‘And now,’ said the Vicar, gently, ‘I am required to ask anyone present who knows a reason why these persons may not lawfully marry to declare it now.’
As the newly declared husband and wife joyfully headed up the aisle to warm smiles all round, Coralie gathered up the little bridesmaids and took the best man’s arm. Keeping her eyes firmly ahead until the group emerged, blinking, into the bright October sunshine; she didn’t dare look at Gethin’s face in case she forgot what she was supposed to be doing. The smallest bridesmaid, who was already getting twitchy, was bound to scoot off whilst she was distracted. Kitty and Adam couldn’t have wished for a more perfect beginning to their married life; the ceremony had been beautiful and she didn’t want anything to spoil the photos now.
Kitty was fussing over Adam’s black eye again and taking every opportunity to smother him with kisses. You’d have to be very cynical indeed, she decided, to question the chance of them finding lasting happiness. Despite Kitty’s slight wobble before the ceremony when she’d had a good cry on Alys’s shoulder because everything was so perfect, and the attack of nerves that had given Adam such a shiner, you only had to look at the pair of them, ducking under a shower of rose petals and coming up all smiles, to see how right they looked together.
Whilst the photographer was getting them in position, Coralie shaded her eyes from the sun’s brilliant gaze, unable to stop herself looking round. The little church was set on top of a hill, against the backdrop of the rolling fields and the sparkling sea, with the scattering of houses that made up the small settlement of Penmorfa roughly following the winding road. She couldn’t help scanning the half-circle of fluttering, brightly coloured silks, confections of hats and smoothly tailored suits for one tall, dark figure in particular.
‘Come in closer, lovely,’ someone said to her, as they shuffled up for the next group picture. ‘We don’t bite. Well, not all of us anyway.’ One of Adam’s surf mates with laughing eyes and a lazy smile reached out his hand and pulled her towards him. ‘Here,’ he said, winking at her. ‘You’ll be safe next to me.’
‘I think she’ll be safer with me!’ said a disapproving voice behind her. Coralie’s fickle new friend, giving her a regretful smile, spotted one of Kitty’s very pretty Cardiff girlfriends and made a rapid decision to abandon her for a damsel in a perilously plunging frock.
Coralie looked up and found herself staring straight into a dark blue gaze, like a midnight sea.
‘Move over, darling,’ said Gethin, slipping in next to her.
Kitty stole a look at Adam as he sat down on her parent’s big brass bed beside her and her breath caught, because he was looking so sexy. She liked the way he looked at work, rough, ready, looking like a bad boy in his sweaty tee shirt and torn jeans, but this was a new, exciting Adam, a cool, sophisticated stranger in a crisp white shirt that was crying out to be unbuttoned.
‘Want me to take him for a while?’ he offered, reaching over her to stroke Jamie’s head. Now he was making her feel weak at the knees because he was so sweet, too. He really was lush, her new husband. And he was all hers; the love in his eyes when they made their vows had reassured her of that.
‘You’re all right.’ She smiled. ‘He’s just about asleep now. Once he’s off I’ll pop him in the travel cot and Mam’ll take over.’ Suddenly the idea seemed too terrifying to contemplate and she found herself choking back the tears.
‘Oh love, what is it?’ Adam wrapped his arms round her.
‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’
‘He’ll be fine, sweetheart. We’re only leaving him for one night.’
It had taken her so long to feel like a proper mother, but now that it had happened, Kitty felt ashamed of how detached she’d felt about this poor, innocent scrap in her arms. She gulped back the tears, hoping that Jamie hadn’t been aware of her initial coldness towards him and vowing to make it up to him for the rest of her life.
‘We can take him with us, if you’d prefer,’ said Adam, scanning her face with concerned eyes. ‘We’re a proper family now, after all. I’m sure they won’t mind at the hotel.’
They were a proper family. And with the warm wishes from their friends and the good example of Alys and Huw to follow, Kitty knew that they had laid the foundations of the strongest of futures together. Everything had been perfect, but one of her favourite moments had been at the reception, after all the speeches. Alys had risen to recite Gillian Clarke’s beautiful wedding poem, Er Gwell, Er Gwaeth, For Better, For Worse, and Huw had watched her with such tenderness and pride that the tears had started raining down again.
Kitty took another look at her husband and had to agree that they probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid about accommodating a small baby in The Cabin’s honeymoon suite. But she would. Jamie was snoring gently, his angelic lips puffing in his sleep, with only the slightest break in the rhythm as the cool cot sheet touched his back when she laid him down.
‘I think our son will be safe and happy with his grandparents, don’t you?’ She smiled at Adam, who was standing over the cot beside her. ‘Right now I just want to be a proper wife.’ She moved into him, breathing him in and closing her eyes as his fingers traced the nape of her neck and downwards across her bare shoulders.
‘Don’t stop,’ she murmured.
‘We have to,’ he told her, nuzzling her neck. ‘We’re neglecting our guests.’
‘They think I’m changing into my evening outfit. No one will miss us for five minutes.’
‘Five minutes!’ Adam laughed. ‘There’ll be a time for fast and furious, but not tonight.’
‘I suppose it would be more romantic to wait,’ she agreed, sneakily stroking the gratifying bulge in his trousers in case she could change his mind. ‘It is our wedding night.’
‘Not just our wedding night.’ He smiled, his eyes dark with desire. ‘It’s the first night of the rest of our lives together.’
Together. That sounded good. Kitty reached up and pulled him to her, kissing him hard, relieved, happy and looking forward to the future.
Coralie smiled at Alys, clinging to Huw as Rick Astley sang ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ as they passed. Alys, looking radiantly happy, gave her a little wave over Huw’s shoulder as Gethin led her away from the dance floor.
‘Come on, Coralie, we’ve done our duty,’ he said, folding back one of the flaps so they could escape from the heaving marquee, ‘now it’s our time.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Where are you taking me?’ Coralie asked, since the evening air was cool across her bare shoulders.
Gethin didn’t answer, but stopped to wrap the frivolous white marabou shrug that went with her bridesmaid dress round her. Her shoulders felt less exposed but a sudden irrational fear that time was running out for her and Gethin still left her feeling chilly. She had the strongest feeling that life was about to change. She could feel the shift in Gethin. He was trying hard not to show it, but she knew him well enough now to know that he was hiding something.
Summer had been special, full of memories to treasure and take out in the cold of winter. Two people, from opposite sides of the Atlantic, who had made something precious together. So if, after their holiday together in New York, it was her fate to return alone then she would accept it, even though it would break her heart in pieces. If this was his goodbye to Penmorfa, she thought, realising that he was leading her towards the sandy cove, she wouldn’t spoil the moment for him.
‘Here, let me go first.’ He sounded nervous, but his grip was warm and secure as ever as he took her hand and guided her down the stone steps. The black waves broke below them, whispering across the sand and the salt air touched her lips in a ghostly kiss. Then Gethin smiled up at her and hoisted her into his arms to carry her over the rocks to the flat sand. She took off her ballet pumps so they could walk along the beach together, and slipped her hand into his.
‘Oh, what a pity,’ she said, spotting a small driftwood fire ahead of them, being tended by a couple of
teenagers. ‘I was hoping we’d have the place to ourselves.’
Whilst it wasn’t unusual, even on the coldest evenings, to see small groups of young people gathered together for the sake of having somewhere warm to sit and talk, it was nevertheless disappointing. She would have liked to gather up close to Gethin. Cwtching the Welsh called it, cuddling and protecting all in one, a cwtch being a private space in a room or in two people’s hearts.
‘Why? What did you have in mind?’ he asked, squeezing her hand and settling her fears a bit more. There were just two boys sitting by the fire this evening. To her surprise, instead of passing them by, Gethin stopped and handed each of the boys a hefty tip and they scooted off, making appreciative noises about their windfall.
‘Why, Mr Lewis? Have you planned this?’ she exclaimed, smiling up at him and slipping a finger between the buttons of his shirt.
‘I want to talk to you,’ he said, removing her hand. ‘But if you carry on like that I’ll forget what I wanted to say. Sit down, will you?’
He straightened out the blanket where the teenagers had been sprawling and patted the space beside him. But when she leaned into him she could feel the tension in his shoulders. Should she be worrying, after all? The moon touched the oily black waves with silver, but, even feeling the warmth of Gethin’s body against hers, she started to fret again that there was no bright lining but only dark clouds ahead for them.
‘Gethin?’
She saw him shake his head. ‘Heck, Coralie, you’ve got me lost for words. And have done from the moment you set your cat on me.’
‘I did not set Rock on you!’ she protested. ‘It was your fault for letting go of him. And you weren’t lost for words for very long! You weren’t very happy,’ she added, trying not to laugh when she thought about the look of disbelief on his face as he stood half-naked in the next-door garden.
‘All right then,’ he admitted, ‘I was just lost.’
‘You!’ This time she did laugh. ‘You were one of the most self-contained, opinionated men I’d ever met! You predicted Sweet Cleans wouldn’t last the winter, remember?’
‘I might have been wrong about that.’ He shrugged. ‘Is that why you didn’t try to rescue me? Stray cats, Bambi glasses, forgotten frocks and broken lives … why not me?’
The low lilt of his lovely voice was getting to her. ‘You didn’t need rescuing,’ she said, feeling her throat constrict.
‘Oh, I did,’ he said pushing his hands through his hair. ‘I needed saving from myself. If you hadn’t come along, I would have ended up a sad, lonely, old man, just like my father.’
Coralie started to dare to hope that maybe it would be all right after all. ‘So what did you want to say to me?’ she said, softly.
He heaved a sigh. ‘Do you mind about Girl in a Coral Dress?’
Not quite what she was expecting. Coralie straightened up. ‘Of course not! It’s wonderful news. It’s lovely to see you getting the recognition you deserve from your own country.’
Kingston Gravell had done them more than one favour when he’d persuaded his good friend Jay Jewell, the art critic, to come to the gala auction. As an avid collector too, he’d not only bought the painting for such a satisfactory sum, but he had also generously offered it on a three-year loan to the National Museum, meaning Girl in a Coral Dress had been added to the collection of works by modern Welsh artists.
‘Good,’ he said carefully. ‘I know I told you that paint was all I had to show you how I feel …’
Coralie slid her arm around him. ‘It’s fine, honestly. You don’t have to explain. I know how much you care.’
He exhaled deeply. ‘Why is this so difficult?’ He shook his head before reaching into a basket on the corner of the blanket and flicking a switch.
Not their last samba? She panicked as he pulled her to her feet. Then Doris Day started singing ‘Secret Love’ and Gethin drew her close to him. He smelled of sea air and firewood and his thighs were warm and hard against hers as they swayed under the starlit sky. Fireworks from the reception, still going on high on the hill above them, erupted over their head in a glittering shower. She looked up and held his gaze, wanting to stay like that forever, knowing it was impossible.
‘Hey,’ he touched his hand to her cheek, ‘why the tears?’
‘I escaped to the country, you escaped from the country, isn’t that what you’re going to tell me? That we’re never going to be happy in the same place. Doris was right, our lips should never have touched. We should have stuck with our first impressions.’
She heard him laugh. ‘Coralie, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Doris Day gets it wrong sometimes. Everyone’s moved over; Alys has got her family back, Kitty and Adam are together where they should be. That just leaves you and me.’
He folded her in and she grabbed hold of him, feeling the lean, hard strength of him and never wanting to let him go.
‘I was so afraid of hurting you,’ he said into her hair. ‘I didn’t want to make a commitment, didn’t want to mess you up the way my father did my mother. And then, when I thought I’d never see you again …’ He shook his head and his body was tense against hers. ‘Coralie, we can live in the country, we can live in the city, we can live on the moon for all I care, just don’t leave me.’
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, swallowing her tears. ‘I don’t know what the future holds, but I only want to move forward with you.’
All the tension left his body as his mouth came down on hers, making her shudder with pleasure and her pulse race. She slid her fingers inside his shirt and heard him catch his breath. This was going to be hell on the bridesmaid frock, thought Coralie, as he pulled her towards the blanket, but when was she ever going to wear a turquoise taffeta strapless number again, anyway?
Before they could get any further though, there was bellowing from the top of the stone steps. Coralie looked up to find Kitty and Adam waving madly at them, then something came flying towards her in the dark.
‘I need to ask you something, Coralie,’ said Gethin, after a short pause whilst they waited for Kitty and Adam to disappear, the sound of the couple’s laughter carrying down to them. ‘The whole future of Penmorfa depends on you.’
Great. Alys had said something very like that to her once and life hadn’t been the same since. ‘Go on,’ she said, unhappily.
‘Coralie,’ said Gethin, holding the remnants of Kitty’s bouquet. ‘Would you believe me if I told you that I love you?’
She looked at him, his anxious expression, his shirt hanging out and his hair untidy, the pathetic flowers shedding petals in his hand, and suddenly he didn’t seem so self-contained anymore, but a real, warm, loving man. A man she would cherish forever.
‘Yes,’ she replied, smiling up at him. ‘Yes, Gethin. I believe you. And I love you.’
She laughed as he dropped the bouquet and punched the air, before quickly pulling her into her arms to silence her with a kiss, but just when she was starting to think about cwtching up together again, he broke away to look at her.
‘Coralie, you didn’t go to Tiffany’s when you were in New York, did you?’
She shook her head, puzzled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I do know they don’t serve breakfast.’
‘You’re correct,’ he said, smiling as he lifted his hands and gently cradled her face. ‘That’s settled then, I’ll take you there next week; what they do have is a pretty good selection of rings.’
About the Author
Winning a tin of chocolate in a national essay competition at primary school inspired Christine Stovell to become a writer! After graduating from UEA, she took various jobs in the public sector writing research papers and policy notes by day and filling up her spare drawers with embryonic novels by night. Losing her dad to cancer made her realise that if she was ever going to get a novel published she had to put her writing first.
Setting off, with her husband, from a sleepy seaside resort on the east coast in a vintage wooden boat to sail halfwa
y round Britain provided the inspiration for her novel Turning the Tide. Move Over Darling is Christine’s second novel.
Christine has also published numerous short stories and articles.
www.christinestovell.com
More Choc Lit
From Christine Stovell
Turning the Tide
Christine Stovell
All’s fair in love and war? Depends on who’s making the rules.
Harry Watling has spent the past five years keeping her father’s boat yard afloat, despite its dying clientele. Now all she wants to do is enjoy the peace and quiet of her sleepy backwater.
So when property developer Matthew Corrigan wants to turn the boat yard into an upmarket housing complex for his exotic new restaurant, it’s like declaring war.
And the odds seem to be stacked in Matthew’s favour. He’s got the colourful locals on board, his hard-to-please girlfriend is warming to the idea and he has the means to force Harry’s hand. Meanwhile, Harry has to fight not just his plans but also her feelings for the man himself.
Then a family secret from the past creates heartbreak for Harry, and neither of them is prepared for what happens next …
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
Find out more and purchase in the kindle store (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turning-The-Tide-ebook/dp/B003Y8XQOC)
Move Over Darling Page 28