Chapter 16 #3
She let go of the chair she was holding. Her hands felt tight and clammy. ‘Me? I’m fine. Fine.’ She focused on the wedding liaison. ‘This is a lovely room, and the garden is absolutely gorgeous.’
‘Thank you. A lot of people like it. I’m sure it would be perfect for your wedding.’
Kalpana nodded, feeling a little light-headed. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure she was the perfect bride for it.
***
By the time they got back upstairs to the lobby, Kalpana was chiding herself for having a momentary loss of equilibrium. Sampath was clearly worried, judging by the way he was fluttering around her.
‘So, er. Did you have any plans for the rest of the day?’ he asked, cautiously.
She pulled her thoughts together. She was annoyed with Marcus for abandoning her while they were looking at venues for their wedding. Fine. That didn’t mean she had to mope around here, sitting in the huge hotel room. She would go and see something. Salvage the day.
‘Where would you go?’ she said. ‘If you didn’t have to do wedding stuff and had an unexpected afternoon off, what would you do?’
He gave it some serious thought, thick brows knitting together.
‘I would … go sightseeing,’ he said. ‘Actually, first, I would ask around for an interesting place for lunch. Somewhere that people who live locally recommend. Then I would ask Lal if there were any sightseeing things nearby, which could be done in an afternoon. Ideally something off the beaten track.’ He stared at a spot ahead of him for a second or two and then nodded. ‘Yes. That’s what I would do. Why?’
That sounded good to her. ‘Then let’s do that,’ she said. ‘Let’s break out from this wedding reconnaissance work and just do something random. If Marcus is going to abandon me with you guys, I may as well do something fun. Would you and Lal mind if I joined in your jaunt?’
‘I don’t mind. Let me just call …’ He spoke to Lal, quickly, in a mixture of Sinhala and English, and seemed to outline what she’d just said. ‘Thanks, Lal. We’ll see you in a couple of minutes.’
He hung up and said, ‘He’s going to do a quick bit of asking around. He’ll meet us at the front in fifteen minutes.’
Something blossomed inside of her. Yes. Doing a bit of sightseeing would be a welcome distraction. She smiled at him. ‘This is going to be so much fun. I’m really looking forward to it.’
He grinned back. They stood there for a moment, smiling at each other until Sampath’s phone buzzed. He excused himself and answered it.
Kalpana watched his broad back as he turned away to speak on the phone.
There was a lightness in her chest that she hadn’t felt in all the time that she’d been here.
Excitement? What was it about the idea of going out with Sampath and Lal that was so exciting?
She spent most of the day with them in the past few days.
The memory of them sitting around the carrom table, drinking beer, rose to her mind.
That had been fun. She had been more relaxed, and enjoyed herself for that hour, than she had been for the majority of the holiday.
Why would she be more relaxed with two men she barely knew than she would with her own fiancé?
Did Marcus make her tense? She turned away from Sampath and stared vaguely at the flower arrangement by the doors.
That was the truth, wasn’t it? She was always on her best behaviour with Marcus.
He was … so different, so great, so very out of her league that she always felt she wasn’t good enough.
Her gaze drifted down to the diamond on her finger.
A tasteful, oval-cut diamond that sparkled in the tropical sun.
Those feelings of inadequacy weren’t a problem caused by him, were they?
It was her. She was the one injecting these tensions into their relationship.
He had never suggested that she wasn’t good enough for him. It was all her and her insecurities.
But it was hard to have a heartfelt conversation with him.
Last night was not unusual. She would start off trying to talk to him but then he would derail the conversation, and she would just …
give up. That was how she’d ended up here, on this ridiculous holiday, where they went from venue to venue, looking for things that Marcus thought were important for the perfect wedding.
She wrote romance novels for a living. She knew that romance was about tiny acts of service.
Love was formed from trust and respect and chemistry …
the rest was merely set dressing. When he came back, she would try again.
This time, she wouldn’t fold like a cheap umbrella in a breeze.
She would stick to her guns. She didn’t want a huge, showy wedding in Colombo.
Really, she didn’t want a wedding in Sri Lanka at all.
She had so little connection to it. It was just a fairy tale to her – a place her parents talked about as a distant prospect.
She had been maybe twice, as a child. She didn’t speak the language.
She didn’t fully understand the culture.
She didn’t belong here, so why would she want to get married here?