Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

by Jill Steeples

  I suspected he’d be the kind of man who’d be handy about the house – putting up shelves, fixing leaks, getting up in the middle of the night to see to that strange noise – a no-nonsense tell-you-straight kind of bloke.

  If he wanted something he probably went straight ahead and got it. Maybe that’s what I needed to do. I should take a leaf from Dave’s book and really dig deep and pull on all my reserves of spontaneity.

  Thinking about his question, though, was there anything stopping me now? I didn’t know if I had a life still waiting for me in London or whether it had disintegrated into a pile of stale wedding cake crumbs. If I were to move away tomorrow would anyone really miss me? Ed and Sophie might be glad to have me out of the way and it wasn’t as if I saw my parents that often. I could just as easily visit them from Hollisea. And Ben could come and stay for the occasional weekend, if he wanted to. Perhaps I could start all over again here.

  I shook my head to rid myself of the self-pitying thoughts.

  ‘Nothing really,’ I said. ‘Maybe I should. Maybe I’ll look back one day and realise this was the point when everything changed in my life. That day when I met Dave and he put the idea in my head of moving to the seaside.’

  I noticed the small shake of his head as he laughed.

  ‘Yeah, you should, if that’s what you want to really do. You should always follow your dreams.’

  We’d been walking for a few minutes before we reached the canopy of the pier and Dave gestured to a sheltered spot between some rocks.

  ‘Do you want to sit down for a while?’

  He slipped off his jacket and laid it down on the ground in a chivalrous gesture. I sat down and stretched my legs out in front of me, my hands instinctively reaching out for the pebbles beneath. My fingers plunged downwards separating the stones and I felt the cool water tingling on my hands. Dave sat down beside me, his arms cupped round his long legs.

  ‘I suppose in a business like yours it doesn’t matter where you’re based?’

  His question caught me totally off guard. I was preoccupied with thoughts of Ed and Sophie, wondering what would happen if I were to run away for good. Would Ed come running after me or would I simply be handing Sophie my very own happy ending on a plate?

  I looked across at Dave, realising he was talking about wretched Persephone and her jewellery business.

  ‘You could always have a little seafront shop or stall if you wanted to. You’d get a lot of passing business.’

  I was feeling worse by the minute. Dave seemed genuinely interested in Persephone and what she would do next, but his questions were filling me with an uneasy guilt. He’d shown me nothing but kindness and friendship since I’d met him and all I could do was tell him one huge whopping lie after another. Ordinarily I was the world’s worst liar. Ed always used to say that he could tell just be looking at my face what I was thinking and I could never get even the smallest, teensiest white lie past him. It was even a bit of a joke between us, how bad I was at lying. Ironic really. Bad at lying and bad at picking up when someone was lying to me. Until now that was. In the space of twenty-four hours I’d turned into a compulsive liar.

  ‘Yeah. To be honest, I could do with a change of scene,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘You got a boyfriend?’

  ‘Umm, no.’ The acknowledgement of the truth hit me with a sharp stab of pain in the chest. I honestly didn’t know if I had still had a boyfriend, a fiancé, a wedding to look forward to even. If I had any kind of future. ‘I did, but we split up recently. You?’

  His laugh was deep and warm, and I saw his eyes light up with amusement.

  ‘No, Perce, I haven’t got a boyfriend.’

  ‘No, you know what I mean,’ I said, punching him playfully on the arm. I realised I knew nothing about Dave apart from the fact that he was extremely handsome and was into import and export, whatever that was. ‘Are you with anyone?’

  ‘Only you,’ he said, with a wry smile.

  I smiled uneasily. Dave was good at asking questions, but not so good at answering them. Not that it mattered. We were definitely ships passing in the night like the ships I could just make out in the distance.

  ‘Can I give you a bit of advice, Perce?’

  I nodded. It hadn’t taken him long to start calling me Perce, which sounded much more intimate on his lips than Persephone or Percy. I just hoped the advice wouldn’t be of the business variety because then I would need to listen up and act like I knew what he was talking about.

  ‘You don’t know me, Perce. We met only a couple of hours ago. You’re on your own a long way from home and I’m guessing no one knows where you are right now.’

  Oh holy cow. A cold shiver of dread ran down my backbone. I had visions of my mutilated and discarded body being found crumpled on the beach. Then Ed would be sorry.

  ‘You seem like a lovely sweet girl, very trusting and funny, but I think you’re taking a huge risk coming down to a beach in the dead of night with some bloke you don’t know the first thing about.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  He must have noticed my strickened expression because he laughed and laid a hand gently on my own.

  ‘Sorry. I’m not trying to frighten you, honestly. I just think perhaps you need to be a bit more careful. If you were my sister or friend I’d be worried sick about you. You should at least be telling someone where you going and who you’re going with. Just to be on the safe side.’

  Of course! What an idiot I’d been. Anything could have happened to me. If Dave had dastardly deeds on his mind then I’d have been in no position to stop him, I realised, as my gaze did another sweep of his, quite frankly, impressive body.

  I sighed, dropping my head backwards to look at the night sky. The trouble was there wasn’t anybody I would rush to tell now. Apart from Ben, perhaps. If I were to disappear off the earth’s surface, how long would it be before anyone actually noticed?

  ‘Yes, thank you for pointing that out to me. You’re absolutely right,’ I said, trying to quash the rising feeling of self-pity. ‘I suppose I’m not used to being out of my own.’ My mouth was doing a good job at portraying me as a complete and utter nutcase.

  ‘Really?’ A smile hovered on his lips. ‘Are you not safe to be let out on your own then, is that it? Is it me who should be the worried one instead?’

  ‘No! I mean, yes. Oh …’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, laughing. ‘I’ll be your chaperone for the night, how about that?’

  The truth was almost everything I did was with Sophie or Ed. Or my parents even. Apart from going to work, of course. It was pathetic, I knew, but that’s how it was. I’d only been on my own for a day and already I’d put myself in mortal danger by the sounds of things. I thought of Ben’s parting words urging me not to do anything stupid and felt my stomach churn. I couldn’t have been more stupid if I tried.

  ‘That sounds marvellous,’ I said, trying to sound worldly and sophisticated. ‘I’m so pleased you haven’t brought me here with a cunning plan to murder me.’

  He shook his head wryly, looking at me with only affection in his eyes.

  ‘No, you’re safe with me, but not everyone you meet will be as decent and honest.’

  Yes, lesson learned. Think, Anna, before going off blindly with the first gorgeous man you come across. One thing was for sure: I wouldn’t be meeting too many guys who were as downright gorgeous in such an obscenely masculine way as Dave. I seemed to have developed an unhealthy fascination with the delicious curve of his lips and had to use all my superhuman strength to drop my gaze.

  ‘Just something to think about in future though, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, I will. Of course,’ I said, taking the opportunity to look away, refocusing my attentions on the horizon. Perhaps it had been a stupid thing to do, to come here with this big hulk of a man who I didn’t know the first thing about, but sometimes your instincts count for a lot and my instinct told me that, in Dave’s hands, I’d be safe from any danger.
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  ‘Okay, so now we’ve got that cleared up now, can I ask you something else?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Let me have it. After ducking questions about my hugely successful career as a jewellery designer and getting over the fact that he wasn’t a mass murderer on the loose and that I wasn’t just out of a secure hospital on licence, anything else would be child’s play surely.

  ‘Can I kiss you?’ he asked, tilting my head up with his thumb.

  Apart from that, of course. That came from left of centre. His gaze landed on my face with an intense thud and a jolt of anticipation reverberated around my body. Totally unexpected, but he wasn’t going to need to ask me twice. I just closed my eyes and fell backwards onto the uncomfortable stones that were only uncomfortable for a nanosecond because as soon as those lips that I knew intimately by sight were hot on mine, everything else was forgotten. The faint sweet taste of beer lingered on his breath as his tongue gently pushed my lips apart and my aversion to beer was over in that moment. Totally unexpected. Totally divine.

  I knew now wasn’t the time to be thinking about Ed, but I couldn’t help myself. His cross face flashed into my mind for the briefest moment as I wondered what the hell I was doing snogging a complete stranger. When had Ed ever kissed me like this, with an urgency and passion that sent my whole body into a quivering mess? Never. It was a revelation. All those years of sub-standard kissing and I hadn’t even realised. If Ed was Tesco Value range, Dave was definitely in the Finest category. As quickly as the thought of Ed flashed into my mind, it flashed out again as I was completely distracted by the man, very much, of the moment.

  His arm brushed against my breast and I didn’t know whether it was intentional or accidental only that my body responded with such a powerful and intense longing that had me clutching him to my chest like a limpet. He extracted himself from my embrace, a smile resting on his lips, his hand brushing the hair away from my face.

  ‘Hey, you’re something special, do you know that?’ His eyes were heavy with longing and if he’d wanted to he could have ravished me right there on the spot, but instead he stood up and held out his hand to me.

  ‘Come on, Perce, let’s get you back to your hotel before you send me completely out of my mind.’

  Disappointment swelled in my chest, but of course, Dave was far too much of a gentlemen to take advantage of me here where anyone could have stumbled upon us. I should have known that. There was being spontaneous and there was being reckless and I think after the headiness of the last couple of hours I was verging on the reckless side. Eagerly I jumped up to join him, grabbing hold of his hand, hardly able to contain my excitement.

  Was this how Ed had felt when he’d kissed Sophie for the first time? Had he been swept away on a tidal wave of passionate longing that I realised only now had been sadly missing from our relationship.

  Whatever is was, none of this was my fault. If Ed hadn’t strayed in the first place then I would never have come to Hollisea. I would never have even thought about betraying Ed because … well, because I was happily stuck in a one-man time zone. Besides, I knew I had far too much to lose. Why would I look elsewhere when I had everything I’d ever wanted in Ed?

  Sadly Ed had no such qualms and he’d just given in to his base desires. No, I was absolutely blameless in all of this. I was simply a victim of circumstance. Thrown together with a handsome stranger after being rejected by my fiancé, how was any girl expected to act in that situation? That sort of humiliation was enough to send anyone running into the arms of the nearest attentive and gorgeous man.

  But when we got to the front steps of the Grand View all I got from Dave was a chaste kiss on the cheek and a squeeze of my hand.

  ‘Don’t you want to come up … for a coffee?’ I said, trying to hide the note of desperation in my voice.

  He gave that low warm chuckle that did funny things to my insides.

  ‘I’d love to, Perce, but I’ve got a really early start in the morning.’ He stroked his hand across my cheek in a surprisingly tender movement for such a beast of a man. His eyes lingered on mine. ‘Do you want to go to dinner tomorrow tonight instead?’

  ‘Dinner?’ Aargh, I had a feeling my body might have spontaneously combusted by then. This was not of my doing. I would obviously never have agreed to a date with a strange man in all the time I’d been dating Ed. But he was the one who’d suddenly shifted the goalposts. ‘I’d love to,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘Good. I’ll pick you at seven, then?’

  He kissed me again, lightly on the lips this time, before turning and leaving.

  A date with the single most gorgeous man to ever have walked the promenade at Hollisea.

  Ha! Take that Ed Fellows!

  Chapter Seven

  The best part about staying in a swanky hotel, apart from the tea and coffee tray in your room and the free samples of soap, shower gel and shampoo, is the magnificent buffet breakfast.

  I’d woken up at six thirty feeling remarkably chirpy for a girl who’s life had disintegrated into a thousand tiny pieces only a couple of days earlier. I suspected that had a lot to do with the Dave factor. Since he’d dropped me back at the hotel last night my head had literally been in a spin as I just couldn’t stop myself from thinking about him.

  Did that make me as bad as Ed? That I could be so easily swayed by the attentions of another man. I felt completely overwhelmed by the way he’d made me feel. One moment I’d been in the depths of despair thinking about Ed’s betrayal and the next I been swept up by the idea of being desired by a man who was so entirely different from Ed.

  I kept conjuring up images of Dave’s lovely friendly face in my mind and the way his eyes danced all over me when I made him laugh. He made me feel attractive too when Ed had made me feel as desirable as a slice of Christmas pudding on Boxing Day morning. The memory of Dave’s strong firm body was taunting me, too, the way his touch made me feel and the effect his kisses had on my entire body. Honestly, I was finding it difficult to think about anything else at all.

  The breakfast menu would have to be the next best thing. I was glad I hadn’t gone for the continental option delivered to the room because although all those croissants and Danish pastries looked absolutely marvellous, it seemed the potential for full-on breakfast gluttony came only from visiting the restaurant. I got down there for about seven thirty and was swiftly ushered to a table overlooking the sea. It was the best way to start the day. I put in my order for a full English and a pot of tea with white toast and wandered over to the buffet bar. I helped myself to a big bowl of fruit and yoghurt in one hand and in the other I filled a bowl full of oats, Bran Flakes, Rice Krispies and Frosties. Honestly, I wouldn’t need to eat another thing for the rest of the day.

  The hotel was surprisingly busy with a cross-section of visitors – business people, young families and retired couples enjoying a well-earned break – although looking around, when I was seated back at my table, I could have bet any money at all that I was the only soon-to-be bride whose wedding had a great big red pen hovering over it, waiting to be scribbled out.

  I sighed, pushing away the thoughts of all things bridal and tried to concentrate on my breakfast. A few minutes ago I’d been completely ravenous and now with the smorgasbord of delights laid out in front of me it seemed as though my appetite had clean deserted me. I stirred my spoon aimlessly around my bowl, wondering what Ed might be doing right now and if he’d spent the night with Sophie. Surely he must know by now that I’d found out about his dirty little secret. Sophie wouldn’t have wasted any time in telling him how she’d found me with Ben the other day.

  Perhaps she’d even planned the whole thing in advance. Maybe I’d walked straight into her trap. Perhaps she’d deliberately left the diary on her bedside cabinet knowing I was likely to wander in there to retrieve my earrings. Who couldn’t resist having a tiny peek inside someone’s diary if it was left in full tantalising view? If it really wasn’t meant for anyone else’s eyes, my eyes in partic
ular, then she should have hidden it away in her knicker drawer or under the bed.

  What an idiot I’d been! Sophie had set me up completely and like the poor unsuspecting fool that I was I’d walked straight into it. There’d been nothing accidental about me stumbling upon that diary; Sophie had manipulated the whole thing. I’d been into her bedroom a hundred times before and hadn’t even known she kept a diary. Yet just a few days before my wedding, it suddenly appears lying bare like a pre-wedding gift with my name on it. It might as well have had a pink ribbon wrapped around its centre it was that obvious. Too coincidental by far. Huh, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Ed had been in on it too!

  I dropped my spoon into my bowl at this blinding revelation, the resulting clatter resonating around the breakfast room. Everyone turned to stare at me just as I was having my eureka moment.

  What if, oh God, what if it was a whole heap of lies and Sophie was some mad-crazed stalker obsessed with me and Ed and she’d made the whole thing up in an attempt to try to split us up? It was possible. I’m sure I’d seen a film along those lines a while ago. It didn’t end happily. There were dead bodies and everything. Oh God, perhaps Ed was blameless and as much a victim in all of this as me. And I hadn’t even given him the benefit of the doubt or the chance to give his side of the story.

  I sighed heavily.

  As if by magic a waiter appeared at my side and presented me with a sparkling, fresh spoon.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said with a smile.

  What was I doing here spending all of Ed’s hard-earned money? We needed to talk and how were we expected to do that when I was holed up in this luxury hotel? Last night I’d been on the brink of throwing myself into the arms of a man I’d only met a couple of hours earlier. I cringed in shame and embarrassment. I didn’t know for certain that Ed had cheated on me and yet I was only too eager to do the same thing to him without even thinking through the consequences.