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Hopelessly Devoted To You. Jill Steeples
Читать онлайн.Название Hopelessly Devoted To You
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781472096494
Автор произведения Jill Steeples
Издательство HarperCollins
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
“Finn, we need to talk.”
“Finn, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“The thing is, Finn, I…”
“Look, Finn, I’m really sorry, but the thing is…the thing is I don’t love you. I wonder if I’ve ever loved you. I’m calling off our wedding.”
Aargh, no! Ruby dropped her head into her hands, a familiar sense of dread sweeping the length of her body. She couldn’t do it. Every time she thought about telling her fiancé she didn’t want to marry him it sent her into a cold panic. How could she do such a bitchy, despicable thing to the sweetest, loveliest man on earth?
She’d tried. Lord knew, she’d tried. Thinking about it, she’d been trying ever since he’d proposed to her over eighteen months ago, presenting her with the biggest, shiniest, most beautiful rock she’d ever clapped eyes on. Swept up in the moment, surrounded by her closest family and friends, champagne bubbles fizzing up her nose, there had only ever been one glorious heartfelt answer.
‘Yes!’ she’d cried, in a blink of an eye.
It was only the morning after when she was alone in her flat, a humongous hangover throbbing in her head, which had nothing to do with the amount of champagne she’d drunk but more to do with the enormity of what had occurred the previous evening, that she wondered if she hadn’t actually been a little hasty in her gushing agreement to Finn’s proposal.
Did she actually want to get married? To Finn, in particular, or to anyone else when she came to think about it? Was she ready for that whole commitment thing? Finn’s unexpected proposal had brought these questions and a hundred and one assorted other ones into startling focus.
The thing was Finn was the perfect boyfriend. There was no getting away from that. Not when everyone kept reminding her of the fact. She knew she was the envy of a lot of girls because they were forever telling her how lucky she was to have snagged Finn in the first place.
Everybody loved Finn.
Everyone except Ruby.
She liked him though. Did that count, she wondered, on the marriageability factor?
She liked him an awful lot; the problem was she wasn’t entirely sure whether she actually loved him or not.
And if she didn’t know how she felt about him then surely that must mean, by a process of elimination, she couldn’t really love him after all.
Honestly the more she thought about it, the more she tied herself up in complete knots.
She’d even spent one futile weekend drawing up a pros and cons list to see if that would help her make a logical and rational decision about the huge Finn-shaped problem in her life. It was what her mum had always advised her to do when she was struggling with a problem in the past and without her mum around now to give boyfriend advice, she thought the list might be the next best thing. But not this time. Not with the Finn problem. In fact it was no use whatsoever. She knew she was on dodgy ground when within half an hour she’d filled two A4 sheets with a long list of Finn’s glowing attributes. And there was only one piddly item to add under the cons side.
‘Doesn’t share my love for James Blunt…’
Admittedly that was pretty shocking and unbelievable and frankly distasteful, but not so shocking that it was grounds enough to give your boyfriend his marching orders. There were much worse things a girl might have to contend with. Only at the moment she was struggling to come up with anything worse.
And now the wedding was only three months away! How had that happened? It had been a lifetime away, long enough away not to have to worry about it, but now it was here, almost on top of her, the wedding train was about to roll into town and she was increasingly uncertain about whether she wanted to jump aboard. Ruby’s heart pounded in her chest at the reminder.
Up until now she’d been able, for the most part, to put it out of her mind and get on with her life; working and socialising and seeing Finn when their busy schedules allowed and that was okay ’cos he was great company and in amongst all the busyness of their day-to-day lives she’d been able to completely forget about the wedding, well, almost…
Only now she couldn’t get away from the fact that she was running out of time and if she didn’t speak to Finn soon, well, then it would be too late and she would just have to go through with the whole shebang anyway. Which might not be such a bad thing after all. It certainly wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
What exactly was the problem here…?
After all, she liked Finn. She really liked Finn. They got on well, but was that reason enough to get married? She hadn’t really given it any consideration until after she’d accepted Finn’s proposal and now she couldn’t think of anything else. It was scant reassurance to know she wasn’t the only person in the world to have struggled with this dilemma. If the future King of England had trouble working out what love was, what chance did she have? Maybe she was making a drama out of a minor crisis of confidence. If her mum were here to talk things through then maybe she wouldn’t be struggling with these doubts.
Was she looking for something that didn’t even exist? Waiting for something that was never going to turn up? Something ridiculously unattainable? That whole bosom-heaving, heart-swelling, pulse-racing gig was the stuff of soppy romance novels and made-for-TV movies. And what she had with Finn was much more solid and dependable and long-lasting. And the only reason she’d found herself recoiling from his touch these last few weeks and avoiding staying over with him was because of all the pressure she’d been putting herself under just thinking about the wedding. And marrying Finn.
That would be it.