Page 46 of The Wedding Proposal
‘Fuck me,’ marvelled Charlie, eloquently. ‘As a joke?’
‘No, as a matchmaking exercise,’ burst in Kayleigh. And began to laugh.
Suddenly Elle discovered her sense of the ridiculous and let out a giggle. ‘I don’t think he realised that Lucas had a girlfriend.’
Picking up the holdall that he’d dropped, Charlie raised interested eyebrows at his brother. ‘I didn’t know he had, either.’
Elle looked from Lucas to Kayleigh to Charlie. ‘Of course he has,’ she said, blankly. ‘It’s Kayleigh.’
Charlie gave a short laugh. ‘Kayleigh’s not his girlfriend. She’s mine.’ As if to prove it, he dropped his bag and yanked Kayleigh into his arms for an enthusiastic kiss.
Chapter Thirteen
Elle could only gaze at Lucas. ‘What?’
Lucas looked as if he wished he could untie the Shady Lady and sail her far away. ‘Um—’
Kayleigh snuggled her cheek against Charlie’s shoulder. ‘I’m over here for a European-wide conference about children with cancer, which takes place next week at a hotel in Qawra. Charlie didn’t think he’d get time off work and I had holiday to take so I thought I’d come early and let Lucas show me the sights.’ She grinned. ‘When I arrived, Lucas got all embarrassed and said he might have let you think I was his girlfriend, so would I at least not tell you that I’m not.’
‘I never actually said that Kayleigh was my girlfriend.’ Lucas was uncharacteristically defensive. His eyes slid from Elle’s. It was the only time she’d known him not be able to meet her gaze. ‘I said I was expecting a girl. You assumed we were in a relationship. I didn’t tell a single lie.’
Elle gaped at him. Then her eyes began to prickle. ‘But you let me think it. Why did you let me make that assumption? Why ask Kayleigh to go along with it?’
‘I suppose it was convenient,’ he began, slowly, ‘in the same way that it was convenient for you to let Oscar believe I was your boyfriend when you wanted to fend him off.’
Humiliation rose up to roar its fury in her ears. ‘But I didn’t need fending off! I was off! And dishonesty from you, Lucas? The man who always said that lies of omission are as bad as lies of commission? The one who had the cheek to call me secretive? Why the hell did you create such an elaborate deception?’
Finally, Lucas looked at her properly, at her trembling lip, her fists clenched impotently at her sides. His gaze seared into her tear-filled eyes. ‘I suppose I must have really wanted to hurt you.’
* * *
Elle spent the day somewhere. Lucas had no idea where she was, but he was all too aware that she wasn’t on the boat.
When she’d turned and walked woodenly away, along the waterfront towards Sliema, he’d stared after her, his words ringing in his ears, not having the first idea how to call them back, replace them, explain them or to wipe the pain from her face.
‘That was shitty,’ Charlie observed candidly. ‘Kayleigh, why did you go along with it?’
Kayleigh’s habitual smiles had vanished. ‘Lucas let me assume that he was trying to get her to show she wasn’t over him so that he could do something about it. Lucas, if I’d known that you were going to use me as petty vengeance, I would have told you to stuff it. That’s so not you.’
‘No,’ he managed, huskily. ‘It was shitty.’
‘You need to apologise. And not to us.’ Charlie picked up his luggage. ‘Where’s your hotel, Kay?’
* * *
Yesterday evening’s dive to put Advanced Open Water Diver candidates through their paces in dark waters lit only with head lamps and flashlights, followed by a few scant hours in a bar and a night on Vern’s inadequate sofa, had made Lucas weary. But being found out in his uncharacteristic deceit was heavy on his mind. He lay on the double bed in his cabin, waiting equally fruitlessly to fall asleep or to hear Elle’s footsteps, staring at puffs of white cloud through the skylights, listening to the sounds from the road and voices of people passing along the quayside.
He felt shaky and queasy. And it wasn’t anything to do with not having eaten more than a bite or two of breakfast.
If this horrible, slimy feeling of self-loathing was how being dishonest felt, he wondered that anybody was ever anything but honourable.
Misleading Elle hadn’t been planned. But that first day, when he’d found her standing on the quayside with her suitcases, looking just so fucking horrified and aghast to find him on the boat, he’d lost hold of his composure. I’m expecting a visitor, soon. A girl. The words had flowed from his lips without him considering where he was going with them. But the dismay on her face had given him so much satisfaction that She’s Charlie’s girlfriend had somehow stuck on the wrong side of his lips.
He’d told himself that he wasn’t telling any actual lies. That he was just avoiding the humiliation of revealing that, since Elle, he’d operated a catch-and-throw-back policy while he nursed wounds that refused to heal.
Hadn’t he just intended to give himself time to turn over in his mind what Elle’s recoil from his words could have meant? Kayleigh had formed a handy barrier, a refuge from his own feelings and from the necessity of deciding on action and taking it.
Kayleigh had asked if he was being honest with himself. But now he was alone in his cabin with Elle’s haunted face hanging before his eyes alongside Charlie’s disillusion and Kayleigh’s accusation, he knew that he hadn’t been honest with anyone. Until today, when he’d told Elle he’d just wanted to hurt her. That had definitely come straight from his heart.
