Convenient Engagements: Fiance Wanted Fast! / The Blind-Date Proposal / A Whirlwind Engagement. Jessica Hart
managing to fill all the available space with the sheer force of his personality even when he was at his most lazy and relaxed.
All in all, it was a relief when Gib went off to have a shower. Phoebe took the opportunity to scramble off the bed and change into the dress she had brought specially for that evening. It was very simple, a slim sheath the colour of a tropical lagoon that brought out the green in her eyes and left her shoulders bare. Phoebe had worried that it might be a little too dramatic for her to carry off, but Kate and Bella had been unanimous in their approval.
‘It’s perfect! No one would ever think you were brokenhearted in a dress like that!’
‘That,’ Kate had agreed, ‘is a dress worn by a woman in control of her life.’
There was irony for you, thought Phoebe, wondering what to do with her hair. She never felt in control when Gib was around.
The bathroom door opened and Gib came out, a towel wrapped around his hips. He whistled when he saw her, and she span round, the breath drying in her throat. His blonde hair was dark and damp from the shower, and she couldn’t help noticing how lean and brown and compactly muscled his body was. Quickly, she turned back to the mirror where she was fixing slides into her hair.
‘I hope you’re not planning to go like that,’ she said, horrified by the shake in her voice.
‘I wish I could.’ Gib contemplated his suit without enthusiasm. ‘I suppose I’ll have to put that on again. I’ve got nothing else to wear, and before you say it, yes, I know it’s my fault! I hate wearing suits,’ he grumbled as he retrieved his shirt from the hanger. ‘I can’t stand the feel of a tie around my neck.’
‘I’m surprised you’re not used to it, running that bank of yours,’ said Phoebe, taking refuge in sarcasm to distract herself from view of his smooth brown back in the mirror.
He glanced at her over his shoulder with a glimmering smile. ‘Maybe mine’s a different kind of bank where you don’t have to dress like a dummy all day!’
‘That sounds about as likely as you being president,’ she said, mumbling through the clips she was holding in her mouth while she secured her hair in place. ‘Don’t you want your staff to look professional?’
‘In my bank we’re more concerned with what people do than how they look,’ Gib informed her loftily.
Phoebe smoothed the last hair into place. ‘Right,’ she said, her voice laced with irony. ‘I’m sure it’s a great success! Now look, can you please keep off the subject of banks this evening? We don’t want to be rumbled now we’ve got this far. I’d appreciate it if you’d remember what you’re here to do!’
‘To show everyone how in love with you I am?’
‘Yes,’ she said, not quite able to meet his eyes directly. She busied herself looking for the necklace Bella had insisted on lending her instead.
‘That shouldn’t be a problem with the way you look tonight,’ said Gib. ‘You look sensational!’
Startled, Phoebe’s eyes flew involuntarily to meet his in the mirror. He was smiling, obviously joking, but there had been something in his voice that made her suddenly, acutely, aware of him, of the breadth of his shoulders and the long, muscled legs and the easy way he moved.
‘There’s no need to start pretending yet,’ she said, tearing her gaze away with an uncertain laugh. ‘There’s nobody else here.’
‘I know,’ said Gib.
The air leaked out of Phoebe’s lungs, and in the taut silence that followed, she fumbled around on the chest of drawers for her jewellery. She was intensely relieved when Gib went back into the bathroom. He reappeared wearing trousers, which was something, she thought. Shrugging on his shirt, he looped the tie round his neck and knotted it loosely.
The casual intimacy of dressing threw Phoebe completely. She was trying to fasten Bella’s spectacular necklace, and Gib’s presence only made her fingers even clumsier at the fiddly catch, until she muttered under her breath in frustration.
‘Here, let me have a go,’ he offered, having watched her struggling for a few moments.
It would be childish to refuse, Phoebe decided. She bent her head, tensing as Gib moved towards her and brushed her hair gently out of the way. The graze of his fingers against her neck made her shiver involuntarily, and she stood mouse-still as he fastened the necklace and smoothed it into place.
There it was done. But instead of stepping back with the flip comment she half expected, Gib let his hands rest for a moment on the curve of her shoulders. Slowly, almost unwillingly, Phoebe lifted her head and met his eyes, blue and serious, in the mirror. They had held the same expression after he had kissed her in the car and her heart began to slam in her chest. She couldn’t move, could just stand there feeling the warmth of his hands on her skin, while an answering heat uncoiled inside her at an alarming rate.
With an enormous effort, she moistened her lips. ‘We’d better finish getting ready,’ she managed, appalled at the huskiness of her voice. Clearing her throat, she tried again. ‘We’ll be late.’
Gib dropped his hands and stepped back. ‘We don’t want that,’ he agreed dryly. ‘They might think that two people as much in love as we are have got better things to do alone here with a four-poster bed than get dressed up in uncomfortable clothes to spend an evening making more small talk!’
‘Making small talk was part of the deal,’ she reminded him, still not quite as steadily as she would have liked.
‘Ah, yes, the deal, we mustn’t forget that!’
They walked across the courtyard from their tower in silence. Phoebe was desperately aware of Gib, close beside her but not touching. There was a strange, jittery feeling just below her skin, and her stomach was looping and churning in a way that made her wish she could go back to simply worrying about whether anyone would spot that Gib wasn’t really a banker and wasn’t really her lover. That had seemed bad enough at the time, but this new consciousness of Gib was much, much worse, this was a whole new level of nervousness and Phoebe didn’t like it at all.
For dinner the remaining guests were divided up among five round tables. Phoebe and Gib were sitting with Lara, who spent most of her time moaning about her parents and their unreasonable behaviour in disapproving of her latest boyfriend.
‘He’s got his own band,’ Lara confided. ‘Some guy in the music business came to listen to one of their gigs, and he thinks they’ve got a great future. They’re going to London soon to make a recording, not that that cuts any ice with Mum and Dad! They’re so conventional,’ she grumbled. ‘They can’t bear the fact that Jed lives in a squat. They don’t understand that he’s an artist. He’d be stifled in an ordinary environment. That’s why he didn’t get an invitation to come to the wedding, even though we’ve been going out for weeks now! They want me to find someone like Gib, with a proper job.’
Involuntarily, Phoebe glanced at Gib. ‘Nice to know that someone appreciates how hard I work,’ he murmured provocatively.
‘Oh, they think you’re great,’ said Lara, missing the irony. ‘Mum can’t wait for you to spend the weekend so she can interrogate you properly! You’d better brace yourself, Phoebe. She’s bound to get out the baby photographs and tell Gib about the time you took your knickers off in the middle of their sherry party.’
‘I was only three,’ said Phoebe as Gib raised an enquiring eyebrow.
‘At least Jed is spared that,’ said Lara, cheering up at the realisation. ‘You should have been a rebel, Gib, then they wouldn’t be so keen on inviting you to stay.’
Oh, dear, Phoebe sighed inwardly. She should have foreseen that her mother would start planning intimate family get-togethers. Now she would have to think up endless excuses as to why they couldn’t go down for the weekend until their supposedly perfect relationship had had time to fall apart convincingly.