Page 6 of The Wedding Proposal
Simon carried on as if Lucas hadn’t spoken. ‘I’ve never completely known why you split up. You never told me.’
Silence. Lucas refused to let himself fill it with explanations. Some kind of residual loyalty to Elle, perhaps? Or his own massive overgrown pride that wouldn’t let him admit what he’d seen.
‘I’m not sure that even your parents know the whole story,’ Simon added, encouragingly.
Lucas barked a laugh. ‘My parents don’t care why we split up. They only care that we did. They never hid their dismay over Elle’s past.’
‘I suppose that’s their privilege. I can’t say I thought their archaic attitude did them credit, and I told them that. Your father’s my big brother but that doesn’t stop him being a pompous butthead who needs to get his values straight. And your mother—!’ Simon halted, as if suddenly remembering who was on the other end of the phone.
‘Don’t hold back. You obviously feel strongly.’ But the fire of Lucas’s anger was beginning to burn down and he sank onto the nearest sofa, suddenly realising how shaken he was by Elle climbing aboard the boat as if she had a right to — OK, she did have a right to — shock and resentment at finding Lucas there written on every plane of her beautiful face.
For several seconds, Simon was silent. Lucas could imagine him over in California, frowning as he gazed at the neat green grape vines ranked in the morning sun on the south-facing slope above the house.
Simon was only a half-brother to Lucas’s father, Geoffrey Rose. Perhaps because he was a decade younger than Geoffrey, or maybe because his mother had been an exotic American rather than an ordinary Englishwoman, Simon had always been a cool uncle to Lucas and his brother, Charlie. Laid-back, feckless and fun, Simon bounced between the UK and the US, taking mad ideas into his head and acting on them. He’d fitted in well in California when he inherited a small vineyard from his mother’s family and rebranded it Rose Wines.
Are you Rose white, Rose red or Rose rosé? the state-wide advertising ran. Lucas remembered vividly how he’d leaped at the chance to take up Simon’s offer of a sort of junior partnership, utilising his management and promo skills at marketing affordable wines to the Californian cool kids.
He hadn’t foreseen that it would spell the end for him and Elle.
At first Elle had been jazzed at the idea of a sun-filled life in the Rose Wines vineyard. Simon had always been high on her list of favourite people.
Lucas, ploughing ahead with Project California, had quickly discovered that, without a sponsoring employer, it would be impossible for Elle to get a US work permit and social security card unless she was his wife. ‘So we’d better get married,’ he’d concluded, with logic but little finesse. Or romance. Or love. Or thought. Or sensitivity.
Elle’s excitement had gurgled away and her eyes had become places of shadows—
Simon began talking again, jerking Lucas back to the present. ‘I sure regret it. Elle’s upset and you’re upset, and it’s obvious that what I thought was a wacky way to give you a last-ditch chance to communicate was actually super-moronic meddling. Elle’s remained my friend throughout the last four years and I’d hate to think I’d endangered that.’
Simon cleared his throat. ‘Here’s the way I’m looking at it, Lucas. I said that Elle could have the boat for the summer, and I said it months ago. She’s lost her job and—’ He paused. ‘Well, there’s nothing to hold her in the UK. Being able to live free on board made it possible for her to do something she wanted to do.
‘Then you suddenly got this contract in Malta and asked me if you could use the Shady Lady as if me saying “yes” was only a formality. I’d just arrived in England for a flying visit, jet-lagged, and I thought how fantastic it would be if everything came right for Elle, for both of you. And so I did say “yes”. But life isn’t a chick flick and I should just have told you that I’d promised the Shady Lady to Elle first.’
‘But I’m family,’ Lucas pointed out, mulishly.
Simon’s silence was its own reply.
Lucas reached for the beer bottle Elle had abandoned. Closing his eyes, he lifted it and drank, his lips where hers had been, because nobody could see him give in to the temptation.
Once the cold liquid had eased the tightness in his throat, he said, ‘It would be a budget-busting pain to have to find a room or an apartment, now. The island’s heaving with tourists already.’ And he might as well confess. ‘I’ve told Elle I’ll be staying out of bloody-mindedness.’
Simon growled in frustration. ‘Compromise and conciliation aren’t exactly your strengths, hey, Lucas?’
* * *
Despite her fury at Simon — or at Lucas, she wasn’t sure — it took about three minutes for Elle to fall in love with Sliema.
She found herself a table under a dark green umbrella outside a bar to watch the tourists strolling along the broad promenade beside Sliema Creek and tried to damp down her anger with a glass of the local beer, Cisk — pronounced ‘chisk’, she learned from a smiling Maltese waiter, whose English seemed as natural a part of his role as his white shirt and dark trousers.
Sipping the cold golden brew, she gazed over the busy road to the sparkle of the sea, bobbing with boats and ferries in the sunshine. She soaked up the noise and colours, the novelty of being hot even in the shade, trying to lose herself in her carefully arranged new life and get past the shock of Lucas appearing like a grouchy spectre.
Presently, the smell and sight of the food around on nearby tables reminded her that it was late afternoon and breakfast at Luton Airport was a distant memory. She picked up the menu and soon the waiter appeared beside her. ‘Would you like to order, madam?’
‘Is the pasta good in Malta?’
He smiled. ‘Madam, we taught the Italians.’
She laughed. ‘Carbonara then, please.’
‘And another drink?’
