Life's a Beach and Then... (The Liberty Sands Trilogy Book 1)

by Roberts, Julia

  ‘Of course it’s not, people would soon get used to calling you by a new name.’

  Holly allowed herself a wry smile. People already knew her by a different name, Liberty Sands.

  ‘I don’t mean that it’s too late to change my name, I mean it’s too late to talk to my Dad about it. He died. It wouldn’t feel right changing the name he gave me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Holly,’ Philippe said, genuine concern in his voice. ‘You haven’t had much luck with the men in your life have you?’

  She looked up at him. ‘I’m hoping my luck might change.’

  Chapter 38

  For the second night in a row Philippe had barely slept, not wanting to miss a moment of his time with Holly, and now the first light of the day was streaming in through the windows. His fingers toyed gently with the dark unruly curls framing her face, tangled from their lovemaking. He smiled at his choice of word. Philippe would normally have referred to it as sex but this experience had been different. He had felt emotion, possibly even love, he thought as he gazed down at her. She looked peaceful in sleep, vulnerable, and at that moment his only thought was to protect her. Obviously losing her husband had been devastating and he wondered if maybe in his desire to get to know her physically he had rushed things emotionally. She had been a responsive, willing sexual partner but she hadn’t uttered those three little words that so many of his previous conquests had. He had wanted her to say it, even though he was unsure how he would have responded, but she had remained silent and then the moment was lost when he had mentioned her husband.

  Philippe had noticed the look of panic in her eyes. Maybe she thought she had betrayed her husband’s memory by mentioning his name while lying naked in the arms of another man. He could understand that and it made the powerful feelings he was experiencing towards her even stronger. What he was finding harder to comprehend was her behaviour at the dinner table. Why had Holly lied about being named after a character in a film? Although she had explained her reasons he felt she was holding something back. And her description of Holly Golightly as a high-class hooker. Was that accurate? Philippe had never thought of Audrey Hepburn’s sensitive portrayal as that, and he had watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s a dozen or more times. She was just a young woman alone and vulnerable, not unlike my Holly, he thought, still playing with her tousled curls.

  He glanced past her to the clock on the bedside table and knew that he needed to wake her if she was to keep her breakfast rendezvous with Robert and Rosemary. He had already decided that he would say his goodbyes and head back to Tamarina Bay to avoid any awkwardness with the hotel staff. Dinner was one thing, breakfast something else entirely.

  ‘Holly,’ he said gently, ‘you need to wake up.’

  Holly opened her eyes and focused on the man she had spent the majority of the last two days with. It seemed longer, she thought, it feels like I’ve known him for years. His slight physical resemblance to Gareth may have been what had initially attracted her to Philippe, but Holly was sure that the deepening feelings she had for him were nothing to do with Harry’s dad. She flinched as she remembered the near miss she had had over the hair clip. It would be so easy to simply tell Philippe the truth but there wasn’t time now, she realised, as she caught sight of the clock. It was already seven thirty.

  Philippe was stroking her arm, occasionally brushing her right breast as he did so.

  ‘I don’t suppose we have time for an encore?’ he said, his eyes twinkling.

  ‘Sadly not,’ she replied, removing his arm from around her shoulders, but kissing the tips of his fingers as she did so. ‘We have a breakfast appointment in thirty minutes.’

  ‘You have a breakfast appointment,’ he corrected.

  Holly’s heart missed a beat. ‘Are you not coming?’

  ‘I think it’s better to say out goodbyes in private,’ he said, then added, ‘and anyway it’s not really adieu it’s au revoir,’ and in case she didn’t understand he translated, ‘until we meet again.’

  Holly released the breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding. ‘You do mean it Philippe? We will see each other when you come back to England?’

  ‘I would fly back with you today if I could. You have given me a reason to get my book finished as quickly as possible so we can spend time getting to know each other properly.’

  They kissed deeply but before it could lead to anything Holly pulled away.

  ‘You take a shower first. I need to start throwing my clothes into my suitcase.’

  Reluctantly Philippe did as instructed leaving the water running for Holly while he gathered his clothes from the floor by the window. It’s a good job people expected linen to look crumpled, he thought, looking down at the woeful state of his trousers. He sat on the bed buttoning his shirt watching Holly through the shutters that divided the bathroom from the bedroom. She had her head back allowing the warm water to rinse away the last remnants of shampoo from her hair and all trace of him from her body. The temptation to strip off and join her in the shower was almost irresistible but Philippe stopped himself. There would be plenty more opportunities. Finally he had found a woman he could love who would love him back.

  Holly towel dried her hair and combed it through, then slipped into her comfy trousers and loose-fitting tunic in preparation for the twelve-hour flight home.

  They didn’t speak, just held each other close, all the communication they needed. Holly opened the door to her room and they walked along the sandy path towards the main hotel building hand in hand. When they reached the fork in the path, one direction leading to the restaurant and the other to the front of the hotel, they stopped.

  Philippe leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. In an attempt to keep the mood light he said, ‘You realise if the restaurant was called Tiffany’s you’d be on your way to Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’

  Even as he said it an idea started to form in his mind so he was only half listening when Holly said, ‘Wrong Holly. I don’t own a cat and if I did I’d think of a better name for it than Cat!’

  Chapter 39

  The black limo pulled up outside the Plantation House hotel at 9.25 a.m. and despite having Robert and Rosemary with her Holly felt alone without Philippe at her side. She understood his reasoning about the hotel staff and how awkward he would have felt going to breakfast with her but a small part of her was hoping that he would arrive in his ageing BMW to drive her to the airport because he wanted to be with her until the last possible moment. There was no sign of him and, come to think of it, he had suddenly become very distracted and positively rushed away from her towards the hotel car park as she stood watching him before she took the other path to the restaurant to meet her friends.

  Neither of them had mentioned Philippe at breakfast, which was a little odd as they must have realised the two of them had spent the night together, until Rosemary, while checking that they had each other’s contact details, phone, mobile phone and email address, asked if she had exchanged her details with Philippe.

  ‘Just email at the moment,’ Holly had replied. ‘Phone calls and text messages to Mauritius are expensive.’

  That wasn’t the only reason. She didn’t want Philippe ringing her mobile and getting a foreign ringtone when she was away on her next assignment. There would be plenty of time to exchange phone numbers when he finished writing his book and came home to England. There would also be plenty of time to tell him the truth about her life, at least she hoped there would be, and she hoped he would understand the reason she had needed to lie to him.

  The driver, Sachin, was holding the car door open for her.

  Holly hugged Robert first. ‘Look after your beautiful wife, she’s a very special lady.’

  ‘You’re right she is,’ said Robert.

  Then she held Rosemary for a long moment. ‘Keep in touch and ring me the moment you get home so that we can meet up.’

  ‘I will,’ Rosemary promised, a promise tinged with sadness as both women knew that the
reason for Rosemary’s return to the UK would be Rosemary’s failing health.

  Sachin closed the car door, climbed into the driver’s seat and the limousine pulled smoothly away with Holly biting her trembling lip and unable to look back for fear of crying.

  So much had happened to her in one short week and she knew the impact would stay with her for the rest of her life.

  Chapter 40

  All the way back to his rented house at Tamarina Bay Philippe had been struggling with the urge to turn his car around and walk in through the front of the hotel, witnessed by the staff who knew him well, so that he could spend a little more time with Holly, maybe even breaking his own rules about last-minute goodbyes by driving her to the airport. The only thing that stopped him was the spark of an idea for his book that would turn it from a dull ‘travelogue’ to a romance with a twist. He was running out of time to deliver the rewrite of his first draft as had been made crystal clear by the frosty email from his publisher that had been waiting for him yesterday when he had arrived home after his afternoon of lovemaking:

  Phil,

  You have two months to deliver before you are in breach of contract, let me know if this is going to be a problem for you. My neck is on the line too – you know how hard I worked to get you the three-book deal before we knew if Maman would be the success it was.

  KR

  Jo

  KR, he thought with annoyance. His editor, Jo, had criticised his writing ability and she couldn’t even write ‘kind regards’. He could feel a bubble of anger starting to swell but he quickly quashed it knowing, despite his irritation, that she had a point. Maman had flowed easily but this latest book had lacked the same depth of emotion, his fabricated characters feeling shallow and unrealistic. Even his English teacher at his boarding school in Kent would have made him go back to the drawing board to flesh out his characters until they felt like real people that you believed in and cared about. That’s the secret, he thought, my characters have to be based on real people and now I know who ‘Tiffany’ is.

  He turned the key in the lock of his front door and headed straight for his desk and laptop impatient to get started on the rewrite. There would be plenty of time to spend with Holly once his book was finished and he was back in England. As he had reassured Holly, it was au revoir not adieu.

  Chapter 41

  Holly stood on the station platform at Gatwick airport waiting for the next train to Clapham Junction from where she could catch a train home to Reading. Soleil Resorts footed the bill for everything while she was on location but travel arrangements in the UK were her own responsibility. She allowed herself a wry smile. It was a very different journey in prospect from her arrival at Dubai International airport in the back of a black stretch limousine for her flight home, some seven hours earlier.

  It had been a crazy eight weeks. She had arrived home from Mauritius to find a manuscript requiring her copy-editing attention. It was a second book from a former daytime television presenter and sadly it was no better written than his first. He had particularly requested Holly as she had ‘licked his first book into shape’.

  That was one way of putting it, Holly thought, but a more accurate description might have been that I totally re-wrote it. Holly had not only corrected the punctuation and grammar, but also made dialogue suggestions as the writer in question seemed to have his characters speaking in language more relevant to the early twentieth century rather than a hundred years later. Even the plot had been too straightforward with no twists and turns and little to keep the reader interested, so Holly had tweaked that too. The resulting book had been well received but even with her changes Holly doubted that it would have made the Bestseller List if it hadn’t been bought by all his adoring female fans.

  Instead of the ‘light touch’ instruction she usually received from the publishing company, meaning let the author’s voice be heard, the accompanying note had said:

  Hi Hols

  Another hatchet job required to make this fit to publish I’m afraid. Do exactly as you did with his last masterpiece please and can I have it by the end of next week?

  Cheers

  DD

  PS I keep telling you that you should write a book of your own instead of making other people believe they can write xx

  How many times had Holly thought of doing just that over the years she had been working as a freelance for DD, a nickname they used that had nothing to do with her friend’s real name. It had been her bra cup size when they had met in their first year at university and instantly become friends but was now a bit of a misnomer as DD was constantly on the latest fad diet.

  When Holly had failed to return to university for her second year DD had tried phoning and even writing to Holly’s home address anxious to find out what had happened that had caused her talented friend to abandon her degree and her friends. Holly’s embarrassment at the situation she found herself in had prevented her from responding to either. Several years later, after completing her English degree with the Open University and having been rejected from most of the publishing companies she had approached for freelance work, she had read that her former friend, Joanna Thomas, had been promoted to editor at Ripped Publishing, a company she had already been rejected from. She had re-sent her CV and a covering letter and a couple of days later DD had called her. Holly wasn’t sure whether her vague explanation of family issues had satisfied DD’s curiosity but she had been prepared to give her friend a chance. Holly didn’t let her friend down. She always did a thorough job and met the deadline, even if it meant staying up late into the night, and she never turned down work, regardless of how badly written it was because, as a freelancer, you have to take what you are given. Through her work for Ripped she had built a good reputation and other companies began to use her too.

  It had taken her the best part of two weeks to finish A Perfect Swine and she had changed almost everything apart from the dreadful title which unfortunately was beyond her remit.

  With the manuscript out of the way Holly had gone to visit Harry in Bath. She had been itching to tell her son about Philippe but she wanted to tell him face to face.

  ‘Have you heard from him since you got back?’ was his first question.

  Typical Harry, always trying to protect her. He had done it all his life even getting into fights with the boys at his school if they ever made nasty remarks about his mum not being married to his dad.

  ‘We’ve been in touch by email several times,’ Holly replied, although in truth she was a little disappointed at both the length and the infrequency of the emails.

  Philippe had apologised, explaining that he had been tied to his computer as he was ‘on a roll’ with his book which he had virtually entirely rewritten. Holly had smiled as she imagined them both feverishly tapping the computer keys on book rewrites.

  In the last email she had received from him a few days previously he said that he was almost ready to send the rewritten version to his editor and if approved he could start to pack up the house in Mauritius and be home within a fortnight. He had added that he couldn’t wait to see her again and just reading that had made Holly go weak at the knees.

  Harry had also asked if she had been in touch with the older couple she had mentioned meeting.

  Rosemary had emailed a few times, mainly to say that they hadn’t seen much of Philippe since she had left as he was holed up writing his latest book.

  ‘I hope it’s as good as his first one,’ Rosemary had written on one email.

  Holly had replied, ‘Which destination did he write about in his first book?’

  She hadn’t heard from Rosemary for a couple of days after that and when she did there was no mention of either Philippe or his first book.

  It had been such a joy to spend time with Harry and she left Bath feeling proud of the young man she had single-handedly guided through his early life. As they hugged he had asked where she was off to next for Soleil Resorts, and when she answered Cuba followed by Dubai he had
laughed and said, ‘I’ve created a jet-setter.’

  Jet-setter, Holly thought, climbing aboard the Gatwick Express, jet-lagged more like. She settled in her seat and closed her eyes for a power nap.

  Chapter 42

  A fly was buzzing round the room, occasionally landing for a few seconds before taking flight again. It was annoying Philippe but he was so tired he couldn’t be bothered to drag himself out of bed to swat it or open the door to the verandah to set it free. He hadn’t slept for more than a few hours a night for the past eight weeks but last night he had finally finished the book and emailed it to his publisher. He had crawled into bed at 2 a.m. without even brushing his teeth, which he now regretted as they felt positively furry, and fallen asleep within minutes.

  The fly landed on his hand and he took an ineffectual swipe at it. It’s no good, he thought, I’m not going to get back to sleep. He rolled over to check his bedside clock and was astonished to see that it was 4 p.m. Reluctantly he swung his legs out of bed and headed to the bathroom. While he was brushing his teeth he decided he would go over to the Plantation House hotel that evening to have dinner with Robert and Rosemary. He had barely seen them in two months and he was feeling guilty for neglecting them, particularly as they had introduced him to Holly. He was still looking at his unshaven reflection in the mirror, after rinsing the foamy toothpaste away, and noticed with amusement that even the thought of her caused him to smile. Although he loved Mauritius he was anxious to pack his things and head back to the UK to see her again. Who would have thought that he would find love at his age?

  He desperately wanted a shower and a shave but first he needed to check his email to make sure that his editor had received his manuscript. He moved towards his desk feeling a flutter of nerves in his belly and clicked the inbox on his laptop. Sure enough there was an email from Jo, and even without opening it he could see the first few words: