Chapter 7

By the end of February Lucy had left her apartment behind and she and Jack were living in blissful cohabitation.

Jack was still manic with work, he had spent the last 6 weeks juggling his time between the thriving new business and helping Ox when he was needed. At present he was still using his garage as a workshop so Lucy was able to pop in and out occasionally and they sometimes had lunch together when she was at home.

She had enrolled on a course at a business school in the city and had taken a part time job in a local bakery, both of which were keeping her more than busy. Jack had tried to insist that she didn't need to work. He had told her that she deserved to be looked after for once after years of having to support herself and her dad, that way she could focus on her study, but she had gratefully declined. She had been so touched by his offer but she was used to working, fending for herself and though she knew they were a team now she felt like she must contribute.

For the first month the weekends had been as busy as the working week. It took a few weeks to unpacked all Lucy's belonging, it was amazing how well their possessions merged in Jack's, no their house. The once slightly bare lounge was now full of books and pictures and her dad's beloved globe took pride of place on the shelf and her snow globe found a new home on the mantle next to one of the framed photos Elsie had taken a few weeks earlier. The place was definitely begining to feel like home, though sometimes Lucy had to pinch herself to check it was all real. How in the space of a few short months had her life changed so miraculously for the better.

Jack had also told her that she could redecorate any of the rooms she wished so that it would really feel like her house too. Lucy loved the house the way it was, it was just so Jack, but after years of renting and not having the time or the inclination to waste her money decorating she decided that maybe they could just change their bedroom. Most Saturdays had been spent choosing wall paper, paint, carpet and curtains. Then the Sundays would be spent with a paint brush in hand or a pasting table making the transformation happen. Even Lucy had to admit the room looked fantastic once they had finished and she had loved that they had worked on the project together. It was modern, feminine and floral, really the bedroom of her dreams. She had apologised to Jack as it was very girly and so not in keeping with the rest of the house which was much more solid and raw, but he had laughed and said that as long as she loved it, he did too. Lucy often wondered, what had she done to deserve this amazing man?

As Lucy woke early on Saturday morning. She realised that for the first time since moving in with Jack that they both had a day off and nothing that needed to be done. She slowly turned so as not to wake him, as he had worked long hours this week, and her eyes rested on her sleeping love.

Her heart did a back flip as she looked on his slumbering form. She marvelled at the love she felt for this man. She had always thought that she had known what it meant to be in love. She'd had crushes and fancies in the past, squeezing her eyes shut against the embarrassment of one particular fancy she would rather not think about, but these

feelings she had for Jack surpassed everything. He was her world, her universe and though she had other areas of her life that were important to her they all orbited around him. She had made new friends at work and school, she had her wonderful new family and this beautiful house but the non of these would be as fulfilling if she wasn't safe in the knowledge that each night, after a busy day, she would be resting her head on the pillow next to Jack and waking up each morning with his warmth radiating every part of her body. She could hardly believe that she had only known him 8 weeks, but during that time she had found a contentment and a serenity that 8 years couldn't bring in the past and finally the little pieces of her soul that had been missing for so long were slotting back into place.

She continued to gaze and him, watching his chest peacefully rising and falling. After a while she realised that lying still for so long had made her leg numb. Shifting slightly to ease the discomfort she disturbed the duvet and Jack's eyes fluttered open.

"Good morning beautiful" she whispered as she brushed the stray hairs from his forehead. "I didnt mean to wake you," but she couldn't resist leaning forward and placing the lightest of kisses on his lips.

He smiled drowsily and shuffled forward to rest his head on her chest as she played with his soft hair at the nape of his neck. He snuggled in closer and wrapped his arms round her waist, Lucy thought she could cheerfully lie like this forever and never get bored.

After a few more minutes Jack slowly lifted his face to look at her, "So what is on the agenda for today?" He muttered groggily then settled back into his previous resting place.

Lucy chuckled and continued to caress the hair at his neck, "nothing, you can relax for as long as you like."

Jack quickly popped his head up again, now seemingly more awake "nothing?" He had a rougish smile on his face. "Well Miss Moderatz, I feel it's my duty as your loving fiancé to stem your boredom."

He jumped up quickly, hands instantly running over her body, she giggled in delight as his lips founds hers in a passionate, mind blowing kiss and suddenly Lucy realised that Jack's methods of entertainment were very good indeed...

Mid morning Lucy found herself in the kitchen making brunch. It had been too late for breakfast by the time they had surfaced from the bedroom, but both found they had worked up quite an appetite so she had offered to make pancake stacks with extra bacon. Jack was a much better cook than Lucy, but she did have the odd thing she could create without too many problems and tried to pull her weight in the kitchen as much as possible.

Soon Jack joined her and started helping her by making the coffee, another thing he was better at, infact hers was pretty awful but she was determined to practice to get it right. "Hey, I'm on kitchen duty this morning, you've worked non stop this week, just sit and relax" she admonished him, pushing him towards a chair.

"I'm just helping with the coffee, that's all" but with resignation he did as he was told as

"I can manage, what kind of wife an I going to be if I can't even make coffee for my husband." She demanded waving her spatula in the air.

He pulled her down onto his knee, snaking his arms round her middle, "I don't care if your coffee tastes like dish water or a cup of the world's greatest Jamaican Blue Mountain you are the best thing that ever happened to me and I can't wait for the day that I can call you my wife!" He told her seriously.

"Thank you" she murmured leaning back into him. "I can't wait for that day either. It's just you give me so much, I've gone from having very little to what feels like the perfect life and its all because of you!" She turned and pressed a lingering kiss on this lips, then pulling back slightly she whispered, "I love you so much and I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you have done for me, I want to be the wife you deserve." A small tear escaped from her eye and ran down her cheek.

He leaned in and kissed the salty tear away then looked at her earnestly, "You need to realise how much you've done for me too. Do you think I had a perfect life before I met you? Because I can assure you I didnt. I lived in this house but it never truly felt like home, it was just the place I slept and where I hung my clothes, because it felt lonely. In truth, I guess I waited so long move out of my parents because I always thought I would find a girl and we would do all that stuff together, but it never happened. I dated but nothing ever seemed to stick, there was no magic and I refused to settle for anything less. I played poker with my buddy's on a Friday night, but they are all married, in long term relationships or just players. I didnt want to go out trawling bars for women on a Saturday night and I wasn't involved in the couples dinner parties, I kind of felt left out, so I spend time with my family and threw myself into work." He gave a cold laugh before continuing.

"But I was trapped in a job that I didn't like, having a family business forced on me that I didn't want but never having the courage to do anything about it. I did a furniture making course in evening class and started making the odd piece of furniture a couple of years ago just to try and get out of the rut, I realised how much I loved it but when couldn't take it further, well it just felt worse almost." He sighed.

"I'm sorry, I suppose I've been so caught up feeling I was the hard done to one. You had a fantastic family and as far as I was concerned that was all you needed to be happy. Sounds dumb now!" She smiled sheepishly and snuggled into him closer.

"It's not dumb, I know how lucky I am to have such wonderful people in my life, but there was definitely something or things missing.

Then one day I was sitting on my parents staircase, drinking a cup of tea and reading the newspaper and my life changed forever." He laughing and dropping a kiss on her cheek.

"I really didn't believe in love at first sight, that always sounded like some ridiculous thing that only happened in movies, I can tell you, it came as a bit of a shock!"

"I am quite shocking, I know!" Lucy said and they both burst out into laughter.

"Especially when I thought you were engaged to my brother!" He teased.

"Oh please don't" she hung her head.

"It was tough and I'm not talking about everything that happened after the truth came out, I mean from the second I met you."

His head bowed with the memory.

"How could I have fallen in love with my brothers girl, Peter's girl! The guy that can get any girl he wants, all he has to do is flash that smile and women seem to fall at his feet. How could I even stand a chance, but you were so kind and beautiful and funny I just couldn't help myself." Jack seemed far away as he reminisced, his eyes seeing something that wasn't in the room.

Lucy blushed, she remembered the time he was talking about so well, if only she had been open from the start...

He continued, "I went to see Peter in the hospital a few days later, while he was still asleep. We played poker, well I played for us both and I told him, I told him I'd never been envious of him in my entire life until then, until you. I think I needed to talk about my feelings out loud to try and make sense of it all, but who could I tell? So I spoke to the one person who couldn't answer back, couldn't give me their opinion. It was the first time I had actually allowed myself to admit that I loved you. I cut the deck of cards we were playing with, high card got to be with you... Peter won, repeatedly" Jack chuckled and shook his head.

"Well the cards were wrong, weren't they!" Lucy said in a mockingly stern voice.

"Yeah well the torture continued when they forced me to kiss you under the mistletoe, my heart rate didn't return to normal for about 3 hours after, then when I was told you were pregnant..." He put his head in his hands.

"You acted so weird that night when you followed me to Celestes party, I knew something was wrong!" Lucy ruffled his hair as he winced.

"I thought I'd lost you, not that I ever had you in the first place but if you were pregnant, then that was it, game over. Even in my head, all my fantasies about you realising you loved me and breaking up with Peter faded to dust if you were having his baby." The pain of the memory seemed to flash across his face for a split second. "The relief when I found you weren't, well it was wonderful. God that sounds so selfish, I'm sorry". He hung his head again, he seemed so angry with himself.

"Your not selfish, you are the least selfish man I've ever met. If you were you would have made a play for me despite Peter, but you didn't!" She placed a hand on his shoulder and tried to rub away the tension in his muscles. "You never acted like anything other than a complete gentleman."

"I nearly kissed you, you know? On new years eve outside your apartment. When we were talking about Joe Jr. leaning." He laughed out at the memory. "If he hadn't interrupted I'm pretty sure I would have done it."

"I know, I really wanted you to and I was so disappointed once the moment had gone." She answered truthfully. Her eyes bore into his, willing him not to feel guilty.

"I was so confused, I knew you were 'engaged' to Peter," his little air quotes around the word 'engaged' made Lucy grimace, "but the connection and the chemistry between us was so powerful, so unlike anything I had experienced before. When you told me you were all alone and that you didn't have anyone, not even Peter the idea of you feeling like that caused me physical pain. I wanted to scoop you up and look after you, be anything you needed me to be, just to take that look from your face." His eyes blazed with emotion as he spoke, his face looked pained.

Lucy was amazed that even though it was all in the past and they were so happy together the mear memory could conjure such hurt.

"But I couldn't have been anything you needed me to be. I knew that much, I realised that after Peter woke up." He bowed his head as he spoke, "Do you remember after I drove you home that night? You said that things would be different, that I 'had become a really good friend'. Friend. It literally felt like you had taken a knife and stabbed me through the heart." He swiped at a single tear that escaped the corner of his eye rolling down his cheek.

"Listen" she cupped his face with her hands, willing him to believe her. "I was so close to telling you the truth that night but Saul had told me he would tell you all for me the next day. When I said things would be different, it wasnt that you were being pushed aside in favour of Peter, it meant that I thought you would know the truth soon and you would end up hating me. I'm the selfish one, to tell you my true feelings would mean I had to tell you the truth about Peter and I wanted one more night of you looking at me the way you always did. One more night of knowing that you didnt despise me. So I chickened out, I played it safe, just so I could have one more smile as we said goodbye."

She rested her forehead against his and smiled. They were so close she could feel his warm breath on her lips. She realised what a complete fool she had been. She should have never played it safe, never been a coward because this man in front of her, this wonderful, amazing man was worth using every ounce of courage she could muster. She should have put every fibre of her being on the line to fight for him and to ensure that he knew just how much he was loved and she knew from that moment she would never allow him to be in doubt of her feeling for him ever again.

"You know I nearly didn't come to the wedding!" Though he still had his forehead on hers his eyes darted down to the floor.

"Your mum would have killed you!" She teased slightly trying to break the tension.

"I know, but I didnt care if I'm honest" He replied still looking away.

"So what changed your mind?" She moved back as she tried to sound calm but she felt a shock of panic as she tried to process this information. Things could have turned out so much different if he hadn't been there.

"Peter asked me to be best man and I couldnt say no. He had been through so much and though we weren't as close as we used to be I was really touched that he wanted me over one of his fancy friends. That and the snow globe." He looked at her and gave a shy smile.

"The snow globe made you decide to go to the wedding?" She was completely puzzled and looked at him expectantly to continue.

"I had decided to keep away from you as much as possible. I thought that maybe with some distance I would be able to forget you or at least try and pretend it wasn't happening." He shook his head and smiled, "stupid really! Anyway, then I saw it in the shop window, I knew you had to have it so I brought it for you. I could have just left it with the other piles of gifts, you would have known what it was straight away, but I wanted to see your face when you opened it. I wanted you to know if was from me and that I had remembered our conversation, so that's why I came by that night and after we spoke I knew that I would have to go to the wedding." He appeared coy as he admitted the truth.

"To try and prove you meant what you said?" She tried but failed to keep the note of sadness from her voice.

"Yeah" He let out a short cold laugh. "but I think that night before the wedding was one of the worst nights of my life. My parents asked me to stay to help out with the final preparations, but I made up some pathetic excuse about having a headache, I couldn't stand being around the excitement and hustle and bustle, so I came home and went to bed. I felt numb, I lay there for hours in the dark just feeling helpless, unable to ever see a way to escape the pain in my chest. I ran though different scenario's in my head over and over. The first where I would jump in my truck, drive to your apartment and knock on your door in the middle of the night. I would give you 20 reasons why you shouldn't marry my brother and you would fall into my arms. The second where I would stop the wedding before you could speak those words and confess my love infront of everyone."

He shook his head, laughing to himself, "it was ridiculous fantasies, I knew that I would never do it. It made me so angry. Angry with Peter because I knew he didn't love you, he admitted that he didn't know you, how on earth could he love you like I did if he didn't know you? But he was going through with anyway. I was angry with myself for being so loyal to Peter when I know he probably wouldn't do the same for me if the situation was reversed, and I suppose, well I was angry with you too! I know its stupid but I was angry with you for being so beautiful, so funny and so perfect and making me fall in love with you. To be honest by the time the sun rose I had almost talked myself out of going again".

"I'm really glad you decided to come. Seeing you gave me the strength to make the right decision." She leaned down and rested her head in the crook of his neck. The thought of what might have happened if Jack hadn't been there sent shivers down Lucy's spine.

"Are you cold?" He asked wrapping his arms tightly round her.

"No, I'm fine, I'm just thinking what would have happened if you hadn't been there." She replied as she snuggled in closer still. His familiar smell and the feel of his skin calmed her nerves and she instantly felt more relaxed.

"You looked so unlike you in that Chapel, it unnerved me. But then you gave me the most amazing smile and I knew what I needed to do."

"I felt like I couldn't breath as you walked in that day, I thought I was going to suffocate. I felt like if I stood still I would pass out, but then you looked at me and you didn't move your eyes from mine. For a moment it was as if you were walking towards me and the weight on my chest lifted and it made me smile." He hugged her to tightly, and he pressed a long kiss on her forehead.

"I wanted to be walking towards you, for me it was as if Peter wasn't there, it was just you and me." She imagined how amazing it would be when it was Jack waiting for her on their wedding day.

As she sat there in his arms, all the love and adoration for Jack that had grown so quickly over these few short months washed over her in waves. It was the most amazing, overwhelming, glorious feeling and it caused a lump to form in her throat. She suddenly jumped up from his lap, realising she still had her spatula in her hand she layed it down on the counter and got down on her knee and looked sincerely into his eyes.

"Marry me" she said, her voice slightly hoarse from emotion.

Jack chuckled, "Didn't we already do this?" He asked as he tucked a lock of fallen hair, behind her ear.

"I want to marry you, I want to walk down the aisle in a proper wedding dress with you waiting for me. I want to make our vows infront of all our family and friends. I want to dance with you at our reception and I want to put everything else behind us." Overcome with emotion her voice sounded small. "I want to be your wife."

"I want to marry you too, I've never wanted anything more in my life" He said smiling as he stroked her cheek.

"So we can do it then? Soon?" She asked excitedly.

"Yes we can, as soon as whatever wedding you want can be arranged!" He beamed.

Lucy leap up and threw her arms round his neck, hugging him so tightly he almost choked in surprise.

"I love you so much" she sang in his ear as she continued to hold him to her.

He whispered, "I love you back."