Chapter 25
For the first time in her career, Ginny was asking herself if wedding favours were really worth all the time and effort.
She was perched on her bed with Reshma and Toni.
Tita and Sophie were bent over their work at the little table by the window.
Usually Ginny loved these moments with her colleagues, creating the beautiful details that guests would remember from an I Do wedding.
But tonight she wanted to be down the hall in Rhys’s room.
She took a measured sip of her wine, trying not to blush when she thought of Rhys telling her firmly that nothing would happen if she was drunk. Red flag, my arse. Emotionally unavailable, sure, but who wasn’t these days?
‘I’m not sure I’m doing this right,’ Tita said, studying her little pieces of string. ‘Is it supposed to look like a figure of eight or a pretzel?’
They’d decided on a little package of local specialities, tied up with two symbolic pieces of string knotted together.
Tucked in the top would be the custom-made wooden place cards, in the shape of mountains and pine trees, etched with each guest’s name.
Ginny had been so satisfied when she’d put it all together, but now she felt as restless as Kira, her fingers tapping and her adrenaline still pumping from the day.
‘A pretzel,’ Sophie answered, showing Tita as she tightened her own knot.
‘Well, that’s appropriate,’ Toni commented as she looped her string around the two little bottles, one of olive oil and one of pine-infused schnapps. ‘Sneaking in another local speciality.’
‘A pretzel is more appropriate than a lovers’ knot?’ Reshma asked drily.
‘Actually, they call it a fisherman’s knot in climbing circles,’ Toni pointed out.
Ginny sighed, setting down her own fiddly knot for a moment.
‘Are you disheartened again, Ginny?’ Tita asked. ‘It is a true lovers’ knot and it’s a lovely nod to Great Heart and Andreas’s profession as well.’
‘Don’t worry, Tita,’ she replied. ‘I’m beginning to understand that these jokes and pranks aren’t necessarily a sign of lacking emotions.’
Andreas declaring brusquely that he loved Sophie in the restaurant today had been one of the most romantic things she’d ever witnessed.
‘Don’t let the Great Heart crew hear that,’ Toni said with a laugh.
‘I’ll leave them to their misconceptions,’ Ginny reassured her.
As if on cue, there was a knock at the door and Ginny hopped up to admit Kira, who burst into the room with her usual swagger. ‘Everyone else has gone to bed, so I thought I’d see how far you guys had got – not that I’m volunteering to help. You don’t want to know how wonky my crafting is.’
‘Actually, you could help with these knots—’ Tita tried hopefully, but Kira held up her hands.
‘Not with those tiny strings. Oh, hey, you’ve got a heap of chestnuts too. Have you and Rhys been collecting them together? Frolicking under the autumn trees?’
Ginny was certain they’d detect the falseness in her laugh, but no one said anything.
Kira perched on the edge of the bed and stretched her legs out. ‘Did I miss any gossip?’
‘Not a lot. We were just all discussing our feelings openly and honestly,’ Ginny answered with mock earnestness.
As she’d hoped, Kira shuddered. ‘I’m still bad at that. Sophie, you’ll have to train Andreas and then he can tell me how it works.’
‘I think communication will always be our biggest challenge,’ Sophie replied flatly.
‘He still hasn’t talked about baby names?’ Ginny asked. ‘I assumed that would be the best bit. If she’s a girl, don’t call her Virginia.’
Sophie gave her a rueful smile. ‘I don’t think that one works in German. But no, his eyes sort of glaze over when I bring it up and he changes the subject. But at least I know what I’m getting into.’
‘You don’t want to be surprised by your spouse’s faults after the wedding?’ Reshma joked.
‘You know what I think?’ Toni spoke up, nudging Reshma’s shoulder with her own. ‘You are all just as pessimistic about relationships as we are at Great Heart.’
Tita clutched her chest and rushed to pretend to wave smelling salts under Ginny’s nose. ‘How can you say that? We love love more than anything else!’
‘Oh yeah? Tell me about your own weddings, then?’ Toni said drily.
‘Sophie, I’ll give you a pass, because you’re pregnant and I don’t want you to cry.
Ginny hasn’t been close enough to the altar to know what it looks like from a bride’s perspective, despite years of her best efforts, and Tita, while I’m sure everyone celebrated hard when you and Sally were finally allowed to get legally married, I know for a fact it happened on a Thursday afternoon at the Milton Keynes register office. ’
Tita shrugged. ‘A big wedding seemed overkill when I was forty-five and we’d been civil partners for six years already.’
‘Strange, when you organise such elaborate celebrations for other people all the time, don’t you think? And you, Reshma—’
‘I was twenty-one and Patrick looked faintly ridiculous in a turban.’
Ginny’s gasp echoed around the room as all of the others froze. ‘You were married and you never told us?’
‘I don’t think the biggest drama here is that she didn’t tell you,’ Kira pointed out. ‘What happened?’
‘What happens to one in six marriages within ten years,’ Reshma said with a shrug. ‘And it was messy. I went back to my maiden name and moved and then it didn’t seem the best advertisement for my new business to mention it.’
Ginny sensed the heartache behind those words and her world felt upside down for a moment.
Reshma was indomitable, a strong woman Ginny had always admired.
She’d assumed her boss was simply choosy and hadn’t found the right man, but to know she’d married young and then regretted it tugged at her heart – and strengthened the little voice that had been insisting she was having an existential crisis at only twenty-eight years old.
‘Why did you start a wedding business, of all things?’ she asked.
‘Don’t look so horrified,’ Reshma said, giving her hand a squeeze.
‘I saw a gap in the market and I like to travel. I couldn’t have built this business if I were still married.
You and Sophie have always been better with the details.
You both like to travel too, the freedom of it.
I’d say Toni is exactly right.’ She turned to Great Heart’s receptionist with a conspiratorial smile.
‘You started to see through me during that wedding on Elba this year, didn’t you?
I know I’m a fraud, peddling dreams I don’t believe in myself, but it’s a business and no one would judge a man for doing what I’m doing. ’
‘You’re right, they wouldn’t,’ Kira agreed vehemently. ‘But this leaves you, Ginny. You’re the only one left – a heartbreak virgin.’
Ginny recoiled. ‘That’s a horrible expression,’ she muttered. ‘Not everyone gets their heart broken.’
‘Not the people who date by the rules, I suppose,’ Kira said gently. ‘But you remember what the hypnotherapist said.’
‘I didn’t think you’d remember so well.’
‘You’re the last one to fall in love. Maybe there’s more to it than not finding the right person.’
Her thoughts flickered down the hall to where Rhys would be already in his room. He was definitely not the right person, but he came to mind anyway.
Kira continued baldly, speaking words Ginny would have refused to understand two months ago. ‘Maybe you don’t really believe you have a soulmate.’
‘Um, I’m super tired actually,’ Ginny lied outrageously when they’d finished packing the wedding favours into a box to be transported to the reception venue.
Although it wasn’t entirely a lie. Her muscles ached from the walk and that terrible – fantastic – climb.
Her heart was tired of… trying too hard.
She’d felt dangerously numb ever since Kira had made her flippant declaration, thinking of Reshma, her parents, her dating ban and those confusing moments with Rhys where something had seemed to briefly shimmer into focus and then dissolve again.
It was something about herself and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it.
Hugging Sophie over her pregnant belly delivered another blow that only made her feel so desperately apart from all of her friends.
‘Please, Ginny, don’t overdo it. I need you smiling next to me at the ceremony.’
‘She’ll be fine tomorrow,’ Kira answered for her with that self-assurance that Ginny had always envied. ‘She just needs to recover from her adventures today when she proved she’s just as much a team member at Great Heart as she is at I Do.’
Ginny shook her head, even as the reminder sent another little fizz of adrenaline through her.
When she shut the door behind her friends, she sagged against it, allowing her thoughts to spin for a moment, forcing herself to pause when her feet wanted to race down the hall.
Not only did she have to wait until no one was looking, part of her insisted she needed to think about what she was doing.
Sneaking around to have sex with a guy who openly said he’d never commit didn’t sound like the actions of someone whose goal in life was to have her own partner. But what did that goal even mean? Did it just mean she wanted someone to love her? Perhaps she really was that pathetic.
Pathetic and deluded and na?ve – and standing outside Rhys’s door with no idea how she got there. She hadn’t even made the important detour to the condom machine. She knocked anyway.
Nothing. For several drawn-out seconds, she heard only silence and hated herself a little more for the thought that even her casual-sex partner had ditched her after one time.
She heard footsteps on the stairs and tasted panic.
If he didn’t come to the door in three seconds, she’d have to casually saunter back to her own room and come up with a plausible excuse for roaming this part of the corridor.
Finally, a light scuffling behind the door put her out of her misery and then it swung open – to reveal a horny fantasy of a half-naked man, dripping wet.
This time the image was even more inviting, because there was central heating and steam from a hot shower, rather than nine degrees and condensation from the cold.
‘Are you going to come in?’
Her gaze snapped back up to his, the footsteps suddenly echoing twice as loudly, and she dived for cover.
She’d admit – only to herself – that she’d been aiming for his chest. To her relief, his arms came around her as soon as she landed, even as he stumbled backwards.
Keeping her anchored to him, he turned to close the door with one last peek along the corridor.
‘Was anyone there?’
He shook his head. ‘All clear.’
As her heartbeat returned to normal, Ginny kept her cheek pressed just below his collarbone, not minding the moisture, hiding there for a moment as she came to terms with herself and her actions. She needed a lot more than a dating ban to work herself out.
When his mouth met hers with all the sparks and tension of the day, it didn’t matter any more whether coming here was a good idea, or what would happen in a few days when the wedding was over.
His breath, the way he clutched her shirt in his fists, the pressure of his lips clashing with hers filled the moment so there wasn’t room for anything else.
She buried her fingers in his hair, recognised the lime scent of his soap. All they’d done was kiss, but her vision blurred.
Rhys’s mouth was on her neck, short-circuiting her nervous system as the sensation rippled through her. His teeth scraped just below her ear and she fumbled for him, sucking in desperate breaths.
His hands were on the door on either side of her head, his body angled wickedly, perfectly into hers, but as the sparks of need flickered, reason intruded and she stilled.
‘I, uh… I didn’t get condoms. It’s a long story.’
He drew back far enough to study her and she kind of wished he wouldn’t. He would see her for who she truly was and she couldn’t allow that.
Untroubled, he said, ‘I did. I love that you wanted to, but I wouldn’t leave it only up to you.’
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, before opening again – for protection. ‘You know that’s a massive green flag.’
‘I also just really wanted to do this again and I didn’t want anything to stop us.’
‘That also works.’ She slid her hand around the back of his neck.
Then he asked the unforgivable. ‘Is everything okay?’
She sighed, her hands skimming down his arms. He captured them when they reached his hands and she stared at the mess of tangled fingers. ‘Not really,’ she admitted.
‘You don’t have to stay. You didn’t have to come.’
‘Apparently, I did,’ she mumbled. ‘Can we… just keep going?’ Freeing one hand, she slid her palm up his chest, studying every flinch of muscle, the bob of his throat. ‘I think I need this right now.’
He nodded, his hand sneaking up her back, under her shirt. The contact on her skin was everything and nowhere near enough.
‘Don’t hold back,’ she murmured. ‘I really need…’ you.
‘All right,’ he replied solemnly, the words burrowing under her skin.