Page 30 of Marry Me…Maybe?
‘Are you still there?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he ground out. ‘Listen to me, Emily. I do not want to get caught up in the media circus you seem to inhabit. If I see any more pictures of the two of us in the papers I’m going to seriously reconsider whether Lula can hold her reception at my house. Do you understand?’
She swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want to have to start locking my gates.’
‘Understood.’
‘So we’re clear?’
‘As ice.’ She took a steadying breath, feeling the need to exert some damage control. ‘Look, don’t worry about that story,’ she said, crossing her fingers even harder. ‘It’ll be tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper.’
‘It had better be,’ he said, not sounding at all placated.
‘Okay. Well, I guess I’ll speak to you after the wedding.’
‘Yes,’ he said, and cut the call.
The guy seriously needed some lessons in charm.
Emily spent the next week at Lula’s house, attempting to keep her friend from going crazy in the run-up to her wedding day – which was lucky as it took her mind off Theo for a bit. She’d never been so preoccupied with a man and it was shaking her up something chronic.
It was time to face facts, though. It was clear that he wasn’t interested in taking their seriously messed-up connection any further and she was going to have to chalk it up to experience and move on…
The day of the wedding dawned and Emily wondered whether she was actually more nervous about it than Lula.
After weeks of flapping about, her friend now appeared to be in a state of otherworldly serenity – as if she’d reconciled herself to the fact that there was nothing else she could do about the arrangements for the day and was determined to enjoy every minute of it.
Ironically, they were using Theo’s bedroom to get changed intotheir wedding garb, and Emily couldn’t help but repeatedly glance at the bed and remember what had happened in it only two weeks ago. It all felt like a dream now. A very intense, erotic dream.
‘So, what’s going on with Theo now?’ Lula asked as she applied a second coat of mascara to her lashes with a steady hand.
Her friend looked utterly stunning in an ivory Grecian-style wedding dress, with her long hazelnut-brown hair twisted up into an amazingly complex hairdo of plaits and twists that would have made any engineer scratch his head in questioning wonder.
Emily shrugged. ‘Nothing, really.’
Lula turned away from the mirror and shot her a worried look. ‘Oh, no! I thought you two were getting on really well?’
Realising her friend needed to hear happy news to maintain her bubble of calm, Emily backtracked quickly. ‘I mean I haven’t caught up with him recently, what with hanging out with you in the run-up to today, but who knows? He’s a great guy.’
Lula beamed at her, clearly caught up in her dreamy world of romance. ‘He must be incredible in bed to have kept your interest this long.’
‘I wouldn’t know – we haven’t gone all the way,’ Emily muttered, trying to keep the touchiness out of her voice and her gaze from shooting towards his large bed.
‘Ah, so that’s the attraction? He’s keeping you at arm’s length? Wow. That’s a new one.’
Emily snorted, but decided to let Lula keep her fantasy that she was involved in an exciting build-up to a torrid affair with him. Her friend was such a die-hard romantic, but far be it for her to mock her views on love and relationships on her wedding day.
‘Do you think he might be The One?’ Lula asked innocently, her big blue eyes wide with hope.
This time Emily couldn’t keep back the splutter of disdain.
‘Don’t be daft, Lu, you know I’m not into all that destiny stuff.’
Lula eyed her sadly. ‘Yeah, maybe… but you shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it.’
Emily flapped a dismissive hand at her friend. ‘Not everyone needs what you and Tristan have.’
