Shopaholic Ties the Knot (Shopaholic #3)(129)
Author: Sophie Kinsella

“Excuse me.” I jump aside as a waiter wheels a cart past.

“Can I help you?” says a woman with a Plaza badge on her lapel.

“I was just, er… looking around…” I say.

“Looking around?” Her eyes narrow suspiciously.

“Yes! In case I ever… er… want to get married.” I back away before she can ask any more. I’ve seen enough, anyway.

I’m not sure how to get back to the suite from here, and this place is so huge I’m bound to get lost, so I head back down to the ground floor and walk as inconspicuously as I can past the Palm Court to the elevators.

As I pass an alcove containing a sofa, I stop. There’s a familiar dark head. A familiar hand, holding what looks like a gin and tonic.

“Luke?” He turns round and peers at me blankly — and I suddenly realize my face is half hidden. “It’s me!” I hiss.

“Becky?” he says incredulously. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see it all. Isn’t it amazing?” I look around to see if I’m being observed, then slide into the chair opposite him. “You look great.”

He looks more than great. He’s looking completely gorgeous, in an immaculate dinner jacket and crisp white dress shirt. His dark hair is glossy under the lights, and I can just smell the familiar scent of his aftershave. As he meets my eyes, I feel something release inside me, like a coil unwinding. Whatever happens today — whether I pull this off or not — the two of us are together. The two of us will be all right.

“We shouldn’t be talking to each other, you know,” he says with a little smile. “It’s bad luck.”

“I know,” I say, and take a sip of his gin and tonic. “But to be honest, I think we’re beyond superstition by now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh… nothing.” I count to five, psyching myself up, then say, “Did you hear about your parents being delayed?”

“Yes, I was told.” Luke frowns. “Did you speak to them? Do you know when they’ll get here?”

“Oh, soon, I expect,” I say vaguely. “Don’t worry, they said they would definitely be there to see you walk down the aisle.”

Which is true. In its way.

Luke doesn’t know anything of my plans. He’s had enough to deal with as it is. For once, I’m the one in charge.

I feel like I’ve seen a completely different Luke over the last few weeks. A younger, more vulnerable Luke, whom the rest of the world doesn’t know anything about. After he had that meeting with Elinor, he was very quiet for a while. There was no huge emotional outburst, no dramatic scene. In some ways, he simply went back to normal. But he was still fragile, still exhausted. Still nowhere near being able to go to work. For about two weeks, he just slept and slept, fourteen or fifteen hours a day. It was as though ten years of driving himself too hard were finally catching up with him.

Now he’s gradually becoming his usual self. He’s getting back that veneer of confidence. That blank expression when he doesn’t want people to know what he’s feeling. That abrupt, businesslike manner. He’s been into the office during the past week, and it’s been like old times.

Although not quite. Because although the veneer’s back, the point is, I’ve seen underneath it. I’ve seen the way Luke works. The way he thinks and what he’s scared of and what he really wants out of life. Before all this happened, we’d been together for over two years. We’d lived together, we were a successful couple. But now I feel I know him in a way I never did before.

“I keep thinking back to that conversation I had with my mother,” he says, frowning into his drink. “Up in the Rainbow Room.”

“Really?” I say warily. “What exactly—”

“I still find it confusing.”

“Confusing?” I say after a pause. “Why’s that?”

“I’ve never heard her speak that way before. It didn’t seem real.” He looks up. “I don’t know whether I should believe her.”

I lean forward and take his hand. “Luke, just because she’s never said those things to you before, it doesn’t mean they aren’t true.”

This is what I’ve said to him nearly every day since he had the meeting with Elinor. I want to stop him picking away at it. I want him to accept what she said, and be happy. But he’s too intelligent for that. He’s silent for a few moments, and I know he’s replaying the conversation in his mind.

“Some of the things she said seemed so true, and others, so false.”