Traffic was heavy on the way back and the journey took two hours. Approaching St. Carys, on a whim Sophie turned left up the lane that led toward Moor Court. If it wasn’t to be a completely wasted day, she may as well see if she could spot the mystery bird.
She pulled in halfway up the driveway. Marguerite’s sporty red Mercedes was missing, which meant she was probably out. Anyway, as Marguerite had said, there was no need to ring the doorbell. Jumping out of the car with the necessary long lens fixed to the camera around her neck, Sophie took a shortcut through the trees leading around to the back garden.
She came out around forty feet from the back of the house. And here it was, the enormously tall ash tree with the cocoon-shaped wicker seat hanging from one of the lower branches.
Peering up, craning her neck and squinting as the bright sunlight flickered through the swaying leaves, she managed to spot the nest, way up high and half hidden among the blur of greenery. She hoisted the Nikon into position, adjusted the elongated lens, and brought the nest into knife-sharp focus. That was it, perfect, but there was no sign of any birds, either parents or chicks.
Sophie leaned back against the silver-gray trunk of the tree and lowered the camera but kept her attention on the nest. Through either luck or patience, she would catch a few shots of the bird when it decided to put in an appearance.
Fifteen minutes later, she gave her aching neck a rest and massaged her knotted-up left shoulder. Looked like it was going to be down to patience rather than luck. She was hot, and the back of her shirt was sticking to her spine, but…
A tiny movement at the very periphery of her vision made Sophie glance across at the house. For a moment she couldn’t work out where it had come from; then it happened again, and she realized there was someone in Marguerite’s office.
Not Marguerite, though. The hair was messy and blond, not sleek and dark. It was Riley, wearing a white T-shirt and sitting at the desk scrutinizing the computer screen in front of him.
He didn’t know she was out here. Only mildly curious as to what he might be doing, Sophie instinctively raised the camera once more to eye level and refocused the lens until she had him in her sights.
There he was, every last tiny detail of his face as clear as if he were an insect under a microscope. Even after all these years, it never failed to amaze her that a lens had the ability to make something far away appear so close you felt you could reach out and touch it.
Sophie made one final minuscule adjustment and turned her attention to the computer screen.
When she realized what was on it, and slowly worked out what appeared to be going on in the room, she felt all the hairs on the back of her neck prickle in disbelief.
Surely not.
It couldn’t be.
Could it?
***
Josh was driving back to the hotel after a meeting in Padstow. He’d reached St. Carys, and slowed to let a girl push a twin buggy across the road, when he happened to glance across at the mini supermarket on his right.
Clearly visible through the glass frontage was Sophie, surveying the shelves of wine.
Sometimes fate intervenes and offers a helping hand, and it would seem rude to refuse it. Josh waited until the twin buggy had reached the pavement, then promptly parked up on the double yellows. Within twenty seconds he was entering the shop, executing a surprised double take as he recognized a familiar face.
“Hello!” Did that sound okay? Suitably casual? God, sounding casual was hard.
Sophie swung around and said, “Oh, hi!”
“Can’t decide?” She’d been holding a bottle in each hand, studying the labels. Look at her, so beautiful…
“They’re both the same price.” She pulled a face, holding up each bottle in turn. “This one sounds nicer. But this one’s on special offer and has a prettier label.”
“Go for the first one. It’s what they’re like on the inside that counts.” He liked Sophie inside and out. “Off somewhere nice?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Celebrating, then?”
“Kind of the opposite. Commiserating with myself. I walked out of a job today and there’s still a chance I could get into trouble over it. Long story,” she added drily. “Anyway, what are you doing here?”
“Just dropped in to pick up some…cookies.” It was the first thing that came into his head; he could hardly say I only came in here because I saw you.
“You live in a hotel. Surely you must have cookies?”
“Not the kind I wanted. I had a sudden craving for Garibaldis.” He saw the look on her face. “It’s okay, I’m not pregnant.”
Sophie laughed. “I haven’t had a Garibaldi for years.”
Was this fate? Seizing the moment, Josh said, “I’ll share mine if you share yours. Fancy a walk along the beach?”
He saw her hesitate, then make up her mind. “Yes, I do. Although…”
“Although what?”
“Will we take turns swigging out of the bottle? Because it might not be the classiest look I’ve ever gone for.”
Josh made his way down the left-hand aisle and picked up a packet of Garibaldis, then moved on to the tiny kitchenware section, there to provide emergency supplies for vacationers staying in tents and caravans in the area.
“They don’t have glasses.” He rejoined Sophie in line for the checkout. “Will these do?”
She surveyed the two cheap china mugs, one blue and stripy, the other pink and decorated with teddies and hearts. “Perfect. Yours is the pink one.”
“Funnily enough, I thought it might be,” said Josh.
***
Sophie sat and wiggled her bare toes in the sand, hyperaware of Josh’s forearm millimeters away from her own. They’d walked to the furthest edge of the beach. Now Josh was opening the bottle—hooray for screw caps—and pouring red wine into their mugs. They both knew they could have gone to the Mermaid, where there were comfortable seats and proper wineglasses to drink from, but they’d taken the beach route instead.
“Cheers.” Josh clinked their mugs together, the side of his hand brushing against hers. Zinggg.
“Cheers.” She took a sip and said, “It’s nice. You were right.” Had he felt the zing too?
“I’m always right.” His eyes crinkled with amusement. “So, what happened to make you walk out on your job today?”
Sophie told him. The outrage bubbled up; recalling Jemini and Jezebel’s reactions made her furious all over again on Elizabeth’s behalf. When she’d finished ranting, she said heatedly, “It just makes me so mad. Elizabeth’s worth fifty of them!”
“I agree.” Josh was nodding.
“Life’s so unfair. Why does bad stuff have to happen to people who don’t deserve it?” It would be poor form to suggest that people who did deserve it should be the ones to get cancer, but the thought was there in her brain. She took a bigger glug of wine and said, “Some people swan through life without realizing how lucky they are.”
“Also true.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” He definitely had a particular expression on his face.
“I like how you get indignant on other people’s behalf.” He smiled. “You’re so…principled.”
“So principled that I lost out on the best-paid job I’ve had in months.” She grimaced. “Ah, well, never mind. It’s only money.”
He paused, gazing steadily into her eyes. “There’s something I’d really like to know. What happened to put you off men?”
Her stomach clenched; they weren’t here to discuss her.
“You’ve asked me that question before.”
“I know I have. Still waiting for the answer.”
“You’ll have a long wait, then. I told you, it’s private.”
“I’m a good listener. And pretty unshockable.”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“Is it?” Josh shook his head fractionally. “You’re a beautiful girl. I like everything about you, apart from the fact that I asked you out and you turned me down. I didn’t like that bit at all.”
“Poor you. Heartbreaking.” In order to keep her own emotions in check, Sophie resorted to flippancy. “You could always ask Tula out. I’m sure she’d say yes. She likes you.”
“And you don’t?”
It was her turn to give him a long look. “You shouldn’t ask questions like that. The answer may offend.”
“Did he hit you?”
“Who?”
“The one who caused all of this.”
He was watching her intently. Sophie said, “No, never. And that’s as much as you get. I’m not saying any more.”
“But—”
“Wait.” She held up her hand to stop him in his tracks. “It’s private, okay? I’m not going to talk about it. Ever. Apart from anything else, it isn’t my story to tell.”
Josh was still watching her, looking as if there was something else he wanted to say. In return, Sophie silently signaled that it would be a pointless exercise. Okay, time to change the subject, to the reason she’d agreed to come down to the beach with him in the first place…
***
What a situation to find yourself in. Josh glanced at the bottle stuck at an angle in the sand and saw that it was almost empty. They’d been sitting out here for an hour now. And all he’d wanted to do the whole time was pull Sophie into his arms and kiss her senseless.
Meanwhile, what had she been doing? The answer to that was: her level best to find out as much information as possible about Riley.
Which was pretty frustrating, to say the least. Every time he’d attempted to steer the conversation to other subjects, Sophie had deftly steered it right back again. She wanted to know whether they had been good friends all those years ago when Riley had first come to live in St. Carys and Josh himself had been returning here during breaks between university terms. Had Riley always been as lazy and hedonistic as he was now? What had he taken his degree in? Did he genuinely have no ambition at all, or did Josh think there could possibly be more to him than met the eye?
It was a virtual interrogation.
“Why are you so interested?” He didn’t want to sound like a bad loser, but if she was asking all these questions because she was attracted to Riley Bryant… Well, he wasn’t at all sure he could keep his feelings about it to himself.
Sophie shrugged easily. “Just curious.”
“He wouldn’t be your type.”
She glanced sideways at him, amused by his tone. “You don’t know that. He might be.”
“I do know. Riley’s just…Riley. He’s good fun, great to spend time with, but what you see is what you get. It doesn’t go further than that.”
Sophie still wasn’t looking convinced. “You don’t think he might have hidden depths?”
Josh poured the last of the wine into their mugs. “No,” he said flatly, “I don’t. And relationships aren’t his thing. Nothing ever lasts longer than a week. More often it’s a matter of hours.”
Her choppy blond hair was being blown across her face. Sophie tipped her head back, shaking the strands out of her eyes. “Maybe that suits some girls.”
Okay, did she mean her? Was she hinting that she wouldn’t be averse to a night with Riley? Experiencing a tightening inside his chest, Josh said, “When I asked you a while back, you told me you weren’t interested in him.”
“Did I?” Sophie smiled, checked her watch, and finished her wine. “Wow, it’s later than I thought. I need to get home.”
Josh rose to his feet, brushed the sand off his jeans, and reached out a hand to haul her upright. For a moment they were facing each other, their bodies almost but not quite touching; he could see his own face reflected in her clear, gray eyes. The urge to draw her closer was stronger than ever. He longed to trace the dimple in her left cheek, to breathe in the scent of her, to push his fingers through that tousled blond hair and feel the warmth of her skin at the base of her throat.
And more than anything else, he wanted to kiss her, hold her and kiss her…
Okay, more than almost anything else, but let’s not get carried away. One step at a time.
“Well, I’d better get back. Lots of work to do.” Breaking contact and shaking dry sand from her own clothes, Sophie handed him her empty mug and said cheerfully, “Here, you take it; it’s yours. Thanks for the chat. It’s been nice.”
She stepped back, moving away, the empty wine bottle swinging between her fingers as she carried it over to the trash can. Once it had been disposed of, she turned, waved, and called out, “Bye!”
And now, with the setting sun behind her, she was heading for the steps, making her way home, presumably to assimilate all the newly gathered information she’d inveigled from him about Riley Bryant.
Josh exhaled, marveling at his own misguided plans. So much for not getting carried away and taking things one step at a time.
If Riley took advantage of Sophie and then ditched her, he would want to kill him.
Then again, if Riley took advantage of Sophie and didn’t ditch her… Well, that would just make him want to kill him more.