Page 31 of Marry Me…Maybe?
‘I know that. I’m just worried that you’re denying yourself something amazing without realising how good it could be for you.’
Emily just gave her friend a placating smile, hoping she’d drop the subject soon. It was making her uncomfortable.
‘Please tell me you at least like him,’ Lula pressed, clearly not reading her ‘drop it’ signals today. ‘The romantic in me needs to hear it,’ she said, batting her eyelashes.
Emily grinned at her friend’s determination. ‘Actually, I do like him. He has this brooding, angry appeal. He’s quite something. Veeerrry sexy.’
‘Good. Then give him a chance, Em,’ she said, turning back to the mirror to apply another coat of lipstick.
Emily caught her snort before it escaped. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done.
Theo kept a low profile during the wedding, spending his time either in the workshop or the guest house, attempting to keep Emily’s unnerving presence out of his mind.
He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that if he did give in to his urges she wouldn’t turn around and start demanding more than just sex from him.
It wasn’t worth the risk.
He was still a little suspicious, too, about the picture of the two of them together in that misleading pose – but then what did he know about modern celebrities and the invasion of their privacy?
Nothing.
What he did know was that he sure as hell didn’t want to get caught up in it.
Emily was clearly a one-way ticket to Troublesville, and that was a place he really didn’t want to visit again. In fact, come to think of it, he’d bet his life she was causing some kind of chaos over at his house today. Perhaps making a smart-alecky comment to the wrong person and causing a fist-fight, or dancing on his mahogany dining table in her stilettos.
The more he thought about it, the more apprehensive he felt about what exactly was going on over there.
Perhaps he should go over and have a very quick check that everything was okay. His events manager had agreed to run this wedding for him, after he’d given her a large bonus on top of her regular fee for the trouble his mother had caused, so he was confident that the arrangements were going as planned, but he told himself he should make a cursory check anyway.
It was his duty as caretaker of the house.
Dumping the book he’d unsuccessfully been attempting to read on the coffee table, he took a quick shower and got dressed in a pair of smart trousers and a shirt and strode over to the house, which was now lit up against the growing dusk of the evening.
Walking through the smartly dressed crowd of guests, he craned his neck to see whether he could locate the bride – on the pretext of offering his congratulations on her marriage and getting feedback on how the house had worked as a venue for it – only to catch sight of Emily, entertaining a crowd of people next to the large stone fireplace in the drawing room.
He stopped dead, his heart hammering in his chest and his breath quickening in his lungs as he stared at her.
She looked utterly beautiful, in an elegant vibrant red strapless dress that looked incredible against the dark colour of her hair. Ashe watched her laughing and joking with the other guests, he felt all the times he’d caught himself smiling in the last week – remembering something funny or smart she’d said – come rushing back to him, and he had to forcibly stop himself from striding over there to listen in to the story she was regaling her audience with.
His whole body throbbed with the control he had to exercise over it.
Don’t do it, Theo, it’s not worth it.
Someone put a gentle hand on his arm, making him start, and he tore his eyes away from Emily to see a short, pretty woman smiling up at him, swaying slightly on her heels as if high on champagne and joy. Judging by the fact she was wearing a wedding dress, he guessed this must be Lula.
‘Lord Berkeley?’
‘Theo,’ he corrected her distractedly.
She smiled. ‘I wanted to come over and thank you for letting Tristan and I use your beautiful house for our wedding. You know, I used to live in the nearby village and I passed this house every day on the bus on the way to school. I had whimsical dreams about getting married here for years. It seemed like such a romantic place.’ She tightened her grip on his arm, squeezing it in gratitude before letting go. ‘Thank you so much for making it happen.’
He nodded. ‘It was all down to Emily, actually. She’s the one who persuaded my mother to change her mind. I’m sorry, by the way, for causing you the stress of thinking you had to find somewhere else at such short notice. I had no idea my mother had done it until I got home to an answer machine full of distressed messages. The woman’s a law unto herself.’
Lula glanced over to where Emily stood, entertaining the crowd gathered around her with another tale that made them all laugh as one. ‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Emily more buzzed than when she was coming here to have dinner with you.’ Sheleaned in conspiratorially, widening her blue eyes at him in a beseeching manner. ‘She’s had a pretty tough life and she deserves some happiness.’
He gave her a stiff smile, uncomfortable at Lula’s implication that it should be him making her happy. ‘Funny – that’s what she says about you.’
Her returning smile was warm. ‘Yeah, we’re both a bit messed up in our own special ways. Parents eh, who’d have ’em?’
