Page 12 of The Wedding Game

Could I use what’s left of my gran’s inheritance? Something tells me I can’t, or rather I shouldn’t. She was a pragmatic woman and would never have done something like this. Blowing her money on a ticket to New York to be with a man I’ve known for such a short time – it’s too crazy. The guilt would consume me.

Chris is scrolling for flight info and I have to stop him. I say his name and he looks up from his phone. His expression falls when he sees my face. He knows I’m going to say no – he can see it in my eyes. I must look sad. I feel it.

‘This isn’t what people do, is it?’ he mutters softly, obviously sensing I’m about to say something similar. ‘Normal people don’t invite women they’ve known for an hour to get on a plane with them, do they?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I reply, keeping firmly to myself the real and embarrassing reason why I’m saying no. ‘For a very long moment I was seriously considering it.’

‘Really?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I breathe. ‘I was very nearly there. Despite the fact that it would have been the most outrageous thing I’ve ever done.’

Chris nods, smiles, looks at the ground and then at me. ‘It would have been amazing.’

I swear my heart rate is well into the hundreds. ‘I know,’ I say, because I believe him.I think it would have been … everything.‘I’m sorry.’

‘There is absolutely no need to apologise,’ he tells me. ‘It was either the most romantic gesture I’veevermade or I am massively unhinged.’ Chris smiles and his gaze connects with mine as he puts his phone away.

‘I guess I’ll never know now,’ I say.

He’s so nice, so attractive, so funny, so warm and I’ve just said no to the most romantic offer I’ve ever received. Am I making a mistake? I could have borrowed some money from Scarlet maybe,again.I don’t know much, but I do know this: Chris is right. Normal people don’t ask women they’ve known for less than a day to get on a plane with them. But maybe this isn’t a normal situation … I groan inwardly. Oh, finances be damned, because practicality tells me saying nohasto be the right decision. Or else why am I doing it?

His phone rings again. Chris pulls it out of his pocket as we stand on the steps.

‘It’s my taxi again,’ he says, looking round for a vehicle that isn’t there. ‘I wonder if he’s in the car park. I should go and find him.’

‘Can I walk with you?’

He nods, picking up his luggage. ‘I’d like that.’ The warmth never leaves his dark-brown eyes.

Oh, what am I doing by not going with him?

‘Can I just say …’ I start, as we enter the large gravel car park, with the house behind us. The taxi is in the distance and pulls out of a front-line space on seeing us. ‘That I am genuinely really annoyed you live in New York.’

He laughs. ‘So am I, at this moment in time.’

Gravel crunches underneath as the taxi pulls up. Thedriver pings the boot open and Chris loads his luggage into the car. I feel strangely bereft with every passing second.

‘Can I get your number? Just in case …?’ he asks, closing the boot and turning to me, although his defeated expression says everything. We’ll swap numbers, sure, but we won’t message each other. Why would we?

‘Just in case I ever move to New York?’ I tease.

‘You never know,’ he replies and, because he’s so lovely and now so utterly unavailable to me, I torture myself, cave in and give him my number. Chris saves it into his phone and then says, ‘This isn’t the way I saw this day going at all.’

‘Me neither,’ I reply, and I make myself a little taller and kiss him on his cheek, lingering for a moment, two moments. I hear Chris breathe. I close my eyes, for a second, lingering in this moment. It’s so joyous, but bittersweet. I could turn and kiss him properly. He could do the same. I’d let him. I want him to. His skin is warm and soft and he smells of eucalyptus, lime, sunshine. But neither of us makes any kind of move and I open my eyes and step back.

Eventually he says, ‘Bye, Lexie. Another time, another place.’ He smiles again and my insides melt.

‘Bye, Chris,’ I reply softly, screaming internally for letting him go like this. But what else am I supposed to do?

And then he’s in the taxi, the door closes and it pulls away. The gravel scatters underneath the tyres until the car disappears through the open gates and turns the corner. I watch it until I can’t see it any more and then, when Chris has gone, I look up at the sky, trying to process what has happened.

It’s only just beginning to get dark and a hazy, twilit-bluecolour enters the atmosphere ever so slowly. Through all of that I hadn’t even noticed the evening fade away. Soon the sky will turn a shade of black and will be full of stars.

My mind is full of regret. In a matter of hours Chris will be up in that sky, passing overhead on a flight back to New York. And as fireworks start behind me, there’s a huge part of me that wonders if, by not going with him, I’ve altered the course of my life in some way.

CHAPTER FOUR

Scarlet greets me on the crowded terrace by producing her bingo grid from her clutch bag.

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