‘Transport,’ he said, gesturing to an open-topped sports car in the car park.
She didn’t have much choice other than to accept. ‘Thank you.’ She looked at him. ‘Is Ash OK?’
‘She’s fine,’ he reassured her.
‘Good.’
‘And I owe you an apology.’
Claire frowned, surprised. Sean was apologising to her? ‘For what?’
‘Sniping at you last night—assuming that you’d given Ashleigh that crazy idea of getting married at the top of the mountain and going up by chairlift.’
‘Given that I’m scared of heights,’ she said dryly, ‘I was quite happy to talk her out of that one on the grounds of dress practicalities.’
‘But you went up on the chairlift last night.’
She shrugged. ‘Luke and I wanted to distract her and we thought that would be a good way.’
‘Yeah.’
She looked at him. He masked his feelings quickly, but she’d seen the flash of pain in his eyes. On impulse, she laid her hand on his arm. ‘It must be hard for you, too.’
He nodded. ‘It should be Dad walking down the aisle with her, not me.’ His voice was husky with suppressed emotion. ‘But things are as they are.’
‘Your parents would be really proud of you,’ she said.
‘Excuse me?’ His voice had turned icy.
She took her hand off his arm. ‘OK. It’s not my place to say anything and I wasn’t trying to patronise you. But I thought a lot of your parents. Your mum in particular was brilliant when my mum died. And they would’ve been proud of the way you’ve always been there for Ash, always supported her—well, almost always,’ she amended. To be fair, he’d been pretty annoyed about Ashleigh’s change of planned career. He hadn’t supported it at first.
‘She’s my little sister. What else would I do?’
It was a revelation to Claire. Sean clearly equated duty with love, or mixed them to the point where they couldn’t be distinguished. And discussing this was way beyond her pay grade. She changed the subject again. ‘So how much do I owe you for the flight?’
‘You don’t.’
‘I’ve already told you, the dress is my responsibility, so I’ll pay the costs. But thank you for organising it, especially as it means Ash isn’t worrying any more.’
‘We’ll discuss it later,’ he said. ‘Ashleigh comes first.’
‘Agreed—but that doesn’t mean I’m happy to be in your debt,’ she pointed out.
‘I did this for Ashleigh, not for you.’
‘Well, duh.’ She caught herself before she said something really inflammatory. ‘Sean, I know we don’t usually get on too well.’ That was the understatement of the year. ‘But I think we’re going to have to make the effort and play nice while we’re on Capri.’
He slanted her a look that said very clearly that he didn’t believe she could keep it up.
If she was honest, she wasn’t sure she could keep it up, either. Or that Sean could, for that matter. But they were at least going to make the effort. Though they had a cast-iron excuse not to talk to each other for the next few minutes, because he needed to concentrate on driving.
She put the dress box safely in the back of the car, took her sunhat from her bag and jammed it on her head so it wouldn’t be blown away, then sat in the front seat next to Sean. She still had her dark glasses on from the helicopter flight, so the glare of the sun didn’t bother her.
Sean was a very capable driver, she noticed, even though he was driving on the right-hand side of the road instead of the left as he was used to doing in England. The road was incredibly narrow and winding, with no verges and high stone walls at the edges; it was busy with vans and scooters and minibuses, and every so often he had to pull over into the tiniest of passing places. If Claire had been driving, she would’ve been panicking that the car would end up being scraped on one of those stone walls; but she knew that she was very safe with Sean. It was an odd feeling, having to rely on someone she normally tried to avoid. And even odder that for once she didn’t mind.
‘Is there anything you need for the dress?’ he asked as they pulled up outside the hotel.
‘Only my portable steam presser, which I brought with me on my first trip.’
He looked confused. ‘Why do you need a steam presser?’
‘This dress has been in a box for three days. Even though I was careful when I packed it, there are still going to be creases in the material, and I don’t have time to hang the dress in a steamy bathroom and wait for the creases to fall out naturally. And an ordinary iron isn’t good enough to give a professional finish.’