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“Don’t you dare take that tinsel down!”
Rob turned with a guilty start to find Val standing behind him, hands on hips. Her fire-engine red hair was styled into a beehive and the capped sleeves of her full-skirted 1950s dress allowed the entire sinuous length of the water dragon snaking up her left arm to be seen. The demure little collar of the dress was a startling contrast to all that green and turquoise ink—all in all, she was an ambiguous siren was Val, with a little Christmas kitsch sprinkled on top in the form of flashing reindeer horns deely-boppers.
“I was just adjusting it,” Rob lied, turning back to fiddle with the Blu-Tack holding up the green glittery garland, as Michael Bublé began singing It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. Again.
“No, you weren’t,” Val accused without heat. “You’ve been whinging about the decorations all day.”
Rob gave a reluctant laugh. She was right, of course. He’d been hoping to at least whip away the tinsel round the coffee machine while she was in the loo. Maybe take down the snowman chimes on the front door. Val maintained that it was bad luck to take the decorations down before twelfth night but Rob just wanted them gone. It wasn’t that he was a complete Scrooge—he liked tinsel and Christmas trees as much as the next man in the lead up to the big day, but by now, four days later, the sparkle was gone. The angel at the top of the tree was listing from its perch and everything just looked a bit sad. Flabby and redundant. A stark, visual reminder that, for all the build-up, Christmas tended to be a disappointment these days. Dinner with friends and a few modest gifts to take home afterwards. Eggnog for one in front of a late night film.
“What’s up?” Val said, interrupting his thoughts. Her concerned expression was at odds with the flashing reindeer horns. The lights on them kept switching from red to green and back again. Rob hoped none of the customers had epilepsy.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “I was just—miles away.” He sent a smile in her direction but it felt weak, even to him.
“You really should leave those decorations up,” Val said. “You could do with a bit of extra cheer.”
“What do you mean?” Rob protested. “I’ve got plenty of festive cheer!”
“I don’t mean that,” she said gently. “It’s just—I know this time of year must be hard. Because of Andrew.”
“Andrew died in November, not at Christmas,” Rob pointed out calmly.
November four years ago, to be precise. This year, Rob had observed the occasion with a long walk along the coastline and the realisation that he had become used to Andrew’s absence.
That he was no longer stricken with grief.
It was hard though, to let the grief go. It had shaped the rhythms of his life for a long time.
His response didn’t seem to satisfy Val. She frowned, opening her mouth to say something else, only to freeze when she noticed something over his shoulder.
“Oh my God, you’ll never guess who’s walking towards the front door—” she muttered. He went to turn but she grabbed his sleeve. “No, don’t turn round, he’s coming in and he’s looking this way.” The snowman chimes peeled merrily as the front door opened and closed.
“Who is it?” Rob said under his breath, extricating his arm from her grip. She was such a drama queen at times.
“Cameron McMorrow!” Val hissed, her voice almost inaudible, blue eyes sending him a meaningful look. “Can you believe he’s got the nerve to come in here?”
Cameron McMorrow.
Rob’s stomach sank, a familiar reaction whenever he saw Cameron. Even now, months later, the circumstances of their run-in didn’t sit well with him. It hadn’t been Rob’s finest hour, and he knew it. And Val was at least partly to blame.
Now he glared at her. “You behave,” he said in a low voice, a warning in his tone, and she sent him a look that was part annoyed, part ashamed. They both knew Rob’s argument with Cameron had been caused by Val, and the fact that her intentions had been good only went so far in mitigating her actions.
“Well, I’m not serving him,” she muttered, pressing her lips together in a mutinous pout.
“All right,” Rob replied. “I’ll do it. You can take care of the kitchen for a while.”
“Fine. You’re the boss,” she retorted tartly and turned on her heel, disappearing through the kitchen door with a sweep of her polka-dot skirts. Rob wasn’t fooled by her seeming annoyance though—he guessed she was glad of the chance to escape.
Sighing, Rob turned back to the café. It was quiet today, only half the tables occupied, but Cameron McMorrow wasn’t making for an empty one—he was walking up to the table in the farthest corner where a young woman already sat. She’d arrived a few minutes earlier and had been pootling on her phone ever since, waiting for someone.
Cameron, apparently.
The girl stood up to greet Cameron, grinning hugely as she walked into his open arms and gave him a tight, rocking hug, planting a big kiss on his cheek. She was only a few inches shorter than him, a slim girl in skinny jeans, her dark hair brushing her chin on one side and shaved close to her head on the other. She was hip and pretty. Young.
Rob felt a weird pang as he acknowledged that.
The girl’s expression was animated when she finally pulled away from Cameron, white teeth flashing with smiles and chatter, eyes merry with laughter. Rob wished he could see Cameron’s reaction to those smiles, but the man’s back was turned to him. The most Rob could see of Cameron was his tall, broad-shouldered frame and, when he yanked off his grey woollen beanie, his sleek, dark head.
Cameron McMorrow wore his hair a shade too short, Rob thought idly. Hair that thick and luxuriant ought to be allowed to grow out a bit. Rob ran a hand over his own mop. It was longer than Cameron’s, though probably coarser to the touch.
Silvering a bit at the temples too.
He was forty next year—and wasn’t that a thrilling thought?
Rob sighed, watching as Cameron stripped away his winter coat and tossed it over one of the unused chairs at the table, settling himself down opposite the chattering girl. Rob was so engrossed in watching him that he didn’t avert his gaze quickly enough when Cameron glanced over his shoulder.
Their gazes collided and Rob immediately looked away, mortified to be caught staring. Even as he did so though, his brain processed the fleeting glimpse he’d had of Cameron’s face, and the oddly wary look he wore.
Rob hadn’t been expecting that. More like open hostility.
The next time Rob glanced Cameron’s way, he and his companion were looking over the menu. Rob gave them a few minutes, ringing up another customer’s bill then clearing the just-vacated table and wiping it down, before he strolled over to take their order.
They were deep in conversation as he approached their table.
“—thing is, you’re turning into a hermit, Cam,” the girl was saying earnestly.
Cam. It suited him, Rob thought.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are! You need to get out and have some fun. When was the last time you got laid?”
Rob cleared his throat. “Hi,” he said. “Are you ready...?”
Cameron’s head snapped round. “Oh, hi. Sorry, I didn’t see you there, ah, Rob.”
That stammered greeting threw Rob somehow. After their last snarling encounter, and the freezing silence that had followed, he hadn’t expected anything half so civilised. Perhaps Cameron was just putting on a polite front for the girl though. Rob glanced at her to find she was watching their stiff exchange of greetings with apparent fascination.
Rob cleared his throat again. God, could he sound more awkward? “Nice to see you, Cameron.” He gave a small smile, an attempt at a tentative welcome. “Did you have a good Christmas?”
“Cameron?” the girl spluttered, before the man himself could reply. “God, Cam, I thought only Mum called you that!” She glanced at Rob then, eyes dancing. “Seriously, is that what he gets called round here? Cameron?”
Rob opened his mouth then closed it again, at a loss, for once, as to what to say. He looked at Cameron—or rather, Cam—for guidance as to how to answer, but the man was staring at the table with a resigned slump to his shoulders, as though he was waiting for some axe to fall.
Rob didn’t know what to say. The truth was, none of the locals really spoke to Cam McMorrow often enough to call him anything. After his argument with Rob, Cam had stopped coming into the café. He’d stopped going to The Stag on Friday nights too. If he was mentioned in conversation, the locals tended to shrug and note that he “kept himself to himself”.
But Rob couldn’t say that to Cam’s—what was she? Sister?
“Well,” he began carefully, darting a look at Cam. “He’s never mentioned to me that he goes by ‘Cam’.”
There. That wasn’t untrue, was it?
He felt absurdly gratified when Cam raised his gaze from the table and seemed to minutely relax.
“I can’t believe he hasn’t told you!” the girl exclaimed. “He’s always gone by ‘Cam’. Our mum started calling him that when he was a baby—she’s Italian but she insisted on giving us these really Scottish names, didn’t she, Cam? I think it was her way of fitting in with the McMorrow side of the family.” She smiled brightly at Rob. “I got ‘Eilidh’.”
Ai-ly. She clipped the two syllables out, short and quick in that Glaswegian accent that sounded so much like Cam’s. Funny how the same accent could make two people sound so different. Eilidh had that cheeky, gallus thing going on that Glaswegians were so famous for, while Cam was quieter, yet harder somehow.
“Eilidh’s a good name,” Rob said, smiling back. He glanced at Cam then, noting that the man’s body language—shoulders angled just slightly towards the tinsel-framed window—suggested that he wished Rob would leave them alone.
“So, Cam,” the girl said. “Are you going to...introduce me to your friend?”
“My frie—” Cam broke off, then cleared his throat. “Oh—Rob. Right, this is, uh, Rob Armstrong. He owns the café.” He sent an apologetic look Rob’s way. “This is my sister, Eilidh.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Rob said, offering her a smile. The family resemblance was obvious, once you knew. Cam and Eilidh had the same olive complexion, the same dark eyes and hair—inherited, presumably, from their mother. Both tall and lean and good-looking, an effortlessly glamorous pair, even in beat-up jeans and scuffed boots.
“You too, Rob,” Eilidh replied cheerily. “And this place is great. The cakes look awesome. Are they homemade?” She was a lot more friendly than her brother, Rob thought wryly. She’d smiled at him more in the last few minutes than Cam had all year.
“Yeah,” Rob replied. “My manager Val makes them. She’s an amazing baker. She takes care of this place most of the time, actually—I just do part-time hours.”
“Oh yeah? What do you do with yourself the rest of the time?”
“I’m an artist.”
Eilidh’s gaze went straight to the walls of the café, skipping over the dozen or so canvasses hanging there. “Are these all yours, then?” She glanced back at Rob who nodded. “God, they’re gorgeous. I love the colours.”
She turned in her chair to look more carefully at the nearest canvas, an oil painting close to their table. It was a simple picture of two cottages at dusk. The white walls were almost luminous against the shadowy hillside and violet sky. Most of the picture was rendered in variations of purple and black with just touches of acid-bright colour here and there—a line of yellow at the edge of a roof, pinpricks of vermillion in the corner of a window.
“Thanks,” Rob said politely. “This place is kind of an unofficial gallery for me, although I also display my stuff in other places on the tourist trail.”
He noticed then that Cam was scowling at the painting, as though it offended him. Rob felt himself bridling, till Eilidh’s huff of laughter drew his attention back to her.
“Don’t mind Cam,” she said. “He always glares when he’s thinking hard.” She poked Cam’s arm, “Don’t you?”
Cam started at that and looked round. “What?” he said, seeming puzzled. When Eilidh chuckled he gave a tiny, dismissive shake of his head then met Rob’s gaze, jerking his thumb at the picture. “Is that out by Cardrogan Bay?”
Rob felt an unexpected stab of pleasure at Cam’s recognition of the place. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the scene he’d painted. It could’ve been anywhere along the coastline—there were hundreds of little cottages just like that round here—and he’d worked from a pretty inaccessible viewpoint that not many people would be familiar with.
“Yes, it is,” he admitted, helpless to stop the little smile that tugged his lips upwards. “That’s the view from the crags on the hillside behind the Bechie Woods.”
“Yeah, I recognise it. I take the bike up there sometimes,” Cam said. “Sometimes I sit on the crags and look out over the sea. You quite often see seals swimming out in the bay. I even saw a couple of sea otters once.” Their gazes met and Cam’s cheeks seemed to colour a little, as though he’d given away more than he’d meant to. He cleared his throat then, glancing at his sister. “It’s a really nice spot.”
Eilidh just raised a brow. She looked amused. Rob didn’t feel amused though. Something about the thought of Cam sitting alone on the crags, looking out over the bay—it made him feel sad somehow. Which was a disconcerting thought.
Equally disconcerting was the insidious little voice at the back of his mind wondering how fit Cam must be to ride his bike up the steep paths of the Bechie Woods.
What must the muscles on those long legs be like?
Rob cleared his throat. “So,” he said, injecting a change-the-subject note into his voice. “Do you know what you want to order?”
“Oh, yes! I’ll have the brie and bacon panini,” Eilidh said promptly. “And a large cappuccino. Oh, and one of those chocolate cupcakes—they look amazing.”
“They are pretty awesome,” Rob confirmed with a wink before turning to Cam. “And for you?”
Cam didn’t meet his gaze. “Um—just a white coffee. I already ate.”
“What do you mean?” Eilidh said, frowning, “You knew we were meeting for lunch. I called you ages ago!”
Cam flushed. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I couldn’t wait—I was hungry.”
“No problem,” Rob said, tucking his order pad back in his pocket, though he couldn’t help wondering if Cam just didn’t want to spend his money in here.
“Well,” Eilidh said, as Rob gathered their menus up, “it was nice to meet one of Cam’s friends at last.”
For a moment, Rob faltered, then he somehow managed a smile, a forced, insincere one, but a smile just the same.
“It was nice to meet you too,” he said.
Then he turned away and headed for the kitchen to put the check on with Val.