It’s dark by the time the bus pulls up at the end of Buntingorden High Street, and Dimitri’s been off all the way home. Quiet, lost in thought, and secretively texting someone while clearly trying to hide his phone from me, and I can’t work out what’s going on.
As we approach the shop, I realise the chains have gone from the stairs leading to the roof terrace and the stairway is open, and when we get even closer, there’s a glow coming from up there, like some sort of candle or lamp.
Or the building’s on fire. That would be just my luck.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask Dimitri.
‘You’ll see.’ He winks at me, seeming devious and confident as I follow him up the narrow stairway.
‘You took your time.’ Drake Farrer is leaning back in a chair with his feet up on one of the tables next to a glowing oil lamp that’s supposed to keep midges at bay.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I snap. Of all people I’d have been happy never to see again.
‘Oh, relax, princess. It was his idea, not mine. It’s past ten o’clock at night, do you think I want to be sitting up here freezing my bits off with all these midges?’ He slaps at the side of his neck. I thought even midges would have more discerning taste than him.
‘It’s June! It’s a lovely warm night.’ I’m instantly annoyed by his distasteful tone.
‘Hal, it’s okay, I asked him to meet us here,’ Dimitri says. ‘He’s who I’ve been texting since we left Cornwall.’
Oh, great. ‘So we can dredge up the other day all over again? I don’t need him to confirm anything, Dimitri. I trust you.’ I’m distracted from Drake’s usual smarmy grin by his shoes, which are so abnormally shiny they reflect the moonlight.
‘I know. It’s not about that. He and I are going to do a business deal.’
Drake uncrosses his ankles and finally deigns himself to put his legs down and sit upright. He swings his briefcase onto the table and snaps it open, Dimitri pulls out a chair and sits opposite him, and I go to put Heathcliff’s bowl safely on the other table and wonder what on earth is going on. Dimitri doesn’t seem like himself. He seems calm and confident which is not a feeling Drake inspires in many people. ‘Did you bring the paperwork I asked for?’
Drake Farrer looks almost as confused as I am. Whatever this is, he clearly isn’t sure about it either. ‘Yes, but I don’t know what you think you’ve got that I want.’
‘My half of the house. My half of the house in exchange for the ex-bakery downstairs, enough cash to do the renovations, and a clause to ensure it can never be turned into something that would cause the village to lose its charm and unique spirit.’
‘What?’ I say.
‘What?’ Drake Farrer says.
‘I have something you want and you have something I want. It’s a fair swap.’
‘Dimitri …’ I take a step towards them. ‘That is not a fair swap. He was being generous when he offered me thirty-five grand for my shop. That mansion is worth a heck of a lot more than that.’
‘Listen to your missus, brother,’ Drake says. Even though it’s meant as an insult, there’s something quite nice about being called Dimitri’s missus.
‘That’s exactly why he’s going to take the trade.’ Dimitri turns to me. ‘Because I don’t care about the money and Drake does. Whichever way you look at it, he’s going to do extremely well out of this, and Drake’s a businessman. Good business decisions are what he does.’
‘Dimitri, we might not always see eye to eye, but you’re still my brother. It’s my duty to warn you this is not a fair trade.’
‘I’ll have quotes for the building work with you by the end of the week, so factor that into your price.’ Dimitri ignores him. ‘I want a couple of weeks to get my stuff out of the house, I want that clause put in the contract, and I want you to leave Hallie’s bookshop and the rest of this street alone. You and Dad. He will undoubtedly benefit from you having full ownership of the mansion. Get him to stop his letters, stop his complaining, and end this campaign of hatred that’s gone on for far too long, and it’s yours.’
For the second time in recent weeks, I am utterly convinced that Dimitri has magic powers because he’s managed to render Drake Farrer speechless too. He seems like a different man tonight – far from the stuttery awkward guy I fell in love with, he seems like a student of the property law he once studied, the suave businessman that his father wanted him to become, a cut-throat entrepreneur who can duck and dive just as smoothly as his brother can.
Even Drake looks to me before looking back at Dimitri and shaking his head. ‘You’re a lunatic but you’re right. You’re making me an offer I can’t refuse. I’m not going to turn that down. I accept.’ He holds his hand out and they shake on it before I have a chance of trying to talk sense into him again.
‘And I know you both think I’m the worst person in the world,’ Drake continues. ‘But I do know our mum wouldn’t have wanted me to treat you unfairly, so you can get your building quotes to me, but I have a rough idea of how much it’s going to cost to do these places up, and I’ll double it. Make sure you’ve got enough leftover to knock the flats into one if you’re going to be living together. A buffer while you finish your book or whatever it is you do.’ He waves a perfectly manicured dismissive hand in typical Drake Farrer style just so we know he hasn’t had a complete lobotomy and become a decent person overnight.
‘I’m an illustrator, Drake. No matter how many times you and Dad try to belittle me because I didn’t follow his planned career path, I’ll still be an illustrator, and I’ll still be happy doing something I love, no matter how much it pays.’
Drake mutters something unintelligible and rifles through the papers in his briefcase until he pulls out a sheaf of official-looking documents and starts writing on them.
I watch in silence until he eventually scribbles his name in a couple of places and hands the pen and documents to Dimitri. ‘This is only a commitment. You’ll have to come into the office next week to sign the official paperwork.’
‘I know.’ Dimitri signs his name, takes one copy for himself and hands one back to Drake. ‘Nice doing business with you.’
I notice the tremor in his fingers as he hands Drake’s pen back too, and I realise he might not be quite as composed as he’s coming across.
Drake snaps his briefcase shut and stands up. ‘Miss Winstone.’ He nods to me and then Dimitri. ‘Enjoy your new cramped lives together. I’ll leave you and your fish to it.’
It almost makes me laugh out loud because I’d momentarily forgotten Heathcliff on the table behind me. I expect Dimitri to get up and walk him downstairs, but he doesn’t look like he can move, so I let my hand brush across his shoulder as I quickly follow Drake, feeling a bit like a guard dog, seeing him off one last time. The smile I give him as he walks away is certainly closer to ‘bared teeth’ than an actual smile. I watch until he disappears into the distance before I go back up to the roof terrace.
Dimitri is standing now, leaning over the table and looking like he might be about to hyperventilate.
‘You were amazing,’ I say, even though I still can’t get my head around what just happened. ‘Suave and sophisticated. As much of a businessman as Drake will ever be.’
He laughs. ‘Oh God, sophisticated and me don’t go together at all, do they? I thought I was being all debonair like Marlon Brando in The Godfather then, and just as I was thinking all I needed was a cat to stoke menacingly, one of my braces pinged off and knocked my glasses sideways, and then I looked down and realised I’d put on my sprout socks this morning.’ He leans against the other table and wiggles a foot at me, showing off a pair of navy and white striped socks with grinning green vegetables all over them, sticking out of his matching boots today. I kind of like the dual-coloured ones.
I go over and stand next to him, reaching up to lift his hair where it’s flopped over and tuck it back. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah. I knew I had the upper hand there. And it’s been a while since Drake and I had a civilised discussion – that’s enough to unnerve anyone.’
‘Do you think he’ll do it? Stop your father complaining about everything?’
‘I think so. All that matters to my father is money. He and Drake will either flatten the house and build something there or restore it and turn it into a hotel or something. Either way, it’ll be a big enough project to keep him busy, and it’s what he’s wanted for years. I think he’ll see that it’s worth giving up his campaign of nastiness for.’
I can feel joy bubbling up inside me, popping at the surface, trying to get out. ‘Why did you do that?’ I ask when it eventually bursts. ‘The house must be worth a fortune, and the shop is not.’
‘Because you were right,’ he says eventually. ‘You were right about the house. It was dragging me down. Every time I go back there, it’s like stepping back in time, and the emptiness closes around me like a tomb. I don’t want to live there anymore.’
‘But the money …’
‘It’s not about the money. If I cared about money, I wouldn’t draw pictures for a living.’ He lifts his head and meets my eyes. ‘The house makes me feel dead inside and being here makes me feel alive. I’m different here. I’ve found myself here. I’m who I want to be here, and I lose that when I go home every night. You’ve reminded me how much I love Buntingorden. The house is just a building, but my mum and sister will always live on in this village because places like Once Upon A Page exist, and I had a chance to exchange the past for the future.’
It makes me well up again and he ducks his head. ‘You changed my life, Hal. You made me remember who I used to be and what I used to love. In the past few years, I’ve hidden away in that house and given up on living, and you’ve reminded me that I used to have dreams. Seeing you throwing your all into the bookshop has reminded me that it’s never too late to follow them.’
‘You haven’t even seen inside. It could be rotting away. It could be tiny. You’re used to a massive kitchen.’ Even as I’m saying it, my voice is going high with excitement. ‘Do you have any idea—’
His arms slide around my waist and he picks me up and spins us around, hugging me to him.
‘—how amazing you are?’ I say against the skin of his neck.
He laughs. ‘They must have a good-sized kitchen. It used to be a bakery.’
I squeeze my arms tighter around him. ‘And now you own it …’
‘I own a shop. And half a roof terrace.’
I giggle and he spins us around again before finally putting me down, his hands on my waist, holding me steady as my hands drift up and down his bare arms to his T-shirt sleeves and back. ‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘It’s going to be an art gallery. I’ll display some of my stuff there, but mainly I want to showcase young, local artists who need someone to believe in them. And there’s this little bookshop next door that I think deserves to be bigger, so I thought we could knock the walls through and expand, and maybe add a few tables for a café and a little bakery counter …’
I reach up and fit my hand over his mouth because his talking has turned back into nervous rambling. ‘It’s exactly what Buntingorden needs. Especially the art gallery part.’
His eyes are watering as he laughs, and I let go of his mouth because accidentally suffocating the man I love would be the unwanted icing on the cake of a day that has turned out nothing like I expected it to. I lean up on my tiptoes to press my lips against his instead.
‘It’s what I’ve always dreamed of for this place,’ he says when we pull back. ‘More books, a café, an art gallery, and an open roof terrace where people can bring their cakes and books and sit in the peace up here watching the river trickling by.’
‘It sounds perfect.’ Up here in the darkness, lit only by the bright crescent moon and the warm orange glow of the oil lamp on the table behind us, I can’t imagine anything nicer than sitting here on a warm sunny day with a pot of tea, a good book, and a pretty cake, listening to birds chirp and watching the swans float by on the river below.
‘Your belief in the love in those notes made me believe in love again,’ Dimitri murmurs. ‘It made me want to prove to you that love exists in real life too. It made me realise that I still believed in love. I’d been alone for long enough to convince myself it was better that way because I didn’t have anyone to lose. I never thought I’d let anyone in again, but I had absolutely no choice with you. Not from that very first day when you didn’t make me feel like the clumsy oaf I am … I felt like I’d found a part of me that I hadn’t realised was missing until that moment.’
‘Me too,’ I mumble, trying not to cry again. ‘And what about you? You’ve made me believe I can run a bookshop. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. You’ve brightened up my life every day you’ve been in it.’
‘This is what I want, Hal. All that matters is how being with you makes me feel. And that’s like I can live again for the first time in years.’
I rest my thumb in the gorgeous dip in his chin and let my fingers stroke his face, tucking the ends of his hair back. ‘And you make me feel unafraid to live. For the first time in my life, it doesn’t feel like everything’s about to go wrong.’
One of the railings behind us creaks ominously, and Dimitri leans his forehead against mine and laughs.
His hand slides down my jaw and tilts my head up until his lips press against mine, softly at first, like he’s waiting for me to object, and I push back, silently letting him know how desperate I’ve been to kiss him, and it’s all he needs. The kiss gets stronger as we clutch at each other, and he picks me up and sits me on the table, and some part of me is almost definitely about to catch on fire from the lamp but none of it matters when his hands are everywhere, holding me, pulling me impossibly closer, tangled in my ponytail, my T-shirt, as my fingers wind in his hair and the other hand curls into his shoulder hard enough to leave nail-shaped indents in the skin under his T-shirt, and I feel light-headed and dizzy and like I never want it to stop.
Time disappears as we kiss – a kiss that feels like not just a kiss but a promise of forever. A kiss with no holding back, no secrets between us now.
Somehow two people as awkward as us can have the most perfect kiss ever.
When we pull back, I can’t bear to take my hands off him. He hugs me from behind and I hold his arms around me as we stand next to the railings at the edge of the roof terrace, looking out over the darkened river and the grassy bank, and there’s only one thing I can think – how did I ever get this lucky?
His arms tighten around me as his chin rests on my shoulder and we stand there looking out, the rustle of summer trees and the gentle lap of water below. Above us, the stars are out in the clear night sky, twinkling brighter than usual in their thousands.
It feels like a scene straight from a romance novel. And the best thing about romance novels is that they always end happily. For the first time, it feels like real life is better than any book I’ve ever read, and like all love stories, even the unlikeliest ones, deserves a happy ending.
***
Swept away by Hallie’s story and the Once Upon a Page bookshop? Don’t miss The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea, another gorgeously uplifting romance by Jaimie Admans. Available now!
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