little twist. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, he’s a great boss, really lovely to work for.’ She leant forward again and said in a quiet voice, ‘I don’t think Amber likes me very much, though; she didn’t seem very pleased to see me here.’
‘I wouldn’t take that too personally,’ Cara said, giving her a reassuring smile. ‘She’s an intensely protective person.’ She put a hand on Lucy’s arm. ‘Thanks for being brave enough to come over and apologise, Lucy; I really appreciate the gesture.’
Lucy gave her one last smile, and Max a slightly terrified grimace, before retreating to her table.
Max sat back down in his chair, giving her an impressed nod. ‘Nicely handled.’
Warm pleasure coursed through her as she took in the look of approval in his eyes. Feeling a little flustered by it, she picked up her glass of wine to take a big gulp, but judged the tilt badly and some escaped from the side of the rim and dribbled down her chin. Before she had time to react, Max whipped his napkin under her jaw and caught the rogue droplets with it, stopping them from splashing onto her dress.
‘Smooth!’ she said, laughing in surprise.
‘I have moves,’ he replied, his eyes twinkling and his mouth twitching into a warm smile.
A wave of heat engulfed her and her stomach did a full-on somersault.
Oh, no, what was happening to her?
Heart racing, she finally allowed the truth to filter through to her consciousness.
It was, of course, the very last thing she needed to happen.
She was falling in love with him.
AFTER THE MEAL and speeches, all the guests were encouraged to go through to the house, where a bar had been set up under the sweeping staircase in the hall and a DJ in the ballroom was playing ambient tunes in the hope of drawing the guests in there to sit around the tables that surrounded the dance floor.
Waiting at the bar to grab them both a caffeinated soft drink to give them some energy for the rest of the evening’s events, Max allowed his thoughts to jump back over the day.
He’d had fun at the lake with Cara, which had taken him by surprise, because the last thing he’d expected when he’d got up that morning was that he would enjoy himself today.
But Cara had a way of finding the joy in things.
In fact, he’d been so caught up in the pleasure of showing her how to skim stones, he hadn’t thought about what he was doing until his hand was on the soft curve of her hip and his body was pressed up close to hers, the familiar floral scent of her perfume in his nose and the heat of her warming his skin. He’d hidden his instinctive response to it well enough, he thought, using the excessive rush of adrenaline to hurl more stones across the water.
And then she’d been so delighted when she’d managed to skim that stone by herself he’d felt a mad urge to wrap his arms around her again in celebration and experience the moment with her.
But that time he’d managed to rein himself in, randomly talking about his own wedding to break the tension, only to feel a different kind of self-reproach when Cara assumed his indiscriminate jump to the subject was down to him feeling gloomy about his situation.
Which it really hadn’t been.
Returning with the drinks to where he’d left Cara standing just inside the ballroom, he handed one to her and smiled when she received it with a grimace of relieved thanks. The main lights in the room were set low and a large glitter ball revolved slowly from the ceiling, scattering the floor and walls with shards of silver light. Max watched them dance over Cara’s face in fascination, thinking that she looked like some kind of ethereal seraph, with her bright eyes and pale creamy skin against the glowing silver of her dress.
A strange elation twisted through him, triggering a lifting sensation throughout his whole body—as if all the things that had dragged him down in the past eighteen months were losing their weight and slowly drifting upwards. The sadness he’d expected to keep on hitting him throughout the day was still notably absent, and instead there was a weird sense of rightness about being here.
With her.
Catching her giving him a quizzical look, he was just about to ask if she wanted to take another walk outside so they could hear each other speak when Jack and Amber walked past them and onto the empty dance floor. Noticing their presence, the DJ cued up a new track as a surge of guests crowded into the room, evidently following the happy couple in to watch their first dance as husband and wife.
Max found himself jostled closer to Cara as the edges of the dance floor filled up and he instinctively put an arm around her to stop her from being shoved around, too. She turned to look at him, the expression in her eyes startled at first, but then sparking with understanding when he nodded towards a gap in the crowd a little along from them.
He guided them towards it, feeling her hips sway against his as they moved, and had to will his attention-starved body not to respond.
Once in the space, he let her go, relaxing his arm to his side, and could have sworn he saw her shoulders drop a little as if she’d been holding herself rigid.
Feeling a little disconcerted by her obvious discomfort at him touching her again, he watched the happy couple blindly as they twirled around the dance floor, going through the motions of the ballroom dance they’d plainly been practising for the past few months.
Had he overstepped the mark by manhandling her like that? He’d not meant to make her uncomfortable but they were supposed to be there as a couple, so it wasn’t as though it wasn’t within his remit to act that way around her.
Ugh. There was no point in beating himself up about it. He’d just have to be more careful about the way he touched her, or not, for the rest of the evening.
As soon as the dance finished, other couples joined the newlyweds on the dance floor and, spotting Cara, Jack broke away from Amber and made his way over to them.
‘Cara, I’m so glad you made it!’ he said, stooping down to pull her into a bear hug, making her squeal with laughter as he spun her around before placing her back down again.
Cara pulled away from him, her cheeks flushed, and rubbed his arm affectionately. ‘Congratulations. And thank you for inviting us. It’s a beautiful wedding.’
‘I’m glad you’re having a good time,’ Jack replied, smiling into her eyes. ‘Want to dance with me, for old times’ sake?’ he said, already taking her arm and leading her away from Max onto the dance floor. ‘You don’t mind if I steal her away for a minute, do you, Max?’ he tossed over his shoulder, plainly not at all interested in Max’s real opinion on the matter.
Not that Max should mind.
Watching Cara laugh at something that Jack whispered into her ear as he began to move her around the dance floor, Max was hit by an unreasonable surge of irritation and had to force himself to relax his arms and let them hang by his sides instead of balling them into tight fists. What the heck was going on with him today?
