by Fiona Harper
When they reached the sand in their tiny cove, he let her fingers drop. They walked in silence to the wooden steps that led up to Juliet’s terrace and he turned to face her. She wondered if he would repeat his invitation of the other evening, offer her a nightcap, but he didn’t. He merely stepped in and kissed her cheek lightly.
‘Buona sera, Giulietta,’ he whispered, and he watched her as she walked back up the stairs to her villa.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
GEMMA SQUINTED AT HER shopping list, hastily copied from Juliet’s notebook onto the back of an envelope. It was so early in the morning that one of her eyes was refusing to focus, which didn’t bode well for a successful shopping trip. There was a crowd of at least fifty people, revving their shopping trolleys, outside the supermarket doors, waiting for a member of staff to come along with a key to unlock them.
She had a twin in each hand and as a slightly petrified-looking employee approached the doors, she crouched down to talk to both of them. ‘What are you looking for first?’ she asked them.
‘Oranges!’ Josh shouted, bouncing a little.
‘Oranges!’ Jake yelled too.
‘No, sweetie,’ Gemma said slowly. ‘Josh is getting oranges and you are getting...?’
Jake looked blankly at her.
‘Brussels sprouts,’ she reminded him, and when he didn’t look any more clued in, she added, ‘They look like baby cabbages.’
He nodded slowly, his eyes wide.
‘And remember...first one to come back to the trolley with their item wins a prize!’
He cheered up at that. In fact, he and Josh were jumping up and down so much she had to pull them closer to her before they knocked a little old lady off her feet. ‘Sorry,’ Gemma said, smiling, as the woman glared at them over her shoulder.
‘Prizes?’ Will said beside her. ‘Where are you going to get those from?’
Gemma would have pegged Will for one of those awful people who actually liked getting up at the crack of dawn, but his mood didn’t seem to be any better than hers on this frosty morning.
‘I’ll find something,’ she muttered darkly. The one thing she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours was that with a bit of imagination and the promise of chocolate, she could convince these kids to do almost anything.
At that moment the doors opened. The supermarket employee ran in the opposite direction as soon as he’d got the key out of the mechanism, and as the automatic doors slid apart, as welcoming as a crocodile’s yawn, the crowd surged forward. The little granny in front ran over at least three people’s feet with her trolley in an effort to get in first.
Gemma made sure she had a good grip on each of the twins, checked that Polly was holding safely onto Will, then joined the stampede. Violet had been allowed to stay at home. There wasn’t room in Will’s car for six of them and she’d promised to do her share by tidying the house while they were gone.
Gemma found just what she needed right at the front of the shop—cut-price chocolate advent calendars, she swept two up and dropped them in the seat at the front of the trolley. Every time a child returned from a search-and-rescue mission to get something on the list, she popped something from a random door and rewarded them with it. Genius. Take that, Will Truman!
The next twenty minutes were chaos. Jake came back with broccoli, asparagus and then a giant cabbage before Gemma realised the reason he couldn’t find Brussels sprouts was because there weren’t any; they were all sold out. She gave him a chocolate for trying anyway. You couldn’t fault the kid’s enthusiasm, even if he was a bit hazy on his vegetable identification.
Things were going really well until they reached the meat and poultry aisle. Will had been wheeling the trolley—with lane guidance and hazard detection, courtesy of Polly—and the boys had enjoyed darting in between the shoppers for their next bit of supermarket treasure. Gemma had been leading the way out in front, grabbing things on the list as she scoured the shelves, but now they all stood in front of row after row of empty shelves and stared.
No turkeys. Not even one.
‘There aren’t even any chickens,’ she wailed, turning to look at the kids. ‘What are we going to do? We can’t eat a Christmas dinner of just veggies!’
The boys pulled a face, and maybe it was that suggestion that caused Josh to focus a little harder on the problem in hand. ‘I can see one!’ he said, peering into the bottom shelf of the chiller cabinet.
‘Where?’ Gemma said breathlessly, crouching low to look where he was pointing. Sure enough, stuffed to the back corner of the shelf and out of view of anyone over the height of three feet was a lone cellophane-wrapped chicken. She lurched for it and clutched it to her chest. ‘Got you, you beauty,’ she exclaimed loudly.
When she stood up again Will was looking at her, eyebrows raised. She had been talking to a chicken, after all. She ignored him and placed it in the trolley. ‘How many have you got coming?’ he asked. ‘I know it’s a large one, but it says it’s only going to feed six to eight.’
Gemma stopped smiling and leaned over the edge of the trolley to have a look at the packaging. Blast. He was right. And for some reason she wanted it to be his fault that the chicken was a bit on the skinny side too.
‘We need more protein,’ she said, putting her hands on her hips and looking around. ‘Aha!’ She marched up to the section with processed meats and picked four packets of chipolatas and a few of streaky bacon off the shelf. ‘We’ll just have to bulk up with these. Everybody loves bacon-wrapped sausages!’
She looked round the group. They all looked back at her and, as one, they nodded. ‘That’s settled then,’ she said, regaining her smile. She was starting to get the same kind of adrenalin rush she got when things went crazy on set and that only made her feel even more buoyant. When she was in ‘the zone’ there wasn’t a problem that man or god could throw at her that she couldn’t solve.
The rest of the shopping trip was a bit of a blur. She found buy-one-get-one-free party bites and bought a whole stack, then topped the trolley up with crisps, nuts and fizzy drinks. Her plan was simple: fill everyone up with canapés, carbonated drinks and alternative meat sources and they might not notice there wasn’t a lot of bird on their plates come dinner time.
Will didn’t say much, just wheeled the trolley round after her, looking slightly bemused, as she dashed in and out of the crowds finding the remaining items on her list. She got quite used to him being there, a steadying presence to return to after she’d flown off on a mad whim or dived for something she knew could add a bit of variety or excitement to the menu.
When they finally were loading the copious amount of plastic bags into the boot of Will’s car, she couldn’t help feeling just a little bit pleased with herself.
‘Right, kids! Back in the car,’ she yelled, clapping her gloved hands together, but Polly and the twins weren’t paying attention. They were staring longingly at the signs for the temporary ice rink that had been set up in the park across the road.
‘I want to go skating,’ Josh whined.
And once the wish had been made vocal, both Jake and Polly chimed in.
Gemma shook her head, looking at the boot full of Christmas food. ‘We can’t,’ she told them. ‘We’ve got to get this food home.’
‘Please, Auntie Gemma,’ Jake said, and he looked up at her with big puppy-dog eyes. ‘Just half an hour? Mummy said she’d take us this year, because she was too busy last year...’
‘And the year before that,’ Polly interjected, then looked pityingly at her brother. ‘But you’re too young to remember that.’ She turned to look at Gemma. ‘I had some skating lessons for my birthday two years ago and I’ve never got to try the things I learned since then.’
She sounded very matter-of-fact, and her expression seemed as don’t-carish as normal, but Gemma couldn’t miss the longin
g there in her eyes. She looked across to Will. ‘It’s your car,’ she said to him. ‘Your time we’re wasting... I think it’s your call.’
He narrowed his eyes a little. What? Did he think she’d just passed the buck? It wasn’t that at all. It really would have been thoughtless of her to agree to it without checking with him first. She was trying to do the responsible thing.
He looked over at the signs and beyond, where they could just see the gleaming white of the ice through the shrubs at the park’s edge, and sighed. ‘Why not? It’s cold enough for the food not to spoil if we leave it in the car for a bit.’
All three children burst into rapturous cheers and bounded over to him. Polly even threw her arms around his middle and squeezed tight, closing her eyes. Will looked a little taken aback at first, but then he smiled and ruffled her hair with his hand.
Ten minutes later they were standing at the edge of the rink. Gemma couldn’t help grinning. A German Christmas market had been set up round the perimeter of the rink and the delicious smells of gingerbread biscuits and glühwein drifted across the ice towards her, riding on the tinny notes of the Christmas pop songs pumped from hidden speakers.
Polly glided effortlessly onto the ice. She wobbled a little bit as she turned to face them but soon skated off at a steady pace and gained more confidence. The boys bounded onto the ice and instantly found themselves on their bottoms. Jake just laughed but Josh started to cry loudly.
‘I thought I said “wait for me”,’ Gemma said, gripping onto the edge and pulling herself onto the ice. She helped Jake up and directed him to hold on to the barrier while she dealt with his brother. After a quick cuddle and a kiss through his puffy coat sleeve for his sore elbow he was fine again. She managed to get him to his feet, but he lost his balance almost straight away and made a grab for both the edge and Gemma simultaneously. The wall surrounding the edge of the rink stayed steady. Gemma didn’t.
It started out as just a shudder, but then just kept getting bigger as it rippled through her. Her arms shot out and she desperately tried to get her legs to go in the same direction. They didn’t cooperate. A sudden gust as one of the more experienced skaters whizzed past was all it took to destroy any hope of balance. She trembled and then wobbled and then the ice was coming closer and closer until—
‘Oof!’ She hit something with her face. Something hard and solid and...warm?
Something very much like Will Truman.
Her hands shot out and she gripped onto his arms for support as she attempted to unpeel her face from his chest. It would have been doable if her legs hadn’t insisted on travelling backwards and away from her. Firm hands came round her shoulders and steadied her.
‘I haven’t done this in a while,’ she mumbled against his coat.
‘No kidding,’ was the dry response, but she could hear him smiling.
She managed to dig the toes of her skates into the ice and get some traction, which allowed her to bring her legs back under her body, and then she prised herself away from his warm body and looked up into his face.
There was a tell-tale residual warmth in his eyes. ‘You okay to stand on your own?’
She nodded, discovering that skating and talking and being quite this close to Will wasn’t a combination she could handle. Thankfully, he saved her from being mute for the rest of the skating session by gently setting her upright. The ability to make words returned.
‘That was hairy,’ she said, laughing nervously, but before she could thank him, Polly had swooped in behind her.
‘Come on, Auntie Gemma. I’ll show you how to do it!’ And she took hold of her hand and started pulling her along the ice. Gemma’s lack of skating skills meant she couldn’t really argue.
It took all her concentration to stay upright at first, just keeping her focus on her feet and letting Polly worry about where the other skaters were, but after a few circuits she found she was starting to manage on her own. She glanced up, looking for the twins, and spotted them on the other side of the rink with Will. He was teaching them how to put one foot in front of the other without ending up in a heap, and no matter how many times the boys overstretched their skating limits and hit the ice, he picked them up again and carried on.
The ice was cold and solid beneath Gemma’s skates, but something inside her started to melt. That took a special kind of patience, that did, teaching two tearaway six-year-olds to skate, and they weren’t even his kids.
She shook herself. Now was not the time to start getting all...whatever...about Juliet’s next-door neighbour. She needed to concentrate on her feet, before she started heading face first towards the ice again, and this time no one was around to catch her.
But that soft, slightly gooey feeling lasted all the way through the skating session and through the drive home afterwards. The fact he insisted on unloading the groceries and taking them into the house with her didn’t help. She wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved when he finally said his goodbyes and headed back next door.
As Gemma put the shopping away she started to notice a worrying lack of difference in her surroundings. Where the hell had Violet got to? She was supposed to have sorted out all the breakfast mess and hoovered the downstairs by now.
‘Violet?’ she yelled.
Moments later her niece sloped into the room, still punching buttons on her mobile phone. ‘Yeah...’ she mumbled, her full attention on the screen.
‘You promised you were going to tidy up,’ Gemma said, frowning, but at least the gooey feeling was being nibbled away by her growing irritation.
Violet just shrugged. ‘I’ll get round to it.’
Gemma nabbed her phone out of her hand and replaced it with a bag of groceries. ‘Yes, you will. Starting now.’
Vi rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue. Gemma carried on emptying plastic bags and stuffing items into either the larder or the fridge, but when she picked up the penultimate bag she had a surprise—a Chinese feast for one and a bottle of nice red wine.
She didn’t remember buying those. It seemed someone had inadvertently brought their shopping into the wrong house.
After giving Violet strict instructions to get cracking with the hoover when she’d finished putting things in the freezer, Gemma nipped out the front door and made her way next door and rang the bell.
Will frowned when he saw her standing there. ‘I think some of your stuff got mixed up with ours,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said, looking surprised. ‘Thanks.’
She handed the bag over, and they stood there, looking awkwardly at each other for a few seconds. ‘I’m sorry we hijacked your Christmas Eve,’ she said. ‘Thank you. For the lift to the supermarket, the skating...everything.’
And she meant it. She was used to being around men who loved themselves so much they always thought everything should be done for them, rather than the kind who were capable and focused and...nice.
He hadn’t said anything back yet, and when she looked more closely she discovered he was regarding her with a wary expression. ‘What?’ she said.
‘You said thank you.’
‘And...?’
‘And I’m just waiting for the punchline.’
‘There isn’t one,’ she said, not rising to the bait, taking the higher road, all that kind of stuff. ‘Not this time anyway.’
‘Then you’re welcome,’ he said softly.
‘Okay... Well, I’ll just be off then... Bye.’
‘Goodbye, Gemma,’ he said and put his hand on the door.
Why wasn’t he closing it? He was letting all the cold air in.
Oh.
It was because she was standing in the way.
She quickly shuffled off his front step and walked backwards up his drive. ‘No more dramas for the next twenty-four hours,’ she said. ‘I promise.’ And the
n she turned and jogged next door without looking back.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WHEN JULIET WOKE UP the next morning, she lay still and stared at the ceiling through the draping mosquito net. She thought about reaching for her book, yet her arm never seemed to make it off the duvet. It was still very early—just before six—but she had to get up soon, because she was due to take a catamaran cruise down the western side of the island, with various stop-offs to see the most popular tourist destinations.
This day couldn’t feel less like Christmas Eve if it tried. Usually the twenty-fourth was a day of panic, of last-minute shopping, preparation, racing against the clock and then crashing into bed some time after midnight.
She got up and started to pack everything she’d need into a beach bag. However, when she opened her chest of drawers to pull out her sensible black one-piece, the red bikini winked at her. It would be much cooler than the costume in this humidity...
Without stopping to talk herself out of it, she yanked the tiny red top and bottoms out of the drawer and put them on. She could always cover up with a T-shirt when she went swimming.
When she got to the dock, a dozen or so Pelican’s Reach guests were already waiting to board their craft. It was a gleaming twin-hulled boat, with a large cabin and a covered seating area at the back.
As the deckhands yelled to each other and untied ropes, Juliet stood at the back of the boat and did a little three-sixty-degree turn, scanning the area with her hand over her eyes to stop herself squinting. She’d wondered if she’d see Marco this morning, but it was only just eight o’clock and she guessed he must be a night owl, because she’d never seen him at breakfast. Come to think of it, she’d never seen him before late afternoon.
But, just as the catamaran was about to cast off, he came running up the dock and leapt on board. Juliet was sitting in the stern and her heart did a little flip as he caught her eye, looked pleasantly surprised, then sat down next to her, grinning.