Christmas Eve Marriage

The very idea made the breath dry in her throat. Something was very wrong, she thought, confused. Her body appeared to have forgotten that she was pining for Harry. It was Harry whose warm skin she wanted to touch.

Only yesterday, Harry had dominated her thoughts, and now when she made the effort to conjure up his handsome face all she could see was Rhys, turning his head to smile at her, the sunlight in his eyes.

Thea felt as if the earth beneath her feet had suddenly started to crumble. She was just tired, she told herself desperately. How could she be thinking clearly after less than four hours’ sleep? She would be fine after a siesta.

The waiter brought a little jug of retsina, and Thea tried not to stare at Rhys’s hand as he poured, but her own was unsteady as she picked up her drink and their eyes met as they chinked glasses. She must get a grip.

Looking quickly away, she reached out for a fat green olive. ‘Is it true what Sophie said?’

‘What about?’

‘That you don’t like our neighbours? What are they called again…the Paines?’

‘Oh, that.’ Rhys looked a little uncomfortable. He swirled the liquid in his glass as he picked his words with care. ‘They’re very…kind,’ he said at last.

‘But?’

He grimaced. ‘They’re just a bit much, I suppose. Especially Kate. She’s one of those women who believe everybody ought to be part of a couple, and seems to take the fact that I haven’t married again as a personal affront. I’m not sure where she thinks I would have found a suitable wife in the Sahara!’ he added dryly.

‘Oh, God,’ groaned Thea. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve come all the way to Crete to end up next to the kind of people who think being single is just a deliberately selfish attempt to throw out the seating plans for their dinner parties?’

The creases around Rhys’s eyes deepened in amusement. ‘Oh, you’ve met them, then?’

Glumly, Thea helped herself to another olive. ‘They’re part of an extended sub-species, copulus smugus, otherwise known as smug married couples.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, well, I suppose forewarned is forearmed,’ she went on as she discarded the stone. ‘I’ll be ready for pitying looks and questions about why I haven’t married and advice about not leaving it too long to have babies, because time’s ticking away, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t believe you’d get those kind of comments very often,’ said Rhys, and she stared at him.

‘Why not?’

He looked a bit taken aback by her vehemence. ‘Well…I don’t know. I’d just assumed that someone like you would always be with somebody.’

Someone like you. What did that mean?

‘No, I seem to be a serial singleton.’ Thea picked up her retsina and drank morosely.

The truth was that even when she had been with Harry she had never really felt part of a couple. She had kept waiting for someone to point a finger and say, Who do you think you’re kidding? You’re just playing at having a man.

Rhys was studying her vivid face over the rim of his own glass, noting the cloud of soft brown hair, the smoke-grey eyes, the generous curve of her mouth and the lush body. ‘You surprise me,’ he said.

Thea hadn’t been expecting that. Startled, her eyes veered towards his and then skidded away. That smiling green gaze of his was unnerving enough at the best of times.

He was only being polite, anyway. What else could he say? Lose a couple of stone and do something about your hair, and you might be in with a chance?

She sipped her retsina, willing the faint colour across her cheekbones to fade. ‘At least you’re divorced,’ she said. ‘I’ve always assumed that would be better. And you’ve got a child, too. You don’t need to prove you’re normal!’

‘Don’t you believe it!’ said Rhys with a twisted smile. ‘Kate is on a mission now to fix me up with another wife. Every time we go over for a meal she tells me about another “awfully nice” friend of hers she thinks I would like.’

‘Can’t you just not go?’

‘It’s difficult. The Paines are friends of Lynda’s—that’s how we ended up here. I haven’t been back in London that long, and the summer holidays seemed like a good opportunity to take Sophie away and spend a proper chunk of time together. It suited Lynda, too. She had some conference or something to go to, so we agreed that I would have Sophie for three weeks.’

‘It’s a very isolated place to spend three weeks,’ commented Thea. ‘I think I’d have taken her to somewhere more lively.’

Rhys nodded ruefully. ‘That’s what I should have done, but I didn’t even think about going to a resort. I thought a beach would get really boring. You can’t just lie in the sun for three weeks.’

Couldn’t you? Thea looked at him. He was obviously one of those hearty ten-mile walk before breakfast types who always liked to be doing things. The art of lying on a sunbed and flicking through magazines with nothing more strenuous to do than contemplate what to eat and drink next would be quite lost on him. Shame, really.

‘If I’d been a more hands-on father I’d have known what Sophie would like.’ Rhys was frowning down at his glass. ‘As it was, Lynda told me that the villa here was available because the friends who were originally coming out with the Paines had dropped out.

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ he went on, lifting his eyes to Thea once more, obviously trying to justify the decision to himself. ‘I thought that if the Paines were friends of Lynda’s, Sophie would know the children and be able to play with them, but as it turned out they’ve got absolutely nothing in common.

‘Meanwhile, Kate and Nick are desperate to look after us. Lynda obviously confides in Kate—she seems to know an unnerving amount about my marriage and divorce—and because they’re friends, short of being outright rude, I can’t get out of it.’

‘It sounds a bit of a nightmare,’ said Thea sympathetically.

‘It is,’ said Rhys, reaching for the jug of retsina and topping up her glass. ‘Kate’s impervious to hints that I’m quite capable of looking after myself. She went on and on about all these single friends of hers she wants to introduce me to when we get home, and I could foresee endless dinner parties if I didn’t put a stop to it. Eventually I just told her I had met someone special already and that I was committed to her.’

Thea was conscious of a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she didn’t want to analyse. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Have you?’

He gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘When would I have been able to meet anyone, let alone anyone special? I’ve been working in the middle of the desert for most of the past five years, and in the few weeks I’ve been back every minute of my time has been taken up with settling into a new job, buying and moving into a house and trying to coax two words out of my daughter.’

‘You lied,’ said Thea admiringly, trying to ignore the sudden lightening of her spirits at the news that Rhys did not, in fact, have a girlfriend.

‘I had to,’ he said, assuming a mock martyred expression, and she laughed as she picked up her drink once more.

‘Well, thanks for the tip. I might invent an adoring fiancé back home myself before Kate gets me in her clutches!’

‘Unless you’d like to be my girlfriend?’ said Rhys.

Thea paused with the glass halfway to her lips. ‘Sorry?’

‘Well, if we’re both going to pretend, we might as well back each other up,’ he pointed out. ‘If my supposed girlfriend was here in person, that would really shut Kate up.’

‘But she’d know that I wasn’t your girlfriend,’ objected Thea, not entirely sure whether he was joking or not.

‘How? I’ve never told her a name or anything about my girlfriend other than the fact that she exists, and Kate doesn’t know who was booked into the villa. She told me herself that she was wondering who would turn up and hoping that it would be a “nice family”. They didn’t see you arrive last night, and they were off on some day trip before you got up, so she still doesn’t know how disappointed she’s going to be.’

His face seemed straight, but that was definitely an ironic gleam in those disconcertingly light eyes, and Thea was pretty sure she had seen the corner of his mouth twitch. So he was joking.

Phew.

She thought.

Sipping her retsina, she decided that she might as well enter into the spirit of the thing. It was just a joke, after all.

‘Wouldn’t you have told her I was coming?’

‘Maybe you decided to surprise me?’

Thea laughed. ‘What, by barging into the middle of the holiday you’d planned to spend alone with your daughter? I think that’s a bit tactless, don’t you? Frankly, I can’t believe I’d be that insensitive!’

He was good at keeping a straight face but there was a definite twitch to his mouth now. ‘Perhaps we’d originally planned to spend it together but you couldn’t make it?’ he suggested.

‘But if I know you’re going to be pleased to see me, why book a separate villa?’ Thea was beginning to enjoy herself. ‘I mean, we do sleep together, don’t we?’ she joked.

Rhys looked across the table at her, his gaze dropping from the wide, quirky mouth to the generous cleavage revealed by her sundress. ‘Definitely,’ he said and, when he looked back into her eyes, Thea was mortified to find herself blushing.

‘That’s good,’ she said, although not quite as casually as she would have liked. ‘I wouldn’t want Kate to think that I was no fun.’

‘No danger of that,’ said Rhys, taking in the wide grey eyes and the mobile mouth that tilted up at the corners and seemed permanently on the point of breaking into a smile.

OK, this was getting silly. Look away from his eyes now, Thea told herself. Now, she added urgently and at last managed to jerk her gaze away. This was just a joke, she reminded herself as she tried to get her breathing under control. That was it, inflate the lungs, breathe out…and again…

‘Ah, so you just want me for my body?’ She tossed her head and the cloudy brown hair tumbled around her face. ‘I thought you loved me!’

‘I do,’ said Rhys. ‘Madly. You’re the woman I’ve been waiting my whole life for.’

Thea hated the way he could say things like that and look so normal, as if the idea—absurd though it was—wasn’t causing little flutters in the pit of his stomach or interfering with the smooth functioning of his lungs at all.

‘Then why aren’t we sharing a villa, if you love me so much?’ she asked almost tartly.

Rhys thought for a moment. ‘You’ve got Clara with you because of your sister’s accident and you need more space?’

Thea wrinkled her nose. ‘She and Sophie could always share a room,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s not as if the villas are pokey. There’s plenty of room for four in ours, and—oh, I’ve got it!’ She held up a hand dramatically, and Rhys lifted an amused eyebrow.

‘Go on, then.’

‘You’ve kept me a secret from Sophie so far,’ she said slowly, thinking her way through it as she spoke. ‘You’re not sure how she’ll react when she finds out that you’ve got a girlfriend.’

He nodded encouragingly. ‘OK.’

‘And I’m a bit fed up with this. If you love me as much as you say you do, why won’t you introduce me to Sophie? She’s the most important part of your life, and I want to be part of it too. You keep saying that you don’t want to rush things, and you think it’s too soon.’

‘I’m still a relatively new feature in her life,’ said Rhys. ‘I probably would think it was too soon to introduce another new person into it.’

‘Well, there you are. But what you don’t realise,’ Thea went on in the same portentous tone, ‘is that I’m sick of the way you’re refusing to commit, and now I’m putting on the pressure. I’ve decided to force the issue by coming out with Clara but, because I’m not quite sure how you’re going to react, I’ve booked a separate villa for us.’

Rhys considered. ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll be angry?’

‘That’s a risk I’m prepared to take,’ she said solemnly. ‘You might be cross, but you can’t ignore me. By booking my own villa, I’ll be forcing you to introduce me to Sophie, just as a friend initially, but at least then you won’t be able to pretend that I don’t exist.’

She was getting so into the story by now that she was almost starting to feel resentful at the way Rhys kept shutting her out of his life. ‘And with my own villa I won’t be crowding you, so you can’t be too angry. In fact, I’ve probably planned to be quite independent with Clara once I’ve made my point.’

Pleased with her own inventiveness, Thea sat back in her chair. ‘What do you think?’

Rhys was looking at her with open admiration. ‘I think it would convince Kate, and if it would convince her it would convince anybody!’

They both laughed, releasing the tension that had underlain the game, until Thea realised that Rhys had stopped laughing and was looking thoughtful instead, and the chuckle dried in her throat.

‘You’re not serious?’

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