Lost (Arielle Lockley Series Book 2) (10 page)

‘I’m sorry.’

‘OK.’ Piers sits up in bed.

I’ve been sitting up in bed for the past thirty minutes mulling things over. It’s hard not to smile at the sight of this gorgeous man next to me, pulling the most unattractive, yet sexy face as he yawns and rotates his shoulders. His biceps twitch under his soft grey Calvin Klein t-shirt, and it takes every ounce of restraint not to skip this talk and climb on top of him.

‘Do you hate me?’ I ask in a small voice.

‘Of course I don’t hate you, Arielle. Where’s this come from?’

He rubs his brown eyes and squints at the clock, then pulls me a look. I ignore that question, and I ignore the look.

‘Do you think I’m trustworthy?’ I stare at my hands.

‘Of course.’ He reaches for my hand and squeezes it; I’m treated to a grin when I look up at him. ‘Is this to do with Felicity, or should I be worried?’ 

I shoot him a look. ‘Are you worried?’

‘No, silly! Now, what is it? You know if it doesn’t work out with Felicity, we can make your shop dreams happen.’

‘It’s not a shop, it’s a pop-up,’ I archly say. Irgh, what is with me? ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I add, as Piers takes his hand away from mine, rightly affronted. ‘I don’t know why I’m in this mood. Time of the month.’ I roll my eyes.

‘Is that so?’

‘No, not at all,’ I purr, inching closer to Piers in a way that probably isn’t very seductive since I went to bed in my pyjamas which have pictures of penguins on them.
Hot
. 

He pushes me away gently as I reach for the waistband of his boxers. I’m definitely not hot then, and I’m more than disappointed.

‘Let’s just call it my time of the month,’ Piers says dryly.

‘Don’t you fancy me anymore?’ I want to cry. ‘You never want us to have sex.’

‘Arielle, woah! Calm down! Surely you can see you’re all over the place? First you snap at me, then you try to seduce me, and now you’re practically in tears. All in the space of two minutes. Of course I fancy you.’ Piers reaches back for my hand. ‘But I still don’t feel great. I’ve had a stressful week, and you staring at me for the past thirty minutes when it’s only six thirty on a Saturday morning and I’m trying to sleep, well it isn’t exactly the best foreplay.’

OK, when he puts it like that, I get that I am being a flake. It’s just that... No, no, stop it. It is not Piers’ fault that I am having problems with the business, and he’s got every right to feel tired and not want to do anything. It
is
an uncivilised hour for a Saturday morning.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say in a tiny voice. ‘Do you want to go back to sleep?’

He laughs. ‘Well, it is only half past six, Pony, and I am tired. But,’ he adds, ‘if you go in my bag, there’s a few things in there that will keep you occupied if you don’t want to go back to sleep. Get yourself a cup of tea though, and put on another layer. As cute as you look in that penguin vest, you look freezing!’

I lean over and kiss him. ‘I’ll be really quiet, I promise.’

He merely raises his eyebrows in response to that, before rolling over and snuggling back down under the covers.

I get out of bed, grab Piers’ dirty shirt from off the floor, then head through to the living room. It’s still dark outside as I peep through the curtains and put on his shirt. I spot a few early morning risers jogging or taking their dogs out for walks. As much as I’d love a dog, unless you have a big garden or are near a park, I don’t think it’s fair to have one in the capital. A cat would be more ideal, though the ones who slink past on the top of our garden fence probably wouldn’t take too kindly to a new fluffball on their turf.

Closing the curtains, I head into the kitchen to pop the kettle on, then flop on a chair whilst it boils. Piers’ bag is on the kitchen table, and it’s time to see what’s in it.

Lifting up the flap, I pull out a bunch of wedding venue brochures and a few more bridal magazines. Amazing! Well, not so much the magazines – I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime already – but Piers has ordered the brochures of some of the venues we were looking at online.

Flicking through them, his notebook falls out, and as I pick it up, I spy a prescription note sticking out of the pages. It will be for his allergy tablets – hayfever season for Piers starts this month, the poor thing.

Putting the notebook back, I stand up and walk over to the kettle to make myself a breakfast tea in my favourite glossy green and gold mug, before heading back to bed with the brochures. These are going to keep my occupied for a while!

Piers is already sleeping soundly when I climb back into bed, and I am half tempted to curl up behind him to try and go back to sleep myself, but I’ll probably wake him up if I do. He needs to rest. I forget at times how hard he works. His day is like my stressful few hours yesterday with Etta. OK, it’s probably a million times worse for him, and he has that kind of day
every single day
.

Irgh,
Etta
. I pull a face at the thought of
her
. Whilst I thought she was amazing when she was just a random girl we saw sing in Ronnie Scott’s, I now know that appearances can be deceptive.

Ditto for Tabitha actually. I once thought she was snooty and elitist – OK, reading the tabloid tales painted her in another unflattering light – but she’s become someone I’d like to spend more time with, and not just in a business way. That sounds like I have some awful girl crush on her, but I don’t have many female friends. I’ve always gone along with Piers’ crowd, something I painfully realised when we broke up and I had no one to turn to and, again, when it came to picking my bridesmaids.

Thank goodness for Piers’ niece, though she is becoming more and more insistent that she rides BoJo down the aisle after me. I have visions of him relieving himself over my train before eating my mother’s hat. Hopefully BoJo will be a distant hobby of Annabelle’s by the time the wedding rolls round.

I do have Lydia though, who I must catch up with soon, especially if Piers is going to be away for my birthday – I do not fancy a trip to Virginia. And, of course, there’s Ob and Felicity. I’d be lost without those two, even if Felicity has a hideous goddaughter who is trying to take over my pop-up. Still, you can’t choose your family, can you, and Etta’s mum was probably lovely. I hear genes can skip a generation...

Enough of those thoughts, it’s wedding planning time! I glance over at Piers, unable to believe my luck that I’m going to be Mrs Piers Bramley.

He’s thrown off the covers already, though I can hear his chest wheezing slightly, so I gently put it back over him. Piers insists that he’s always too warm when we go to sleep; if I had my way, we’d have a fifteen-tog duvet on the bed throughout winter. He’s already itching to get out the summer duvet as it’s March next week... Sometimes I don’t understand my fiancé at all. 

What I do understand though is his need to reflect a certain way of life. OK, I have my marvellous dress that I absolutely love and may never take off once I put it on for the wedding, but I’d be just as happy having a tiny ceremony – heck, even elope – rather than attempt the society wedding of the year, which is what I fear this wedding is slowly turning into.

Half the people on the guest list seem to be clients of Piers who I’ve never even met. I understand it’s good for business, but why can’t we just take them out for a really awesome dinner (or two) rather than have them as guests at our wedding? I suppose that’s what married life is about, compromising, and this also applies to the wedding.

I take a sip of tea and pick up the stack of wedding brochures. So, what’s so special about these places that we’ll happily fork out a staggering amount of money to use the place for roughly half a day?

‘Thank you so much for fitting us in at such short nice, Veronica’ Piers says, sticking out his hand.

‘My
pleasure
!’

If she got any closer to Piers, a casual passer-by would easily mistake me for Pelsley Castle’s wedding planner and her for Piers’ fiancée. What is it with women who throw themselves at men who are clearly taken? There couldn’t have been any more emphasis on the way she said pleasure, except if she had spelled out exactly what she’d like to do to Piers at the back of the Great Hall. I’d like to wipe that desperate smile off her face with one of the ceremonial swords this place, more than likely, has kicking around.

I know before we’ve even looked around that our wedding will not take place here. Veronica has yet to acknowledge me, the bride, the woman who is marrying the man she is trying to not-so-subtly give a view of her cleavage.

Of course, Piers is oblivious to all of this. If I pointed out this behaviour of hers afterwards, he would think that I was being funny because I didn’t like her. Men... sometimes they are blind idiots, even the smart ones like Piers.

I have never known a handshake to last so long.
What is she hoping Piers will see in her cleavage – the lost treasure of Tutankhamun?

‘And I’m Arielle,’ I say, throwing my arm around Piers so Veronica has to move her hand away pretty fast.

‘My beautiful bride-to-be.’

Piers puts his arm around me, and pulls me closer to plant a long and lingering kiss on my lips. A really long and lingering kiss. Maybe he’s not as oblivious to Veronica’s intense attempt at flirtation as I thought.

‘Lovely,’ she says flatly, her demeanour completely changed from a mere minute ago when she was fawning over Piers. ‘Well, if you’d like to follow me.’

Veronica turns around and marches off, leaving Piers and I giggling at her complete three-sixty. Some of her light brown hair is falling out of her bun; I’d point it out to her if I wasn’t afraid she’d snap my head off.

‘Crikey, I thought she’d never let go.’

‘Someone’s clearly made an impression.’ I raise my eyebrows.

‘Please,’ Piers replies. ‘It would be like eating mouldy bread for the rest of my days after spending all these years savouring that cherry and walnut sourdough bread we get from the bakery.’

That is possibly one of the sweetest things Piers has said to me; well, it’s the sweetest thing he’s said to me in a while. It’s quite easy to fall into a humdrum routine where you take your partner for part of the furniture, which is sadly inevitable when you’ve been going out for as long as we have.

Though, to be fair, that bread is something else. I am now cursing myself that I didn’t pick some up whilst Piers was sleeping; it would have made an awesome start to the weekend, and might have made up for some of my weirdness. Veronica clearly doesn’t know that the way to a man’s heart is via his stomach, not lower down or, indeed, higher up – about cleavage-level – as she tried to demonstrate.

‘I’m happy with
you
,’ Piers continues. ‘Deliriously happy.’ He starts attacking my face with little kisses, causing me to giggle and squeal in (mock) protest.

Silly mistake. Veronica turns round at this, and hisses: ‘Could you please cut that out?’

For someone who is trying to convince us to spend twenty grand on a wedding, their minimum charge for a weekend wedding – their packages go up to a staggering fifty grand, not mentioning the “price available on request” option if you want something “off menu” – well, she’s not doing the best job of convincing us that we should choose Pelsley Castle. Granted, I bet it gets slightly tedious having to deal with love-struck couples each and every day, but if you can’t hack that, then you shouldn’t be a wedding planner at one of the most (supposedly) romantic castles within the M25 belt.

‘Keep up, please,’ she bellows at us, before turning around smartly on her horrid low heels and stomping off.

‘We’re not getting married here,’ I say, and not just because she is wearing hideous shoes and an outfit that also isn’t my cup of tea. Straight-legged black trousers are just so boring and remind me of school. ‘Can we just go?’

‘And miss the chance of a private tour of Pelsley?’ Piers looks appalled. ‘Let’s look round, we might as well. If not, we’ll just be sitting in the car waiting for our next tour at Tharnham.’

I shoot Piers a look. ‘OK,’ I agree. ‘But you’re taking me out for dinner tonight to make up for
her
.’

We quickly catch up with Veronica, who does nothing to convince me that she is one of Pelsley Castle’s “warm and inviting professional wedding planners” that I read about this morning.

By some stroke of luck, when we phoned up we managed to get a slot this afternoon from a couple who had to cancel due to the groom-to-be being rushed to A&E last night. He’s now waiting to have reconstructive jaw surgery sometime today.
Ouch
.

The other half of that couple is probably more worried than her fiancé, the one having the surgery; I would be if it was Piers who was about to go under the knife. I do not cope well with hospitals ever since I broke my ankle, back when Piers and I first met. OK, he was the one who helped me to break it, but it was an accident – I was
mostly
to blame, despite Piers’ gallant apologies. 

Pelsley Castle looks amazing in the brochure, but this place makes me feel apprehensive. There’s something quite cold about this castle, and I don’t think any amount of wedding decorations or flowers are going to help to dispel that feeling. (And I’ve not decided that merely because I hate Veronica.)

‘This is the Great Hall,’ Veronica is saying. ‘Seats two hundred and fifty for a civil ceremony, holds the same amount for an evening reception. You can host two hundred people for a dinner.’

‘By evening reception, you mean?’

‘A dance,’ she snootily answers. I bet her tone would have been different if Piers had asked.

‘How about–’

‘Please save all questions until the end,’ she adds sharply.

What a bitch.

‘The Great Hall was built in 1414,’ she continues. ‘And was–’

I zone out as she goes on with her monotonous spiel, and take a look around the Great Hall for myself. Chandeliers the size of washing machines hang down from the stone arch roof, whilst intricately carved Romanesque windows line the side walls of the Great Hall, although these don’t seem to let much light in. It’s rather gloomy in here, and the heavy presence of stonework doesn’t fill me with romantic feelings.

It feels bleak, like there could quite easily be rusty shackles hanging below the windows, waiting for their next prisoner to rot in them. Maybe a prisoner or two dangling down from the mammoth hangings that attach the chandeliers to the ceiling. I shiver at that thought. It doesn’t feel like a happy place.

‘It’s freezing in here,’ Piers whispers to me, misunderstanding my shiver.

It’s not that bad, but his teeth are practically chattering, despite the sheen of sweat resting on his forehead.

‘Are you OK?’ I whisper back.

‘Sorry, what was that?’ Veronica asks icily. ‘I don’t have to give you the history, if you’d prefer not to listen to me.’

What bug crawled up her ass?
I’m saved from answering by Piers breaking into a hacking cough. Veronica immediately lurches forward to start rubbing him on the back.

‘No, no, I’m OK,’ he tries to insist between coughs, failing to push her away. ‘I’ve just got a tickle, that’s all.’

This doesn’t deter Veronica. If I wasn’t rummaging to see if I have any lozenges kicking around at the bottom of my denim and silk Louis Vuitton bag, lozenges that will actually
help
Piers out, I’d be swiftly removing her from his vicinity. I suspect if I was the one coughing that she’d be shrieking at me for disturbing the ambience, or lamenting that they allow “peasants” like me into the Great Hall.

‘Perhaps you could get Piers a glass of water,’ I suggest, anything to help Piers out and get her away from him.

‘Oh no, we can’t have drinks in here.’ Veronica tinkles this at me like I’m an imbecile.

‘Then how can you have a dinner in here?’ I ask.

She laughs snootily. ‘It’s OK for paying couples, of course, but our insurance just doesn’t cover people like you.’

I splutter. ‘People like–’

‘A glass of water would be great,’ Piers interrupts quickly. He clears his throat and gives her a puppy dog look. ‘If it’s not too much trouble?’

‘Of course not!’

Hideous.

‘If you’d just like to follow me, please.’

I can’t wait until this tour is over.