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

by Holly Martin

  Tory stared at him in confusion. ‘What drawing?’

  ‘The one of me.’

  ‘Oh that. That was just a doodle.’

  ‘That you’ve now had tattooed onto your back.’

  Her eyes widened in horror. ‘What do you mean? It’s just flowers and a heart.’

  ‘With a picture of my face inside.’

  Her mouth dropped open in shock. ‘Your face inside a heart?’

  ‘Yes.’ Why did she seem so surprised by this? Was he mistaken? He quickly moved behind her to look at the tattoo again. His face stared back at him; there was no denying that it was him. He cocked his head. Was it possible that she had asked for the face of someone famous and it had turned out looking like him by mistake?

  Tori turned back to face him. ‘Your face is tattooed on my back?’

  ‘It sure looks that way,’ Aidan said in confusion.

  She suddenly curled up in a ball, screaming with frustration into her hands. ‘I’m going to kill her, I’m actually going to kill her.’

  ‘Who?’

  Tori looked up at him, her cheeks burning red with embarrassment. ‘Your lovely aunt Agatha.’

  Pennies started to drop into place. ‘She had something to do with the tattoo?’

  ‘I stupidly agreed that she could choose my tattoo, I don’t know why. I just thought it would make her happy. I figured it was on my back, no one would see it and it would wash off in a few weeks so where was the harm. She wouldn’t let me see it when it was finished, and I couldn’t see it properly when I got out the shower tonight, I just thought it was a heart with patterns inside. Oh my god, I cannot believe I have your face tattooed on my back. I’m going to kill her.’

  Aidan stared at her and then burst out laughing. He offered out his hand and pulled Tori to her feet. ‘She really is going all out to get us together, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, it would break her heart if we actually hated each other.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Her whole plan hinges on that she has predicted we will get married to each other. What if we were to show interest in someone else instead? You could perhaps go on a fake date with Leo or Jamie,’ Aidan said, bending down and picking up her hoodie and passing it back to her.

  ‘Oh god, she would die, her best laid plans unravelling right before her eyes. Though I can’t see Leo agreeing to that and I’m not sure Melody would be too happy if I went on a date with Jamie. I do like that idea though.’

  ‘Leo has quite the mischievous streak; well he used to. He’s been way too serious over the last year. I suppose losing your best friend does that to you. But he’s always loved winding Agatha up – even as a child he used to love playing practical jokes on her. Maybe this would be a good thing for him too.’

  ‘OK, we’ll ask him. Although none of this will be necessary once I kill her for this ridiculous tattoo. What was she thinking? Did she really think that you would be impressed by it?’

  ‘I was a little freaked out if I’m honest. I’m very relieved that this wasn’t your choice.’

  ‘Believe me, this is a million miles from what I would choose. I was thinking I might go for a dragon, not the face of a man I’ve just met. That’s creepy. I’m going to go back and get it covered tomorrow. I can’t walk around with your face on my back for the next few weeks. Someone is bound to see it.’

  ‘The villagers would love this.’

  ‘No one needs to know,’ Tori said, panic starting to show in her eyes.

  ‘If Agatha has her way, I’m sure half the village already knows,’ Aidan said.

  Tori groaned, and he felt sorry for her. She hadn’t been here long enough to put up with this crap from his aunt. He pulled her into a hug and held her against him.

  ‘Hey, when we get married, this will be one of those funny stories we tell our kids or tell people when they ask how we met.’

  She laughed and pulled out of his arms. ‘I don’t think I can ever marry you, I couldn’t bear the smug satisfaction from Agatha that she was right. I’m going to carry on picking fruit now before my cheeks match the colour of the heartberries. We’ll just pretend that none of this ever happened.’

  ‘OK, agreed.’

  He watched her turn back to the bushes and start picking berries again. He wanted to make this OK for her and he had an idea of how he could do that.

  * * *

  ‘So beautiful,’ Tori said, as she lay back on the picnic blanket and stared at the millions of stars twinkling from the inky sky.

  After the incident with the bat, they had carried on working until two o’clock, clearing four out of the six rows between them. They had taken a break and had spent it kissing, eating and kissing some more.

  ‘I agree,’ Aidan said.

  She glanced over at him and realised he was staring at her and not the stars.

  ‘Smooth,’ she laughed, rolling over on top of him.

  He wrapped his arms around her, holding her against him. She stared down at him. This felt so comfortable and so right. Lying here with him, it felt like they had been doing this for years.

  She frowned slightly. Things seem to be moving so fast between them, well, they were for her. She meant what she’d said earlier after they’d kissed. She could definitely see herself falling in love with Aidan Jackson and that worried her. Because, in reality, what kind of future could they have together, two people who didn’t want any kind of relationship for fear of getting hurt again? Could she really put her past behind her and let herself fall in love again? What if he didn’t return her feelings? What if he let her down? Love hurts, and she had spent most of her life trying to avoid it. Could her relationship with Aidan be that different? And what if they both managed to get past their fears and make a go of it? Could it really work? She lived in London, he lived in the most westerly corner of the UK. It was crazy to get involved with him. The sensible part of her head was screaming at her to untangle herself from this mess before her feelings grew any deeper, but her heart was loving the way he was looking at her right now, the way he was stroking his hand through her hair and his kiss which was not like anything she’d ever experienced before.

  She sighed because right now her heart was in charge and she just couldn’t walk away from him.

  He stroked his hand down her cheek, running his thumb across her lips as he stared at her with complete adoration. ‘What’s going on in that beautiful brain of yours?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I doubt that. Your mind is constantly buzzing and for the last few minutes you’ve had a frown and this sadness in your eyes.’

  ‘Just… thinking about us.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Want to slow things down?’

  ‘No,’ Tori said immediately, her heart speaking for her. She bent her head and kissed him, and he slid his hand round her neck to cup her head. He kissed her back, slowly, leisurely, as if he had all the time in the world and not just a few weeks before things would come to an end between them. ‘I’m just worried about… tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure that tomorrow I will still feel the same way as I do now, that I’ll still want to kiss you and I’ll still be imagining doing dirty wicked things to you.’

  Tori laughed. ‘I meant the future.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ He smiled because he’d known exactly what she meant. ‘In my experience, it’s better to enjoy today and worry about tomorrow when it arrives.’

  ‘And that approach works for you, does it?’

  ‘It’s working out for me just fine right now. There’s no point in worrying about what might happen. Worrying isn’t going to change that.’

  ‘I like to be prepared.’

  He smiled. ‘And where’s the fun in that?’

  She grinned because he was so right and, for this holiday at least, she had promised herself she would take the fun path.

  ‘Look, we have something special here, you know that,’ Aidan said. ‘And the only way we can tell if what we have is worth fighting for is to enjo
y this for the next few weeks. If it turns out to be nothing, then we would have had an amazing few weeks and you leave here with some happy memories. If it’s something more… well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

  She looked down at him and something inside her said he was worth the risk. It was probably her foolish heart but, right here in his arms, she was enjoying where her heart had taken her too much to listen to her head. She bent her head to kiss him again.

  ‘OK,’ she whispered against his lips.

  He rolled her, so he was pinning her to the ground. ‘Good, now let me show you all my dirty plans for you.’

  She laughed. ‘Sadly, we have berries to pick.’

  He groaned. ‘I can’t believe you’re choosing berries over hot sex.’

  Her heart leapt at the thought of sleeping with him, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready for that yet.

  ‘I think we’ll save the hot sex for that elusive tomorrow. As you said, we should enjoy today, which means right now we have berry-picking to do and we’ll deal with tomorrow when it comes.’

  She pushed him off her and he let her up.

  ‘Well, we have about two hours until sunrise so we’re technically already in tomorrow.’

  ‘Still no sex.’

  ‘Damn it.’ Aidan got up and she helped him to pack away the picnic.

  ‘Whenever we do, it’ll be all the more amazing because we waited for the right time,’ Tori said, not entirely sure she believed that or why she was waiting or when exactly the right time would be.

  He snagged her around the waist and held her against him, kissing her briefly on the lips. ‘I have no doubt it’s going to be amazing. Whenever you’re ready.’

  She smiled. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘The elusive tomorrow, or the real tomorrow?’

  She pulled out of his arms and walked back towards the rows of heartberries. ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’

  15

  Aidan had never really considered himself to be a romantic man. He knew what to do to tick those boxes for the women he dated but romance wasn’t something he’d ever really considered he needed in his own life. He had seen plenty of sunrises and could appreciate their beauty but, for some reason, standing on the shore of the small beach next to the heartberry field, holding Tori’s hand as the sun rose over the sea, he could suddenly appreciate it in a whole new light. Was it crazy to think he wanted to watch every sunrise with her?

  She leaned into him and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her head.

  ‘What a beautiful sunrise,’ Tori sighed happily.

  They had worked throughout the night as Tori had shown no sign of stopping and managed to clear ten rows between them. It was only half past five but already the warmth of the day was surrounding them.

  The waves were lapping gently onto the sand, but he knew later, at high tide, it would be a different story, the waves crashing onto the rocks at the back of the beach in great swells.

  ‘So, you own your own beach?’ Tori said.

  ‘No, I don’t think this is mine. I mean, there is no way of accessing it unless you walk over my land or climb down the cliff over the rocks or come by boat, so I guess technically it’s mine. But I’ve heard somewhere that all beaches are public property and I’ve seen quite a few people on here in the summer months and it’s never occurred to me that they’re not supposed to be there.’

  ‘It’s so peaceful here. I feel like we’re standing on the edge of the earth.’

  ‘Well, there is nothing out there between us and Canada. The Scillies are over there towards the left but if we could travel west in a straight line from here, we wouldn’t reach land again until we hit Newfoundland. We get the full force of any storms that come across the Atlantic, the rest of Sandcastle Bay and Sunshine Beach is a little more protected by the headland over there, but the storms gather force across the Atlantic and hit here on Orchard Cove. Sometimes the heartberry field floods in the autumn and winter months because of the storms but not normally this time of the year, apart from the tidal flood at the end of June.’

  ‘But there’s that big storm coming now, I heard more about it on the news,’ Tori said. ‘There was that hurricane that was supposed to hit Florida, Hurricane Imogen, but it veered off at the last moment and they think it will travel across the Atlantic. They think it will hit here with eighty mile an hour winds somewhere near the weekend.’

  ‘I know. It figures that almost two years after Imogen, my ex-fiancée, wreaks havoc over my life, Hurricane Imogen is back to finish the job.’

  ‘Are you worried? I know you said that the weather never normally causes floods at this time of year but hurricanes are unpredictable. We have so many heartberries to pick, we’d never clear the field before the weekend.’

  ‘It could be a problem. With the supermoon we had last night, we’ll have really high tides, so with the storm, it wouldn’t take a lot to send the sea over into the field. But the storm could change course again, head south towards Europe, or north towards Ireland and Scotland, or blow itself out completely before it gets here. There’s no point worrying yet. We won’t know what damage it will do until it hits, if it even gets that far.’

  She looked up at him and smiled. ‘You’re not really a worrier, are you? You seem so calm and laid-back about most things.’

  He shrugged. ‘Worrying isn’t going to change what will happen. I can only do what I can do and stressing over possible outcomes in any situation won’t help anything.’

  ‘That’s a great quality to have. I worry about everything; what I’ve said, what I should say and do. What other people’s reactions will be to something I’ve said and done, whether I should do something, whether I shouldn’t.’

  ‘How does that work out for you?’

  She laughed. ‘It doesn’t.’

  He smiled. ‘Maybe you should try my way for a while. Whatever will be, will be.’

  ‘Maybe I should.’

  He laughed because he knew it wasn’t that easy. ‘Look, I’ll take care of the worries for the farm, you don’t need to worry about that for me.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And you never need to worry about what you’ve said and done around me, just be yourself.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And the rest…’ he gestured to the two of them. ‘We’ll work it out together.’

  ‘Que sera, sera.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She nodded and leaned back into him.

  He looked back out over the sea and wished he was really that laid-back about them. He wanted her to enjoy what they had and not worry about where it was going, but in truth he wasn’t relaxed about the two of them at all. He felt like something important was happening here and he didn’t want to lose that.

  * * *

  As Tori walked back down the drive with Aidan, she felt energised, full of life, more so than she had in a long time. Aidan had suggested they stopped berry-picking at four, but she had felt so awake, adrenaline coursing through her as if she’d just ridden on a rollercoaster, that she insisted they carried on for a bit longer, knowing that it would help Aidan if he had more of the full moon harvest to sell.

  She looked up at him as he held her hand. Being with him made her feel alive.

  They reached the front doorstep of Blossom Cottage and she suddenly wondered if he was expecting her to invite him in and whether in fact she should. She wanted to continue kissing him, she knew that much. But it was too soon to take it any further than that. Wasn’t it?

  He leaned down and kissed just between her eyes.

  ‘Stop worrying,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not,’ Tori lied.

  ‘You get a little crease here when you’re worried.’ He ran his thumb across where he’d just kissed her. ‘What are you worried about?’

  She smiled at how well he knew her already. But there was no point worrying, she had to remember that.

  ‘Nothing, it’s OK.
’

  He hovered, and she wondered if he wanted to kiss her. She didn’t say anything, just waited to see if he would make a move. But he didn’t do or say anything either.

  She decided to tease him.

  ‘Would you like to come in and tuck me up?’

  He grinned. ‘Is that a euphemism?’

  She laughed.

  He paused. ‘I’m not expecting you to sleep with me. It’ll happen when you’re ready and I’m happy to wait. And if it doesn’t happen, then that’s fine too.’

  She smiled. God, she really bloody liked this man. Luc had pushed and pushed her into going out with him and then it had moved to sex probably a little too quickly for her liking. Aidan was incredibly laid-back and she liked that about him.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that but I was just teasing; you seemed to be hovering.’

  ‘Oh.’ He pushed his hand through his hair. ‘It’s silly but I don’t want this night to end. It’s been wonderful.’

  ‘It really has.’ She smiled and stepped up onto the doorstep, so she could kiss him. He moved his hands to her waist and kissed her back. Every time they kissed it was so sexy, so lazy and slow, his tongue sliding against hers in gentle sure movements. He was so confident, and she loved that about him.

  He pulled back slightly and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I think this might be my best summer ever, Tori Graham.’

  She stroked his face. ‘I think it might be mine too.’

  ‘I’m talking about the berries, we’ve got a good crop.’

  She felt her heart fall in disappointment before she saw the twinkle of amusement in his eyes.

  ‘I was talking about being here in Sandcastle Bay, it’s such a pretty village. I definitely wasn’t talking about us.’

  He grinned. ‘Why don’t I pick you up for the memorial later, say eleven? We could go for a drive along the coast first, there’s some lovely viewpoints.’