Where Have All the Boys Gone?(89)

“I . . . I kind of thought, after everything that had happened, you wouldn’t be interested.” Iain’s left eye had developed a nervous twitch.

“And you never bothered to find out?” asked Katie, full of indignation. “Oh, then I come back and you’re all over town, squiring blonde bits and pieces up at the caravan park.”

“Well, yes,” said Iain. “I think we can both agree I needed the practice.”

They were both silent for a second after that.

“Anyway, you didn’t tell me you were back in town.”

“You PHONE girls you sleep with!” said Katie. “That is absolutely obvious rule number one! EVERYONE knows that! You could ask Francis that and he’d dial a number with his paws!”

“Yes, well, if you’d bothered to let me know you were coming back EVER, I might have done something about it. Anyway, I did leave you a message.”

“I can assure you you didn’t,” said Katie.

Iain unfastened his sporran and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here,” he said, looking disgruntled. “I thought you’d get it.”

She took the crumpled sheet from him.

“Come on,” came a voice suddenly. Katie looked down. It was Lachlan, looking crossly at them. “It’s about to start. If you want your dinner, you have to get in here right away . . .”

THE MARQUEE LOOKED awesome. Tables stretched away as far as the eye could see, twinkling with little candles and thistle centrepieces. Of the errant donkey, there was no sign. At every turn, Katie was amazed. OK, she happened to know that the tablecloths were mostly paper, and several young techies had ended up requiring first aid after deciding that the middle of the night, after a long session at the Mermaid, was the ideal time to go thistle-gathering, and about sixty of the candles were slowly melting Santa Clauses she’d finally found in one of the gift shops at the last minute, rather than the plain whites . . . but, with the lights turned down, it was a fairyland.

Everyone was already seated, with an artillery of waiters standing ready to go. Lachlan led them right into the middle, and everyone fell silent, as if they were about to start dancing or something. Katie felt terribly uncomfortable.

“You’re over there,” said Lachlan to Iain. “Table seventy-nine.”

Iain looked at Katie and headed off to the left. She couldn’t read his expression.

“And you’re here,” said Lachlan, as he led Katie to the biggest table, right at the top of the marquee. There was an empty space at Harry’s right hand.

He was looking at his drink when she approached, then, just at the last minute, lifted his face to meet her eyes.

It was like a lightbulb going off in her head. From completely out of left field, she knew straight away. His normally brooding, guarded expression had dropped completely. She’d thought the scene in the nightclub was just a drunken aberration; she was so focused on her own loneliness, she’d never even considered his. She just . . . she was so unused to any kind of male attention, she’d bypassed it altogether.

And now of course he thought it was all up, all done for, the moment she and Iain had walked in through the entrance together. She blinked, still staring at him. But he’d dropped his eyes again and was staring at his empty dinner plate.

She had. She’d backed the wrong bloody horse. She’d been blind to what was right under her nose. The crack in the door she’d seen . . . the glimpse of the desired life. Maybe it hadn’t been Iain at all. Maybe it had been Harry all along.

Lachlan cleared his throat behind her and, conscious of five hundred pairs of hungry eyes staring at her, she slipped into the seat beside him.

“Busy?” asked Harry, pain evident in his voice as the chatter around the room started up again and Kelpie’s army leaped into motion, rushing forward to start serving soup.

“Look, Harry . . .” Katie started, and then didn’t know how to go on. She could hardly say, “If you’re in love with me . . .” Plus, what if she were wrong? Plus, what was the end of that sentence anyway? She swallowed and looked up at him. He had turned to his left, where a very grand woman Katie didn’t know was sitting looking snooty. He was trying to chat to her whilst looking completely unperturbed. The back of his neck was giving him away though. On Katie’s right was Kennedy, who was talking about the number of his bedrooms to a wide-eyed busty blonde on his other side. Katie concentrated on her broth when it came, and took a few gulps of wine, her mind racing furiously. Louise was on the other side of the room, where she seemed to be engrossed in a very deep conversation with Craig the Vet. Olivia was already up and going around the room, chatting to one and all in what looked like harsh anti-golf course tones. She certainly wasn’t touching any food that might have been made with anything other than soya.

There was no help at hand. Katie winced at herself. How could she have been so naive? OK, so she wasn’t Beyoncé Knowles, but things were different up here. She could probably have looked like Harry Knowles, and courted a bit of attention. And Harry must have thought she was taunting him all this time. She closed her eyes.

The posh woman had turned around to talk to someone else, and Katie was suddenly very aware of Harry’s bulk at her elbow.

He cleared his throat. “Well, who’d have thought it, eh?” he said, in a growly tone of voice.

Katie sneaked a peek at him. He looked as though he was trying incredibly hard to be Very Brave. Her heart went out to him immediately.