by Beth Good
The song on the jukebox finished, and for a moment there was a curious silence in the pub.
Was everyone listening to Irene’s superstitious ramblings, Charlie wondered?
She cringed at the thought, and wished she could crawl away invisibly under the tables. Either that or choke Irene to death with her cocktail umbrella. This was hardly helpful for business, spreading the rumour that the tea rooms were still cursed, despite the change in management.
But it seemed she was not alone in feeling annoyed.
Gideon regarded Irene steadily, as though weighing what she had said with appropriate care and attention. Then he said, without any change of expression, ‘There’s no curse on the tea rooms, Irene. Not unless it’s you.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You heard me. The only curse on the tea rooms at the moment is you.’
Gideon shook his head, then swung on his heel, looking round at everyone in the back room and raising his voice so they could all hear him. Though since you could have heard a pin drop in the pub, Charlie thought, not without a touch of awe at Gideon’s natural authority, he might have whispered and the village would have caught every word.
‘In fact,’ he told them calmly, ‘you’re all invited to an evening at the Cornish Tea Rooms next Saturday, when you will hear the real story of what happened to the original owner, Pansy Bligh.’ He waited a moment while the buzz of excitement around them began to build, then added, ‘Tickets on sale at the door, one free drink included.’
Then Gideon turned and held out a hand to Charlie, whose jaw was in danger of becoming detached, it was sagging so low.
‘It’s getting late.’ His voice was practically a purr, deep and sensual, the clear inference behind his words leaving her – and most of the watching women, by the look of their faces – breathless. ‘Shall we go home, Charlotte?’
CHAPTER NINE
‘So what was all that about?’ she whispered as they crossed the road together, hand-in-hand, heading back to her cosy flat above the tea rooms. ‘What bloody true story? What do you know that you’re not telling me?’ She paused for breath. ‘And why are you calling me Charlotte all of a sudden? I’ve told you, it’s plain Charlie.’
They had reached the other side, and he scooped her into his arms, bundling her into the darkened doorway to the fishmonger’s. ‘There’s nothing plain about you, Charlotte,’ he said, and kissed her.
Charlie had frozen the second his head bent towards her, unsure what to do. But her mind was already spinning wildly, and her heart racing out of control.
His lips teased hers into opening, and his hands smoothed down the fragile line of her spine, pressing her against his body. His very hard body, every contour suddenly more than obvious to her fevered imagination.
Oh. My. Goodness.
The evening was very warm. Very very warm, given the lateness of the hour. That was almost certainly what she was feeling, she decided, closing her eyes against reality. Heat exhaustion. What else could account for this sudden weakness in her legs, or the perspiration and light-headedness that appeared to have seized her?
After several minutes of smothered silence during which he kissed her thoroughly, and left her in no doubt what he wanted, because she wanted it too, and quite badly, Gideon raised his head and said huskily, ‘So there is a way to get you to be quiet for once.’
A little affronted, perhaps even hurt, Charlie put both hands flat on his muscular chest and pressed.
Hard.
There was no response.
His muscles must be made of steel, she thought, trying again with no effect. It was clear he wasn’t going anywhere. ‘Is that the only reason you kissed me?’ she demanded. ‘To shut me up?’
He searched her face in the gloom, then shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Or maybe it was … time.’
‘Time?’
At almost exactly the same moment, Stew shouted, ‘Time, ladies and gentlemen!’ in the pub opposite. As in, drinking-up time. The pub was closing soon.
Gideon grinned, the tough lines of his face relaxing momentarily. ‘What he said.’
‘Let me go,’ she said.
With undisguised reluctance, he released her. ‘What’s the matter now? And don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that, Charlotte,’ he said sternly, ‘because I’ve kissed a few women in my time and you weren’t exactly fighting me there. Quite the reverse.’
Stung by the implication, Charlie tilted her head back and glared at him. ‘Hold on a minute. Are you saying I’m easy?’
He laughed heartily. ‘Of course not. Now you’re being ridiculous.’ He frowned at her hurt expression, then slipped his arms round her waist. ‘Christ, you were serious, weren’t you? Come here, let me show you … ’
From behind them, an acid voice interrupted them, saying sharply, ‘If you ask me, you’re both being ridiculous. Kissing and groping each other in a shop doorway? Isn’t that something teenagers do when they haven’t got a bedroom to go to?’
It was Elsie.
Charlie’s cheeks flushed with a terrible burning embarrassment. Oh good grief, she thought wretchedly, and did not know where to look. Of all the people who could have caught them at it … and in the doorway of the fishmonger’s too. She couldn’t even tell Elsie to mind her own business. On this occasion, the horrid woman had every right to tell them to knock it off, since they were necking like teenagers on her property.
‘Sorry, Elsie,’ Gideon told her with cheerful insincerity, and steered Charlie down the street, back towards the Cornish Tea Rooms. ‘Have a good night.’
If Elsie replied, it was inaudible.
‘Oh God,’ Charlie muttered as she unlocked the door.
He was laughing as he followed her into the dark tea rooms. ‘Don’t worry about it. So she caught us kissing. So what? There’s no law against it.’
‘Then perhaps there ought to be,’ she said, and paused to lock the door again. Then she leant her forehead against the glass door, feeling hot and wildly off-balance.
He came up behind her in the dark, touching her shoulder lightly.
‘Hey,’ he whispered.
She said nothing. But her heart jumped.
His lips brushed the nape of her neck. ‘Charlie?’
Bloody hell, just the touch of his mouth gave her the shivers. She had to get the situation back under control. Or this was going to end badly. How else could it end, when he would be moving on at the close of the summer season?
She tried for a flippant note, but only managed to sound shaky. ‘I thought I was Charlotte now?’
‘Charlie, Charlotte, whomever or whatever you want me to call you … ’ His voice thickened, and his hands dropped to her hips, tugging her back against him. ‘Can you feel what you do to me?’
She bit her lip. She could definitely feel it.
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ he said, close to her ear, in almost a growl.
‘Upstairs?’ Her cheeks flared with heat as her imagination raced ahead up the stairs and into her bedroom, to see him naked, to touch his body, to lie down with him ...
‘Yes, upstairs. Together. Right now.’
She gulped.
‘Isn’t this a bit … sudden?’ she whispered, staring out at the moonlit street and hoping that no one weaving their way unsteadily home from the pub could see them silhouetted against the glass.
‘Sudden?’ Gideon threw his head back and laughed throatily. God, she had grown to love that laugh of his. So deep, so masculine, so damn infectious. ‘Woman, are you insane? I’ve been sleeping in the next room from you for weeks now, only one thin wall between us,’ he points out, ‘dying to show you precisely how I feel, to bury myself deep inside you, and you think I’m moving too quickly?’
‘I only meant … Because, you know, it feels sudden to me … One minute we’re kissing in a doorway, and the next, you’re talking about going upstairs and … burying yourself, et cetera.’
‘Oh, especially et
cetera.’
Her nerves jangled. She fought for control, aware that she wanted him desperately. ‘You were going to tell me about … about Aunt Pansy,’ she struggled to say, and found herself losing the thread as his hands snuck round to cup her breasts, ‘and her true … her, erm, true story … Can you please stop doing that?’
His hands dropped away. There was a rough note in his voice, like he was hurt. ‘If you want me to stop, of course I’ll stop. If I’m bothering you …’
She turned to stare up at him. ‘B-Bothering me?’
‘Well, am I?’
‘I … I … ’ she stammered.
‘You …? You …?’
‘Don’t laugh at me,’ she exclaimed, and tried to push past him.
He grabbed her hands and brought them up to his face. To the hard, stubbled cheeks she had been secretly studying for weeks, and longing to stroke.
‘Don’t you want to touch me too?’ he demanded, staring into her eyes. ‘Don’t you want this? I was sure you did. But perhaps I was completely, totally, embarrassingly wrong. Perhaps you don’t care and are planning to throw me out on my ear first thing in the morning. Perhaps you think I’m a sex pest and – ’
‘Oh, shut up,’ she snapped, and dragged his face towards hers.
Their lips met, almost angrily.
He held her head, stroking her hair as they kissed.
‘Mmmm,’ he said against her mouth.
‘Mmmm,’ she mumbled back under her breath.
His mouth moved lower. ‘Ghnnn uhhhh ssss,’ he growled, nuzzling her throat.
‘Mmmm?’
He repeated the strange noises, and she pulled back, staring at him in bemusement. ‘Sorry, I have no idea what you just said.’
‘Go upstairs,’ he repeated impatiently, ‘let’s go upstairs.’
‘Oh,’ she said, slightly dazed by the speed of what was happening, but did not argue this time, allowing him to lead her through the dark tea rooms and up the stairs to her flat.
It was madness, of course. Sheer bloody madness. But so what? So what if their affair only lasted as long as the summer season? She was a big girl now; she could handle breaking up with Gideon Petherick once the last of the tourists had left Tremevissey and he was ready to move on to somewhere new, to someone new …
Couldn’t she?
CHAPTER TEN
The next morning, it was hard to look at Gideon, even over the normally chilly ices cabinet, without feeling overheated.
Oh dear, she was probably a fool.
But a happy fool, right at the moment. Happy, satisfied, and maybe a little bit sore. Not his fault, of course. But it had been a while since …
‘I said, could I have a large whippy ice cream, please?’ a man repeated, staring at her over the ice cream counter and bringing her back to her senses.
How long had he been standing there while she daydreamed?
‘Yes, right,’ she said quickly, and began making the poor man his ice cream. ‘Sorry, I was … erm … miles away.’
Gideon, serving someone scones with Cornish clotted cream, grinned at her across the tea rooms, and she found herself smiling back, unable to help herself.
Everything seemed to be going so well in her life, she thought. Even if her cat Benjamin had been less than thrilled to be turfed off her cosy duvet last night, and sent to sleep in the less comfortable kitchenette instead, because Someone Else was sharing her bed last night. A very gorgeous Someone Else, who for once knew just how to stroke her, rather than the other way around.
She grinned to herself, licking an errant blob of ice cream off her finger when no one was watching. Damn the Health and Safety regulations.
What an amazing night!
Yet at the same time, there was a siren going off somewhere deep inside. Too deep to really bother her, perhaps. A siren and a series of red flashing lights.
DANGER.
Over an early, and very intimate breakfast, she had tried hard to get Gideon to tell her what he’d meant last night about Pansy’s ‘true story’. But all he’d done was smile mysteriously and tell her to ‘Wait and see,’ with a finger laid over his lips when she protested.
She was determined to work out what he knew though.
And before his big reveal on Saturday night.
Maisy appeared in the doorway, the rather posh mother of one of their Saturday helpers, who had agreed to help out so Charlie could have a much-needed afternoon off. She didn’t need a job, having a very well-off husband in construction, who hated the idea of his wife going out to work. But she had commented once to Charlie that she’d love to have something more constructive to do than lounge about in her large back garden, so Charlie had naturally dragooned her in to help around the tea rooms. She was paying her the usual rate, of course. But it was clear Maisy would have done it for nothing, just to avoid boredom.
‘Hey, Charlie,’ she said, waving cheerfully. She looked flushed from the sun, despite her floppy sun-hat. ‘Sorry if I’m a little late. I couldn’t find a sitter for my dog. And I hate leaving her alone indoors in this hot weather.’
‘Don’t worry, you’re not late at all,’ Charlie told her, unfastening her apron and throwing it to Maisy. ‘Right on time, in fact. And thank you for coming in.’
‘My pleasure,’ Maisy said, beaming. ‘It was this or watching my cleaner do the housework. Besides, Tim says you’re great fun to work for.’
‘With,’ Charlie corrected her. ‘To work with.’
Tim was Daisy’s fifteen-year-old son, who worked at the tea rooms on a Saturday. It seemed his dad didn’t disapprove of hard labour in general. Or not where his teenage son was concerned, anyway.
‘Have you got a lovely afternoon planned?’ Maisy asked, strapping on the apron and checking the orders that needed to go outside.
‘Well, I’m hoping it will be an eye-opener, at any rate,’ Charlie muttered.
Maisy looked round from the hatch, distracted, a plate in each hand. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch what you said there.’
‘Oh, nothing important.’ With a smile, Charlie slipped into the kitchen to say goodbye to Gideon. ‘Maisy’s here. Will you be okay on our own, just the two of you?’
He raised his eyebrows, and she made a face at him.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘We’ll be perfectly fine,’ he said without a quiver, as though last night had not happened. ‘Go and enjoy yourself. Have a few hours away from the tea rooms. Do your own thing.’
‘I intend to,’ she said, rooting a Tupperware box out of the cupboard and trying to sound as cool as he was about the fact that they had started a relationship. But still couldn’t resist a peek at his rear view when he bent to take a tray of delicious-smelling hot muffins out of the oven. ‘I’m taking a few scones with me. You don’t mind, do you?’
Gideon straightened and looked round at her, his expression quizzical. ‘Why on earth would I mind? This is your place, Charlie. Those are your scones. Make free with them!’
She wanted to say, The same way you made free with me last night? But didn’t quite dare.
Instead, she arranged a selection of his gorgeous-smelling, fresh-baked cheese and fruit scones in the Tupperware box, snapped on the lid, and bore them out of the tea rooms with only a murmured word of farewell.
Outside, the sun was shining and it was a fabulous day. She could see light glinting off the incoming Atlantic tide in Tremevissey harbour, and smell salt on the air.
Charlie smiled.
It was her afternoon off, and she intended to make the most of it.
‘Hot last night, wasn’t it?’ Elsie remarked from the doorway of her fish shop, wiping her hands on her white apron. ‘I bet you two didn’t sleep a wink.’
Charlie remembered Gideon pressing her against that doorway last night, his lips on hers, and had to suppress a smile.
‘Good afternoon, Elsie,’ she said, determined to remain polite.
Elsie’s eyes narrowed. ‘And where are you off t
o?’
‘To see a woman about an aunt,’ she replied tartly, and continued along the sunny street with the plastic box of scones under her arm.
Crossing the road, she entered the Muddle, the locals’ name for a maze of narrow, cobbled lanes that formed the heart of the old village, and began to climb the steep hill at its centre.
As she left the main road behind and the poky seventeenth-century buildings crowded in above her, Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. It was cooler in their shade, and the Cornish Tea Rooms felt so distant here among the old fishermen’s cottages. Already she could feel the weight of her responsibilities falling away …
But a brand-new worry had taken hold of her mind and she couldn’t seem to shake it off. Was Elsie really interested in Gideon? Or was she just playing mind games with her new neighbour, for the sheer hell of it?
She hoped to goodness it was just the latter. She was far too busy these days to indulge in a hair-pulling contest with a love rival.
Which meant she might lose Gideon if Elsie made a concerted play for him. Elsie was quite a vamp after all, and all that platinum blonde hair might be his taste, for all she knew. Truth was, she knew very little about Gideon Petherick.
It had taken Charlie months to gain the trust of the villagers, not being a Tremevissey girl born and bred. But the fact that she was at least a blood relative of an old Tremevissey family had stood in her favour with most locals. And now the tea rooms were open again, and business was booming after a shaky start, she felt more accepted here.
Elsie, however, seemed harder to convince.
Old Mrs Trevellyan lived in the end cottage, facing the harbour below. She had an assortment of sea shells in her small front garden, lovingly arranged around a half-barrel crowded with dark green water lily pads.