Chapter 3
‘What’s that smell?’ Trust Kira to get straight to the heart of the matter.
Ginny slumped over the table, burying her face in the crook of her arm. ‘It’s me. What smell do you mean? The burning or the aniseed?’
‘Uh, both.’
‘They’re both me.’
‘Dare I ask what happened to the beers?’ Laurie ventured.
‘I can’t face him again. You’ll have to get them yourself. They’re on the bar, next to a singed piece of my hair,’ Ginny lamented.
Toni tilted Ginny’s face up and inspected her locks. ‘It’s just a little bit. Are you okay?’
‘No.’ She pouted. ‘I was right. Rhys hates me. I was exactly the wrong person to ask him.’
‘What’s this?’ Andreas asked.
Ginny wasn’t sure how much of her mortification to share.
Definitely not the fact that there was a sizzle of something in her stomach when she thought of Rhys’s crinkled forehead and solemn eyes – or that short flirtatious conversation before she’d realised it was him.
If she were to develop a crush on him, then the hypnotherapist had definitely been right about the self-sabotage.
‘We rub each other the wrong way, that’s all. Oh, and he’s refused to be the wedding photographer, so I’ve failed.’
Andreas harrumphed and got to his feet. ‘I’ll talk to him.’ Laurie stumbled after him, fleeing Ginny’s undignified display of emotion.
She could feel Toni and Kira’s concerned looks.
Peering over at the bar, she saw Andreas arguing with Rhys and her stomach sank even further.
‘I think I should just go. Maybe you could lend me your key and I’ll get a taxi if you want to stay longer.
If I hadn’t had that burning shot, I might have been able to drive all the way home. ’
Living in Glastonbury, around the corner from where she grew up, had been practical over the past year, working between her usual office in Bath and the Great Heart gym in Weymouth, but it was over an hour to get home from here and Kira had a spare room.
Usually it was fun, like sleepovers from childhood – except Kira didn’t like makeovers and the boy talk was all from Ginny.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Kira offered.
After giving Toni a hug in farewell, Ginny sighed as they headed out to the car. ‘I think my dating ban is for the best’ was the thought that made its way out of her mouth.
‘What made you say that?’ Kira asked, clicking in her seat belt.
‘I was just thinking how much it means to me that this wedding goes well.’
‘It would be kind of embarrassing for a wedding-planning agency if you can’t knock it out of the park for one of your own.’
‘It’s not just that,’ Ginny insisted, peering at Kira. She knew her friend had softened significantly towards emotional vulnerability since the wedding last winter, where she’d met the person who was undoubtedly her soulmate, but Ginny wasn’t sure if she’d softened towards weddings in general.
‘Sophie’s been through so much,’ she continued. ‘And now the surprise pregnancy, which is wonderful, but must be overwhelming. I want to give her this moment to treasure and that she can keep forever, which is the power of a photo.’
She turned to Kira.
‘Do you think that’s what I should have said to Rhys? Do you think he would have agreed, if I’d appealed to his artistic, philosophical side?’
‘What makes you think he has an artistic, philosophical side?’
Ginny frowned. ‘I just assumed, since he took that amazing picture of Andreas – the one in the reception area at Great Heart.’
‘Yeah, that’s an old photo,’ Kira said quietly. ‘He’s… struggled in recent years.’ She grimaced. ‘Not to excuse him or anything. You know how he is.’
‘Not really,’ Ginny pointed out. ‘I only know he’s a loner who waves his own giant red flag to keep people away.’
To her chagrin, Kira chuckled. ‘That’s a good description. But I’m sorry it went so badly tonight.’
It had gone badly; she hated it when people disliked her.
‘I’ll get over it in time for the wedding,’ she assured Kira. Now all she had to do was convince herself.
Rhys stepped up to the door of the pretty Bath stone building in a leafy part of town near the river Avon.
A tasteful plaque announced the offices of I Do Destinations, with gold swirls and a little stylised plane.
Andreas’s words were echoing in his head: Just explain it to her.
She’d continue to ask until she understood why he shouldn’t be the one taking wedding photos.
He wasn’t looking forward to this conversation.
She thought he didn’t like her and she certainly didn’t like him, especially not after he’d set her hair on fire last week at the Admiral. It surely wouldn’t hurt her feelings any further if he explained that he couldn’t remember what she looked like.
It annoyed him that he thought of Annie as he stood on the doorstep, hesitating. Memories of her were less frequent now, but the twinge of grief remained: for his old life, for the way he’d hurt her.
That grief and the prospect of explaining his condition to someone he didn’t know well was probably behind the attack of memories about Annie. It was nothing to do with whatever seemed to draw him to Ginny, despite everything suggesting he should run the other way.
Forcing himself to open the door, he found a neutral and tasteful reception room on the other side, with vases of fresh flowers and a couple of wedding photos printed on large canvases.
The couples were in soft focus or turned away – for anonymity and to emphasise the location, he assumed.
He could probably take those sorts of shots without a problem.
‘Hello. It’s Rhys, isn’t it? Are you here to see someone?’
He turned to the woman sitting at a small desk to one side, wisps of greying hair around her head. He wouldn’t forget Tita any time soon – she’d given him a strong sales pitch when they’d first met, trying to get him booked in before she’d even finished introducing herself.
‘Hi,’ he began. ‘Yes. Ginny.’
‘Uh, she might be on a call, but I can check for you. How about you go through to the meeting room? There’s no one in there just at the moment.’
‘Thanks. Which way is it?’
In the meeting room, he took a seat on the sofa Tita indicated, clenching his hands into fists to stop himself from fidgeting.
This must be where the clients sat to pin down the endless details.
Although he’d suspected Annie would have liked to get married one day, he’d never imagined making such a big deal out of it.
She’d married someone else a few years ago, and now they had two kids.
She’d probably been waiting for him to pop the question before the accident and now it seemed too late in his life for all that fuss. He turned forty next year and he only seemed to be growing less certain of how to bond with other people.
There was a photo book open on the coffee table in front of him and he ran his fingers absently over the full-page close-up of a bride with the shadow of a dimple giving her a joyfulness that filled the photo.
The portrait was so different from the shades of rock and earth, the birds and wild animals he usually photographed and framed.
The curve of her cheek caught his eye and he admired the depth of the image, the skill to capture the emotion of the moment.
That was where he failed. He was so overwhelmed by all the faces, like pieces of a puzzle he couldn’t put together, that special moments like this just passed him by.
He was startled when someone bustled into the room. ‘Oh, hi, Rhys.’ Blonde hair tied back, emerald engagement ring on her finger. It was Sophie. ‘I didn’t realise you were coming.’
‘I just need to… talk to Ginny.’
‘Oh.’ Her tone suggested she knew why. It was strange to think how much Andreas must tell her, when he’d always been a cranky, close-lipped type. ‘You know, I completely understand if you don’t want to be our photographer.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate that.’
She sat down next to him and he hoped she wasn’t going to say anything further. But Sophie gestured in front of them. ‘These turned out beautifully. I was just showing them to a client.’
It took him a moment to realise she was talking about the photo book on the coffee table. When she turned the page, he instantly recognised the frothy white lace of the bride’s veil and the slant of the dance-floor lighting that had been a pain to work with.
Flipping back to the page before, he noticed the clip in the bride’s hair, another familiar detail.
Christ, he’d taken that picture, last winter, in Tyrol.
How was that even possible? He remembered trying to frame a few close-ups, but he’d been convinced they all looked like candid-camera disasters.
He’d been so uncertain that he’d just dumped all of the files onto Ginny to tidy up, not even sifting through them beforehand or touching anything up. He’d been terrified he’d smooth some detail and the person wouldn’t look right any more.
‘Ginny doesn’t know about your accident, does she?’ Sophie asked.
He shook his head. ‘There never seemed to be the right moment.’ And now she might think he’d kept the truth about his brain injury from her on purpose.
He didn’t want to talk about it, so he changed the subject.
‘Do you know what kind of photos you want? A staged shoot? Locations? Just out of curiosity.’
‘Of course,’ she said wryly. Her gaze dipped and she bit her lip as though he’d triggered a nerve.
A hand lifted to her stomach. Although the pregnancy had only just started to show, her body language had changed right from the beginning.
With his brain trained to notice non-facial cues, he’d caught one glimpse of her and guessed right away, although he would never have said anything.
‘I haven’t really thought about it. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? I love weddings. I should be obsessed with my own, but… The anxiety haze is real and all the change is…’
‘Frightening?’ he suggested.
She turned to him with a smile. ‘Exactly. I should be thankful Andreas is pushing everything forwards, but this about-face from him…’
‘Is frightening,’ Rhys repeated with a sage nod.
‘I suppose life never waits for us to get our heads around these things.’
‘It doesn’t,’ he agreed quietly.
‘You, um… No “plus-one” for our wedding?’ she asked tentatively.
He shook his head. ‘And please, no single friends, wedding florists or opera singers for me.’ When he thought about it, it was concerning how quickly so many of his friends at Great Heart had fallen in love since the merger with I Do Destinations.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Sophie said in a tone that suggested otherwise. ‘Ginny might be secretly hoping we’ll throw her in the path of her soulmate, but we’re not a matchmaking agency.’
There was movement at the doorway and then came a familiar voice. ‘Hey, Soph, I need the email address for that—’
He could tell the exact moment she caught sight of him, because her words choked off and he had the sudden conviction that, by coming here, he was making everything worse.