Free The Proposal Plan by Charlotte Phillips

face flame with humiliation. She was sixteen after all, not a child.
    Before she could speak, he addressed the blonde girl. ‘Ali, this is Lucy.’ Lucy couldn’t seem to look away from the entwined hands. ‘I told you about her. Kind of like my baby sister from back home. ‘
    Alison smiled at her. ‘Hi, Lucy,’ she said warmly. ‘It’s good to meet you. Gabriel’s mentioned you a few times. It’s nice to put a face to a name. ‘
    A few times.
Gabriel hadn’t been out of her thoughts for longer than a few minutes these past weeks, but he clearly hadn’t been dwelling on her in the same way.
    She was snatched back from her thoughts of the past when Gabriel touched her hand briefly before replacing his on the steering wheel. ‘You’re quiet, Lu. Everything all right?’
    ‘Fine. I’m just tired.’ Her hand tingled at his touch and she stared down at it.
Oh, what is happening here?
She felt the blush creep up her face, as if Oxford had happened yesterday, and she was grateful that his attention was focused on the road so he wouldn’t notice. She remembered that she only managed to stomach an hour or so of seeing the two of them together. Alison was studying medicine andthey both had rooms in the shared house. She could see they were besotted with each other. Lucy had been so full of excitement at seeing him, believing him to be unknowingly in love with her, expecting to fall into his arms as it all became clear to him. Well, she’d certainly found him in love, just not with her.
    She’d managed to hold it together at the house but she’d sobbed her heart out all the way back to Gloucestershire on the bus and then the train. The only comfort she’d had was that she’d stopped short of making a fool of herself by exposing her feelings to him.
His baby sister.
It stung. She was so hurt and humiliated that her first instinct had been to avoid him completely. She stopped calling him after that. But she quickly realised how stupid she was to think she could cut him from her life. She needed him far too much for that.
    So when he’d brought Alison back to the manor she hadn’t stayed away. It had crushed her to see how happy he was. It became clear that their relationship was not going to be over quickly. That it was a proper, adult relationship. Alison completed him in a way Lucy never had. They’d been all things to each other for so long and now she wasn’t enough for himany more. And she began to see with growing, frightening clarity that there could very easily be no place for her at all in all this. She was totally dispensable in the face of his perfect future with Alison. And under threat of losing him altogether, she’d made a decision. Better to keep him as a friend than to lose him completely from her life because of her own stupid pride.
    And so it was that she had played the part of childhood best friend until it became no longer an act and was second nature to her. In the years since she had managed to convince herself that her behaviour had been nothing more than a ridiculous teenage crush, brought on by the sudden gap he had left in her life when he went to university, combined with the worsening hell that was her inescapable home life.
    Since that awful moment at sixteen she’d never again allowed herself to consider Gabriel as more than a friend, a brother, but that apparently hadn’t stopped his parents doing just that. Thinking about it now made her feel suddenly hot, as if she’d walked into a sauna. Before she could stop herself she was trying the idea for size in her head. Her stomach flutteredand she covered it angrily with her hands. It had been a
crush.
Nothing more.
    Then why did you blush when his mother mentioned it?
She fought that thought with all her might. She couldn’t imagine a circumstance in which she would lay their friendship on the line. Gabriel was useless at relationships; they rarely lasted longer than a month. He just didn’t seem to have it in him since Alison