Modern Romance June 2017 Books 1 – 4. Maisey Yates

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       CHAPTER SIX

      EVEN A FEW days before the wedding Lucy still couldn’t quite accept that she was getting married. She was very tense and stressed. Jax had insisted on picking up the bill for the hundreds of guests invited and her father had been dismayed to discover that he was only allowed to cover his daughter’s more personal expenses. In the same way Jax had organised the church and the venue for the reception.

      And he had done all of that from a safe distance, leaving Lucy to handle her father’s hurt pride and angry complaints. Jax, after all, was the man who had never planned to marry and since the moment Lucy had agreed to marry him Jax had come no closer to the centre of bridal activity than a phone call because he had hired a wedding planner to take care of everything. Lucy had had the freedom to make her own choices but had relied heavily on the planner’s advice because she knew nothing about high-society weddings. Her brain was still stuffed, however, with the turmoil of selecting flowers, colour schemes and table arrangements from frighteningly long lists of options and having to discuss every possibility.

      Iola had gone shopping with Lucy for a dress and Jax had been allowed no input there. Lucy had gone for lace and a fancy pleated train that would be removable if she was dancing and she had picked the sweetest little outfit for Bella.

      It was ironic that Jax had pretty much vanished as soon as she’d accepted his proposal and that had really annoyed Lucy. He had said that he had too much work to get through and he had only visited the house once when she had insisted he come and meet her father and her stepmother. That had been a very awkward hour of stilted conversation, she recalled ruefully. Jax had been very cool and polite and her father had been stiff and formal. Iola and Lucy’s efforts to lighten the atmosphere had made little difference. It had been painfully obvious to Lucy that her father and her bridegroom didn’t much like the look of each other.

      And then there was the troubling question of her future father-in-law, Heracles Antonakos.

      Lucy had assumed that Jax’s father would want to meet her in advance but apparently not, and Jax did not seem to know whether or not his father would attend their wedding, an admission that had made her wince. Obviously, Heracles Antonakos was not impressed by his son’s decision to marry a waitress and he wanted nothing to do with the event. But Jax refused to be drawn on the sensitive subject and had urged her to be patient.

      ‘It’s a delivery...for you,’ Iola called up the stairs to Lucy.

      Lucy clattered downstairs and signed for the package she was given, turning it over and back before walking into the kitchen to open it. She extracted a letter and a small jewellery box and frowned.

      ‘Is it a wedding present?’ Iola asked.

      ‘No...it’s from some woman called Polly, who says she’s one of my sisters,’ Lucy whispered in deep shock, reading the closely typed lines to learn that her mother had only passed away a few years before at a hospice and commenting on the fact to Iola.

      ‘I always assumed that Mum had died when I was a child...possibly during the three years I was adopted because of course I wouldn’t have been told about it then,’ Lucy confided. ‘But according to my sisters they too only found out about her death afterwards because she didn’t want to see any of us while she was so ill. But she left us all rings given to her by our fathers...and it was only then that my sisters found out that I existed.’

      ‘Strange,’ Iola commented. ‘But if she was very ill, possibly she wasn’t thinking very clearly. Is there a ring in that box?’

      Lucy opened the box and extracted a small ruby ring with a smile. ‘It’s very pretty. I’ll wear it when I get married. It’s wonderful to have something that my mother actually wore,’ she murmured with a sad look in her eyes.

      ‘Read the rest of the letter,’ her stepmother urged. ‘Tell me about your sisters.’

      Unfortunately Polly didn’t offer much information beyond the fact that she was married and had children just like Lucy’s other sister, Ellie, who was a doctor. What she did say was that she and Ellie very much wanted to meet Lucy and get to know her.

      ‘She couldn’t have chosen a worse time to contact me,’ Lucy mumbled, settling down to read СКАЧАТЬ