New Beginnings at Seaside Blooms

by Jessica Redland

  New Beginnings At Seaside Blooms

  Welcome to Whitsborough Bay Book 2

  Jessica Redland

  I searched for Steven and found Mark instead. This is for him xx

  Contents

  One Year Ago

  Chapter 1

  One Year Later

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Three Months Later

  Chapter 39

  Acknowledgments

  More from Jessica Redland

  About the Author

  Also by Jessica Redland

  About Boldwood Books

  One Year Ago

  1

  ‘Come on, Jason. Ring.’ I frowned at my iPhone as I paced up and down in the lounge, my stiletto heels echoing on the wooden floorboards. ‘Or text. I don’t care which. Just make contact. Please.’

  My heart leapt as the phone beeped, but the text was from one of my best friends instead.

  ✉︎ From Elise

  Happy birthday Sarah! Last year in your twenties so make the most of it. Wish you weren’t so far away so I could give you a birthday hug so sending one by text instead. I’ve hopefully timed your present to arrive today. Hope Jason’s got you a fab gift… proposal maybe? Have a great evening xxxxxxx

  I stretched out my arm to admire the sparkly silver bracelet she’d sent.

  ✉︎ To Elise

  Just got home and your parcel was waiting. Way too generous as usual… but absolutely gorgeous! Thank you so much. Not sure where he’s taking me but hopefully it’s somewhere nice this time. I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go! Would be lying if I said a proposal hadn’t crossed my mind. EEEEEEKKKK!!!! You’ll be first to know if he does xxx

  My hands shook slightly and I felt a flutter in my stomach as I typed in the words. Could tonight really be the night? Maybe. The timing felt about right and he’d been talking about making plans for the future. We’d been together for two years and two months and had lived together for most of that time. Aside from occasional bouts of thoughtlessness on his part and a tendency to drag me to the gym or on a twenty-mile hike way more often than a person should have to endure in a lifetime, we were very happy together and I assumed that a proposal wouldn’t be too far away.

  Another text arrived but it still wasn’t Jason.

  ✉︎ From Clare

  Sorry for not texting earlier. Dim Daz borrowed my phone then drove to Essex with it. Bloody muppet. Anyway, better late than never… happy birthday you old fart. Can’t believe you want to spend the evening with your eejit flatmate rather than me. Hope it’s not McDonalds this time! Maybe he’ll really treat you & do Pizza Hut?! Keep Saturday night free if you want your card & gift or I’m keeping them xx

  She’d added several laughing emojis to the end of the text.

  ‘Your Auntie Clare is being very rude, as usual,’ I said to one of our kittens, Kat, who’d appeared to demand a fuss. ‘Flatmate indeed.’ But I couldn’t help smiling. Only Clare could get away with a comment like that.

  ✉︎ To Clare

  Thanks. Was beginning to think you’d forgotten me! I promise to keep Saturday free for you. Dread to know what sort of abuse I’d get if I don’t. Not sure where MY BOYFRIEND is taking me. Still waiting to hear. McDonalds was a misunderstanding and you know it! Laters xx

  * * *

  ✉︎ From Clare

  Misunderstanding my arse! My final guess of the evening… The Griffin

  I shook my head. So our two-year anniversary hadn’t gone quite to plan, but it was my fault really. I should have known that saying, ‘I’d love to go out for a meal to celebrate; how about The Kam Po? I could meet you in The Griffin after work,’ was far too vague for Jason. I ended up nursing the same glass of Pinot Grigio for ninety minutes before finally accepting he wasn’t coming. Trudging home, I found him in his gym kit playing on his Xbox. ‘You been working late?’ he asked. ‘You should’ve texted me. I got you a McDonalds on the way home, but it’ll be cold now and there’s nothing else to eat.’ He returned to his game and I went to bed hungry. I kept hoping he’d realise his mistake but he never did and, by then, it felt too late to say anything.

  I checked my phone again now. Nothing. It couldn’t happen twice, could it? No. It had been his idea this time. Some of my friends from work had suggested a birthday meal, but Jason had insisted on taking me out himself. I’d gently reminded him a couple of days ago and he’d assured me it was in hand and I wasn’t to quiz him any further or I’d spoil the surprise. He said he’d contact me last minute with a location to meet him so I could enjoy the excitement of speculating about where we were going. This was certainly last minute and excitement wasn’t quite the feeling I’d describe.

  It was now after half six. Sod it! I couldn’t do this anymore.

  ✉︎ To Jason

  This is killing me! Where are you taking me? I’m all ready and awaiting my instructions! Please tell me you haven’t forgotten xx

  I hoped that reading my birthday cards again would distract me. It didn’t. A little voice in my head kept telling me he had forgotten and Clare’s joke about McDonalds or my local might not be far from the truth. Perhaps he was frantically phoning round restaurants right now and that’s why he hadn’t been in touch. Another text arrived and, finally, it was from him. Please don’t say McDonalds…

  ✉︎ From Jason

  South Kensington Tube Station. 1915hrs. Table booked for 1930hrs xx

  Butterflies stirred in my stomach. Oh my God! South Kensington. Could it be…?

  I hastily shoved my phone in my bag, pulled on my coat and left the flat, legs shaking as I strode towards the tube station. It was just a coincidence. There were hundreds of restaurants in South Kensington and we could be going to any of them. With Jason’s track record, it could be McDonald’s. But what if…?

  He'd taken me to Luigi’s to celebrate me moving down to London shortly after we started seeing each other. During dessert, the man on the table next to us proposed to his girlfriend. It was such a moving and romantic moment and, on the way home, Jason said that he could imagine proposing there too. But that didn’t mean he’d booked a table there tonight to propose to me, did it?

  When I reached South Kensington tube station, it took all my willpower to stand still on the escalator when all I wanted to do was to shove past the travellers, run up the steps, and skip across the concourse screaming, ‘Yes, Jason, I will marry you.’

  I spotted him by one of the exits. My breath caught as I saw what he was wearing. Classically tall, dark, and handsome, he looked particularly hot in the three-piece suit he’d bought for his brother’s wedding last summer. After his firefighter uniform, it was my favourite outfit on him. Although, to be perfectly honest, with a toned body like his, I prefe
rred no clothes at all.

  ‘Happy birthday.’ He bent down and gave me a soft kiss. I breathed in his musky scent and those butterflies went crazy. ‘You look good.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I whipped open my coat like a flasher, revealing the LBD I’d agonised over wearing for fear I’d be over-dressed.

  He wolf-whistled and I flushed from head to toe. ‘I approve. Although you may be a little over-dressed for what I have planned later tonight.’

  I flushed again and Jason laughed as he took my hand in his. ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I tried to sound casual but failed abysmally. Please say Luigi’s. Please.

  He winked at me, grinning widely. ‘It’s a surprise.’

  Oh my God!

  It could only have been three minutes, but I swear that walk felt like an hour. My sweaty hand kept slipping from his, I stumbled several times and I even hiccupped, causing Jason to ask if I’d been on the wine before leaving the flat.

  The Italian flag and deep green canopy of Luigi’s loomed ahead of us. My breathing quickened and I mentally prepared myself: must not look gutted if we walk past, must look happy wherever he takes me.

  But we didn’t walk past. We stopped. We went in. He gave his name and we were led to a table towards the back where a bucket of champagne on ice was waiting for us. Champagne. Proper Champagne. Jason always said that supermarket own label Cava was overpriced. Which could only mean… Oh. My. God!

  I put my glass of champagne down as Jason pushed the candle aside and reached for my hand across the table a few minutes later.

  ‘You really do look gorgeous tonight,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t scrub up too badly yourself,’ I whispered, barely able to speak for anticipation of what was coming.

  His dark eyes twinkled as he gazed at me over the table. ‘Thank you. I thought I should make a special effort. It’s a special occasion, after all.’

  Eeeeeeekkkkk!

  ‘I haven’t given you your birthday present yet.’

  A shiver of anticipation ran through me. ‘No, you haven’t.’

  ‘If I know you, you’ll have spent all day trying to guess what it is.’

  ‘Me? It never entered my head.’

  Jason laughed. ‘Yeah, right. I think you’ll like it. I was going to wait until the end of the meal but I’m too excited about it to wait. Is it okay if we do it now?’

  I nodded.

  ‘There are a few things I want to say first,’ he continued.

  ‘Your water, sir.’ A waiter inconveniently appeared. Bottled water? Not tap? Crikey! I willed the waiter to be quick. ‘Would you like me to pour, sir?’ he asked.

  I silently pleaded with Jason to say no before I wet myself with excitement.

  ‘It’s fine. You can just leave it. Thanks.’

  ‘Happy Birthday,’ Jason said when the waiter finally left.

  ‘Thank you.’ We clinked champagne glasses.

  ‘Now, where was I?’

  ‘You wanted to say some things?’

  ‘Oh yes. Do you remember the night we met?’ He reached for my hand again.

  ‘Of course. Best night of my life.’

  ‘We said it was fate that we met, remember?’

  ‘It was meant to be,’ I agreed. Neither of us was supposed to be in Nottingham the night we met. I’d been drafted in last minute to make up numbers on a friend of a friend’s hen do and Jason had spontaneously decided to visit an old friend there after his weekend plans fell through.

  After a day of never-to-be-repeated-because-it-was-so-terrifying ‘fun and frolics in the great outdoors’, the hen party donned fairy wings and net skirts and embarked on a pub crawl. We ended up in an eighties club where I spotted Jason on the dance floor looking very cute and very out of place in a thick jumper. ‘Aren’t you hot?’ I shouted over the music.

  ‘I’m used to the heat,’ he replied. ‘I’m a firefighter.’ Oh behave! I had an obsession with firemen so that one line told me all I needed to know. Then when I found out he lived in London… Well, I was moving there from Manchester two weeks later. It had to be fate.

  ‘Can you remember what I said attracted me to you that night in Nottingham?’ Jason asked.

  ‘My fluffy wings?’

  He laughed. ‘The outfit certainly helped. But there was something that made me get your phone number at the end of the night.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘It was that you’d spent the day on a gorge-walking adventure. Any woman who’d spent the day abseiling, climbing and walking through waterfalls was worth getting to know better.’

  Oh! That was unexpected. I thought I’d told him it was a one-off for the hen do and I’d never have agreed to make up the numbers if I’d realised what was planned. Maybe I hadn’t. Probably wasn’t the moment to confess it now.

  ‘I’ve never had a girlfriend who enjoys being outdoors and keeping fit as much as I do,’ he continued. ‘I can’t believe I’ve found someone who loves to go to the gym…’ Didn’t he realise I tolerated rather than loved going to the gym? Obviously not.

  ‘… who enjoys mountain biking…’ Eek! I’d better not confess that my mountain bike hadn’t actually been stolen but was hiding in Clare’s garage because I’d have a coronary if I ever had to put myself through the extreme torture again that Jason described as a ‘gentle leisurely ride’.

  ‘… and hiking. It’s such a dream come true. I love that you have the same passions as me.’ He looked at me all dewy-eyed across the table and I tried to hold his gaze with confidence while my pulse raced. Oh no! I’d anticipated a proposal speech to be all about how happy I made him and how much he loved my company. Actually, that’s effectively what he’d said, but I so hadn’t seen it coming from that angle. I knew honesty was the foundation of a good relationship, but these were only little white lies, weren’t they? I mean, I did regularly accompany him to the gym, but mainly because he worked shifts so I’d hardly see him if I didn’t. And I did go hiking, but that’s because I loved being in the countryside, not because I liked to trample twenty miles across it. Perhaps the time for confession wasn’t when he was about to propose. It wasn’t like that was all we had in common. We did loads of other things together. The gym and all that stuff was such a small part of what we did… wasn’t it?

  Thankfully Jason’s scary fitness speech had ended. ‘You know you mean the world to me so I wanted to make you really happy on your birthday. I racked my brains trying to think of the perfect gift. I wanted to give you something you really long for so… here it is. The one thing I know you really, really want…’

  He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket. My heart leapt as he produced a small green velvet ring box. ‘Happy birthday, Sarah,’ he said, placing it in front of me.

  ‘Is this—?’

  ‘Open it and you’ll see.’

  With shaking hands, I eased open the lid. My stomach lurched as it opened wider and wider to reveal… What the…?

  There wasn’t an engagement ring inside.

  There wasn’t even a pair of earrings.

  There was a small key.

  I looked at Jason, then at the key, then back at Jason again. A thought struck me. He hadn’t got down on one bended knee yet so maybe this was the start of an elaborate game to find the ring. It would be locked in a tin in a suitcase in a safe or something like that and I’d have to follow a trail of rose petals and fairy dust. How incredibly romantic.

  He handed me an envelope. The first clue maybe? I tore the seal open and scanned the contents. Maybe not. My fist tightened, crumpling the edge of the paper.

  Dear Mr Wilkes & Miss Peterson,

  We’re delighted to confirm your six-month premium membership at The Fitness Factor. This is a fantastic investment in your health and wellbeing. Your exclusive membership guarantees a place in our most popular classes – no waiting lists for you – as well as a weekly premium-members-only pool session and climbing wall session.

  And you’ll have ex
clusive use of your very own lockers for the duration. We’re pleased to enclose your keys.

  Finally, we’ll be launching an exciting programme of outdoors adventures next year on which premium members will have priority booking.

  Thank you for choosing The Fitness Factor. We look forward to welcoming you both as premium members very soon.

  Your Fitness Factor Team

  He hadn’t, had he? Surely he hadn’t bought me a gym membership for my birthday. A joint membership. A gift for him too. I felt nauseous as that random speech about keeping fit and the great outdoors suddenly had a context.

  ‘What do you think?’ Jason shuffled in his seat with obvious excitement. ‘Is it the perfect gift or what?’

  ‘It’s great,’ I said, my voice sounding an octave higher than usual. ‘Thanks, Jase.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I knew you’d love it. How many times have you said you wished you had your own locker so you didn’t have to remember to take your shampoo and stuff when you go for a swim or sauna?’

  Cue flashback of us leaving the gym a couple of weeks ago. I mustn’t have zipped my bag up properly because my shower gel clattered onto the tiled entrance floor, spurting citrus gunk everywhere. ‘Do you know what I wish for right now…?’ I said.