Midnight Wedding Read online

  ‘A night for love,’ said Holly aloud. For all her intended cynicism she sounded young and breathless, even to her own ears. She tried again, ‘Passion under a tropical sky…’

  Her hands clenched on the balustrade. The grip was so tight that the wood scored her palm. The new diamond ring cut into her. She looked down at it.

  She had taken it off, the first day. It was too valuable, she’d said. She was not used to it. She might lose it…

  But Jack had been implacable. ‘We’re not talking Aladdin’s treasure here.’ He extracted the ring from the velvet nest to which she had restored it and held out his hand.

  Holly went into full retreat. She put her hands under the table. She knew he must think she was behaving like a stubborn child and she couldn’t do a thing about it.

  ‘I’m in your debt enough.’

  His amusement died. ‘I’ve told you. It’s not a gift, it’s part of the disguise,’ he said curtly. ‘If you want people to accept the story you’ve got to play the part.’

  For a moment his eyes bored into hers. Holly said nothing. Jack snapped the box shut and put it down on the table between them.

  ‘Up to you,’ he said softly.

  So she wore it. Not, in the end, because her disguise demanded it. Because she wanted to.

  It worried her. It felt as if she was breaching one of her mother’s cardinal rules: putting herself in the power of one of those creatures who could break your heart.

  Except that Jack couldn’t break my heart. You have to love someone for them to be able to hurt you. I don’t love Jack. Thank God.

  Paula came out of the cabin with a shawl in one hand and a softly burring mobile phone in the other. She tossed the bright fringed stuff to Holly and answered. ‘Hi. That you, Bob?’

  Holly pulled the shawl round her. It was exquisitely soft but its touch did not seem to warm her skin at all. Paula did not notice; she was too busy listening. A frown gathered between her brows.

  She said impatiently. ‘So you keep the airport open until the man arrives.’

  The mobile phone squawked.

  Paula was having no truck with excuses. ‘Just tell him “hurricane”. Remind him what Jack Armour did for us.’ She gave Holly a sudden wicked grin. ‘If that fails, ask him if he wants Sugar Island to have a tourist industry or not.’

  A pause. For no reason she could think of, Holly held her breath.

  ‘This is the guy’s wedding, for heaven’s sake. You want to break’s the bride’s heart?’

  Holly flinched.

  ‘Great headline that would make,’ said Paula, not noticing. She lowered the mobile phone. ‘You want to tell him something? Message for Jack, maybe?’

  Holly panicked. ‘No!’

  Paula misinterpreted. Or maybe she chose to misinterpret. She went back to the attack.

  ‘I’ve got a bride falling apart here,’ she told her interlocutor forcefully. ‘You get the man on the island and up here to his wedding. Or I’ll make sure everyone knows who got in the way.’

  She snapped the phone shut.

  ‘That Bob is an idiot. They should never have given him a uniform. It’s got him thinking he rules the world.’ She looked at Holly narrowly. ‘You’re not really upset, are you, honey?’

  Holly shook her head. The movement made her long loose curls fly. Another tribute to Paula’s powers of persuasion.

  ‘You can’t go to your wedding with your hair in plaits,’ she had said, genuinely shocked.

  So Holly had washed her hair and combed it out until it fell into a waterfall of golden-brown pre-Raphaelite waves which satisfied Paula. Holly, facing an image in the mirror that she had never seen before, had gone into shock. She had never looked so pretty. So—she’d swallowed—feminine.

  Now Paula said comfortingly, ‘Jack will get here. Never known him to give up if something is important. Jack always keeps his promises.’

  ‘You must know him very well.’ Holly sounded strangled.

  Paula thought she knew why. ‘Hey, I’m a respectable married woman. I love the guy like a brother, that’s all.’

  She thinks I’m jealous, thought Holly. She said abruptly, ‘I’m really cold. I need a coat.’

  She went back into the cabin and grabbed her old denim jacket. It was battered and not very clean but it would protect her a bit.

  She pulled it round her shoulders, remembering Paris and a man putting this same jacket around her while she shook. Not from cold then. Holly caught the jacket collar to her face and rubbed her cheek against it. Was it her imagination, or did it still smell of him? Yes, it was there: elusive as smoke, faint as a whisper in the dark, disturbing as a dream.

  How could I be jealous? I know nothing about him, she thought. Nothing. What am I doing here?

  But it was too late to ask that. She was here and, what was more, she had given Jack her word. She always kept her word. In the terrible mess of her teenage years, that was the one truth she had held on to. From what Paula said, it seemed it was one she shared with Jack.

  She went back onto the verandah, hoping Paula would ascribe her pallor to the temperature. She pulled the familiar jacket closer, with a theatrical murmur of appreciation. ‘That’s better.’

  Paula did not seem to be deceived. She surveyed Holly critically. ‘Hey. No need to look like that.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Holly, trying not to bristle.

  ‘Like you’ve got to climb Everest. Everything’s taken care of. Organising weddings is my business.’

  ‘I’m sorry. The waiting must be getting to me.’

  Paula nodded understandingly. ‘Any bride would be upset.’

  Holly flinched again. There was that word, for the second time tonight. Any bride.

  Paula did not notice. ‘Sugar Islanders are used to planes arriving late. We know it’s not worth getting steamed up about. It’s different for you.’

  Any bride, thought Holly, almost with horror.

  ‘Jack will be here. Bob says he’s found a pilot to fly him in from Barbados. They’ll keep the airport open here until he lands.’

  Her conversation with the distant Bob suddenly fell into place.

  ‘Thanks to you,’ said Holly, enlightened.

  Paula shrugged. ‘Thanks to Jack. I just reminded Bob.’

  ‘Reminded him?’

  Paula’s eyes narrowed. ‘Didn’t Jack tell you? We had a hurricane here a couple of years ago. Jack was on the relief team.’

  ‘I know his company makes emergency housing…’

  ‘Yeah, sure. His company made tents and stuff. But Jack was here. Mucking in with us. He didn’t go until everyone had a roof over their heads again, even if it was only canvas.’

  Holly had a vision of Jack, analysing the problem, working it out. And then he would tell everybody what to do. Calmly, logically and with no hint of emotion—and making quite sure that they did exactly what he said.

  ‘Sounds like Jack.’

  ‘He’s got a lot of friends on Sugar Island after that.’

  Holly looked away. They knew him, really knew him. She did not. They trusted him, admired him. Surely she could take comfort from that?

  Yet when she thought about him, Jack was as alien as the moon. Jack of the slanting dark eyes; Jack of the disconcerting silences; Jack who was still and deep as a mountain lake and whom she did not begin to know. Whom she was going to make vows to tonight that neither he nor she meant. Who, she now realised, had not given her one good reason why he was so determined to marry her.

  Holly tipped her head back and stared at the stars. She felt cold to her bones. But it did not have much to do with the increasing chill of the tropic night. Though she had done her best to hide it from herself, it was a cold that had started in Paris.

  He can’t hurt me. I’m not in love with him.

  And then, slow as a building wave, Am I?

  Stop, she told herself. Ask yourself the basics. Has he made a pass? No.

  She had repelled enough passes to be su
re of that.

  Has he suggested he’s attracted to you? No. Do you want him to? No.

  She began to feel better. Also slightly ashamed of herself.

  Hell, he hasn’t even kissed me properly. What on earth am I getting myself into this state for?

  Meanwhile Paula’s phone was ringing again. Holly jumped, brought back to the present with a bump.

  ‘Hello? Hi, Vinny. How you doing?’

  Holly could hear the other end of the conversation. Great news: the little Islander had landed. Yes, they had processed Jack’s passport and customs clearance while he was getting changed in the rest room. The whole party would be at Haven Beach in half an hour.

  ‘Right, we’re rolling,’ said Paula. She gave Holly a grin. ‘You can stop worrying. You’re not going to be jilted at the altar.’

  Holly tried to respond in kind. She really did.

  ‘That’s a relief.’ She stood up.

  Paula, confronted by a self-contained woman with frighteningly blank eyes, thought she had never seen a bride look like that. She tried hard to put it down to bridal nerves. She liked Jack Armour.

  She tried to be encouraging. ‘Want a last drink as a free woman?’

  Free? Holly shuddered at all the implications of that. Then she took herself to task.

  This was a marriage of convenience, pure and simple. They both knew that, she and Jack. She had no reason to think he had any intention to lock her into anything she didn’t want. Unlike Homer Whittard, he had no ulterior motive for marrying her. Jack Armour was just a practical man with a strong protective streak who had decided that she was making a terrible job of solving her own problems. She sometimes thought that he had taken her future into his own hands out of pure impatience.

  So why did he make her feel so insecure?

  Because she was not used to being taken care of, Holly assured herself. She did not know how to respond. But she was really lucky that he was that sort of man.

  Yes, that was the idea to cling on to. He was chivalrous. She was lucky. There was no need for her to feel as if she were about to jump off a cliff. Everything was going to work out fine.

  ‘Here,’ said Paula. She put a glass into Holly’s hand. ‘Fruit juice cocktail,’ she explained. ‘You want a dash of rum to stoke the fire?’

  For a heartbeat, Holly turned to stone. All the things Paula thought she was feeling—all the things a normal bride would be feeling—surged up into a tidal wave and knocked the breath out of her. Then she took hold of herself. She shook her head violently.

  ‘How long have I got?’ Her voice sounded strange to her own ears but at least it was steady.

  ‘Depends on how long you want to keep him waiting.’

  Her throat nearly closed again. Holly worked hard on keeping her expression blank and breathed through it.

  Paula Vincent sighed. She had hoped a little joke would lighten the atmosphere. Wrong, obviously!

  She refused to be downcast. ‘OK,’ she said brightly. ‘This is your last chance to freshen up as a single woman. Grab it. And I’ll tell Proteus to bring the car round.’

  Proteus turned out to be the taxi-driver who had met her at the airport. He was also the hotel barman and all-purpose wedding witness. The car was a flower-decked beach buggy which bounced to a halt on the grass below Holly’s verandah.

  ‘You go with Proteus in about ten minutes,’ Paula told her. ‘I’ll get on down to the beach.’ She gave her a quick, embarrassed kiss. ‘Good luck. See you at the party.’

  She went.

  Proteus strolled up the steps. ‘Shame you missed sunset. But you got a great night for it.’

  Holly nodded. She grabbed at the chance of a neutral conversation. Her heart was thudding somewhere up in her throat and her spine kept giving little shudders. Adrenaline, she told herself. That was what it was. Not foreboding. Certainly not panic. Adrenaline and all perfectly normal. She was still grateful to discuss local marriage customs instead of how Gorgeous Jack always kept his promises.

  She cleared her throat. ‘Is that when people usually get married, then? Sunset?’

  Proteus flashed a white grin in the darkness.

  ‘Depends. They want a pretty sky for the photographs. Sunrise for the romantics. They want to be alone. Sunset for the ones who want to party.’

  Holly was amused in spite of herself. ‘Makes sense,’ she said gravely.

  ‘And Jack was always going to have a hell of a party.’

  Holly was taken aback. As far as she knew Jack had decided they would marry on Sugar Island entirely because the official papers would take too long to organise in France—or in England, where her passport had been issued, or Florida, where his company was based. Yet here was Proteus talking as if Sugar Island was Jack’s home and his local friends had always expected to dance at his wedding.

  The sensation of being on a runaway dream ride struck her again.

  ‘W-was he?’

  Proteus smiled reminiscently. ‘He was here after the hurricane. Brought those dinky little tents of his, all done up in cookie packets.’

  ‘I see,’ said Holly enlightened. ‘Paula told me that he had done good work here. But I didn’t realise you were so close to him.’

  ‘Jack and me and Roy Vincent, we all put together the emergency generator at this end of the island. The guys and I promised him then—bring your lady on a trip when the island is back on its feet. And then Paula said, “Get married here and we’ll give you the best beach front wedding you’ve ever heard of.”’

  ‘I see,’ Holly said again, faintly.

  It had not occurred to her that Jack might already have a girlfriend he wanted to marry. Why had it not occurred to her? A sexy man like that? Of course he would have a girlfriend.

  So where was she? Why had he not married her, after all? And why was he willing to marry Holly, as if it did not matter who he married?

  ‘So Paula was half expecting it when he called,’ she said, fishing.

  ‘Hell, no. Expecting it? When do you ever expect Jack Armour to do anything? He blows in when he feels like it. She was pleased, though. We all were.’

  Great, thought Holly. Just what I need. A wedding full of guests who know the groom better than I do.

  And then a small voice said in her ear, Anyone who’s ever met him knows him better than you do.

  She said curiously, ‘Is it true they kept the airport open specially for him tonight?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Just because his company built you some shelter after the hurricane?’ She was incredulous.

  Just like Paula, he was indignant at the suggestion that Jack had been doing no more than his job.

  ‘Hey, not so much of the company talk. The man was hauling people out of buildings along with the rest of us. He got friends here. The guys will check his plane, then they’ll all come on down to the beach for a few hours. Drink your health. Dance a while.’

  Holly was beginning to be alarmed. ‘It sounds like a major production.’

  Proteus looked at her in surprise. ‘No production. Just friends and food and some good music.’

  Holly had a sudden memory of the party she had fled five years before. The Lansing Mills house had been full of formal flower arrangements and the garden full of circling waiters. Donna had spent months in detailed preparations, including countless phone calls to brief the tuxedoed band. Holly could not imagine a party being organised in that house at a week’s notice.

  Involuntarily she smiled.

  Proteus beamed back. ‘It will be real pleasure to give you a good send-off,’ he said. ‘Jack said you had a lot of responsibilities. Didn’t say how young you were, though.’

  Clearly it was a cause for congratulation. Holly shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘When I first saw you, I thought Jack had got him a schoolgirl,’ he admitted.

  Proteus had driven her from the airport.

  ‘I hate flying. It always shows.’ Holly was imp
atient. She wanted to know more about what Jack had told these people. She had a strong suspicion that he must have been talking about another woman altogether. ‘When did Jack—?’

  ‘No, wasn’t jet-lag. Maybe it was your hair. Don’t see a lot of grown-up ladies with plaits on Sugar Island.’ He eyed her current tumble of brown-gold curls with approval. ‘That’s better.’

  But Holly did not smile. ‘When did Jack tell you I had a lot of responsibilities?’

  He was apologetic. ‘When you take a break, guys like to talk about normal stuff.’

  ‘Take a break? You mean when he was here? After the hurricane?’

  ‘Yes.’

  So the unknown girlfriend had a lot of responsibilities. And after the hurricane Jack had expected to marry her. So why hadn’t he?

  And, more important, why was he marrying Holly? Why?

  Proteus was alarmed by her silence. ‘Wasn’t anything—you know—private,’ he assured her. ‘Guys don’t talk secrets like women do.’

  She pulled herself together. ‘It doesn’t matter. How soon should we go?’

  ‘Soon as you like. Jack should be there by now.’

  The verandah lurched under her feet.

  ‘Oh.’ She put a hand to her throat. ‘I think I feel sick.’

  Proteus grinned, unperturbed. ‘Never knew a bride yet who didn’t have wedding nerves. You’ll be OK soon as you see Jack.’

  There was that word again. Bride. The trouble was, she was beginning to believe it. Holly repressed a desire to moan.

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘Or when the party gets going.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Holly. She squared her shoulders and strode bravely towards the buggy.

  The beach looked as if the party had already started.

  There were real flambeaux on long poles stuck in the sand. Their flames beat sideways in the occasional gusts from the sea, a trail of smoke following the flaring light. Someone had put up a canopy. Someone else had brought a saxophone and was playing late-night blues.

  And people were everywhere! Men in uniforms, men in suits, some of them even wearing ties. Men in shorts and jeans and even those loose three-quarter trousers that made them look like eighteenth-century sailors. Women in everything from cocktail glitter to business suits. Plenty of wild batik prints on men and women alike. Skins every shade from so black it was purple to treacle-gold.