“What the hell was that supposed to mean?” Mo demanded once Ella and her sports car had departed. “Why would you owe her anything?”
“No idea,” said Ashley, but he couldn’t quite meet her eyes when he said this. He had the same sort of sheepish expression that Mo was used to seeing on the faces of Nick or Zak after a wild night out. Ashley and Ella? Surely not?
“Have you been seeing Ella?”
“Hardly,” said Ashley. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Red, I’ve been spending most of my time with you lately.”
“All right then, let me rephrase that.” Mo put her hands on her hips and glowered at him. “Have you seen her in the past?”
He rolled his eyes. “Jealousy is such an ugly emotion, Red. Beware the green-eyed monster. Of course I’ve seen her. Her family owns the hotel where I’ve been staying while my house is renovated.”
Mo chose to ignore the jealousy comment even though just the mere thought of Ella being anywhere near Ashley filled her with white-hot rage. In fact, if it was true she thought she might explode, leaving nothing behind but a smoking pair of riding boots.
“Don’t get smart,” she snarled. “You know what I mean! Have you slept with her?”
Ashley stared at her. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”
“And I can’t believe you’re not answering! Everyone else seems to have shagged her, so why should you be any different?”
“Christ, Red, you should get yourself down on the quay,” he drawled. “You’d make a great fishwife. And as for everyone else having shagged Ella, as you so delicately put it, I am not everyone else and, no, I haven’t had the pleasure. I’m not saying that the thought didn’t cross my mind at one point – we’re both single consenting adults, after all – but after a drink or two I knew that sex with Ella wasn’t actually what I was looking for. For some unknown and totally inexplicable reason there was somebody else on my mind.”
There was somebody else? Apart from Ella? Mo wanted to scream. Her instincts had been spot on from the very beginning, hadn’t they? Ashley Carstairs wasn’t to be trusted an inch. He was nothing but a player. Look at him now! He was laughing at her. What a piece of work! And to think that she’d been stupid enough to believe that he actually had genuine feelings for her and, most shameful of all, to discover that she had feelings for him.
For a few beautiful, perfect moments Mo had even wondered if she might have been falling in love…
“What the hell are you laughing at?” she demanded.
“You,” Ashley replied, holding up his hands and stepping backwards in mock terror. “You are so god-damn sexy when you’re cross.”
He’d not find her quite so sexy when she bopped him on the nose, Mo fumed.
“I don’t know what you’re looking so pleased about,” she snapped.
“You being green with envy,” Ashley replied, still smiling. “Jesus, Red, you’re worse than Othello! Still, it’s nice to know you care.”
“I’m not jealous! And I don’t care.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Really? So if I did meet Ella tonight for a drink and to complete the paperwork it wouldn’t bother you at all?”
“Not in the slightest,” lied Mo.
“Fibber,” Ashley said softly. He stepped forward and pulled her into his arms, still laughing at how rigidly she was holding herself. “My sweet little fibber. Oh Mo, don’t you understand anything at all?”
His laughter stopped abruptly and he gazed down at her.
“Don’t you know how I feel about you?”
Mo stared up at him. She felt dangerously close to tears, which wasn’t like her at all. Bloody Ashley Carstairs. She’d been doing fine, happy to be on her own until she’d met him. And now look at her.
He reached out and tenderly traced her cheek.
“Can’t you even guess?”
Mo shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak when there was too much tied up in his answer; her hopes and her fears all bundled up together, emotions that Mo had never shared with a single soul, not even with Summer or Jake. Somehow though, Ashley Carstairs had managed to steal closer to her heart than anyone else. Could she trust him with it?
“Tell me, Ashley,” she whispered.
He kissed her softly and time seemed to slow down. All she could hear was the racing of her heart and Ashley catching his breath and then, annoyingly, the harsh chime of a mobile phone.
Ashley’s hand flew to his pocket and he pulled a face. “Bloody phones. No sense of timing. Let me turn that off.”
He slipped it from his jeans, glanced at the screen and inhaled sharply. In that briefest of seconds Mo felt him slip away from her; he didn’t so much as move or speak a word, and yet he might as well have been transported a thousand miles away. Whoever it was who was calling him certainly exerted some strange hold: Ashley’s face had tightened and he was gripping the phone so hard that his knuckles glowed chalky white through his flesh.
The green-eyed monster that he’d teased her about growled and dug its claws deep into Mo’s heart. Was it another woman calling?
“Sorry, Mo, but I really need to take this,” he said, turning on his heel and striding across the yard away from her. It was a call that required privacy, then. Although the air was still, Mo couldn’t catch his words. She couldn’t help it: her ears were out on elastic. Ashley’s tone was clear enough, even if his words were muffled. He sounded angry at first, then almost pleading before swinging back to anger. He stood with his back to her but Mo guessed from his body language that Ashley was only just clinging on to his temper. Whoever it was he was speaking to must have really got to him.
Once the call was over he stood motionless for a moment, visibly gathering himself. Mo could see that she was right: Ashley was deeply upset. His face was set, a muscle ticked in his cheek and his eyes were dark with fury.
It had to be a girlfriend who’d just called, Mo concluded as she focused all her attention on checking Splash’s legs for lumps and bumps. It was an ex maybe, giving him a hard time about something or other. This was what usually made Zak or Nick look so agitated. That would explain the constant coming and going as well as the silence of the past couple of weeks. Ashley had said that there were no calls allowed where he’d been staying. If he’d been with a girlfriend then that made perfect sense, didn’t it? He wouldn’t have wanted some fling from Cornwall disturbing his London love nest.
Mo shot the bolts of the stable door across with a clatter and gave the kick bolt a savage boot with her steel toecap. Only moments ago she’d been in serious danger of making a complete fool of herself, and over what? An afternoon’s fun? A quick distraction for him? It didn’t matter that it hadn’t felt like just a fling, or that all of Mo’s worries and reservations had flown away from the very first moment that Ashley had taken her in his arms; the truth was that he had a whole other life that she knew nothing about.
He was a total stranger. He was Cashley. What had she been thinking?
“I have to leave.” Ashley’s voice sounded odd and although he was standing beside her he seemed even more distant than before. “There’s something I have to do in London and I’m needed there urgently. They can’t do without me.”
Not a girlfriend then? He looked so earnest that she felt compelled to believe him, and she was horrified just how huge the relief was.
“Do you have to go right now?” Mo asked. She hated the way that her stomach felt as though it was freefalling. “You’ve only just come back. Surely you can stay until tomorrow.”
“I shouldn’t have left. I wasn’t supposed to and I knew that really. There’s unfinished business.”
Business. Not a relationship.
“Can’t it wait? You’re the boss aren’t you?”
He gave a harsh laugh. “Not this time, Red. Right now I’m not in control at all; I’m on another timescale altogether. I need to get back to the city.”
“Ella will be gutted. I bet she’s bathing in asses’ milk ri
ght now in anticipation of doing the paperwork with you this evening,” Mo tried teasing to lighten the atmosphere, but Ashley didn’t respond. He was miles away.
Mo took a deep breath and laid herself bare. “Oh, sod Ella, Ashley. I don’t want you to go. I’d like you to stay. Please. Stay with me tonight.”
There. She’d said it and she was trembling all over because Mo Tremaine never, ever said that she needed anyone. She never asked. And she certainly never asked a man.
Ashley looked at her for what felt like forever. At last she thought he was on the brink of saying something; he raised his hand as though about to touch her cheek. Then his arm fell heavily back to his side. Shaking his head, he stepped away. When he finally spoke, his voice was cool and clipped. The urgency of before had vanished just like the sunshine that had been smothered by the scudding charcoal clouds gathering above the sea.
“Mo, I can’t stay. Not now and not ever. I had no right coming here today and I certainly had no right to think about getting involved with you.”
She stared at him and her vision swam. “But we are involved. What about the other afternoon?”
“The other afternoon was a mistake. It should never have happened.”
Mo felt as winded as though she’d taken a crashing fall.
“It was a mistake,” Ashley repeated. “It’s something that should never have happened and we need to forget it, do you understand, Mo? You must never think about it again. It will never happen again.”
There was a look in his eyes that was so bleak it frightened her.
“You don’t mean that,” she whispered. He couldn’t mean it. When he’d just kissed her she’d felt something that she’d struggled to name but that had felt terrifyingly close to love. How could one phone call change that?
Ashley was silent and Mo’s stomach tied itself in tighter knots with every passing second.
“You don’t mean it,” she said again.
“I’m afraid I do,” Ashley replied dully. “Forget about me, Mo. Put me out of your mind. It’s over, whatever it was.”
She stared at him. “What if I don’t want to do that?”
“You don’t have any choice.” He looked away from her, fixing his gaze on the sweeping clouds. “Neither of us does.”
“That’s bollocks,” Mo cried. “We both have every choice. Why not?”
“Because nothing else will ever happen. Can ever happen. It’s best forgotten.”
“So that’s it?” Mo couldn’t believe her ears. He was walking away with no explanation? Woods? Eventers? Lovemaking? All forgotten in one five-minute call? It didn’t make any sense.
Ashley inclined his head in agreement. He couldn’t look at her.
“That’s it. Goodbye, Mo.”
Ashley turned on his heel and strode away from her. Mo stared after him, stunned by the abrupt nature of a goodbye she’d never seen coming. He paused to open the gate and she thought she saw his hand reach up and dash over his eyes. She could have been mistaken, though, because at that point the heavens opened and fat spots of rain began to fall. In the distance thunder rumbled and the horses in the paddock kicked up their heels and cantered around in terror.
The gate clicked and the rain fell harder, but Mo didn’t move. She stood in the yard, rain and tears mingling on her cheeks, gazing after him. A chasm of loss, entirely at odds with the short interlude of knowing him, opened and threatened to swallow her. It made no sense. None of it.
And worst of all, Mo was filled with an awful feeling that she might never see Ashley Carstairs again.
Chapter 14
Polwenna Bay’s post office was very busy for ten o’clock on a Tuesday. Suspiciously busy in fact, thought Jules as she squeezed through a crowd of villagers and almost sent a spinning display rack of postcards flying. There were no tourist coaches in the village car park today and, unless her Boss had decided to move His Son’s birthday, it seemed unlikely that everyone had flocked here all at once to send parcels on an August morning. Usually at this time Jenny James, Polwenna Bay’s postmistress, was to be found playing Candy Crush under the counter or sneaking a peak at the Mail Online, but not so today. Looking like a rabbit trapped in the headlights, Jenny was rushed off her feet serving an enormous queue of villagers, all of whom had suddenly discovered an urgent need for a stamp or postal order.
There couldn’t be anyone left tending to their own businesses, Jules thought wryly as Silver Starr wafted by in a cloud of patchouli and Kursa Penwarren attacked the post office’s ATM with the same gusto that she usually played the fruit machine in the pub. The surgery was evidently a GP short right now too, given that Dr Richard Penwarren was here engrossed in the charity-book selection. Work up at Mariners must have ground to a halt as well, because the Pollards were browsing the stationery. Sheila Keverne and Saffron Jago had abandoned the vital gossip in the village shop and were loitering by the Cornish china. Even Teddy St Milton, Ella’s playboy brother and heir apparent to his grandfather’s hotel empire, had pulled his Aston up outside at a rakish angle and was headed toward the post office.
Oh Lord, Jules thought as her heart plummeted into her Crocs, this could only mean one thing: somebody must have let it slip that the first batch of the Save St Wenn’s calendar had been delivered. Glancing at Danny’s far too innocent face, Jules had a fairly good idea who this might have been.
“What?” said Danny. His good eye was opened, wide and guileless, but Jules wasn’t fooled for a millisecond.
“Don’t what me. You’ve told them all, haven’t you?”
“You have such a suspicious mind! Maybe they’re just making the most of still having a post office?” suggested Danny.
Jules snorted. “When was the last time you saw Teddy St Milton in the village, let alone queuing for the ATM? Look, he hasn’t even a clue how to use it.”
Sure enough Teddy, looking overdressed and out of place in his stripy Ralph Lauren boating blazer, was squinting in confusion at the ATM, which was now beeping at him impatiently.
“Christ! Calm down!” he was saying to the machine. “I only asked for five hundred! What’s the matter with that?”
“It’s fifty maximum per withdrawal,” Kursa explained helpfully.
Teddy looked stunned. “Is that all I’m allowed? Seriously? What on earth can I buy with fifty quid?”
“That won’t even buy him a decent bottle of champagne,” Danny whispered. “If you think Ella’s spoilt you’ve not seen anything yet. Teddy’s something else.”
Jules imagined that usually money just appeared as if by magic in Teddy’s wallet. She certainly wished it would appear miraculously in the St Wenn’s bank account. With every day that brought them closer to the bishop’s visit, Jules was feeling more panicked. She knew that she ought to put her faith in God, and she was trying hard to do that, but she had a dreadful feeling that the visit was just a formality and that the diocese had already decided to close the church. Unless she came up with something fast, St Wenn’s would be a Peppermint Hippo club, or whatever it was called, before they knew it. Jules just wasn’t convinced that a nude calendar was quite the way to go. She’d had a vague plan that she’d get to the post office, collect the calendars and buy them all up with what was left of her meagre savings in order to prevent impending doom, but thanks to Danny “The Mouth” Tremaine, that wasn’t going to happen now.
“OK, so maybe I did mention it in passing to just one or two people,” Danny admitted sheepishly as they elbowed their way through towards the counter.
“One or two?” As the villagers made way for her, Jules was feeling a bit like Moses must have done when parting the Red Sea. Chris the Cod from the chippy waved at her and even Pete the Post had completed his round in record time to loiter innocently by the postcards. “Danny, I’m about to be mobbed! This is ridiculous!”
“I thought we wanted to shift these calendars? Raise money for the church?”
Jules could hardly admit that she’d hoped the project would fail. B
esides, it seemed that the whole village was well and truly behind this fundraising effort, even if, as she strongly suspected, it was because they all wanted a good gawk at their friends and neighbours in the buff. Personally, the proofs had been enough to give her nightmares – she now had mental images of Sheila and co that decades of therapy probably couldn’t erase – but nobody else seemed worried.
“If everyone just in this shop buys just one, that’s at least two hundred quid,” Danny continued happily. “Look how it’s brought the whole village together. We’re on our way!”
Jules didn’t have the heart to tell him that two hundred quid wouldn’t even pay the latest heating bill for the church. Besides, Dan was right: people were pulling together, which had to mean something, surely?
Other than that they were all perverts, of course…
“Vicar! Thank goodness you’re here,” gasped Jenny when Jules reached the front of the queue. Sealed in her little glass cubicle with the villagers drawing ever closer, she had the traumatised look of a last survivor in a zombie apocalypse movie. “I’ve taken the parcels upstairs to the storeroom. I didn’t think they were safe here.”
“Parcels?” Jules frowned. “I thought we ordered fifty?”
Jenny shook her head and her earrings swung in agitation. “Didn’t look like fifty to me, maid. There were ten crates.”
“Ten crates?” Jules heard herself screech.
“You sound like an Oscar Wilde play! A handbag?” Danny teased – and then wailed “Ouch!” when Jules dug an elbow into his ribcage.
Since she’d lost a bit of weight lately, hopefully it had hurt him.
A lot.
“What did I do?”
“You ordered ten crates, that’s what!” Jules glared daggers at Danny. “Just how many of those bloody calendars did we buy?”
A Time for Living: Polwenna Bay 2 Page 13