Convenient Engagements

‘It’s just that he’s got a meeting in … um …’ Oh, God, where did bankers have meetings? ‘… in … er, in … yes, Switzerland,’ she remembered triumphantly after a nasty moment where her mind went completely blank. ‘It’s first thing the next day, so he’ll have to get back.’

‘Oh, well, if he must, he must.’ Her mother made no attempt to hide her disappointment, and Phoebe sighed inwardly, spotting a fresh attack of guilt coming on.

‘But do try and see if he can change his meeting,’ her mother went on, working up to the emotional blackmail. ‘We’re all so looking forward to getting to know him. It’s not just your father and I. Lara’s very keen to meet him, too.’

Phoebe closed her eyes briefly. Lara was her younger sister. She had a sweet, pretty face and could be disconcertingly perceptive at times. Phoebe would have to keep her well away from Gib. She would see through him in a second.

‘I’ll ask him,’ she lied. ‘I’m sure he’ll see what he can do.’

‘This is turning into a nightmare,’ she sighed as she switched off the phone and threw it onto a chair. ‘I wish I’d never mentioned you to my mother!’

‘Why?’ said Gib. ‘It seems to be working perfectly. You wanted your mother to be happy, and she is.’

This was unanswerable. Phoebe made a show of looking through the post she had brought in from the hall. A credit card bill, two circulars and a letter from the gym asking plaintively why they hadn’t seen her for a while.

‘Why did you tell Mum all that stuff about love at first sight?’ she demanded instead.

‘I thought I was supposed to be a besotted lover,’ said Gib.

‘Not that besotted! Nobody’s going to believe you if you carry on like that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, because it doesn’t happen like that in real life, does it?’ she said, a bit thrown by the directness of Gib’s question.

‘What doesn’t?’

‘All that bolt from the blue stuff. You have to know someone before you can fall in love with them.’

Gib looked at her, one corner of his long, mobile mouth curling upwards in a crooked smile. ‘That might be true for you, but it isn’t necessarily the same for everyone else.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve ever fallen in love at first sight!’ said Phoebe, tearing up the letter from the gym and dropping the credit card bill onto the table unopened.

‘Why shouldn’t I have done?’

It was a fair enough question. ‘You don’t seem the type,’ was the best she could do for an answer.

‘That’s what I thought until it happened to me.’

‘Oh.’ She eyed him a little uncertainly, wishing, not for the first time, that she could tell whether he was joking or not. He could keep his mouth perfectly straight as now, but it always seemed on the verge of twitching upwards, and as for those eyes … Phoebe risked a glance only to find herself skewered by a blue gleam that was impossible to interpret but which for some reason sent the blood surging into her cheeks.

She jerked her gaze away. ‘Are you sure was it was love and not lust?’ she said, trying to be ironic but succeeding only in sounding tremulous.

‘I think it was a bit of both,’ said Gib.

He smiled then, a reminiscent smile that turned up the corners of his mouth and creased the edges of his eyes. No doubt thinking of some long-legged, sun-streaked blonde he had met lazing around on a Californian beach, thought Phoebe, inexplicably irritable.

Turning her back on that smile, she headed over to the fridge, her dignified demeanour rather spoilt by falling over the cat who had been waiting to ambush the next human who approached his bowl.

‘The point is, I’m trying to convince my family here,’ she said coldly, disentangling herself from the weaving cat with difficulty and opening the fridge door, relieved to see a bottle of wine that had been chilling overnight. She could do with a drink! ‘We need to stick to a realistic scenario, or they won’t believe a word you say. And the fact is, I’m just not the kind of girl men fall in love with at first sight.’

‘Your mother didn’t seem to have any trouble believing me.’ Gib watched her scrabbling through the drawers in search of a corkscrew. ‘She told me that I sounded like a dream come true,’ he went on virtuously.

Phoebe muttered under her breath as she located the corkscrew at last and attacked the foil at the top of the bottle. ‘You’re not taking this seriously!’ she accused him.

‘And you’re taking it too seriously,’ said Gib. ‘You need to lighten up, Phoebe! Everything’s under control.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ grumbled Phoebe, twisting the corkscrew. ‘Have you organised a suit yet?’ She bet he hadn’t.

‘Yes.’

Oh.

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’ The cork popped out and she poured the wine into a glass, pausing for a second to savour its pale golden beauty before she went back to her fretting.

‘What about this job you’re supposed to have?’ she demanded as she carried her glass over to the armchair next to him. ‘I’ve told Mum you’re a banker now, so you’d better be able to carry it off.’

‘Relax,’ said Gib lazily. ‘I’ve been doing some research. Look.’ He picked up a brochure from the floor by the sofa and waved it at her.

Phoebe took it with her spare hand. ‘This is for the Community Bank,’ she said blankly.

‘I know.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘It was lying on the table with some of the other stuff you brought home with you,’ said Gib, and Phoebe was too busy studying the brochure to notice the faint hesitation in his voice. ‘I thought I might as well take advantage of the research you’ve been doing for your programme, so I had a look through it. If anyone asks, I’ll say I work in their development section. I ought to be able to bluff my way through on that.’

‘That’s not a bad idea.’ She looked at him with grudging respect. ‘It’s a bank, but not a real bank.’

‘What do you mean, it’s not a real bank?’ For once Gib was roused out of his lazy good humour and he sat up to object. ‘It lends money, it supports its customers, it’s an integral part of the financial infrastructure of the countries where it operates …’

Phoebe looked at him in surprise. ‘You have been reading the brochure, haven’t you?’

There was a tiny silence, and then Gib lay back down. ‘I told you I’d been doing some research,’ he said.

‘I’m glad to hear you’re getting into your role so well,’ she said dryly. ‘Anyway, I just meant that because it’s an ethical bank, if you meet any other City types there, they won’t expect you to be flash and boast about bonuses. They’ll probably make allowances if you seem a bit …’

‘A bit what?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Phoebe with a touch of irritation. Why did Gib have to pick her up on everything? ‘A bit different, I suppose.’

She sipped her wine reflectively, trying to spot the flaws in Gib’s idea, but the more she thought about it, the better it seemed. ‘No, I think it might work,’ she said with gathering excitement. ‘We could say that’s how we met,’ she went on, getting into the idea.

‘Exactly,’ said Gib.

Phoebe ignored his smugness. ‘People know that I’ve been working on the programme. I’m so desperate that I’ve asked most of Ben’s City friends if they’ve got any contacts in the States who might know about the Community Bank, but hardly any of them had even heard of it—which is good news for you,’ she added as an aside. ‘We can pretend that someone put me in touch with you, and you were so impressed by me on the phone that we arranged to meet and … Bam!’

‘Ah, so it was love at first sight?’ said Gib provocatively.

Phoebe rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, all right, it was love at first sight, if that’s what you want! If you’ve already told Mum that’s how it was, there’s not much I can do about it anyway.’

She might be reassured that Gib was getting ready to play his part, but as Ben’s wedding approached, Phoebe grew more and more apprehensive. By the time the following Saturday came round, she was so jittery with nerves that she could hardly speak.

‘You’ve got to calm down,’ said Bella that morning. ‘You’re wound so tight, you’re going to snap! Here, give me that,’ she added, seeing Phoebe lay her dress onto the ironing board. ‘You’ll just burn it if you try and iron it in that state. Sit down and relax for a minute.’

‘I can’t relax,’ said Phoebe, hugging her arms together edgily as Bella tested the iron with the tip of her finger. ‘I keep thinking of all the things that could go wrong.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like Gib forgetting who he’s supposed to be,’ she said with a pointed glance at where he sat reading the paper at the table in jeans and a T-shirt, long legs stretched out before him and quite unperturbed by all the activity around him.

‘Hey, I resent that!’ he said, without looking up from his paper. ‘I’m John Gibson, Gib to his friends, development manager at the Community Bank with special responsibility for setting up funding programmes and links between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, and I can now bore for England and the States about development strategies, ethical investment opportunities and interest assessment.’

‘See?’ said Bella, impressed. ‘He’ll be fine.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Phoebe fretfully, rummaging through her make-up bag in search of a mirror. ‘It would just take one little slip, and they’ll all know that my fantastically successful lover is in fact my unemployed lodger!

‘I didn’t sleep a wink last night thinking about it,’ she went on, opening the mirror and contemplating her face glumly. ‘Excellent, bug eyes and puffy skin! Just what I need this morning!’

‘Nothing a bit of make-up won’t cure,’ said Bella reassuringly. ‘Put on some lippy and you’ll be fine.’

‘I think it’s going to take more than lipstick this morning,’ said Phoebe, refusing to be comforted. ‘God, I look a mess!’

‘No, you don’t,’ said Gib, lowering his paper to study her. ‘You look absolutely beautiful.’

It was so unexpected that Phoebe’s jaw dropped, and Bella looked up from her ironing in surprise.

‘Blimey! She hasn’t even got her make-up on yet!’

‘Phoebe doesn’t need make-up. She always looks beautiful to me,’ Gib said soulfully, and belatedly Phoebe realised that he was just proving that he had his role down pat.

Mortified by her blush—what if he thought she had taken him seriously?—she lifted her chin and retreated behind her haughtiest air. ‘You’d better not say anything like that today, or they’ll know you can’t be serious,’ she said.

‘Why?’

Phoebe glanced back at the mirror. Her face stared uncompromisingly back at her. ‘I accepted a long time ago that I’m not beautiful, and I never will be,’ she said flatly.

Gib looked across the table at her. She wasn’t pretty, it was true. Her face was too full of character and her features too strong to be anything as insipid as pretty. Instead she was vivid and dramatic, with those fierce eyes and that mouth that hinted at a passionate nature well hidden behind her prickles.

‘I don’t agree,’ he said.

Phoebe saw Bella’s hand still and the sharp look of interest she gave Gib. ‘All right, you can drop the act for now,’ she said hastily. ‘Save it for later, and don’t overdo it,’ she warned. ‘Everyone there has known me for ever, and they know I hate all that gushy lovey-dovey stuff.’

‘You might not if you were in love,’ said Gib.

‘Ben never went in for that kind of thing,’ she told him, and he folded his paper and got deliberately to his feet.

‘Well, I’m not Ben,’ he reminded her, and when Phoebe met his eyes she saw with something of a shock that the familiar laughter was quite gone. ‘You’re in love with me now, remember?’

Phoebe moistened her lips, wondering why the kitchen was suddenly so airless. ‘Just for today,’ she managed.

There was an unpleasant silence for a moment, then Gib smiled. It wasn’t his usual smile, though. There was something almost grim about it. ‘Of course, just for today,’ he echoed in a voice empty of expression. He turned for the door. ‘Excuse me, I’ll go and get ready.’

Phoebe didn’t realise that she had been holding her breath until he left and she was able to let it out at last, very carefully. When she glanced back at Bella, she saw that her friend was watching her with a speculative expression.

‘I wouldn’t push Gib, if I were you,’ was all she said, slipping the dress onto its hanger and handing it to Phoebe. ‘Here you are. Go and have a shower, and I’ll do your makeup for you afterwards.’

‘You look fantastic!’ she said later when Phoebe was glossed and mascaraed and dusted with Kate’s special shimmering powder that promised a radiant golden glow. She made her turn and look at herself in the mirror. In heels and a flame-red suit with a dramatic necklace, Phoebe looked taller and more vivid than ever.

‘All you need now is your hat,’ said Bella. ‘And a smile.’

Phoebe couldn’t manage the smile, and wrung her hands together instead. ‘Oh, God, Bella, do you think I’m doing the right thing?’

‘Yes,’ said Bella, who had no time for doubts. ‘You’re going to be able to go into that wedding with your head held high. Gib will be beside you, and he won’t let you down.’

‘He’d better not,’ said Phoebe tensely.

Bella smoothed the short-sleeved jacket over Phoebe’s shoulder. ‘He was pretty convincing when he said he thought you were beautiful,’ she said, carefully expressionless. ‘I wondered how much he was pretending.’

‘Of course he was pretending.’ Phoebe didn’t quite meet her eyes. The last thing she needed was Bella knowing that she had wondered the same for an embarrassing moment or two. ‘That’s what I’m paying him to do.’

Bella picked up Phoebe’s hat. ‘You seem to have been getting on better recently,’ she commented in the same studiedly casual tone.

‘I suppose so,’ was all Phoebe would admit.

‘I think he really likes you, Phoebe. So does Kate. We think he’s just what you need,’ she went on when Phoebe could only gape at her.

‘No.’ Phoebe found her voice at last. ‘No, he’s not what I need at all.’ She shook her head firmly to emphasise the point, although it wasn’t clear whether she was trying to convince herself or Bella. ‘He’s nothing like Ben.’

‘Exactly,’ said Bella. ‘I know you loved Ben, Phoebe, but it’s time you moved on. You need someone you can have some fun with, and I can’t imagine anyone better than Gib for that.’

‘I’m not sure I’m ready to have fun,’ Phoebe confessed in a low voice. ‘I’m scared of being hurt again, Bella. I don’t want to get involved with anyone, let alone Gib. Anyway,’ she went on, lifting her chin, ‘I think you’re wrong about him. Pretending to be in love with me is just a job to him. He was quite happy for me to pay him. He wouldn’t be interested in money if he really liked me, would he?’

She needed to remember that, Phoebe told herself as she went downstairs carefully on her high heels.

They found Kate in kitchen, and by the time she had exclaimed over the outfit and heard Bella’s account of Gib’s unexpected acting ability, Phoebe’s nerves were back in full force and her stomach was churning furiously.

She looked at her watch. The ceremony was at two-thirty, and they would need to allow at least two hours to get to the castle. Getting out of London on a Saturday could be a nightmare.

‘OK, I’ve got my bag, got the present, got my hat … what else do I need?’

‘Car keys?’

‘God, yes, car keys! Where are they?’

Phoebe began scrabbling frantically through the piles of junk on the table. ‘I had them yesterday,’ she said fretfully. ‘I’m sure they’re here somewhere. Kate, can you see whether the cat is sitting on them? And where’s Gib? We’ve got to go.’

‘I’m here.’

All three girls looked up from where they were burrowing down the sides of the sofa or sifting through the clutter of papers on the worktop, and there was a moment of thunderstruck silence. Kate and Bella frankly stared, and Phoebe froze, breathless as if from a blow.

She couldn’t believe how different Gib looked. He had showered and shaved, and changed into a beautifully cut grey suit with a classic white shirt and a pale grey tie. He looked much older, much more respectable, even distinguished, but his sudden grin at their expressions was exactly the same as before.

‘Well!’ whistled Bella, the first to recover. ‘Who’d have thought you’d brush up so nicely!’

Kate walked round him critically. ‘Ten out of ten!’ she agreed. ‘There’s just something about a man in a suit, isn’t there? What do you reckon, Phoebe? Will he pass?’

Why couldn’t she be as easy with him as Kate and Bella were? Gripped by a ridiculous shyness, Phoebe couldn’t meet Gib’s eyes.

‘He looks fine,’ she said curtly.

‘Are we ready to go?’ His voice was warm with that unsettling undercurrent of laughter, so much so that Phoebe began to wonder if she had imagined the formidable look she had glimpsed earlier.

‘When I’ve found my car keys,’ she snapped.

‘Here.’

To Phoebe’s annoyance, Gib spotted them immediately on the sideboard and dangled them from his finger. Snatching them from him, she stalked out to the car, her exit only marred by the fact that she forgot to pick up her hat and her overnight bag.

‘Are you OK to drive?’ Gib asked when she had stowed them in the boot of her old Peugeot.

‘Of course I am.’ Phoebe bridled as she opened the driver’s door. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘You seem a bit … tense,’ he said carefully.

‘Of course I’m tense! I’m going to watch the man I love marrying someone else while lying to my family and friends about having a relationship with my unemployed lodger who’s pretending to be a hotshot businessman, and knowing that if anyone even suspects what I’m doing it’ll ruin the whole day for everyone!’

And that was quite apart from knowing that her friends thought she should get involved with a man who was only pretending to be nice because she was paying him.

Suddenly Phoebe felt close to tears.

‘That’s what I meant,’ said Gib. ‘I know it’s going to be difficult for you today. If you want to drive, that’s fine by me, but if you want one less thing to think about, I thought it would be something I could do for you.’

Phoebe hesitated, chewing her lip. She didn’t want to give in, but she knew that Gib was right. She wasn’t in a fit state to drive, and an accident was the last thing she needed right now. Usually, she loved being driven, but she wasn’t sure she trusted Gib. He looked like the kind of man who burned along the highways in an open-topped sports car, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on a blonde, not one who would drive her old banger safely and sedately down to Wiltshire.

Gib came round the front of the car to her door. ‘You’re not really intending to drive in those, are you?’ he said, nodding down at her strappy shoes with their delicate heels.

Of course she couldn’t drive in them. She could dig out her driving shoes from the boot … or she could just let Gib drive.

Reading the decision in her face, Gib held out his hand and Phoebe put the keys into his outstretched palm.

‘As long as you drive carefully,’ she said with a flash of her old self as she got into the passenger seat.

Gib inserted the key into the ignition and pushed back the seat to allow room for his longer legs. ‘You don’t trust me, do you?’ he said as he pulled out into the street.

‘If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be exposing you to my family,’ said Phoebe, grabbing at the door as a taxi swerved in front of them.

‘If you trusted me, you wouldn’t be sitting there clutching the door and jamming your foot on an imaginary brake,’ said Gib in a dry voice. ‘If you’re going to do that all the way to Wiltshire I’d rather you drove after all!’

Phoebe made a conscious effort to relax. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered.

Contrary to all her expectations, Gib was a calm, competent driver, quite unflustered by the London traffic. It was odd seeing him in the driving seat, his hands sure on her steering wheel. Phoebe’s eyes kept sliding sideways, and every time the sight of him was like a tiny shock that made her look quickly away.

For a while the conversation was limited to Phoebe’s attempts to direct Gib through the labyrinth of back streets to get out onto the M4, but once they hit the motorway, he put his foot down and settled back comfortably into his seat with a wriggle of his shoulders that sent a peculiar little shiver down her spine.

‘Do you want to fill me in on a bit more background before we get there?’ he said with a sideways glance. ‘I know the situation with Ben, and I’ve got the job covered, but am I likely to meet anyone else I should know about?’

Phoebe looked out of the window at the speeding traffic. ‘There’ll be various friends who knew me when Ben and I were together, but I suppose we could say that our relationship is too new for me to have mentioned them to you.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Gib with a wicked smile. ‘When you’re as much in love as we are, you’ve got better things to think about, haven’t you?’

Faint colour touched Phoebe’s cheekbones. ‘Exactly.’

‘So it’ll just be your family I really need to worry about?’

‘Yes.’ Phoebe was glad of the chance to move onto a safer topic. ‘Mum and Dad are pretty much what you’d expect, and my little sister will be there, too. Lara’s the baby of the family. She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but don’t be fooled. She’s sharp as a tack.’

‘What does she do?’

‘Drives my parents to distraction mostly,’ she said wryly. ‘She’s incredibly bright, but she gets bored so easily. She keeps starting courses and not finishing them, or walking out of perfectly good jobs, and she’s always got some unsuitable boyfriend in tow.’

‘Not like big sister, then?’ said Gib with another of those disconcertingly blue glances.

‘No, I’m the boring one of the family.’ Phoebe gave an unconscious sigh as she stared through the windscreen and thought about her sister. ‘I’ve had such a conventional life. Fell in love with the boy next door, got a degree, saddled myself with a mortgage … Giving up my job to work for Purple Parrot Productions is the riskiest thing I’ve ever done, and that’s not exactly living dangerously, is it?’

‘Is that what you’d like? To live dangerously?’

‘Sometimes,’ she admitted, ‘but I don’t think I’d be very good at it. I’m too sensible.’

That was what Ben had said. You’re so sensible, Phoebe. I know that you’ll understand that it’s not that I don’t care for you. It’s just that we know each other so well that things aren’t that exciting, are they? We can’t surprise each other any more.

‘I wish I could be more like Lara sometimes,’ she told Gib, pushing away the memory. If she had been, maybe Ben wouldn’t have fallen in love with Lisa, who wasn’t predictable and familiar. ‘She decides she wants to do something, and she does it. She’ll try anything. She doesn’t stop to think about the consequences, or what might happen if something goes wrong, she just goes for it.’

Gib slid her another glance. ‘I’ll look forward to meeting her.’

‘You’ll like her.’

Phoebe was conscious of a faint wistfulness. Her sister had exactly the same streak of recklessness that seemed so much part of Gib. It didn’t matter that he was rattling along in the slow lane in her battered old car, or that he was dressed in the most conventional of grey suits, he still exuded an air of danger and excitement that alarmed and intrigued her in equal measure.

Gib would find a kindred spirit in Lara, she thought. Lara was reckless and funny and open, the complete opposite of her big sister in fact.

CHAPTER FIVE

WITHOUT meaning to, Phoebe sighed.

‘What’s the matter?’ Gib was watching her more closely than she realised.

‘Nothing,’ said Phoebe quickly.

She could feel his blue gaze sharpen assessingly as it rested on her averted profile, but after a moment he evidently decided to let it go.