Convenient Engagements

‘Is it illegal?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Immoral?’

‘No!’

Gib shrugged. ‘Then why would I refuse?’

To her chagrin, Phoebe realised she had been manoeuvred into beginning to talk about Kate and Bella’s idea with Gib, exactly the thing she hadn’t wanted to happen! But she could hardly walk out in mid-conversation.

‘Because it’s embarrassing,’ she muttered.

‘For you or for me?’

‘For both of us.’

‘This is beginning to sound like fun!’

Gib strolled over towards her, and Phoebe found herself backing down into her chair once more. ‘Come on,’ he said encouragingly, sitting on the arm of the sofa. ‘You’ve got this far, so you might as well tell me the worst!’

He wasn’t anywhere near her, but Phoebe was desperately aware of him. She wished he’d go back to the fridge. If only he wasn’t so … so overwhelming.

‘It was just a silly idea,’ she mumbled.

‘All the best ideas are silly to start with,’ said Gib. ‘If they were sensible, somebody else would have thought of them before.’

‘Well, this one really is silly,’ she told him almost belligerently.

He smiled. ‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?’

Phoebe tore her eyes away from the warm blue eyes and scowled at the mess on the table.

‘All right,’ she said, giving in. ‘I need a lover.’

There was a tiny silence. ‘In that case, I’m glad I said yes,’ said Gib, and although she wasn’t looking at him, she could hear him smiling and the colour deepened in her cheeks.

‘Not a real one! Don’t be stupid,’ she snapped.

‘Right,’ he said, humouring her.

‘The thing is …’ Somehow Phoebe stumbled through the whole sorry saga of Ben’s wedding and her attempts to keep everyone in the family happy. ‘So we were wondering—it was Kate’s idea, I’d never have thought of it—and it’s entirely up to you, of course—you can say no, it won’t be a problem at all….’

She floundered to a halt, lost in a morass of sentences, and looked a little helplessly at Gib, who was studying her with a disconcerting half-smile.

‘Well, I’ve already said yes, so I’m sure it won’t be a problem,’ he agreed, ‘but I’m still not entirely clear what it is you want me to do, other than not be a real lover.’

Wasn’t it obvious? Phoebe was hating this. If she had to spell it out for him, she would, but she couldn’t help resenting Gib for not being able to make immediate sense of her incoherent ramblings.

‘OK.’ She drew a breath. ‘I wondered if you’d be interested in earning some extra cash, that’s all.’

Gib’s brows rose. ‘You’re offering me a job?’ he said blankly.

‘We had the impression that things weren’t very easy for you at moment,’ said Phoebe stiffly, borrowing Kate’s comment. ‘In the circumstances, I’d be prepared to pay you to come to wedding with me and pretend … well, pretend … ‘

‘That I’m in love with you?’ he finished for her, a smile lurking around his mouth, and she let out a breath that she hadn’t been aware until then that she had been holding.

‘Yes.’

His lips twitched. ‘You want me to be a male escort?’

‘Yes.’

There, it was out. Phoebe sat back, oddly relieved. Maybe Kate and Bella were right. He could only say no, and when it came down to it, all she had done was offer him a chance to earn some extra money. What was so embarrassing about that?

‘Well, I’ve never been offered a job like that before!’ Gib shook his head, but he was grinning.

‘It would be just a job, of course,’ said Phoebe hastily. ‘There wouldn’t be any … any of the reason why you might normally pay for a male escort.’ She could feel the treacherous colour creeping back up into her cheeks. So much for not being embarrassed! ‘I’d be paying you to be an actor, that’s all.’

Gib didn’t answer immediately. ‘You know, Phoebe, you don’t need to pay me,’ he said carefully at last. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we? If Josh was sitting here now, you wouldn’t even think of offering him money to help you, would you?’

It was true, of course. Phoebe wished that she had been able to ask Josh. He was so nice and reliable, he would have been ideal, but unfortunately her parents had already met him and knew about his friendship with Bella. They would never believe that she had come between those two.

Gib wasn’t like Josh. He wasn’t calm and he wasn’t safe. He didn’t make her feel comfortable the way Josh did. Phoebe couldn’t think of him as a friend like Josh when all her nerves jangled and twitched the moment he walked into the room. Friends were people you could relax and be yourself with, not people who made you feel as if the earth was unsteady beneath your feet.

‘I’d feel more comfortable if we both thought of this as a financial transaction,’ she said firmly. ‘That way I’ll be able to ask you to do things I wouldn’t want to ask if you were just doing me a favour.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like …’ Phoebe didn’t really want to get into what she might have to ask him to do to convince her family they really were in love. ‘Well, I can’t think of anything right now,’ she prevaricated, ‘but there’s sure to be something. Anyway, it’s already asking a lot for you to give up a whole day to spend it at a wedding with a load of people you don’t know.’

‘I’ll know you,’ Gib pointed out, unperturbed by the prospect.

‘You’ll have to get to know me a lot better before you can face an interrogation by my mother!’ she warned him.

Gib’s mouth quirked in a smile. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

There was an odd little silence.

That was the thing about Gib, Phoebe thought edgily. He would say something perfectly innocuous like that, and suddenly the whole atmosphere had changed without you realising how or why it had happened.

She cleared her throat and strove for a businesslike tone. ‘Well, as I say, I’d prefer to keep it a business arrangement. I’ll pay you for your time, and also for the hire of a suit and anything else you might need.’

Her face was scarlet by this stage. Gib hesitated. The last thing he wanted was to take money from Phoebe, but he could see what it had cost her to ask him to help her. Paying him was a way of saving her pride, and if he argued with her, it would only prolong her embarrassment. It wasn’t as if he had to do anything with the money, and he could always find a way to give it back to her later.

Meanwhile, here was the perfect opportunity to prove to all those Doubting Thomases like Mallory and Josh that he was just as good a friend as the next person. Phoebe needed him, and he wouldn’t let her down. He would be doing this for her.

The fact that helping her would mean spending a day in close proximity was purely incidental. If he had to touch her, maybe even kiss her, as part of the pretence, well, that was hardly his fault, Gib reasoned virtuously. It was just a lucky side effect of being a friend, and Josh wouldn’t be able to claim that he had broken the terms of their bet.

‘OK, if that’s what you want,’ he said briskly, deciding that it would make things much easier for her if he played along with the idea that he needed the money. At least that way, she could think that she was doing him a favour too. ‘You’re the boss. How much were you thinking of paying me?’

‘Well, I don’t really know …’ Phoebe was a bit taken aback by his abrupt volte-face. ‘I suppose I could ring an agency and find out how much one of their escorts would cost,’ she offered awkwardly, conscious of a quite unfair sense of disappointment that he had turned out to be interested in the money after all. He must need some extra cash very badly. ‘I could pay you the same.’

‘It’s a deal,’ said Gib and leant forward to offer his hand to seal the bargain.

Phoebe looked at it, stupidly reluctant to put hers into it, but she couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse, and it would only look rude if she ignored it. So instead she put her hand out, bracing herself against the cool strength of his grasp and the tingling warmth of his palm pressed against hers.

‘Right.’ Gib released her just as she began to think that it didn’t feel that bad after all. He was abruptly all business. ‘Tell me again exactly what it is you want me to do.’

‘I’m going to tell my mother that I’ve met someone special,’ said Phoebe, marvelling at how easily she had been swept along into the whole idea. Hadn’t she decided only a few minutes ago that she wanted nothing to do with it? Oh, well, she might as well go with the flow. Resisting the combined will of Bella, Kate and Gib would be just too exhausting.

‘If I know Mum, she’ll be straight on the phone to Penelope—that’s Ben’s mother—and you can bet your bottom dollar that an invitation to the wedding will be dropping through the door for you five minutes later.’

She hesitated. ‘The thing is, if my mother rings up in the meantime, and you answer the phone for some reason, you’ll have to be prepared to be cross-examined by her. Would you mind that?’

‘That’s what you’re paying me for,’ said Gib cheerfully.

Phoebe knew that she ought to be reassured by his down-to-earth approach, but somehow the fact that he was treating it as a job, just as she had insisted he should, was a bit disconcerting.

‘Yes … well …’ she said, somewhat at a loss. ‘Then, obviously, there’s the wedding itself. That’s when the real pretence comes in.’

‘The pretending to be in love with you?’

‘That, too, but I was thinking more of you pretending to have a proper job or something. After all, if I’m going to make up a lover, I might as well make up an incredibly successful one.’

‘Ah,’ said Gib, looking down at himself, his would-be regretful expression marred by the twitch of his lips. ‘That might be more of a problem,’ he sighed. ‘I can see why it would be good for you to have a wealthy and successful lover, but do you think I’d be able to carry off an image like that?’

Phoebe surveyed him with a critical eye. He was lounging on the arm of the sofa, wearing jeans and a battered leather jacket over a plain white T-shirt that stretched across his broad chest. Laughter lines fanned his eyes and creased his cheeks, and the blue, blue eyes danced. He looked vibrant and physical and—OK, Kate—attractive, and absolutely nothing like a businessman.

Her mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Maybe if you cut your hair,’ she suggested doubtfully, ‘and generally brush up a bit. A suit would make a difference, too. You’d better hire one before the wedding.’

‘It’s going to be a smart wedding, then?’ asked Gib, not unduly put out by her critical appraisal.

‘Yes,’ said Phoebe without enthusiasm. ‘The wedding party is taking over an entire castle. It’s been turned into a hotel, where all the rooms have panelling and four-poster beds, you know the kind of thing.’

‘Aren’t they getting married in a church?’

‘No, the ceremony is at the castle as well, so that everyone moves straight on to the reception in the gardens. And then close friends and family are staying on for dinner and dancing in the evening. This will be a more intimate affair, according to my mother, and they’ve booked all the rooms in the castle, so I’ve got to get through all of that and breakfast next morning, as if the wedding itself wasn’t going to be bad enough,’ she finished glumly.

Gib raised an eyebrow. ‘So we’ll be spending the night?’

‘I’ll have to, but we can think of some excuse for you. I’ll tell them you have to get back that evening because you’ve got a meeting the next day.’

‘On a Sunday?’

‘Not everyone has your relaxed attitude to work,’ Phoebe retorted. ‘It’s a well-known fact that all successful businessmen are workaholics! I don’t think anyone would be surprised to hear that you had a weekend meeting.’

‘Right, well, I’ll bow to your superior knowledge on that one,’ said Gib. ‘What sort of businessman am I supposed to be, anyway, in case anyone asks?’

‘We hadn’t got that far,’ she admitted. ‘What would you like to be?’

‘Perhaps I could say that I’m in … oh, I don’t know …’ He scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘What about banking?’

Phoebe looked doubtful. ‘You don’t think you should pretend to be something less … ambitious?’ she said carefully.

‘What do you mean?’ Gib pretended to be affronted. ‘You don’t think I look like a banker?’

‘Not really.’

‘Hey, I can put on a suit and poker up with the best of them!’ he reassured her, but Phoebe was unconvinced.

‘I don’t know that it’s such a good idea,’ she said. ‘Ben works for one of those big international tax consultancy firms, and the reception will be choc-a-bloc with City types. You know what men are like about sniffing out each other’s status. If you say you’re in banking they’re bound to ask who you work for, what kind of bonuses you earn and how many Ferraris you’ve got sitting in your garage, and what are you going to say then?’

‘I’ll say I’ve been working for some American bank,’ said Gib easily. ‘Relax, it’ll be fine.’

Phoebe wasn’t so sure, but she told herself that she could always tell her mother that he had come down with an acute case of food poisoning if necessary and go on her own as she’d planned.

‘When is this wedding?’ he asked, still in businesslike mode.

‘In three weeks.’

‘That’s fine then,’ he said. ‘I’ll have plenty of time to prepare my role.’

He seemed so casual about the whole thing, as if women asked him to pretend to be in love with them every day of the week. Phoebe chewed her thumb nervously.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?’ she asked, abruptly attacked by doubts.

‘Why would I mind?’ said Gib. ‘It’s a chance to earn some extra cash and drink champagne at someone else’s expense. It’ll be fun.’

It wasn’t Phoebe’s idea of fun. She felt tense at the mere thought of carrying off the deception. ‘Frankly, at the moment sticking pins in my eyeballs seems like more fun,’ she said.

‘Then don’t do it.’

Phoebe thought about turning up at the wedding on her own, and how awkward it would be for her family and for Ben’s. ‘No, I want to do it,’ she said, making up her mind. ‘It will make everyone happy if they see that I seem to have found someone else.’

‘Everyone except you,’ Gib pointed out.

She looked at the cat curled up on the sofa. ‘I’ve got used to not being happy since Ben left,’ she said bleakly.

There was a pause. ‘You’re still in love with him,’ said Gib, sounding oddly flat.

Phoebe kept her eyes on the cat. ‘Ben’s part of my life,’ she answered him after a moment. ‘We were toddlers together. I planned to marry him when I was four, and I never wanted anyone else. I suppose I took it for granted that he would always be there for me, and now I can’t get used to the fact that he isn’t.’

In spite of herself, her voice wobbled treacherously, and Gib saw her lift her chin to an unconsciously gallant tilt. ‘I know Ben didn’t want to hurt me but I’ve accepted the fact that he loves Lisa, not me. Now I just want him to be happy, and if that means pretending to be in love with someone else at his wedding, that’s what I’ll do.’

Most of the women Gib had known would have given in to bitterness or rage at their disappointed dreams, but not Phoebe. He wanted to tell her how brave he thought she was, but he was afraid that she would be mortified if she thought that he had glimpsed her distress.

‘If that’s what you want,’ he said, getting to his feet instead, ‘I’m happy to do my bit to help. I won’t let you down.’

Caught unawares by the sincerity in his voice, Phoebe glanced at him and saw that the blue eyes were warm with sympathy, almost as if he could see the painful lump of unshed tears in her throat. ‘Thank you,’ she said with difficulty.

‘Hey, no problem.’

Murmuring something about a shower, he left her alone with the cat.

Phoebe looked after him with a curious expression. ‘What do you think about that?’ she asked the cat, who deigned to open one yellow eye in case food was in the offing. ‘Who would have thought Gib would be that tactful?’

The cat yawned hugely, uninterested. Phoebe reran the conversation with Gib in her mind. He had been surprisingly understanding. He hadn’t probed for details about her break up with Ben or made fun of her predicament, and now her resistance to asking him to help her was beginning to seem a bit churlish.

She wasn’t sure how he was going to carry off being a banker, but otherwise Kate was right, he was the perfect person to help her. He had been nice about it, too. Phoebe watched the cat stretching and remembered how Gib had smiled. I’m glad I said yes, he had said when she told him that she needed a lover. I’ll look forward to it.

The memory sent an odd feeling snaking down her spine, and she got abruptly to her feet. Anticipating the chance of being fed, the cat jumped down and headed purposefully to its bowl, where it sat and fixed Phoebe with faintly menacing yellow eyes.

‘Oh, all right,’ she sighed, fully aware that any movement towards the fridge would mean her ankles passing well within biting range. It went against the grain to give in but she cravenly shook some biscuits into its bowl. It was obviously her night for giving in.

What would it be like, spending the whole day with Gib? Phoebe was uneasily conscious of a tremble of anticipation uncurling somewhere deep inside her at the prospect. Ridiculous, of course. OK, so he had been nicer than expected, and at lot less irritating than usual, but that was no reason to forget that the arrangement they had made was a strictly businesslike one.

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything silly,’ Phoebe informed the cat as if it had objected. ‘There’s no question of me getting involved with Gib.’

And there wasn’t, she reassured herself. Gib wasn’t the sort of man sensible girls like her fell in love with. He might be fun for a while, but he would move on eventually, and it would hurt. When Phoebe thought about the pain of the past year since Ben had left, she knew that she wasn’t prepared to risk that again. If she did ever let herself fall in love again, she would have to be very, very sure that it would be for ever, and Gib just wasn’t a for ever kind of guy.

‘No, I’m grateful to him for helping me out,’ Phoebe told the cat firmly, ‘but that’s all.’

CHAPTER FOUR

IN SOME ways, that conversation with Gib left Phoebe feeling even more unsettled than ever. It had been easier when he was irritating, she thought, and when the days passed with no sign that he was doing anything about preparing for his role, she was almost relieved to find herself getting quite cross again.

It was all very well for Gib to lounge around the kitchen joking with Bella and Kate, but he seemed to have no idea of how easily he could be revealed as a fraud, Phoebe fretted, her gratitude eking away with each fresh onset of nerves. Of course she appreciated how understanding he had been, but when it came down to it, she was paying him, and the least he could do was make an effort to seem convincing at the wedding.

Kate and Bella pooh-poohed her worries, but then they weren’t risking humiliation in front of their family and oldest friends, were they? If anyone at the wedding discovered that Gib was not in fact the banker he claimed to be, her cover would be blown too. She would be revealed as a sad, pathetic spinster who was reduced to paying a man to pretend to be in love with her.

Phoebe cringed at the prospect. She couldn’t stop thinking about everything that could go wrong, and had lived through each potentially disastrous scenario so many times that she could picture every one down to the last detail.

There was the banker who quizzed Gib about exchange rate mechanisms and investment portfolios with increasing puzzlement until he exclaimed, ‘Damn it, I don’t think you’re a banker at all!’ just as a hush fell on the gathering. Phoebe shuddered at the thought of everyone turning to stare at Gib, who would be left blustering unconvincingly.

Or one of the other guests might know Gib. It was all very well for him to say that he had been in the States for the past few years, but people travelled and coincidences happened all the time. What was the betting one of his old surfing pals would be there, only too ready to throw back his head and hoot with laughter at the idea of Gib being a banker?

Sometimes Phoebe varied the theme, and imagined one of his ex-girlfriends turning up at the wedding with one of Ben’s friends, and spotting an ideal opportunity to wreak her revenge on him. There would be champagne thrown in his face, tears and tantrums and accusations as Gib’s past caught up with him … oh, yes, she could see it all.

But the scenario Phoebe dreaded most was the one where it gradually dawned on her parents that the man masquerading as their daughter’s lover knew nothing about her and cared even less. If they guessed that she was deceiving them, they would be desperately hurt. Her mother would tell Penelope, who would tell Ben, who would obviously tell Lisa, and before she knew it, word would go round the reception like wildfire. Already Phoebe could picture the whispered asides, the pitying glances, the way the conversation would fall awkwardly silent as soon as she approached, and she cringed as if it was already happening.

After nights spent churning over one humiliating scenario after another, she had just decided to call the whole thing off when she let herself into the house one evening to find Gib chatting cosily to her mother on the phone in the kitchen.

‘To tell you the truth, Mrs Lane,’ he was saying in a confidential tone, ‘I knew the moment I saw Phoebe. It was like a bolt from the blue. I just looked at her and knew that she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with!’

Phoebe’s mouth dropped open before she recovered sufficiently to snatch the receiver from Gib’s hand. ‘Mum!’ she said on a gasp. ‘Sorry, I’ve just got in.’

‘That’s all right, dear. I’ve been having a nice little chat with Gib. I must say, he sounds absolutely charming!’

Her voice was clearly audible, and Gib sent Phoebe a smug grin. Pointedly, she turned her back on him.

‘We can’t wait to meet him,’ her mother was burbling happily on. ‘Penelope was thrilled when I told her, and she said she would send an invitation off straight away. Did Gib get it?’

An embossed white card had dropped through the door practically the day after Phoebe had rung her mother to drop Gib’s name into the conversation for the first time. She must have been straight on the phone to Penelope. Phoebe could picture Ben’s mother frantically gesturing for a pen so that she could write out the invitation there and then.

‘Yes, we got it,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure Gib will be able to spend the night, though,’ she went on quickly, anticipating her mother’s next question. She might as well knock that idea on the head right now. Her nerves were going to be in shreds as it was, without the prospect of spending the night with Gib as well.

‘Oh, what a pity!’ Her mother was clearly disappointed. ‘You know what receptions are like. We won’t get a chance to relax and talk to him properly until the evening.’

Relaxing and talking properly was precisely what Phoebe didn’t want. That would be the very time they were likely to let slip a comment that brought the whole pretence crashing down around them. No, much better to get Gib firmly out of the way.

‘I know, but Gib’s got to work the next day, I’m afraid,’ she said, trying to force some regret into her voice.

Her mother clicked her tongue impatiently. She had no time for the tedious business of actually earning a living. ‘I’m sure he can work another time,’ she said, and then to Phoebe’s acute embarrassment lowered her voice. ‘You know it’s not a problem about you two sharing a room, don’t you? Penelope’s absolutely fine about it. We know things are different for your generation.’

‘It’s not that, Mum,’ said Phoebe, squirming and hoping Gib couldn’t hear. He hadn’t even had the decency to leave the kitchen to let her talk to her mother in peace, and she was very conscious of him lounging on the sofa behind her, hands behind his head and long legs crossed.