Harper stared at him. ‘You mean Kristofer?’
‘I believe that’s his name. You must know him, of course, as he’s been involved in the research around our little box of surprises. Charming fellow, but unnervingly so for an insecure soul like me.’
‘He’s going back to Norway? When?’
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ Will replied, clearly confused by her reaction. ‘Cesca said it was all rather unplanned and imminent. She said she didn’t know what had caused such a sudden change of heart…’
Harper had heard the word imminent and stopped listening.
‘Shit,’ she muttered. Ripping her apron from her waist, she hung it on a hook. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking up at Will, ‘but I have to go out.’
‘Is there something I can help with? Something wrong?’
Something was very wrong. Shaken by recent events, confused by her conflicting desires, Harper had assumed that there would be time to decide what she really wanted in a calm and rational way. If she was going to make Kristofer a part of her life, then time would have shown her that it was absolutely the right choice. She hadn’t even considered that he might not stay in Cerne Hay. But suddenly, the idea of him not being there left her hollow and she knew, in a burst as bright and clear as a popping flashbulb, that she loved him. She’d loved him from the first day they’d worked together at the farm, and now she was going to lose him if she didn’t act. Ricky and Shay, they’d been mistakes, but something deep inside told her that Kristofer wouldn’t be. The only mistake she could make with him was letting him go.
‘Pip!’ Harper called through to the kitchen. ‘I have to go out!’
Pip came through, her brow creased. ‘Now?’
‘Sorry, but yes. Can you manage here?’
Pip nodded. ‘I’ve got Allie.’ She glanced at Will. ‘Is everything OK? Something I need to know about?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied uncertainly, glancing at Harper who was now rummaging beneath the counter for her car keys.
‘You’re worrying me,’ Pip said. ‘Whatever it is, do you need me to come?’
‘You’re needed here,’ Harper said briskly, already marching for the door. ‘I’ll try not to be long.’
* * *
She had a vague idea where Kristofer’s cottage was because Cesca had mentioned it, but the leafy lanes around Cerne Hay were still so confusing to her and they all looked so similar that twenty minutes of driving up and down them had still not revealed it. Fighting the urge to scream with frustration, she backed the car into a passing place and turned in the road to go back the way she’d come a third time.
Forcing herself to take a deep breath, she tried to calm down. She’d seen him a matter of days before, and he couldn’t possibly plan and execute a move back to Norway in that time, could he? Besides, now that she thought back to her conversation with Will, she was wondering whether she’d overreacted. Nobody had said that Kristofer was going for good. For all she knew he was planning a holiday. But wouldn’t Will have said that if it were true? Going back home – that meant going back home, as in the place he was going to becoming home, didn’t it? All she knew was that now she’d found him she couldn’t lose him, and she’d never been more certain of anything in her life.
Eventually she found it; a faded sign almost entirely obscured by a trailing honeysuckle: Rowan Cottage. This had to be it. Yanking on the handbrake outside the gate, she raced from the car and up the path, careless of how mad and desperate she might look, and hammered on the front door.
‘Kristofer!’ she yelled.
There was silence.
Putting her mouth to the letterbox she called him again. ‘Kristofer! It’s Harper! Are you there?’
She pressed her ear to the door this time, straining to pick up the sound of footsteps in the hallway, somebody coming to answer the door. But nothing. She knocked again and then hurried to a window, cupping her hands around her eyes to peer in. The room beyond was empty of furniture, a few odd boxes stacked in a corner. Harper’s stomach dropped.
He’d gone.
Chapter 33
She’d knocked again, several times, despite her growing conviction that all was lost. But eventually she had to accept the truth. Harper drove away from Rowan Cottage not knowing how to feel, only that she was so overwhelmed by emotions she couldn’t even begin to recognise that it was like white noise in her soul.
She tried to tell herself that she could find him in Norway and try to contact him – people did it all the time. But the very fact he’d gone told her that perhaps he didn’t want to be found. She’d driven him away when he’d opened his heart and he’d understood that to mean she didn’t want him. She could hardly blame him for that. And then her thoughts, increasingly bitter, turned to Shay. It was yet another way he’d managed to screw up her life. If she hadn’t been cursed with a stupid sense of loyalty to a man who hadn’t deserved a crumb of it, she might have been happy with a man who was worth a thousand times more. Kristofer was the one – she knew it in a way she couldn’t explain, and she’d lost him.
If anyone had asked her to describe her drive back to Silver Hill Farm, she wouldn’t have been able to recall a single detail. She’d somehow functioned, returning in one piece, but it had been a fluke. As she looked up at the welcoming vista of her beloved tearoom – with its candy-coloured walls, flowers from her own garden on every table, customers laughing as they tucked into their lunches, Allie skipping back and forth with a new lightness of step that Harper had never seen in her before, Will still standing at the counter talking to Pip – she tried to fill her mind with positive thoughts. There was a lot to be thankful for and people who needed her to be strong. But it was hard when regret stung like an angry wasp. Without Kristofer, life wasn’t meaningless or pointless or not worth living, or any of those sentimental things that filled the pages of the romance books on her bedroom shelf, but it was duller somehow, emptier, a hollow feeling of loss opening up like a sinkhole at her core. She would mourn for the possibilities, for the future she could have had, knowing that there was no blame to place but that she placed upon herself.
But for now she locked the car and painted on a smile as she went back to work. Later, Pip would want to know the reasons she’d hurried off, and she would offer a shoulder to cry on. Now, however, she had a business to run.
As she pushed open the tearoom doors, Pip rushed over.
‘Where have you been? I’ve been phoning you!’
‘You have? I didn’t hear it; I’m sorry. I was driving.’
‘I guessed that much,’ Pip said, a note of irritation in her voice. ‘You still haven’t said where… We were worried sick.’
‘I’m sure you were… Honestly, it was something and nothing.’
‘Something and nothing? What the hell does that mean? You don’t go racing off in the middle of a working day for something and nothing.’
Harper shook her head, desperately holding back tears. ‘I’ll have to talk to you later…’
Harper began to sidle past her but stopped dead, staring towards the occupant of a table she hadn’t noticed as she came in. Was this her mind playing tricks? It had to be.
But then he rose, striding over.
‘Cesca has told me all about what happened,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see if you were OK.’
‘Kristofer!’
Indifferent to the stares and gasps of surprise, she launched herself into his arms. He stiffened for a moment, clearly shocked by her reaction, but then relaxed and folded her in closer. His scent filled her head – pines and mountains, glacier lakes and wild grass – and she breathed him in, the beat of his heart steady in her ears, syncing even as they embraced to match hers.
‘I thought you’d gone,’ she whispered. ‘I thought you’d gone home.’
‘I was about to,’ he said. ‘My flight is this evening.’
She pulled back to look at him. ‘And you’re going?’ she asked, not daring to breathe until she had
the answer, terrified that she would come this close and then lose him again.
He gazed down with a faint smile. ‘Do you wish me to stay?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. I wish it. I’ve never wished anything as much in my whole life.’
‘I thought you were lost to me.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry about how we parted last time.’ She frowned as the realisation hit her. ‘That’s why you were going?’
‘I could not see you married to another man, but it was not my place to break your engagement.’
‘Shay’s gone,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘He’s not coming back.’
‘You do not love him?’
‘No.’
‘So there is hope?’
‘For us? More than hope.’
He opened his mouth to speak. But then he closed it again and instead dipped to press his lips to hers. It was shy, almost chaste, as if testing the waters. But as she yielded his mouth caressed hers with more confidence, their movements an effortless dance of perfect timing, her insides ablaze at his touch.
Then there was the sound of someone clearing their throat, and Harper pulled away, sucked back to her surroundings to see Pip watching with a grin, while Allie and Will were both agog, and an audience of customers – half of them curious, half embarrassed – did their best to look as if they weren’t watching when it was clearly the best entertainment most had seen in a long time. Harper felt a rush of heat from her toes to her scalp.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘Perhaps you’d like to take this out back?’ Pip said in a teasing voice. ‘Or we might have the police arriving to investigate a case of lewd conduct.’
Harper glanced up at Kristofer, who looked as embarrassed now as she did. ‘Do you want to talk?’ she asked. ‘In the back room?’
‘Talk?’ Pip folded her arms. ‘That’s what we’re calling it nowadays?’
‘Shut up,’ Harper said, grinning. No amount of ribbing could ruin this perfect moment. She took Kristofer by the hand and he followed. They had a lot to talk about and a lot to decide, but one thing was certain – she wasn’t letting him slip through her fingers a second time.
Epilogue
A whirlwind summer was already playing its encore as Pip hugged Harper and Kristofer in turn. The months had passed in a happy blur, despite Shay’s best efforts to cause trouble between Harper and Kristofer, or Allie and Greg – in fact, just about anyone who was happier than he was. But it had come to nothing; Harper and Kristofer had grown closer and stronger than ever, while Allie and Greg, though not together, had come to a new understanding. Harper often shared a private hope with Kristofer or Pip that they’d make it eventually.
Allie, meanwhile, had settled into life at the farm and was now ready to take Pip’s place as Harper’s right-hand woman. She seemed content, despite the moments when her gaze would go slack and her mind would be in another place or time. But Harper understood that she missed not only Greg, but Josh as well, and it would take a lot more than a summer for her to adjust to her new life. Harper and Allie had become close, drawn together by their shared betrayal, and there were times when Harper felt almost guilty that her own luck had changed so dramatically while Allie still waited for her break. So when the time came for Pip to go back to Esther for good, Harper was more than happy to offer her position at the farm to Allie, and Allie seemed happy to accept.
Harper stood in the tearoom now, watching as Pip lugged her suitcase out to her car. Business was closed for today, which was lucky because Harper was in no state to make afternoon tea for anyone. She glanced up at the vase Will had given her, now displayed on a high shelf. Pip had told her again, only that morning, that she was daft not to sell something that was so valuable – it would change her life in so many ways. And yet Harper couldn’t bring herself to part with it, certain that the money would only bring change of the worst kind. Besides, she didn’t want her life to change – it was perfect just as it was. And her beautiful vase reminded her of that every time she looked at it.
‘Is that all of her belongings?’ Kristofer asked.
Harper nodded and gave him a watery smile. ‘I think it might be. Let’s go out to her.’
Hand in hand, they followed Pip out to her car.
‘You’re all done?’ Harper asked as she turned to face them.
‘Yep.’ She looked at Kristofer. ‘You’d better look after my bestie,’ she said, prodding a finger into his broad chest.
‘I will,’ he said, laughing. ‘I am afraid to do anything else.’
Allie strolled out to join them now, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. ‘You’re all set?’ she asked Pip.
‘Looks that way,’ Pip said. She pulled Allie into a hug too. ‘Look after yourself.’
‘I’ve got Harper for that,’ Allie said as they broke apart. ‘My guardian angel.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Harper said. ‘If anything, it’s the other way around.’
Pip let her gaze wander the glass walls of the tearoom. ‘I’ll miss this place.’
‘You’d better not be gone for good,’ Harper said. ‘I want regular visits – Esther too. There’s plenty of room for you to stay awhile. And don’t forget you have to come back for the grand opening of Silver Hill House. You can’t miss that.’
‘That’s a year away!’ Pip laughed. ‘I can’t believe how excited you are. God help the workmen if they go past that schedule.’
‘They’ve started already,’ Harper said. ‘I saw the vans go up there yesterday.’
‘That’ll make Cesca happy – she’s been like a sparrow on a pylon since they announced the plans.’
‘She wants it to be right – she and Will have a lot riding on it,’ Harper said.
‘I’m sure I’ll hear all about it…’ Pip collected a holdall from the floor beside her, the last bag to go in her car.
‘You will. Every day, in mind-numbing detail. In fact, when Will and Cesca come for dinner at the weekend we’ll FaceTime you and they can put you to sleep with talk of lintels and roof slates and National Trust board meetings.’
‘Can’t wait,’ Pip grinned. She paused and held Harper in a fond gaze.
They were stalling, putting off their goodbye, and Harper was determined she wouldn’t cry first. But then her vision blurred and the tears began. Hastily, she rubbed her eyes clear.
‘I said I wouldn’t cry, didn’t I?’ she sniffed.
And then Pip began, and she dropped her bag to pull Harper into another hug. ‘Take care,’ she whispered, holding her tight. ‘Be happy – if anyone deserves happiness, it’s you.’
Harper dragged a sleeve across her eyes and forced a smile. ‘How could I be anything other than happy? I have the love of my life right here with me, new and wonderful friends just up the road, lovely Allie…’ she turned to Allie and shot her a fond smile, while Allie began to tear up too, ‘and all the excitement of seeing Silver Hill House finally restored.’
‘And you can be proud that’s down to you.’
‘Not just me,’ Harper said.
Kristofer put his arm around Harper and smiled. ‘Mostly you,’ he said. ‘You are a remarkable woman.’
Harper nudged him playfully and laughed through her tears. ‘Stop it – I might start to believe it if you keep saying it.’
‘Right,’ Pip said briskly, wiping away her own tears. ‘This time I’m going, or I might never leave.’
Harper leaned into Kristofer as they watched her throw her last bag into the boot of the car and slam it shut. She hardly knew how to feel – so much had changed in her life in such a short time she barely recognised it. Kristofer kissed the top of her head, and she gave him a teary smile. Pip started the car and waved as she pulled away. She was finally making a life with the woman of her dreams, and though Harper would miss her, she understood now more than ever how important that was. To find the one soul that mirrored yours in a perfect reflection, that was rare, and it was to be treasured at a
ny cost.
There had always been treasure at Silver Hill Farm, but it wasn’t the sort money could buy. There was a magic about the place, an unnameable something that had called to Harper when she’d needed help – the same magic that had brought Cesca to Will, the same magic that would heal Allie’s wounded soul and bring her peace – perhaps even bring Greg back to her. Harper didn’t know what the future held and what the old farm had planned for her, she only knew that it was a future she was bound to, and it was filled with hope.
* * *
If you fell in love with the romance and sunshine of The Summer of Secrets then you’ll love The Little Village Bakery available to order now!
* * *
Get it here!
The Little Village Bakery
Honeybourne Series Book 1
Help yourself to a generous slice of Victoria sponge, a perfect cup of tea and a big dollop of romance. Welcome to The Little Village Bakery.
* * *
Meet Millie. Heartbreak has forced her to make a new start and when she arrives at the old bakery in the little village of Honeybourne she is determined that this will be her home sweet home. Her imagination has been captured by the tumbledown bakery but with no running water and dust everywhere, her cosy idea of making cakes in a rural idyll quickly crumbles.
* * *
Luckily the locals are a friendly bunch and step in to help Millie. One in particular, Dylan, a laid-back lothario, soon captures her attention.
* * *
But just as Millie is beginning to settle in, an unexpected visitor from her past suddenly turns up determined to ruin everything for her. It’s time for Millie to face the skeletons in her closest if she’s going to live the dream of running her little village bakery, and her blossoming romance with Dylan.
The Summer of Secrets Page 30