And wasn’t she just about the luckiest girl ever, she thought with a lightening of her heart as she took in the sexy profile of the man beside her, the strong square set of his jaw, the slightly crooked shape of his nose – broken when he’d been a child and had fallen out of a tree – and the enviable length of his gorgeous eyelashes. Then there were his arms and his big broad shoulders, the muscles all ropy and zinging with the kind of powerful energy that could lift a girl right off her feet. As a student he’d worked on building sites during the holidays, carrying bricks up and down ladders, and acquired, as he liked to joke, superhuman strength, as well as pointing him in the direction of becoming a quantity surveyor.
Jenna and Callum often teased her that she was obsessed with falling in love. She didn’t see it that way. She just wanted to have that special person in her life, someone who would always be there for her.
The marriages she knew well – her parents’ marriage, Frankie and Danny’s, and Alastair and Orla’s – epitomised for her what a loving relationship was all about. It was about sharing and supporting one another, through good and bad times. She didn’t kid herself that Mum and Dad were always perfectly happy, but it was normal to bicker over the stupidest of things. Everybody did that. Well, maybe not Frankie and Danny, she thought with a small smile. But having been surrounded by those strong and loving relationships all her life, it made her want something similar, something solid and lasting.
But was Paul really the right man for her? Until this weekend she would have said yes in a heartbeat. Now her head was questioning her heart. It made her reflect on Mum and Alastair, and how for a short time, when they were young, they had been an item. Until Orla had come along and Alastair had fallen for her. Rachel couldn’t remember exactly how old she’d been when Orla had told her this, but she could recall laughing at the idea, as no way could she picture Mum and Alastair as a couple. She’d even accused Orla of making it up, that it was just another of her jokes, but then Mum and Dad had said it was true.
So could she picture her and Paul as a proper long-term couple, that was the question?
‘I’m sorry if you felt a bit left out,’ Paul said, breaking into her thoughts, ‘but I warned you that my family needs some getting used to.’ He took one hand off the steering wheel and reached for hers. ‘By the way, my mother thought you were great. She said what a charming smile you had, that she’d never seen such amazingly white teeth before. She was very impressed.’
Rachel smiled. ‘That was nice of her. What about your dad, what did he think of me?’
Paul laughed again. ‘He just needs to get over the disappointment of you not being an F1 fan like the rest of us.’
‘I didn’t realise you were so into it. I mean, I knew you watched it on the telly, usually when I was at the gym or seeing Jenna, but I didn’t appreciate how big a thing it was for you.’
‘My guilty secret,’ he said, removing his hand from hers and returning it to the steering wheel, ‘now you know.’
‘Anything else I need to know about?’ she asked. She wanted to ask specifically about Perfect Paula, but she’d sooner fling open the car door and schlep all the way back to London on foot, rather than reveal how hurt her feelings had been with his family banging on about Paula this and Paula that.
He hesitated. Then: ‘There is something.’
‘Go on,’ she said, warily.
‘Well, my mum’s not the only one who thinks you’re great. I do too.’ He swallowed. ‘Actually, and I know this isn’t the best time to say it, I could choose a more romantic time and place to say it, but … well, the thing is,’ he took his eyes off the road and shot her a sidelong glance. ‘I think you’re really great. So great that I think I love you. There, I’ve said it.’
Rachel felt her cheeks blossom with a heady rush of pleasure, and in an instant any niggling doubts she’d felt vanished. ‘I love you too,’ she said, the words out before she realised she was even saying them.
‘Really?’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘I am. I thought that maybe after meeting my family you might have changed your opinion of me. I think that’s why I was so reluctant to take you to meet them. And then you seemed so quiet over the weekend, I thought that was a bad sign.’
‘It was hard to get a word in edgeways,’ she said light-heartedly.
‘Sorry about that. Like I say, we can be a bit full on.’
‘I’m sure I’ll get used to it.’
‘So when do I get to meetyourparents?’
Chapter Thirteen
Jenna froze with sudden alarm, her heart going from its customary steady beating speed to full-on-burst-out-of-her-chest mode. ‘Callum! What are you doing here? It’s not Dad, is it?’
He frowned and shook his head. ‘No, I just happened to be in London and thought I’d see if you were free for lunch. But no problem if it’s not convenient.’
By the time they were seated at a wobbly metal table outside a nearby sandwich bar in the full glare of the July sunshine and the fumes from the slow-moving traffic, Jenna’s heart had resumed normal service and she felt she could once again breathe properly.
‘It was the unexpectedness of seeing you here and me putting two and two together and coming up with the worst news imaginable,’ she explained to Callum, thinking as she often did how well he looked. Hair lightened by the sun, his face tanned and making his blue eyes look even bluer, he was every inch the outdoor man he was, fit and wholesome with the casual air of someone content with his lot. He’d never been what you’d call weedy as a boy, but he’d certainly filled out in the muscle department since working at the boatyard. She had noticed a few glances turning his way while walking here, her shorter legs working to keep up with his long energetic strides. The girl who’d taken their lunch order had clearly been charmed by more than just his engaging smile, her eyes doing a less than subtle sweep over his well-honed body. To her amusement, Jenna had been as good as invisible next to him.
‘I think we can safely say that if there was bad news to be delivered to you, you’d receive a phone call,’ he said. ‘I doubt I’d be top of the list in terms of an emergency call-out service.’
Jenna smiled. ‘You’d be good at breaking bad news to me, though. Maybe that’s what my subconscious leapt on. You’d certainly make a better job of it than your sister.’
He nodded his head vigorously. ‘Yeah, Rachel’s not known for her sensitivity. Talking of Rachel, don’t tell her I was here, will you?’
