A Secret, A Safari, A Second Chance. Liz Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ tell me you’re planning to live with that look permanently if you get the job?’

      She’d worn a conservative grey suit and pinned her hair up as tight as humanly possible for the interview and had somehow reached the shortlist. It had been the perfect excuse to keep her visit to her ailing grandmother as short as possible.

      The best-laid plans...

      ‘I had to call them when Nana died to let them know that I wouldn’t be available for a second interview.’

      ‘Surely, under the circumstances, they would have waited?’

      ‘They could have held the post for another week, but the cottage was an unforeseen complication,’ she said. ‘Since I couldn’t give them a date, I had to step down.’

      ‘You weren’t expecting to inherit your grandmother’s cottage?’ Martha asked, surprised.

      After the way she’d left, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Nana had left it to her cat. The creature was old, bad-tempered, and the rest of the family had, as one, taken a sharp step back when she’d raised the question of rehoming him.

      ‘I didn’t inherit it,’ she pointed out. ‘Nana left it, and everything in it, in trust for Hannah.’

      The lawyers had made it plain that her plan to invite the family to help themselves to furniture and anything else they wanted, get a firm in to clear out what was left and leave it in the hands of a realtor, was not an option.

      ‘I should probably sympathise with the lost opportunity,’ Martha said, ‘but good teachers are always in demand. You can’t sell the cottage, but you and Hannah could live there. Stay on the island and let your hair grow out. Someone has to take care of that cat,’ she added.

      With the summer approaching, Eve had to admit that it did sound a lot more appealing than going back to supply teaching in London. Apart from the cat.

      Unfortunately, Hannah’s father wouldn’t stay in the southern hemisphere for ever, forcing her to face the decision she’d been avoiding for so long that it now felt...impossible.

      And she wouldn’t be able to hide behind the muddy brown for ever.

      She’d be for ever on edge, never knowing when she might turn a corner, with not just hers but Hannah’s unmissable bright red curls blazing in the sunlight, and find herself face-to-face with the man who’d lived up to his reputation as a serial love ’em and leave ’em playboy.

      ‘Once I’ve sorted out the family stuff and put it into storage I’m going to freshen up the cottage and put it on the rental market to build up a college fund for Hannah,’ she said, aware that Kit Merchant wasn’t the only one on the run.

      ‘Or you could sublet your London flat and put that money in the bank,’ Martha pointed out. ‘Unless there’s some pressing reason to return to London? You never talk about Hannah’s father. Does he support her? Does she see him?’

      ‘N-no—’ It would have been the perfect excuse, but then she would have had to invent some man, a relationship that had gone off the rails. She’d told Hannah that she didn’t see her father because he lived in another country but that he had been kind when her mama had been very sad.

      Her best friend at preschool had a daddy who lived in Australia so she’d accepted it without question.

      For now.

      She knew that if Hannah was ever to know who her father was, she would have to tell Kit, but she was very afraid that he wouldn’t want to know.

      ‘He was there at a bad moment,’ she told Martha. ‘That’s all.’

      True, and less embarrassing than admitting that her precious daughter was the result of a one-night stand at a beach party with her mother’s ashes barely in the ground.

      Shame had sent her running back to England and then a pregnancy that would have caused gossip, raised eyebrows, a stain on her mother’s memory, had kept her away.

      Her daughter had turned three at the beginning of May, time enough, she hoped, for dates to have blurred.

      ‘Did you ever tell him about Hannah?’ Martha asked.

      ‘I... No,’ she admitted. ‘He was long gone before she arrived.’

      To say that Martha pulled a face would have been an exaggeration. There was the slightest movement of muscles, more than enough to show her disapproval. ‘And now you’re hiding out, afraid to get involved again.’

      ‘It’s simpler this way.’

      ‘Men do tend to complicate life,’ Martha agreed, ‘but they add a little spice. You’re a single mother, Eve, not a nun.’

      ‘Martha! I’m shocked.’

      ‘Are you?’ Her godmother could write an essay with the lift of an eyebrow. ‘Clearly you haven’t heard the rumour that it was my generation that invented sex as a recreational pastime.’

      It was perhaps as well that, having arrived at the entrance to the ballroom, Martha didn’t wait for a response, but reached for a glass of champagne.

      ‘This is stunning,’ Eve said, following suit as she took in the magnificence of the ivory-and-gold ballroom.

      She’d never been to the resort as a girl, although she’d instantly recognised Kit Merchant when he’d left the party to come and talk to her.

      She hadn’t wanted to talk, and she was pretty sure he hadn’t followed her for the conversation. A local hero, he could probably have had any girl on the beach, but they were his kid sister’s friends, pretty and no doubt keen to attract his attention. Trouble, in fact, which might have accounted for his eagerness to get away.

      Normally, she’d have told him to get lost, but she’d been a mess. Her mother had just died, and her father hadn’t felt the need to fly in to support her at the funeral. Her boyfriend had felt the same way, sticking to his plan to go backpacking around Europe during the spring break rather than fly to Nantucket, and she’d dumped him by text from the airport.

      She’d been at the party because her cousins’ arms had been twisted to take her with them and she had only gone to get away from another miserable night sitting in with Nana.

      She had been desperate for someone, anyone, to put their arms around her, to hold her, and Kit had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

      Not that he’d failed her. Far from it. No doubt used to females throwing themselves at him, he had responded with some truly outstanding sex. Not the wham, bam, anonymous stuff she’d expected, had wanted right there on the beach to drive away the pain. Instead he’d grabbed her hand, racing with her to his beach hut where they’d had hot, mindless sex, as if they were both desperate to blot out the world. But then he had slowed everything down. They had drunk a rich red wine under a star-filled sky before making slow, sweet love; the kind that could break your heart. That you would never forget.

      She swallowed, looking at the men in dinner jackets, the women in their beautiful clothes, and had a moment of regret for the head-turning red curls, wishing she were wearing something a little less...classic.

      Wanting, СКАЧАТЬ