Chapter One

 

Caleigh

 

I can’t believe my rotten bloody luck. I’m stuck in a window seat. That’s what you get for waiting until last minute to book a ticket. You get the shitty seat next to the guy with overpowering body odour. But at least there’s nobody sitting next to me yet, so I inhale the clean smelling air while I can.

I really wish I could ask the flight attendant for a whiskey to calm my nerves. I hate flying. I hate being shoved into ridiculously tight spaces like I am crammed into right now. And it’s only set to get a lot worse when someone sits down next to me.

There’s never enough room in these seats.

I close the blind on the window, not wanting to look out when we eventually take off. I know, statistically speaking, I’m actually safer on a plane than in a car, but right now I’d give anything to be in my little red Miata, or better yet, home in bed. The job, if I get it, isn’t even far from home, but their headquarters is a couple of hours away by plane, longer by car. Though I did almost convince myself to drive instead of being stuck in a flying tin can. The only reason I didn’t is because I hate long journeys in the car. I feel almost claustrophobic. That might sound silly to others, but I’ve always been a person who needs space and fresh air.

Flying was the lesser of two evils only because it was faster. So here I am, like it or not.

We’ve been waiting what seems like forever for all the passengers to get on board, but in reality, it’s probably only been minutes. I keep looking at my watch, but you know what they say about a watched pot never boiling. So, I sit back and try to get comfortable. I pull my sleep mask out of my bag, wriggle it over my eyes and focus on my breathing. In for three seconds, out for three seconds, just like I was taught to try and combat my anxiety. When that doesn’t work, I try tapping it out. It doesn’t work for everybody, but it seems to do the trick for me. However, I’m not at the point of needing that. Not right now.

“Your seat is just there, sir,” the bubbly flight attendant says from somewhere close.

I almost take my mask off to take a peek, but I can’t find the energy. I’m trying my best to be chilled here, after all.

“Excuse me, miss,” a voice says. “Your bag seems to be on my seat.”

Wait one gosh-darned minute. I know that gravelly voice.

No, no, no. A thousand times no. It can’t be him. It just can’t.

Pulling my mask off, I move to grab my bag from the seat next to me and look up right into the chocolate brown eyes of Mr. Tinder. Well, knock me down with a feather. What in the ever-loving fuck is he doing on my flight?

“Oh,” he says as he stares at me. “It’s you. I thought you caught a flight to Barcelona?”

A mischievous smile lights up his features. Features that I am now noticing to be rather handsome. Why did I swipe left on him again? I can’t fathom how I’d do that to someone with such enticing eyes and that chiselled jaw covered with a scruffy but sexy beard.

“I … umm … I …” I can’t think of a convincing lie.

Someone shoot me. Shoot me now. Please, someone have mercy on me. I can’t think what to say, and he knows he has me cornered. His eyes twinkle with mirth as he takes his seat next to me.

Oh my god, he’s so close. And to think I was worried about a man with overpowering body odour. I should have been worried about a man with come-to-bed eyes and a delicious smell of rich aftershave. Something woodsy. I can’t put my finger on what.

“Go on,” he urges with a playful smile.

“Well … look, I-I won’t lie. Well, not again, anyway.” I try to stifle a giggle as he laughs at me, knowingly. “I just … Oh, I’m not making much sense.”

“Would you like to start again?”

“Yeah, okay. Umm … truth is, I was just flustered earlier. I shouldn’t have lied, but you caught me swiping left on you. What else was I supposed to do? I’m sorry. I actually should have just told you the truth. But the truth is, I just don’t know what I would have said.”

“I meant would you like to start again as in start over from meeting, like, you know, start a clean slate. But thanks for the apology.”

“Oh.”

My voice squeaks out high-pitched and almost painful.

Mr. Tinder bursts out laughing, and I can’t help but join in with him.

***

The rest of the journey is spent making idle chit-chat. He introduces himself as Rhett. Yes, after Rhett Butler in Gone with The Wind. It was his mum’s favourite film, and their surname is Butler, so he has—in his opinion—a rather clichéd name.

He tells me about his siblings—two brothers and a sister. He says Eliza has always been like his shadow, always choosing to follow her eldest brother around as a kid. It makes me laugh when he says that she’s a feisty young thing, which in his opinion is just like me.

I know I’m feisty. I won’t lie. But I guess I’ve had to be. I’ve grown up fighting my own battles. No siblings to protect me. I had to grow a thick skin and wear it as my armour every time someone had a problem with me. Which in high school was pretty often.

I guess I come off as feisty to people that don’t know me very well, much like Rhett, because I have long pink hair, tattoos on my arms and multiple piercings, including the most recent addition of something called an Ashley—a piercing in the middle of my lower lip. I look … different to most people, always choosing to have my own style rather than being a sheep who follows the latest trends. I’m not a goth, but a lot of my wardrobe is black. I dress for comfort over style.

People that spend time with me know that I’m a big softie at heart. I think I keep most people at arm’s length and act like a bitch because that way I don’t get used.

I’ve always been the type to wear my heart on my sleeve, but all that’s ever earned me is heartache and pain. So I’ve learned to disguise that about myself.

Rhett keeps me entertained with stories of his siblings and what it was like to grow up being the eldest of four. He seems sweet and genuine. I realise somewhere along the way that I shouldn’t have swiped left on him, but his Tinder pic and bio didn’t give much insight into who he is. I wasn’t to know he was actually pretty cute under that rugged beard, as well as funny and down to earth. Just goes to show my mother was right when she said never to judge a book by its cover.

He buys me a much-needed whiskey and I relish the slow burn as it travels down my throat. It also calms my nerves about flying. Or is that more to do with Rhett himself?

As I hail a taxi outside the airport, Rhett helps me wheel my bags and loads them into the boot of the car. Who said chivalry was dead? It almost has me swooning. Almost. I’m not some dewy-eyed teenager after all.

My taxi pulls away from the kerb and I’m left wondering who Rhett is and what he’s doing in River’s Edge. It’s a quiet little town, not some suburban concrete jungle, the likes of which I imagine he’s used to. When I say little, I mean remote and with not much to do.

We have a population of only a couple of hundred people. There’s a post office, a small school and a corner shop. For food, we have to either survive on what the shop has in stock or go further afield for a supermarket. There’s also a pub, Da Vinci’s Lock. Or as the locals call it, The Lock. It was so named because Leonardo Da Vinci invented the locks we see on rivers and canals today. That ends my knowledge on the subject. I only know that much because I work there part-time. Then there’s the bed and breakfast and that’s about it really.

I love it here. The people are friendly and the rent is reasonable. Yes, everyone knows everyone’s business, but it’s not like we’re a bunch of gossips or anything. It’s just hard not to know everything about everyone when you’re so tight knit.

I ponder what Rhett could be here for. A holiday? Maybe, but we’re hardly a tourist trap.

As we pull up outside my little cottage, the front door opens, and Hardin runs down the garden path and pulls my door open. I smile as my baby hugs me so tightly you’d think I’d been gone for a month, not a couple of days.

Managing to move to the boot of the car with a small human being clinging to me is a feat in itself. I grab my bags and pay the driver before wheeling my case up the path to the front door where my mum is waiting for me.

“Caleigh, darling, you’re home,” she says with a pearly white grin. “Did you have a good flight?”

“As good as flying in a tin can gets, I suppose.”

I choose not to tell her about Rhett. She’d only read too much into it.

“It’s so good to see you, Mummy. Did you get me a present?”

I look down into the most beautiful green eyes I’ve ever seen and feel a genuine smile grace my face.

“Oooh, I can’t remember,” I lie as I rub a hand over my chin, pretending to be lost in thought. “Did I buy a present for the most gorgeous person in the world? Hmm.”

“You did, Mummy, you did. You promised me you would, and you never break a promise.”

I open my carry-on bag and pull out the gift-wrapped parcel. Hardin’s eyes light up like it’s Christmas. I hand it to him, and he runs into the house to open it.

“Here darling, let me help you with those,” my mum says as she grabs my bag.

I wheel my case in behind her and crane my head around to look at Hardin as he pulls the last of the gift-wrap off his present.

My little angel is five and he’s due to start school this autumn. I can’t believe where the time has gone. One minute he’s swaddled in a blanket, held tightly against me, smelling the way only a new baby does, and the next he’s starting school.

It’s hard being a single mum, but my mum and dad have been a godsend in that respect. Sadly, Hardin’s father passed away when he was only two years old, leaving me a widow at the age of thirty-one, and Hardin had to grow up without him. We have pictures on the mantel and pretty much every wall in the house. He knows how much his daddy loved him until he took his last breath. I often tell him bedtime stories about Angelo, about the things we got up to and who he was. He was a good man, taken way too soon. But that’s something we have to live with.

“Mummy, you told me that this game hadn’t even come out yet,” he pipes up as I walk into the living room.

I don’t often buy him video games. I prefer to take walks with him, go on day trips, pack a picnic and go to the beach—even if it’s an hour’s train journey away. A lot of children spend too much time with gadgets these days. That’s something I never did as a child and I had a happy childhood, so I want the same for my boy.

“I know, baby. Mummy wanted to surprise you.”

He runs up and tackle hugs me, which in turn ends up in a tickle fight that has me landing on my ass with a hard bump.

There’s nothing more I like than being a mum. Hardin has made me a better person these last five years. Being a mother can do that to you.