Secret Evenings in Pretty Beach

by Polly Babbington

  Lottie watched Connor as he moved around the room. He seemed to get better looking and more interesting the more she got to know him. The feelings he was generating in her had come completely out of the blue and were like something she had never known. It was as if she’d entered a whole new world.

  Connor took a bag of coffee beans out of a cupboard, poured them into the top of a grinder, and pressed a button. The machine whirred the beans and the powder fell into the container underneath.

  ‘Bit of a coffee connoisseur, are you?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘Not really. There’s a bit of a story behind the machine, actually. I was on a contract job for the Australian government a couple of years ago and they are seriously into their coffee over there. Like, obsessed with it. So much for being laid-back. Anyway, I’d had amazing coffee every day which made me realise what I’d always been missing. Then, on the way home from the job, I was staying in the mountains at a cabin in the middle of nowhere and even there, coffee was a serious subject. The cabin had one of these Smeg machines and the matching grinder, a huge bag of coffee beans, and a comprehensive list of step-by-step instructions on how to make it.’

  ‘Sounds very full on.’

  ‘Yep, it certainly was. So, one morning I followed the instructions together with milk from an organic dairy and went to heaven and back, and decided as soon as I got home I would throw away the instant coffee in the cupboard and invest in one of these,’ Connor continued, tapping the coffee machine on the side. ‘And here it is. Best thing since sliced bread as far as I’m concerned, and a lot of people who’ve had a coffee from this think the same.’

  Connor finished making the coffee, topped it off with the frothy milk and handed one to Lottie. ‘Fancy strolling down to the end of the jetty with these? It’s a lovely night for it now all that rain has passed.’

  ‘I’d love to. Will it not be a bit chilly down there out on the water, though?’

  ‘It might be with the breeze coming off the sea. I’ll get you a jacket.’

  Connor came back into the kitchen thirty seconds later with a huge, dark blue waterproof jacket with a white crest patch on the chest and white flashes on the shoulder.

  ‘I think you could bury me in this.’ Lottie laughed as she put her tiny arms into the coat and it draped down way past her knees.

  ‘We don’t get many your size in here as a rule,’ Connor replied with a chuckle. ‘Okay. Follow me.’

  Connor held the door open for Lottie and she followed him out the back of the workshop, through a small alleyway across a couple of the other yards and sheds, until they came to the start of the jetty. They both stood there and looked all the way down to the end as a strong breeze came in off the sea, and the moonlight danced around and glinted on the water.

  ‘So pretty and so many stars now. The weather has been all sorts today,’ Lottie observed, blowing on the hot cup of coffee in her hands.

  ‘It has. It was pelting down earlier when I came down to go to the fish and chip shop.’

  ‘Yes. We had to walk people under umbrellas to the cottage in rotation. And even then they still got wet. It was funny, though. Sort of broke the ice for a lot of people in a way.’

  ‘How did it go, then?’ Connor said as they strolled along the jetty the waves lapping in and out underneath them.

  ‘Really well. Much better than either of us anticipated and we are now fairly booked up for the next one and the one after.’

  ‘Excellent. You must be exhausted though after all that work. It would have been a lot of planning and prepping to do all that in that tiny cottage for twenty people, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It was. But I’m also quite experienced in cooking so the menu was designed to suit the limits of the space.’

  ‘Not just a pretty face by the looks of it, then?’

  Ahhhhhh, not just a pretty face. He’s flirting! Christ. He’s flirting and I’m blushing like a twelve year old. Man oh man, he’s absolutely gorgeous. Oh dear, who am I? Where is the Lottie Cloudberry I know?

  Lottie didn’t say anything back as they got to the end of the jetty and she sat down on the bench.

  ‘Goodness. That feels good. I didn’t realise how much my legs were aching. I suppose I was on them for the whole night after all.’

  They sat there in silence looking out to sea with the lighthouse beacon sweeping across the bay every now and then, and the sea air whipping around their faces. In the distance, they saw the lights of the last Pretty Beach ferry go past and the sky darkened as a cloud dipped across the moon.

  Lottie sat there lost in it all, sipping on the hot and, she had to admit, absolutely delicious coffee. The air felt tense with nerves as she sat with her feet neatly together and her hands clasped tightly around the coffee mug. All of a sudden she remembered the card.

  ‘Oh! I nearly forgot. The card! So sorry I didn't call. It slipped under the doormat and I didn’t see it until I was right in the thick of the Secret Evenings stuff.’

  ‘I did wonder. I’ve been glued to my phone checking it every five minutes to see if the phantom asparagus stroker was going to call. And when you didn’t, I’d presumed you weren’t interested...’ Connor joked.

  Oh, I was definitely going to call, Connor. I am feeling things in my nether regions I thought were dead and very much buried, but I won’t mention those regions yet, best save that for later.

  ‘Sorry about that. Yes, I was going to call you tomorrow.’

  They finished the coffee and Lottie could hear Connor’s breathing beside her and she moved her left leg ever-so-slightly to the left closer to his and then Connor reached over and put his arm around her shoulders.

  Lottie felt a strong wave surge through her as she moved her hand and placed it on Connor’s leg and he bent down, and then time stood still as Connor gently kissed her on the lips. Sensation tingled through Lottie as Connor caressed the back of her neck and stroked her cheek. As she lost herself in the kiss Lottie rubbed Connor’s strong leg, pulled herself closer to him, and hoped that the moment under the stars over the water where she felt like her whole body had been dipped in gold would never end.

  Chapter 40

  Lottie walked into Maisy’s cafe and looked around for Juliette. She spied her tucked right at the back in the corner perusing the menu. Lottie walked up to the table, pulled out the chair, and sat down quickly.

  ‘Woah. You’re looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for someone who had a huge day yesterday,’ Juliette observed.

  ‘I slept like a log for the first time in weeks. I think once it was done and dusted and over with I suddenly switched off.’

  I was also dipped in gold by a gorgeous man in the moonlight on the jetty.

  ‘I bet you did. It went brilliantly. I could see from all that organisation though that you must have been thinking about and prepping it for a long time. I don’t think you missed anything.’

  ‘Yeah, I have been. I didn’t think I’d get the vegetarian curve ball thrown at me at the last minute like that, I can tell you, so thank goodness everything else did run like clockwork. That could have turned into a complete and utter nightmare.’

  Juliette smiled as their tea and a plate with two slices of chocolate cake was put in front of them.

  ‘Who even does that? I don’t get it. You book what is a pretty expensive meal in a secret location where you know there’s a set menu, and you don’t notify the organisers that you’re vegetarian? Or it doesn’t cross your mind to find out what’s on the menu?’

  ‘I know. You never know, though. I’ve had some strange things over the years with the dinners. So I wasn’t really that surprised. At least they were good about it,’ Lottie replied.

  ‘Yeah. I mean they were happy to just not eat stuff. But that in itself is weird, isn’t it? Paying a fair old whack and then having to leave it. Odd if you ask me. Very odd.’

  ‘Nothing as strange as folk, don’t they say?’

  ‘They absolutely do. I don’t know why I’m surprised. In
my job, I’ve seen it all. To be frank, in my line of work I am now no longer surprised that I am surprised.’

  ‘Ha, yeah true!’ Lottie agreed.

  ‘It was quite funny though when they announced they were vegetarian. Luke went into panic mode. He was scurrying around the kitchen opening cupboards. As if he was, what, going to magically find something in there to give them instead of the main course?’

  ‘He was hilarious. The rest of the night worked like clockwork though. I’d have him in the kitchen with me again. He really was quite adept at it all.’

  ‘Plus, he said he enjoyed it and it took his mind off work and everything. He didn't have time to think about anything else.’

  ‘It certainly works like that. I think that was one of the first reasons I loved cooking - the no thinking thing. It can be like therapy,’ Lottie replied.

  ‘So, what did you do after we cycled home? Did Dimitri go home with Rory and Holly? He looked shattered by the end of the night.’

  ‘Yep. He went home and then I made myself a peppermint tea and went and sat outside on the chairs looking out to sea to wind down a bit. It always takes me a bit of time to come down from something like that.’

  ‘Right. It turned into a really clear evening after all that rain too. We noticed it as we rode home.’

  ‘Yep. It was gorgeous by the end of the night. A shame the rain arrived earlier and then the setting would really have sparkled in the earlier part of the evening. Hey ho, the one thing you can’t predict, the weather.’

  ‘So, you walked home in the end did you?’

  Lottie’s mind started to race. How did Juliette know she hadn’t driven home? ‘Err,’ Lottie said to bide some time and frowned.

  Juliette continued as she scooped a piece of chocolate cake onto her fork. ‘Only I saw your car still down at the Boat House when I was on my way to drop off Maggie at Jeremy’s this morning.’

  Lottie coughed as a bit of her tea went down the wrong way. ‘I was tired but I thought I would stroll home in the lovely evening and walk off the craziness of the kitchen.’

  ‘Ahh, right. That makes sense then.’

  ‘Yeah, as you said it was a lovely clear night to walk home even though my legs were aching.’

  They sat in Maisy’s tucking into the chocolate cake and drinking their tea and debriefed further on how the evening had gone. Juliette explained how she felt on the customer-facing side of it all and they talked about how things could have been done better and what things had worked beautifully.

  Lottie sat there looking out at the bustling cafe and thought about the other thing that had happened. The little secret that she was hugging to herself. The shimmering gold that had enveloped her that she felt like everyone in a ten-mile radius could see. Could everyone in the cafe not see the gold halo sitting on the top of her head?

  Did she confide in Juliette and tell her? Maybe not. Maybe she’d wait and see how it went. If it went anywhere. She wasn’t even sure how she herself was going to go. Not having been on a date in years. Not knowing what she wanted in her life.

  Lottie mulled it over and decided to remain casual about the gorgeous man who turned her to molten gold, and that she’d keep quiet about it in Pretty Beach too. No use in the Pretty Beach gossip mill knowing yet if they didn’t need to. Not that that usually stopped them, it had to be said.

  Lottie smiled to herself as she listened to Juliette telling her about her new house. She might well be keeping quiet about it on the outside, but inside she glittered and twinkled and danced as she thought about the kiss on the jetty.

  And how when he had dropped her off at home once they’d walked back to his workshop from the jetty, Connor Bally had said he had been thinking about her since the first time he’d seen her emerge from the beach with a basket of driftwood and a piece of seaweed in her hair, and did she fancy coming out with him for a meal?

  Chapter 41

  It had been a couple of days since the kiss on the jetty and the tea in Maisy’s, and Lottie had been engrossed in getting back on top of the garden, catching up with the preparation for her dinner deliveries, and planning the menu for the next Secret Evenings event in the bookshop.

  Most of the logistics had been done by Dimitri but she was the brainpower side of the menu planning and the actually-making-it-all-happen person. Her side of the bargain meant that she had to ensure that it was both on budget and delicious, so that people would want to come back over and over again.

  Lottie stood with her cup of tea in the room in the eaves of the outbuildings and looked all the way down to the sea. She loved how peaceful it was and half-wished she’d discovered it earlier. She could smell her garden and nature all around her, and see the sea at the same time. A most magical combination. Just standing there and admiring it calmed her down. She knew that it would be an amazing Secret Evenings location.

  Just as she was finishing off her tea and contemplating the huge pot of industrial white paint to start painting the upstairs walls, her text pinged in her pocket. She jumped in anticipation.

  She’d been waiting on tenterhooks for a message from Connor and when one hadn’t come, she’d decided that her initial thoughts had been correct: he had changed his mind on going out to dinner, and he had thought she was a bit of a loony with her love for vegetables and nature after all.

  Hello. Connor here. Just touching base. Wondering if there have been any other incidents where you crawl around on the floor? :)

  Lottie stared down at her phone and reread the message and then thought to herself. Oh. Right. Where’s the dinner invitation?

  She stood there continuing to stare at her phone and waited for the three little dots to indicate that he was typing another message. Nothing happened. She waited a bit longer. Yikes. What do I reply? Do I remind him about the dinner? No. Remain aloof and casual. She decided not to refer to the dinner or for that matter the kiss and started typing.

  Hey, Connor. Nice to hear from you. No crawling around for me. I’m currently about to paint a whole room white so I think I should be safe. At the moment I’m very much upright and there are no vegetables to be seen.

  Lottie finished off the text with three little winking emoticons and quickly pressed send before she changed her mind.

  She had really wanted him to just ask her out for dinner again since they’d not locked anything in when he’d dropped her off at home after the jetty kiss. Nothing came back right away. Gah! She closed the cover on her phone and put it back in her pocket. Two seconds later she took it back out and opened it again. Nothing.

  Ahhh! This is why I’m not interested in dating. Too much headspace for one tiny woman with a house to keep from being sold.

  Sighing, Lottie walked over to the paint tin, pinged the lid off with a screwdriver, poured some paint into a paint tray and took the plastic covering off a roller. She stood back and surveyed the room. She had a lot of painting to do in a small window of time before she had to get on with her dinners. She had plenty of time to wait and see if Connor was going to text her back and ask her out to dinner.

  Forty minutes later, as she was furiously pushing the roller back and forth up the wall and was beginning to think that Connor Bally could go and take a running jump, her phone went again in her pocket.

  Sorry. I had to take a call. Glad to hear you are safe. When would you like to join me for that dinner? Connor x

  Lottie beamed and hugged the phone to her chest.

  A kiss? He finished it with a kiss! Woohoo! Oh yeah, baby!

  Lottie threw the paint roller in the tray, jumped around the room, shut her eyes, and fist-pumped the air like a mad thing over and over again.

  When she’d stopped dancing around the room she opened her eyes to see Dimitri at the top of the stairs shaking his head with a concerned look on his face.

  Dimitri addressed her in Greek. ‘Lottie, is everything okay?’

  Chapter 42

  Lottie had been buzzing from everything that had happened at the weeken
d. Secret Evenings having been a success, the next events booming, a clandestine kiss with a handsome man on a jetty, and the fact that the old nearly derelict outbuildings had turned from an unused space tucked away and not that pleasant, to the location of her new business.

  She’d spent the evening in the greenhouse with her plants, thinking about how funny life was with its twists and turns, and had ridden the high for hours out there in the dark doing her watering and potting on of new things.

  Lottie had gone to bed after a long, hot shower and thought that she would never sleep with her mind racing about everything that had gone on, and everything that hopefully was going to happen. Like the dinner with Connor. She’d had a whole week of fitful sleep and tossing and turning, and had been ready to be awake for half the night again. But in fact, she’d slept soundly waking up with the intrusion of her alarm clock at six, ready to start another day on the treadmill of getting Secret Evenings on the map.

  Lottie sat up in bed checking her phone and the lists, and felt very grateful that she’d had a full night of sleep. The long evening of gardening, the night air, and the promise of good things to come had done something to her brain and the heavy sleep had been just what she’d needed.

  Lottie looked over to the shutters. No sunshine streaming through this morning, a chilly air outside the duvet cover, and she could hear the sea crashing far off in the distance. She got out of bed, opened the shutters, and was greeted by dark, purple skies and the threat of more rain. Not a nice day to be out and about and busy in Pretty Beach.

  Pulling on her dressing gown Lottie walked all the way down through the floors of the house to the kitchen, and as the warm air from the Aga hit her she put the kettle on, took down a pan, filled it with water, and started to poach some eggs.

  She finished making the poached eggs on toast, walked through the boot room, and strolled with the plate and mug in hand all the way through the garden to the outbuilding she’d been painting the night before.