He sounds so confident that it makes me smile and my nerves diminish. Instinctively, I want to make an excuse and run away, but I force myself to stop and actually listen to him, because there’s something about Nathan that makes all my old excuses seem like exactly that.
The cottage is gorgeous and I hate leaving him every night. It’s one of the reasons I’ve got so little work done. I find as many excuses as possible to spend time with him. When I’m not with him, I’m generally thinking about him, and not in the way Zinnia intended.
His eyes are glued to the carpet, and I have the overwhelming urge to throw my arms around him. I’d love to stay here, and I can’t quite believe that he wants me to as well. ‘You just want me to protect you from carousel ghosts, don’t you?’
He bursts out laughing. ‘Damn it. You got me. I’m terrified that Ivy’s going to come and get me in the middle of the night.’ He looks up, his eyes still glinting as they catch mine. ‘The spare room’s yours for as long as you want it. I hate thinking of you in that crappy hotel with all the zombie cows every night. And if Ivy comes howling around with her old carousel music, she’ll come and get you first and your screams will be enough warning for me to get away.’
It makes me giggle as he continues.
‘I’m running low on food, so why don’t we do an online shop together and make sure we’ve got plenty of stuff in for your parents? I know we like the same things so we’ll find plenty to agree on there. Go on, it’ll be fun, I promise.’ The intensity in his eyes takes my breath away. ‘Please stay, Ness.’
No one’s ever asked me to stay before. Not like that. No one’s ever made me feel as wanted as Nathan does. I bite my lip as I look at him, and I’m glad I’m already sitting down because my knees suddenly feel wobbly.
‘I’d love to.’ I can’t contain the smile that threatens to split my face in two. Usually, I’d be hunting for excuses not to even add a man as a friend on Facebook, but everything feels different with Nathan. I can’t think of anything better than spending the rest of my time in Pearlholme here, with him, not having to say goodbye every night or feeling guilty for still being at the cottage even though I have a hotel to go to.
His face lights up and his eyes look a lighter brown than they ever have before as his crow’s feet crinkle around them and the brightness of his smile somehow manages to make my smile even wider.
‘Yay!’ he squeaks and then clears his throat. ‘Obviously I meant that as a completely dignified, manly “jolly good, thanks”.’ He puts on a deep voice that doesn’t work at all with the unbridled joy on his face. ‘I promise to make you Marmite and crisp sarnies whenever you want them.’
‘Don’t say that out loud in front of my mum – she’ll think it’s a wedding vow.’
He laughs. ‘Aw, she seemed lovely.’
‘Within zero-point-two of a second, she’d started interrogating you on your future fatherhood plans.’
‘At least she cares,’ he says with a shrug. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting her. It’ll be fun.’
‘Last time you said that, we ended up halfway up a mountain and I’m still fishing sand out of my bra. This will be an unmitigated disaster, Nath. You mark my words. There’s no way they can stay here.’
Chapter 15
‘Of course they can stay!’ Camilla squeals the next night in The Sun & Sand, taking a seat at the edge of our table, pushing Nathan further in towards me while we wait for Charles to come back from the loo.
I groan. She was my last hope. I was thinking there might be some health and safety landlord laws about more than the allotted number of guests staying, but she’s delighted by the idea of my parents visiting for the weekend.
‘And I’m so glad you’re staying with him too, Ness. I gave him extra girly toiletries for the bathroom as soon as I met you, and it’s taken him this blimmin’ long to ask you. Men are strange creatures, aren’t they? You can’t trust them to do anything right.’ She tuts and rolls her eyes.
‘And there’s me been showering every night in sweet pea and rose blossom scented shower gel.’ Nathan laughs. ‘Smell me.’
He bares his neck and leans towards me and I’m just about to bury my nose in it when he blushes and hides his face in his hands. ‘I can’t believe I just said that in public.’
‘Smell him in private, love,’ Camilla says. ‘It’s much more fun that way.’
Nathan and I are both blushing by the time Charles hobbles across the pub towards us.
‘Ooh, let me tell him,’ Camilla trills as he squeezes onto the bench beside me, making me shift closer to Nathan again and sandwiching us between them.
‘You’ve lost another one, matey! Ness is leaving your awful hotel for the cottage!’
‘Finally plucked up the courage to ask you, did he?’ Charles says to me before giving Nathan a toothy grin. ‘Good on you, lad.’
He doesn’t seem in the least bit surprised.
‘I feel bad for abandoning you, Charles,’ I say.
‘It’s all right, love. The hotel’s crap. I’d go and stay with him too.’ He nods at Nathan and nudges me. ‘Who wouldn’t? Even I fancy the pants off him.’ One of his hearing aid batteries chooses that moment to give up the ghost, and he shouts the last bit like we’re the ones who can’t hear him, attracting the attention of several elderly couples sitting at nearby tables and the Labrador on the floor.
‘Me too!’ Bunion Frank shouts across the pub, raising his glass in a toast.
There are strawberries paler than Nathan right now.
I can’t take my eyes off him as he sinks down against the bench. His head drops onto my shoulder and he hides his face until everyone else in the pub looks away.
‘Didn’t you say your mum’s a gardener, Ness?’ Camilla says, suddenly excited. ‘Do you think she’d have a look at the garden for the PPP?’
‘I hope so,’ Nathan says, his cheeks still red. ‘What we’ve discovered is that I’m absolutely not a gardener and Ness is brilliant.’
‘All I’ve done is a bit of weeding.’
‘All I’ve done is scalp your rhododendron.’
‘Sounds like a fun euphemism,’ Charles says. ‘I think about scalping my rhododendron sometimes but then I go to the bathroom and all is fine again.’
Nath’s already sunken so low in his seat that the laughter nearly makes him slip out. ‘Oh God, not again. I nearly died last time you two joined us for a drink.’
‘At least we haven’t done anything to choke the dickies,’ I say, and it sets him off again.
‘Why do I feel like I’m drunk whenever I’m with you?’ he murmurs. ‘I’ve only had two sips of a beer.’
‘Ahh, young love,’ Camilla says, looking at us and clasping her hands together over her heart.
‘Oh, we’re not …’ I wave my finger between the two of us.
‘Charles and I said the same thing when we first met, and look at us now.’
I do look at them as Nathan wriggles himself back upright on the bench, his warm arm pressed against mine.
It’s not a bad way to be, really. Growing old and spending the rest of my life with someone isn’t something I’ve ever really thought about, but Charles and Camilla make me want something like that. Happiness shines from them. They have such a cheeky, teasing relationship, and they never stop smiling. Every time they look at each other, their dentures make a break for freedom.
I glance up at Nathan and he smiles back at me and I’m sure he’s thinking the exact same thing.
Charles and Camilla leave us eventually to go and have a gossip with their friends sitting at another table, but Nathan doesn’t move any further away now we’ve got some extra space, so I don’t either. There’s something nice about sitting so close to him, feeling our arms touching, his breath against my hair whenever he turns towards me, our thighs together. The feeling that he doesn’t want to move away.
The woman who I saw on the first day brings our chips over and leans across the table to set the bowl ne
atly between us. ‘About time you moved up to the cottage. I don’t know how you’ve managed nearly two weeks in that dreadful hotel. It needs a new owner because I strongly suspect the current one has been dead since 1993.’
We both burst out laughing and risk a glance towards Charles, who’s deep in conversation with another bloke a few tables over. He’s still shouting because of the hearing aid battery, so we can hear every word as he shares a rundown on the best brands of incontinence pads.
Which does distract a little from how she could possibly know I’m going to stay at the cottage. Camilla was the first person we mentioned it to. Maybe there really are peepholes installed in all the doors?
‘Glad you came back here for another date,’ she says. ‘There’s a special offer on at the moment. If you come here for five dates, you get the sixth free.’
‘You have a special offer on dates?’ Nathan’s forehead screws up in confusion. ‘The fruit or actual dates?’
‘Actual dates, like you two are on. Generally more fun without the elderly village busybodies tagging along.’ She nods to Charles and Camilla again. ‘But yeah, we’ve seen you a few times now, come a couple more and you’ll get a free drink and bowl of chips. Least we can do for the couple restoring the old carousel. We’re in a chip war with the owner, but it’ll bring in so much tourism that we can’t even begrudge him that. Cheerio!’
‘Chip warfare,’ Nathan says when she walks away. ‘Just when you think this village can’t get any weirder.’
‘And free dates.’
He shakes his head fondly. ‘Like when you buy ten coffees and they stamp your loyalty card so you get your eleventh free. I’ve never heard of free dates before, but I don’t go on dates so I wouldn’t know. Is that a thing?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t go on dates either, but lots of girls in the office do. I’m sure they would’ve said.’
He takes a chip and blows on it, and I love that he still hasn’t moved away even though the woman who works here insinuated we’re a couple. My natural reaction is to put a bit of space between us so people don’t get the wrong idea, but if Camilla and Charles think we’re a couple, it seems a safe bet to say that the rest of the village will think so too, no matter how close we sit to share a bowl of chips.
‘Do you really not date?’ I can’t stop myself asking him. It’s impossible to believe because he’s so much fun, and every time I go out with him, he’s like the most perfect date you could ever wish for. I’m surprised he hasn’t got a queue of women following him around.
‘Like I said, I’m not interested. I don’t like crowded places, I don’t want to go out drinking and get off my face every weekend, I’m happier curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea and Netflix. If I do end up in crowded places, I’m generally uncomfortable so I come across as unapproachable – my mates have told me so often enough. Like that’s the only reason I don’t date.’
‘Why don’t you?’
He sighs. ‘I did once.’
‘You dated at one time or you’ve been on one date?’ I say as a joke.
‘One date.’
I feel my eyes widen in surprise. ‘One date in, what, the whole five years since you got divorced?’
‘Yes. And thanks for sounding as shocked as my mates do when they try to set me up and I turn ’em down. How many dates have you been on?’
‘Not many. A few here and there of varying degrees of awfulness before I met “poor Andrew”, but none since him.’
‘Exactly. I only had one degree of awfulness and it was so far past the scale of awfulness that it straddled the line between enough to put me off for life and literally the worst night I’ve ever had.’
‘You know you can’t leave that there, don’t you?’ I bite the end off a chip. ‘You have to tell me now.’
‘Yeah, I thought I might.’ He gives a hesitant laugh and takes another chip. ‘I never saw the point in dating because I’ll never have another relationship, but I was on a friend’s stag do a couple of years ago, and I had a moment of weakness, or madness, or loneliness, or all three combined with too much to drink, and I agreed to let them set me up. Which, with hindsight, was a huge mistake.’
‘How come?’
‘What is it about you? Why do you always manage to get me telling you things I’ve never told anyone before?’ He rolls his eyes and nudges his elbow against mine. ‘My brother chose someone eventually, a girl who’d been trying to seduce him for ages even though he’s married, which really should have been my first clue that it wouldn’t go well. And, like I said, I’m not good with crowded places, but I met her in a crammed pub, and she refused to sit outside, so I was getting more uncomfortable and nervous, and you know me when I’m nervous, right? I ramble. And I could tell that she was getting annoyed by it, but suddenly she was all over me. Like, full-on clambered onto my lap, hands in my hair and tongue down my throat. And I was thinking I was lucky to meet someone who liked me so much they couldn’t keep their hands off me, and I carried on rambling just to try to stop her kissing me in this crowded pub where people were watching, and it lasted until I happened to mention that I repaired antique fairground rides for a living, and she jumped back in surprise and said, “Don’t you earn loads of money like your brother?” and when I laughed at the thought, she climbed off with a noise of disgust and said, “Urgh, I suppose you’re expecting me to pay for half of this crap meal too?” and didn’t say another word to me, not so much as a thank you when I didn’t expect her to pay half, and it wasn’t a crap meal.’
‘Wow.’
‘My entire dating life summed up in one word.’ He shoves another chip in his mouth. ‘I think a life of designer handbags and Louboutin shoes flashed across her eyes and that would’ve been worth the sacrifice of dating someone as dull as me.’
I point a chip at him threateningly. ‘Don’t you dare say that. I nearly choke to death on laughter every time I’m with you. You’re a joy to be around. You deserve someone who appreciates that. Not every date’s going to be like her.’
‘Nah, not interested now. I mean, I wasn’t interested before – my marriage was enough to put anyone off relationships forever – but that did make me very guarded and very aware of what people really want and how far they’ll go to get it.’ He holds his hands up and smiles. ‘I told you about the trust issues, see? I’m suspicious of how easy it is to say one thing but mean another.’
I gulp. Isn’t that exactly what I’m doing here? I’m supposed to be writing the third part of an article that he doesn’t know I’m writing, about him, and inventing a story about falling in love with him, and the longer time has gone on and the better I’ve got to know him, the harder it’s got to tell him. How can I now come out and say, ‘By the way, my boss thinks we have some magical connection and has sent me here to invent a story about us living happily ever after, oh and we’ve borrowed some pictures from your phone so we can run a national campaign to pretend to find you’? That is straight out of the rulebook for people who say one thing but mean another. He’s going to hate me if he ever finds out. He’s going to think my job is what I really want and that I’m using him to get it.
‘Did you really just call me a joy to be around?’
I bury my face in my hands as my cheeks flare burning red. ‘No, you misheard.’
‘Thought I had. I think Charles’s shouting has deafened me.’ He lifts his arm and drops it around my shoulder, tugging me even closer in to his side. ‘Thank you,’ he whispers against the shell of my ear. ‘You’re a joy to be around too.’
My nose burns because he sounds so genuine that it makes me want to cry. No one’s ever said anything like that to me before, and I lean my head back against his arm and try to get a look at his face to see if he’s just being funny, but he’s holding me too close and I can’t pull back far enough to see his face.
The atmosphere between us is suddenly charged. Every movement feels electric. There’s warmth sparkling out from where our thighs are pressed to
gether, my elbow is against the shirt covering his ribs, his finger drifts up and down the top of my arm, lifting the sleeve of my T-shirt with every upward stroke so his fingertips are against my skin, and if I turned my head just a little bit, I could touch his jaw and pull his head down until his lips meet mine, and I can feel the want coming from him. I know he wouldn’t object if I kissed him …
Apart from the fact he’s just told me how uncomfortable he is with kissing in public. I have to stop thinking about it. I should move away from him, but that’s beyond my capabilities as the moment because my brain has short-circuited from how much I want to kiss him. I want to wipe that horrible date from his mind and make him realise how lucky anybody would be to have him.
I go for a swift subject change instead. ‘Mainly, I love that the thing you’re most offended about from that date is that she thought the meal was crap when it wasn’t.’
He dissolves into laughter, his face burning hot as he rests his head against mine again. ‘No, it wasn’t. It was this artichoke tart thing that was really good. And I love that that bothers you as much as it bothers me.’
He’s laughing so much that his arm loosens around my shoulder and I incline my head until I can meet his eyes. ‘I think good, healthy, well-balanced food is one thing we’ll always agree on, Nath. Coco Pops, Nutella, those cinnamon swirls from the shop here …’
His eyes crinkle up even more and there are tears of laughter running down his cheeks. ‘God, Ness, I …’
His eyes darken and his hand slides up my jaw. He lowers his head and I lift mine, wetting my lips in anticipation, because this is it. Our first kiss and I—
The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea Page 21