The Holiday Cottage by the Sea: An utterly gorgeous feel-good romantic comedy

by Holly Martin

  ‘And do you love him?’ Melody asked.

  Isla sighed. ‘Yes, no… maybe. I don’t know. We’re good friends, maybe that’s as much as it will ever be.’

  Elliot came running back, halting the conversation from going any further. At least for now. ‘Can I have a slice of banoffee cake?’

  ‘Of course, tell Emily that I said it was OK.’

  Elliot ran off again.

  ‘OK, can we change the subject before he comes back?’ Isla said.

  Tori cast around for a suitable topic. She spotted Mark at the next table eating a large cream cake that probably wasn’t very vegan either or, if it was, she didn’t think Mindy would approve. Isla was right, everyone did have their secrets.

  ‘I suppose I should share my secret as well, though it’s not too much of a secret,’ Melody said. ‘I’m in love with Jamie Jackson and I’m not talking a silly little crush. I mean head over heels, can’t sleep, can’t eat, crazy in love with him. And he’s the first person I’ve felt this way for too.’

  Isla leaned forward. ‘Ah no Melody, I knew you fancied him, I didn’t realise you loved him.’

  ‘Your first love?’ Tori said, gently.

  ‘I know. Does love always hurt this much?’ Melody asked.

  Tori and Isla nodded.

  ‘Then maybe it is best to be avoided,’ Melody sighed.

  Tori didn’t want Melody to think that way. She might have given up on love for herself, but it didn’t mean she didn’t want to see her friends with their happy ever afters.

  ‘Have you done anything about it, have you told him how you feel?’ Tori said.

  ‘I think he knows.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘I kissed him.’

  Tori’s eyes widened, and she quickly glanced at Isla, who clearly had no idea this had happened either.

  ‘When was this? Did he kiss you back? What was it like?’ Tori asked, a million more questions bubbling in her head.

  ‘After Matthew’s funeral. I was a mess. Went to a pub and got myself blind drunk. Jamie looked after me. I knew him, of course. Every time I’d come down and visit Matthew, the Jackson brothers were always with him. I had a little crush on Jamie for years. He stayed with me that night in the pub, made sure I drank plenty of water, practically carried me back to the hotel I was staying at. And that’s when I kissed him. I don’t remember much, only how he held me in his arms like I was something precious, I remember his grip on me tightening, his tongue in my mouth and how I’d never felt that incredible when kissing anyone before. It seemed to go on forever, but in reality, it was probably only a few seconds before he pulled away. He didn’t say anything, just helped me into the hotel and into my room and, for a wonderful moment, I thought he was going to stay with me, but he simply took my shoes off and then covered me with the duvet and left. We have never spoken about it since. Of course, now, I’ve moved down here, and I live practically next door to him and bought the shop just opposite him, I bet he thinks he’s got himself a right stalker.’

  ‘Oh, love,’ Isla said. ‘It sounds like he kissed you back though.’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe he did, maybe he was just trying to get away from me politely,’ Melody said, sadly.

  Elliot came running back then with a large slice of banoffee cake and a big pile of squirty cream with sprinkles on the top.

  Tori looked around the table at her two friends. All their love lives were a complete mess. Maybe the festival of love would sort them all out once and for all.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, after she had spent a while making a Millennium Falcon cake topper, and some time working on Aidan’s advert, Tori pulled on her strawberry-print pyjamas and got into bed, feeling a bit ridiculous for taking a nap. She was tired, but she couldn’t remember the last time she had slept in the middle of the day. She lay staring at the ceiling for a moment before she rolled onto her side and closed her eyes, hoping that the warmth of the bed would send her to sleep. It didn’t. Maybe Aidan was right, maybe taking a nap with someone was infinitely better.

  Feeling silly and giddy, she grabbed her phone from the side and took a photo of herself lying in bed and then texted it to Aidan with the message,

  Getting ready for my nap, any tips for getting off to sleep?

  To her surprise, he texted straight back.

  Nice pyjamas.

  The next text he sent contained a photo and, as she opened it properly, she could see it was Aidan, lying in bed, with only a sheet clinging to his hips, only just covering his modesty. Was he naked under that sheet? God, he looked amazing, his hair all messed up, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

  He sent another text.

  You need something to cuddle up to.

  She smiled and deliberately didn’t take the hint.

  If only Beast was here.

  * * *

  Ha, I bet he is a good cuddler. I’ll see you at the farmhouse at 11.

  * * *

  Want to make it a bit earlier, I can show you what I’ve been working on for your advert.

  * * *

  Sounds good. Come by at 10.30 then. I hope you have sweet dreams, Tori Graham, I know mine will be.

  * * *

  What will you dream about?

  * * *

  Beautiful girls in strawberry print pyjamas.

  She smiled, squeezing her phone to her chest as excitement bubbled through her. She wasn’t sure what was happening here, but she knew she wanted more of it. She closed her eyes and imagined him lying in his bed, thinking of her, and her smile grew even bigger. If she could get to sleep now that her heart was galloping in her chest, she knew she’d have some very sweet dreams indeed.

  * * *

  To her surprise, she did sleep, and she slept a lot. Maybe it had been the eighteen months that she had spent on the animated film finally catching up with her, or maybe it was the sea air or that she had spent most of the night before awake, working on the advert instead of sleeping, or maybe because she’d had such wonderful dreams that she didn’t want to leave them. Whatever it was, she had been in bed for nearly three hours.

  She got up and made herself a pot of tea before going outside to sit on the decking. She watched the sun as it began its slow descent into the sea, leaving plum and candyfloss pink trails through the sky, although it wouldn’t set properly for another hour or two yet.

  She grabbed her notebook and started sketching out some more ideas for Aidan’s advert and the mascot, using her fine-line pens to add colour to her drawings so they slowly came to life. She was excited about this and how it would finally look and as the ideas bubbled through her she even started making a rough model out of plasticine too. The one she would use for the advert would be bigger, but at least showing Aidan what the model would look like would help him to visualise it better than her sketches and storyboards would.

  Tori suddenly realised that she’d lost several hours to her sketches and modelling. The sun had set a long time before and solar lights were lighting up the decking without her even realising, though the pale sky and bright full moon still illuminated the garden almost like it was day time.

  She got up and hurriedly made herself a bacon sandwich for her tea, slathering it in a thick layer of ketchup before tucking in. She’d seen Beast sniffing around outside near the shed, but she wasn’t sure if he’d gone in there to sleep or snuck off to terrorise the rest of the village again. But she poured out some food and left out some fresh water just in case. Judging by what she’d heard from various members of the village, he got his food from plenty of other sources, not just her, so she wasn’t too worried if he had missed dinner from her that evening. He was probably tucking into steak and chips somewhere else.

  Tori decided it was time to look at the tattoo. With all the talk about Matthew with Melody and Isla that afternoon, she’d not had the chance to ask them what the tattoo was, and she hadn’t been entirely happy about showing people when she still had no idea what it was herself.


  She stepped into the shower and a brown crust fell onto the cubicle floor as she brushed a towel across her shoulders. She turned the shower on and washed away any remnants before washing her hair and finishing off her shower.

  Tori stepped out into the tiny bathroom and looked in the mirror over her shoulder at the tattoo, but the mirror was quite steamy. She wiped it down with a towel and pulled her hair up out the way and had a look again, but she still couldn’t see it properly as it was in the middle of her shoulder blades. She needed another mirror but there wasn’t anything in the bathroom. She quickly moved into the bedroom and rooted around in her handbag to find a tiny hand mirror, noting that she was running out of time and would need to be up at the farm soon. She quickly rushed back into the bathroom and, turning her back to the big mirror, she held up the tiny mirror in front of her and moved it around until she could see the tattoo. But she still couldn’t make out what it was. The lighting in the bathroom was particularly dim and, although she could see it was a heart with flowers around the outside, she couldn’t make out the patterns on the inside. She moved the mirror around and tried to step back, closer to the big mirror, but the sink was in the way. Maybe the patterns were just Celtic swirls, though she wasn’t sure what would be so hilarious about that. But it definitely wasn’t writing, no declarations of love for Aidan. It had crossed her mind that that was what Agatha had done, especially as she had been so adamant about Aidan seeing it. She sighed. She would have to get Isla or Melody to look at it the next time she saw them, for now she needed to get up to the farm. Luckily, Aidan wouldn’t see it, whatever it was, because it’d be hidden away under her hoodie.

  She quickly got dressed, pulled on her wellies, gathered together her sketches and her heartberry model and left Blossom Cottage.

  13

  Aidan was waiting at the bottom of the drive for Tori, not wanting her to walk up the bumpy path in the dark on her own. The full moon was shining brightly, stars pin-pricking against a black velvet sky. It was warm, the heat of the day still lingering. The perfect night for picking the heartberries.

  He hadn’t slept well that afternoon, his head too full of Tori Graham in her pretty strawberry pyjamas. It was funny, the pyjamas were not what he would class as typically sexy if he’d seen them in a shop, but there was something very sexy about Tori in them, lying in her bed, her hair in scarlet waves over the pillow. That photo had been so innocently taken but it had stirred in him so many emotions.

  He saw the flickering torch light coming from Blossom Cottage and, as Tori rounded the corner, he couldn’t help but smile.

  She was dressed in little denim shorts, her long legs disappearing into bright purple wellies. She was wearing a baggy red hoodie, her hair swept up into a high ponytail under a tweed flat cap, just like the one he had worn the first day they had met.

  She grinned when she saw him waiting for her and then doffed her cap as she did a little bow.

  ‘My Lord.’

  He laughed. ‘My Lady.’

  She did a little twirl. ‘Will I pass muster? I saw the cap in the village and thought if I’m going to be a fruit farmer for a few weeks, then I needed the right uniform.’

  God, she was so lovely.

  ‘You more than pass muster,’ Aidan said, softly.

  He offered out his hand and she smiled and then took it.

  ‘How was your nap?’ he asked as they walked back up the drive towards the farm.

  ‘I had wonderful dreams,’ she said, looking up at him.

  Aidan hoped those dreams were about him.

  ‘So, we’ve got time to look through your ideas for the advert. The lantern ceremony won’t be starting for a while yet.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Many of the villagers will bring lanterns and candles down to the field to help light it up for the heartberry-picking.’

  ‘You don’t have floodlights or something a bit more… modern to light the fields?’

  ‘Yes, of course but this is all part of the celebrations. It’s how it was done hundreds of years ago. So, we still do it today. Well, only for tonight, we have proper lighting for the rest of the time.’

  ‘Oh, that’s really sweet,’ Tori said. ‘And when does the naked dancing start?’

  He laughed. ‘Any time you want.’

  They walked in silence for a while as Tori looked up at the moon and the stars.

  ‘Are you going to Matthew’s memorial thing tomorrow?’ Tori asked.

  ‘Yes, I wasn’t sure if you were going, what with Melody and Isla not knowing about the two of you.’

  ‘They know now. Elliot kind of outed me this afternoon. Apparently Matthew talked about me a lot with him. I’m relieved more than anything. I’ve been wanting to tell them for a while and the longer I left it the harder it was.’

  Aidan thought about Matthew and wondered what his friend would make of this tentative relationship between himself and Tori. He looked down at Tori who was frowning slightly as she was clearly deep in thought. Was she thinking the same thing? Was it too soon for her to be moving on? It had been nearly a year, but she had loved Matthew and that was difficult to get over, if she ever could. Her relationship with Matthew had been a strange one – one weekend, a few months of phone calls – but he was sure that her feelings for Matthew didn’t run any less deep just because they hadn’t been together in the conventional sense.

  ‘Is this weird?’ Tori said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Talking about Matthew when we’re…’ she trailed off, clearly not really knowing how to describe what she had with Aidan. She gestured to their joined hands to sum it up.

  ‘When we’re… something?’ he supplied, rather unhelpfully.

  ‘Yes. If you were talking about your ex all the time, it would be weird.’

  ‘It’s different with Matthew. You didn’t split up, he died,’ Aidan said. ‘I know you pushed him away, but in my mind that was a bump in the road more than anything. And you’re not talking about him all the time. Matthew was my friend, it’s only natural that you would want to talk about him with someone who knew him. I suppose my only concern is you and whether you’re ready for… something with someone else.’

  She didn’t answer at first and he patiently waited, running his thumb over the back of her hand as they walked along. She had made it clear from the first time they met that she wasn’t interested in a relationship, but now they were embarking on some kind of fling. Had that been mainly to do with him? Had he pushed her into this?

  ‘I loved him, and I do miss talking to him every day. I regret that I never really gave our relationship a chance but who knows what would have happened if we had, whether it would have worked. And you’re right, it’s different when your ex dies to just splitting up. My love for Luc ended the second I found out he had cheated on me. I hated him for doing that to me. I loved Matthew long after he had died. So, I don’t know when the right time is to move on with someone else after a loved one dies but I do know that this… thing between us feels right. Whatever it is, whether it lasts a few days or a few weeks or it lasts a hell of a lot longer, it feels right. I never want to look back on these few weeks and regret the things we didn’t do, and I certainly don’t think I’d ever regret the things we did do.’

  Aidan nodded as they approached the back door of the farmhouse. He wasn’t going to regret it either.

  ‘And what is it you think we’re going to do?’ he teased.

  ‘Well you’ve already shown me your elbows, multiple times. It’s just a slippery slope from here on in.’

  He laughed. She was quick, and he liked that about her. He glanced down at her beautiful smile filling her face. There was a lot that he liked about Tori Graham.

  He let her into the kitchen and the bright lights made him blink for a few seconds as he closed the door behind them. He turned back to find that Tori was already unpacking her sketchbook, notebook and a small box from her bag. Her hair shone in the glow of the light in the kitchen and
he wanted to run his hand through it. She smiled at him, filling him with feelings he hadn’t experienced in a long time. It had been years since he’d had anybody mooching about in his kitchen, but she looked comfortable here and he wondered vaguely what it would be like if she was here all the time. He quickly pushed that thought away. She was leaving in a few weeks. Whatever happened between them, it would probably never go beyond the few weeks that she was here. He stepped closer to her, inhaling her wonderful scent. But he was damned well going to enjoy himself while she was here.

  ‘So, I have drawn out a selection of five heartberry characters for you to choose from,’ she said, laying out five sheets of paper. ‘He needs to be cute if we are going to go down the merchandising route, something that might appeal to children too, so I kept that in mind while I was designing them.’

  He forced his eyes away from the beautiful woman in front of him to look at the drawings. They were so detailed, shaded and coloured to look 3D, almost popping from the page.

  ‘These are amazing,’ Aidan said. ‘You have such a talent for this.’

  ‘Which one do you like the best?’

  All the berry characters were cute and appealing, but he loved the one with the twinkle in his eye, wearing a flat cap.

  ‘I like this one,’ he said, touching the page.