Free A Paper Marriage by Jessica Steele Page A

superb. Tall, immaculately suited, those fantastic blue eyes-not to mention he was extremely good looking-and sophisticated with it. 'Lydie,' he greeted her.

    She flicked her gaze from him for a moment, and found her voice. `Jonah, I don't think you know my great-aunt, Miss Alice Gough. Aunty, Jonah Marriott, a fr-friend of mine.'

    `Pleased to know you, Miss Gough.' Jonah pleasantly shook hands with her and then moved into the pew to go in front of Lydie and take a seat beside her. Whereupon he bent close to her ear, and asked, 'Where's the boyfriend?'

     

    Oh, help! All at once it struck Lydie like a bolt from the blue that, somehow or other, for today's purposes, she was going to have to tell Jonah that he was her boyfriend! Oh, heavens. Yet she just couldn't have him mingling with her family and referring to someone else as her boyfriend.

     

    'Er...' she began, but was so overwhelmingly conscious of him sitting so close to her, and of what she must say to him, that she could get no further.

    `Er?' he prompted-and her newly discovered thumping tendency was on the march again.

    She would have liked to move her head away from the close proximity with his, but she could not afford to have anyone else hear what she had to say. `I-um-need to talk to you-rather urgently-on that subject,' she said in a low voice.

    `Shall we go outside?' he asked blandly, obviously picking up that she did not wish to be overheard.

     

    She gave him a speaking look-she really was going to thump him before this wedding was over. `For the purposes of today, and until I can explain,' she said through gritted teeth, `you are my boyfriend.'

    His head came closer, and to her amazement he brushed aside her night-dark hair and planted a kiss on her cheek. `Forgive me, darling,' he murmured, `I forgot to do that when we said Hello.'

     

    Thump him? She'd like to throttle him! Her insides were having a fine old time within her. He was playing with her; she knew that he was. And, having designated him her boyfriend, there was not one darn thing she could do about it! She moved her head out of range, and gave him an icy look. He smiled. Lydie gave her attention to the printed Order of Service they had each been handed. `Do you know these hymns, Aunty?' She concentrated on her great-aunt instead.

    `Backwards,' her great-aunt replied. `Is it serious?"

    'What?"

    'You and your man?'

    Oh, grief. Lydie found she had the utmost trouble in lying to her great-aunt. 'I'm working on it.' She played for safety, saw and heard Alice Gough smile and then actually giggle, then the strains of Richard Wagner hit the air, and everyone got to their feet.

    The ceremony was lovely. The bride looked radiant, and Lydie felt a lump in her throat as she witnessed her only brother being married. She saw her mother trying to be surreptitious as she reached for her handkerchief, and Lydie felt choked again when she spotted her father take a comforting hold of her mother's hand. Her father might have been very out of sorts with her mother all this week, with verbal communication between them at a minimum, but that did not mean they did not still care deeply for each other.

    As they had always been going to have to provided Jonah turned up, that was-he and her father met up with each other as they mingled outside of the church. `How are you, Wilmot?' Jonah at once greeted her father, extending his hand.

     

    Her father shook hands with him. 'I'm in your debt, Jonah. I think we should meet.'

     

    Jonah nodded, his eyes on the man who had been a stone heavier and a lot healthier-looking the last time he had seen him-three years ago. `May I call you?' Jonah asked.

     

    `If you would.' And, turning to his wife who had appeared at his elbow, `You remember Jonah?"

     

    'Isn't it a perfect day?' Lydie's mother commented, evidently still uncertain whether to like her daughter's escort or not.

     

    Jonah smiled politely, and looked at Lydie, `Quite perfect,' he replied