Page 22 of The Wedding Proposal
And one section used for storing pornographic images.
Oh-kay.
She blinked at the first few pictures, all eye-watering but, she was relieved to see, not illegal; then, disquieted by her discovery, protected the area with the caustic password NotCool and shut down the machine.
She went round making the installation of new apps an admin privilege on the machines that weren’t in use, giving the admin user account a new password, FirstSteps. She paused, wondering whether that had sprung into her mind in relation to her first steps in taking control of this chaotic computer room . . . or her first steps in her new life.
Probably the latter. Even though she’d been busy all morning, a part of her mind seemed constantly occupied with Lucas. It was as if sharing the boat had thrown the past four years in the bin. Occupying the same space. Talking together. Feeling his eyes travelling over her like a shiver. Dammit, she’d even woken up beside him yesterday evening.
Her fingers moved over yet another keyboard, but her mind kept floating back to their first meeting when, part of a drunken version of free running through the night-time streets of Northampton, Lucas had literally knocked her off her feet. Elle had been wandering disconsolately through Market Square towards the taxi rank after she and a date had agreed to end the evening early and suddenly men had flooded down the street. Pounding over walls, sliding over car bonnets, hurdling chained up cycles, twenty specimens of stag night manhood. Rat-arsed.
Lucas had lost his tie and two shirt buttons as other racers tried to haul him back. Gasping for breath and choking with laughter, he hurled himself over grey guardrails at the edge of the pavement. Then a competitor crossing his line forced Lucas to alter his trajectory over the top of a bin.
Elle, passing on the other side, found herself bowled over like a skittle, head bouncing on the pavement, legs and knickers flashing.
Lucas rolled to his feet as if landing a parachute jump, abandoning the run to fall to his knees beside her. ‘Are you hurt? Should I get an ambulance?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Crossly, Elle yanked her skirt to its proper position with one hand and rubbed her head with the other.
His friends returned, solicitous, crowding, offering her, with equal parts enthusiasm and drunken hilarity, piggybacks, fireman’s lifts or consoling cuddles.
‘All I want is a taxi.’ She struggled to her feet, brushing off a forest of helping hands.
Lucas despatched someone to the rank to secure a taxi and before she knew it Elle was crushed in the back seat with Lucas and a beaming bumbling red-faced reveller introduced as Lucas’s brother, Charlie. Sweet Charlie, so unlike Lucas.
‘We’re much nicer when we’re not drunk,’ Charlie confided. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Elle.’
Charlie began to laugh. ‘L for what? L for leather? L on wheels?’ He’d laughed so hard he couldn’t catch his breath.
But Lucas hadn’t laughed. ‘Elle est jolie, elle est chaude, elle est parfaite.’ His eyes had been fixed on Elle as he’d described her as pretty, hot and perfect. She’d found it hard to look away. In a taxi rocking out of the late-night streets of the town centre towards Upton, where she had a flat, Lucas breathed, ‘Elle, je veux.’ She, I want.
Lucas returned next day, sober, clutching a huge bunch of fragile pink peonies. He hadn’t forgotten her building, apparently, no matter how drunk he’d been, and had located her apartment by ringing each bell in turn until she answered.
Dark hair glossy, jaw shaved, T-shirt hugging his biceps, Lucas looked a hundred degrees of hot. He stood on no ceremony. ‘How about I take you to lunch?’
It wasn’t in Elle’s nature to be that attainable. ‘I have plans.’ But she gave him a small smile as she took the flowers. ‘Thank you.’
‘Dinner?’
‘Extensive plans.’
He looked exasperated. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘Plans . . .’ She let her smile widen to a grin.
‘When?’
She tilted her head, pretending to consider. And then, as his eyes narrowed, capitulated. ‘Tuesday evening could work.’
It had.
Elle completed her task and fished out the key for the cupboard where computers and peripherals went to die, intending to hook up a discarded tower to see if it could be salvaged. It seemed as if the computer room had been run without expertise or common sense, so it was possible that formatting a supposedly defunct hard drive might be all that was needed to make the machine once again a useful member of the IT team.
She tried to concentrate, to ignore the ache in her chest at how good it had been with Lucas before everything had begun to go horribly wrong.
Before the day when a scruffy man she’d taken to be homeless had shaken a cardboard cup in her face, its meagre handful of small change jangling.
