels running over the concrete that had carried on the night air.

He sat motionless, hardly breathing.

---