Page 19 of The Wedding Proposal
Chapter Six
Lucas lounged on top of the boat and watched Elle stroll towards him along the curve of the quayside.
Even from a distance he was clonked over the head by the way her legs looked in her very short shorts. Legs that he had in no way forgotten.
Hatless, she reached up and loosened her hair from its ponytail to let it blow behind her as she strolled between the yachts and the gardens that teemed with families now that the sun had lost some of its afternoon savagery. She showed no sign of being aware of how many men were checking out the hot cool blonde as she sauntered by.
He wondered which Elle was heading his way. The poised one? You could take that Elle anywhere from a formal party to a rock climbing weekend and she’d be fantastic. Fun, articulate, quick-witted, alight with laughter.
It was the wary, withdrawn Elle that he found harder to deal with. A hundred times he’d watched her slide from laughing playfulness to grave watchfulness, picking her words as if one bad choice would explode in her face. Hell of a trick to know what was going to kick off the transition, though.
The subject of her ex-husband, Ricky — that he could understand, even if it irked him. People liked to put bad relationships behind them.
His parents? Elle had never dealt well with their habit of holding themselves aloof from those who fell short of their standards. His mother was straight-talking, his father a little chill, but it wasn’t as if anybody had offered Elle money to leave Lucas alone or sent heavies to scare her off. He frowned. His parents hadn’t remotely succeeded in influencing him against Elle but maybe he’d been too dismissive of her anxiety that they would.
And then the subject of marriage had brought out her mild freakiness—
Don’t go there, down that labyrinth of unanswered questions and half-understood baggage.
She was drawing close enough for him to hear her flip-flops on the concrete. Her hair blazed in the sunlight and blew across the shoulders of her deep turquoise top.
‘Hey,’ he called down.
She looked up, shading her eyes. ‘You’re on the flybridge. I haven’t been up there.’
‘Come up now.’ He might have known she’d use the proper name. Most landlubbers would have called it ‘the roof’, but that was Elle: precise.
She disappeared from his view as she approached the gangplank and a few seconds later appeared at the top of the steps. ‘Fantastic,’ she breathed, gazing around at this open-air lounge — if lounges had radar and GPS equipment at the back and a helm at the front.
Lucas lazed along one seat, a bottle of water open on the deck beside him. Elle dropped down on the seat at an angle to his. Her nose was slightly pink and a few freckles had appeared on her cheekbones. She looked familiar yet unfamiliar. ‘How was your day?’
‘Good, thanks.’ He tried to ignore an echo of old conversations, when living with Elle meant something quite different to what it meant now. ‘I was on a dive with my favourite instructor, Polly, and we took four tourists over to Ghar Lapsi, on the other side of the island.’
She turned on the seat and drew up her legs, so that her side rested on the seatback and she could lay her cheek against her knee to watch him as he talked. He kept his own gaze on her face. It would be easy to let it follow the curve of her thigh down into those tiny frayed shorts, but she’d be bound to notice his eyes straying. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. Even more, he didn’t want her to point out that he’d long ago lost the right to take liberties. But his eyeballs felt weighted, straining to shift down so he could just check out—
‘Is diving dangerous?’
He blinked. ‘No, it’s not dangerous if you know what you’re doing and follow the rules. It’s a fantastic experience. Most divers are great people to be around.’
He went on talking about Dive Meddi and its clientele of tourists. The Shady Lady rocked peaceably, the breeze whispered in his ears over the background rumble of the traffic.
As he watched, Elle’s hair blew across her face. Her eyelids slid gently shut. Then he was hit by what it was that had seemed so unfamiliar — she was relaxed. No more staring into space and frowning, no more looking away when he caught her looking at him, as if worried that he’d read her thoughts and not liked what he found.
No more evasion.
His stomach curled to remember his casual enquiry about the man he’d seen her talking to outside her workplace, and her stuttering replies. It was no wonder he’d suspected the worst. Her hesitation over marrying him had assumed massive proportions until he was one writhing mass of suspicion. The Incredible Hulk had had nothing on the green monster that had burst out of him, wreaking carnage on their relationship.
She’d flinched as if his words were daggers, panic in her eyes as her expression had flipped through shock, horror and dismay. Then the familiar shutters had come down as he’d given her the ultimatum that had sent them careering to the end of the road.
Charlie had told him he was an arse. Charlie hadn’t believed Elle was seeing someone else. Charlie had offered to talk to Elle to try and discover the truth.
Lucas had bellowed, ‘What would be the fucking point of that? She’s made the truth obvious!’ But his fury hadn’t really been at Charlie. It had been at Elle, and at himself for allowing jealousy to turn his suspicions into disaster.
His parents had been pleased, as if he’d come to see things their way at last. Pride had prevented him from telling them the bleak truth.
Now that he could study Elle unobserved, he found that his major desire was just to watch her sleep, her lips softly parted, her lashes against her cheeks. She had chosen a seat in the shade, under the bimini. But as the sun sank it grasped her in one of its beams. A sheen began to form on her face.
He reached forward and gently pressed her shoulder. ‘Elle? You should probably get out of the sun.’
