Just Say Yes (31 page)

Would he be bearing gifts? Flowers? Chocolates? An explanation? Suddenly, a whole field of butterflies took flight in her stomach. All she really wanted was his presence.

She was greeted at the door by a wave of warm air and a smiling waitress who asked her if she’d made a reservation.

“Table for two. I’ve reserved. It’s in the name of Gibson,” said Lucy.

“Oh, yes,” replied the waitress, checking the list for the name. “Your guest’s already here.”

He was sitting at a little table over in the corner, his face half in shadow and half in flickering candlelight. He hadn’t noticed Lucy yet and she could see from across the room that he was empty-handed, apart from the table napkin he was twisting in his hand. As she drew nearer, he glanced up and his face was such a mixture of guilt and hope that Lucy had to dig her nails in her palms. He looked so different in his smart suit.

It was almost comical how restrained they both were while the waitress was still fussing around taking drink orders. His polite peck on the cheek, her muttered hello—anyone would think they were business acquaintances. Yet inside, Lucy sensed he was going through the same turmoil of expectation as she was.

Finally, the waitress left them.

“I didn’t know you drank gin and tonic. That was your mum’s favorite,” said her father.

“Gin? Did I say that? God, I meant to order a vodka and tonic.”

“I can’t remember what I ordered either.”

“Half a lager.”

“Bugger. I could really do with a pint.”

Lucy started to get up. “They don’t serve draught, but I can try and get the waitress to change it…”

Her father laid his hand on her arm. “No, Lucy, pet. Leave it be.”

At the sound of that endearment, she knew she couldn’t take any more. “Dad, I’m sorry. I need the loo.”

Ten minutes later, she was trying to reapply her mascara with a shaky hand, wondering why they’d plumped for such a public reunion. They hadn’t even spoken yet and already she was worried about making a fool of herself in this smart bistro. Maybe they should have met at her flat, but she’d wanted this first encounter to be on neutral territory. She made it back to the table and, some time later, as the waitress cleared away their uneaten steaks, she had the chance to get a good look at her father. She wondered how he felt, seeing her as a woman for the first time, rather than as a teenager. An angry, bitter teenager.

“You look like you’re doing well for yourself,” he said as they sat over a coffee. “But I always knew you would. Where are you working?”

“I run my own marketing business, specializing in the vacation trade. It’s nothing grand but I like it.”

“Sounds good to me,” said her dad and the pride in his eyes made her feel light-headed. It was what she’d once craved, what she shouldn’t long for: his approval and approbation. Realizing she still cared so much about what he thought was scary.

She allowed herself a small smile. “I love working for myself. There’s risk but I like that. Having no one to answer to.”

He nodded. “And no one to turn to if things go wrong. You know you’re really living when you set up on your own.”

“That’s it.
Exactly
,” she said, surprised that he understood so well.

“I’ve got my own business too. It’s nothing so glamorous as yours, of course, just a small builders’ merchants,” he said.

“So you don’t work for Hudsons anymore?”

“Oh Lord, no. They went out of business years ago. I worked for a couple of other firms after that before I decided to have a go myself. Take control of my own destiny and all that.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. He had deep brown eyes and he was still a good-looking man, despite the gray hairs. He was still her dad, the man she’d once been proud to have pick her up at the school gates, the man her mum had fallen in love with and then out of again.

An awkward silence was broken by the waitress asking if they’d finished and both Lucy and her father refusing the dessert menu.

“I agonized for months over whether to try and contact you again. I saw all that terrible stuff in the newspapers. Those parasites made me want to punch their lights out but I thought that if I joined in, I’d only make things worse or you’d think I wanted to jump on the bandwagon.”

Lucy was going to tell him not to be silly but realized he was probably right.

“I phoned your mum, you know,” he said out of the blue.

Lucy fiddled with her teaspoon, trying not to feel defensive over her mum. “What did she say?” she asked carefully.

“Well, she didn’t slam the phone down, which was a start. She told me you’d gone off to the seaside for a while to sort yourself out but that you were back now.”

“Have you seen her?”

“I didn’t ask, Lucy. I think we’re way past reconciliation. She’s got her life and I’ve got mine. I heard a man’s voice in the background. Scottish, I think…”

“Hmm. That was probably Big Kev from the gardening club.”

“Lives there, does he?” asked her dad.

“Not officially, but he doesn’t seem to go home much.”

“She deserves to be happy.”

“Yes,” said Lucy, draining her drink and feeling uncomfortable. “Are you with anyone?” she asked.

Her father gave a wry smile. “I was. A woman from work, actually, but I’ve just been passed over for one of our suppliers. He’s got two things I haven’t: a villa in Tenerife and a clean license as far as his reputation goes.”

Lucy wondered whether or not to say she was sorry he was alone, but she wasn’t quite ready to be that generous. Not yet. “What about you? Has there been anyone else since that Nick bloke?”

She felt her body stiffen. That was one thing that time hadn’t healed: the raw wounds left by Josh. She still thought of him every day. Every time she had to write about Cornwall, or cottages, or even the seaside in general. Every time Fiona arrived with Hengist. When she woke up in the morning and last thing at night when she went to sleep. How long would it take for him to disappear from her world? Would he ever?

“I’m too busy with the business. I don’t need a man to complicate things.”

“No, I shouldn’t think you do. We’re nothing but trouble, eh?”

“Lucy!”

Fiona bounded up the steps to the cinema where Lucy was waiting, stamping her feet to keep out the spring evening chill.
Psycho: The Director’s Cut
wasn’t really her thing but Fiona had an obsession with Hitchcock movies and afterward they were going on to a new club in Piccadilly, where Fi was “on the list.” Lucy was aching for some escapism. The previous evening’s reunion with her dad had left her drained and, though it was hard to admit, had also made her realize how much she still missed Josh.

“Lucyyyy! Wait until I tell you what’s happened,” called Fiona as Lucy skipped down the steps to meet her friend halfway. Fiona’s face was glowing pink in contrast to her emerald-green trench coat.

“Fi! Are you OK?”

“Oh, I’m fine. No, it’s Fergus the toxicologist!”

“God, what’s happened to him?”

“He’s only gone and proposed to me, the mad bugger! Can you believe it?”

Fiona threw her arms around her and hugged her in a most un-Fiona-like way. “Poor Fergus, he must be heartbroken,” said Lucy sympathetically.

“Heartbroken? What d’you mean? Of course he’s not bloody heartbroken, because I’ve accepted!”

Lucy’s jaw dropped toward the pavement.

“Don’t give me that look. I said I’m getting married.” Fiona beamed.

“But he’s
brilliant
, Fi! You said yourself he was the cleverest man you’d ever met. Even cleverer than you.
And
you told me to have you committed if you even so much as contemplated getting married again.”

“Yes, yes, I
know
I did, but the thing is, Fergus makes Simon Cowell look like a pauper. He’s got his own moated manor in the Cotswolds and some kind of castle in Bute. Besides”—she lowered her voice—“you just wouldn’t believe what he can do with his tongue.”

Abandoning
Psycho
, they jumped straight into a cab and headed for the nearest champagne bar where Fiona ordered Krug. Then they went on to the club and were joined by Charlie and Fergus who was drop-dead gorgeous in an aristocratic, slightly ravaged kind of way. Lucy wondered how he’d ever cope with Fiona, but Fi was deliriously happy and that was all that mattered. It was Fiona’s moment so Lucy danced and laughed and tried to think of all the good things she had in her life such as her business, her new relationship with her father, and, as Mrs. Sennen no doubt would have reminded her, she had her health.

Yet later, as she lay in bed at the flat in the small hours, all she could think of was the one thing she didn’t have and how much she longed to be wrapped in his arms right now. She hugged her pillow, longing to be pressed against his warm, big body, safe in the knowledge that he’d be there the next morning and every morning.

She awoke shivering with the kind of hangover that not even intravenous Lucozade could shift. She couldn’t hear the comforting sound of Charlie moving about in the flat downstairs. In fact, every little noise she made, from her bare footsteps on the floor to the kettle boiling, seemed to echo off the walls, as if the flat had been emptied by phantom removal men during the night.

Unable to bear the emptiness, she decided to go for a walk, and even outside, everywhere seemed muffled and blank under the cloudy London sky. Wrapped in her raincoat, a scarf wound around her face, she was on her way into the gates of the nearby park when there was a squeal of brakes.

“Ow!”

The next thing she knew, she was lying on the pavement. Someone who appeared to be a sailor was peering down at her.

“Charlie?” she said, as her eyes focused and her head throbbed.

Resting his bike against the park railings, he held out a hand. “So sorry, darling. No bones broken, I trust?”

“No, I’m fine,” said Lucy, hearing him grunt as he hauled her up. “Have you thought of getting your eyes tested?”

“Often. However, I’ve never met an optician I liked the look of yet. Besides, I was in a tearing hurry to try and catch you. Lucy, there’s a Greek god on the steps to the flat and he’s looking for
you
.”

Her heart, already jogging after the collision, went into sprint mode. “
A
Greek
god?
”

“You know the kind of thing—tall, blond, chiseled, would look good naked on the walls of the Parthenon. I passed him on my way out.”

She could hardly squeeze out the words. Someone seemed to have Botoxed her vocal chords. “D-did he—did he say anything?”

Charlie looked puzzled. “That was the
weirdest
thing. He asked if you lived there and if I was Charlie. I have absolutely no idea how he knew who I was.”

“I do,” said Lucy, taking in the vintage sailor boy outfit her neighbor was wearing and guessing that he must be on his way to a
South
Pacific
rehearsal. “Charlie, I think I know who it is. I think it’s Josh. You see, I told him about your musical career.”

Charlie’s face filled with pride. “In that case, if I were you, apart from putting on a lot of makeup, I’d whizz over to the flat now before Zeus decides to fly back to Mount Olympus.”

In Lucy’s wildest dreams, when she’d first returned to London, she’d imagined Josh walking into her workplace, in
Officer
and
A
Gentleman
style. In her fantasies, her document wallet would fall to the floor as he swept her into his arms and carried her down the corridor past a whooping Lorna who’d be shouting, “
Way
to
go, Lucy!
” All the patients from the podiatrist’s on the ground floor would be clapping and cheering as Josh whisked her off toward…

She’d never been sure where because she hadn’t really known what she wanted to happen next.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, what are you waiting for?” said Charlie as she hesitated.

Lucy was wondering the exact same thing until she realized that the feeling that was keeping her frozen to the pavement was fear. Fear mixed with pride. Josh hadn’t been prepared to give her a second chance. She knew that she’d deceived and hurt him but she’d always nurtured that tiny flame of hope that he might have softened.

“I don’t know,” she told Charlie. “It’s just that I’ve worked so hard to get over him. I thought I had got over him, but if he’s just turned up to say hello or ask me the way to Buckingham Palace or something, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Charlie gave an exasperated sigh. “Lucy, I give up on you. Whatever he has to say, it can’t be worse than the agony you’ve been going through, my lovely. Now, be brave. Go and talk to him.”

Everyone was always giving advice about thinking positive, thought Lucy as she tried very hard not to run back to the flat. Thinking positive might work if you were pushing for a new contract or you’d been shipwrecked on a desert island, but in the case of love, thinking the worst meant you could never be disappointed. Just because Josh was here, in London, waiting for her, she told herself, didn’t mean he’d come back to
her
or for her. There could be any number of reasons he was here: he had business in London, he was looking for Luke. Yes, that was it.
Of
course
. He’d made one last attempt to find his brother and had decided to see her at the same time. Now that was sorted, she could be calm.