One Summer in Cornwall

by Karen King

  ‘This is our home, Buddy,’ she said to the parrot who was cheerfully nibbling at a piece of apple. He lifted his head and stared at Hattie, then squawked, ‘Bloody hell!’

  She grinned. She could hardly believe it too. Fisherman’s Rest belonged to her. She didn’t have to move. She could stay here in Port Medden, the little town she had come to love. Living next door to Marcus.

  Would he be pleased? she wondered.

  She’d just made herself a cup of frothy coffee and was tucking into a slice of chocolate cake when there was a knock on the door. She sighed, hoping it wasn’t Jonathan come to try and talk her into changing her mind. He hadn’t been very happy when Owen had phoned that morning to say that they weren’t going ahead with the sale. Perhaps if she ignored it he might think that she was out and go away. She took another bite of her cake.

  There was another knock on the door. Whoever it was, wasn’t going to give up.

  She swallowed down the cake in her mouth and got up and went to answer the door. To her surprise, it was Marcus standing on the doorstep, not Jonathan.

  ‘I saw your dad go out and, well, I wanted to talk to you. Can I come in for a few minutes?’

  He looked a bit awkward. She wondered if this was about the painting again. Maybe he’d got it back and was going to show it to her. She had said she wanted to see it.

  ‘Sure.’ She turned back towards the lounge, leaving Marcus to close the front door behind him and follow her through.

  As soon as he saw Marcus, Buddy started hopping on his perch and whistling. ‘Where you been? Where you been?’

  Marcus grinned and walked over to the cage. ‘Working, mate,’ he said. He dug around in his pocket, pulled out a grape and handed it to the parrot, who took it with great delight.

  ‘I’m going to miss him.’ Marcus turned around to Hattie. ‘And you. That’s what I came to say, really. That I’m going to miss you. Lots. I wish I hadn’t wasted so much of the short time we had together being so disapproving and snarky. I wish we hadn’t had that stupid mix-up with Estelle. I wish we had longer together. And –’ he gazed at her – ‘I wanted to ask you if we could maybe go out for a goodbye meal tonight?’

  Was he saying that he didn’t want her to go? ‘No,’ she said simply.

  She saw his face cloud over. He nodded briskly. ‘Okay. I understand. Sorry if I got it wrong.’

  He went to march past her, his face tightly set, but she grabbed his hand. ‘No, because I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here. Dad’s selling the cottage to me. I’m paying him so much a month.’

  Marcus’s eyes held hers. ‘You’re not leaving?’

  She shook her head, hardly daring to breathe. Was he pleased? He looked stunned. Did he love her? Had she got it all wrong?

  Then Marcus’s face broke into a wide smile and he held out his arms. ‘That is the best news ever.’

  She went into his arms and nestled against his chest. Was he pleased as a friend? Because he could still see Buddy?

  Marcus wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly. Then he said softly, ‘Hattie . . .’

  She eased herself out of the embrace a bit to look at him. ‘Yes . . . ?’

  ‘I love you.’

  He was gazing down at her, with such tenderness in his eyes that she knew he meant it.

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Really?’

  She nodded. ‘Really.’

  He pulled her closer, his mouth seeking hers, and then she was lost in the passion of his embrace.

  Much, much later, as they lay entwined on the sofa, their clothes a tangled heap on the floor where they had discarded them before making love, Hattie thought that she had never felt happier. She was home.

  ‘I think I fell in love with you the first time I set eyes on you,’ Marcus whispered in her ear. ‘Only I didn’t know it then.’

  ‘When you walked in on me naked in the kitchen, you mean?’ she said.

  ‘Well, you did look incredibly gorgeous. Then you glared at me with fire flashing in your eyes, swiped the tablecloth of the table and wrapped yourself in it while you stood your ground and argued with me. How could I resist?’

  She groaned. ‘I must have looked ridiculous.’

  ‘You looked incredibly sexy, and feisty. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you, Hattie. You’re so natural, so warm and easy-going.’ He pulled her closer to him and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I tried so hard to fight it because I knew you were leaving, and in my experience long-distance relationships don’t work out. But I couldn’t bear you to leave with us at loggerheads. That’s why I came around today.’

  She snuggled into him. ‘I felt the same. I didn’t want to admit I loved you because it would complicate things. I knew we had to sell the cottage, but Dad saw how much it meant to me, and I think he realised how much we meant to each other too, so he said he wanted me to have Fisherman’s Rest, to keep it in the family. He’s sold his half to me really cheap and letting me pay it monthly.’

  ‘That’s brilliant.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Mandy could see that we loved each other too. She told me that you were meant to stay in Port Medden. Her intuition told her that you wouldn’t leave. It seems that she was right.’

  ‘I’m glad. I don’t want to leave,’ Hattie murmured as she nestled into his chest. ‘This is exactly where I want to be.’

  Marcus lowered his head and kissed her. ‘And this is exactly where I want to be too.’

  ‘Night, night!’ Buddy squawked. ‘Time for bed!’

  ‘I think Buddy is right. Shall we go up?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘That sounds like a very good idea,’ Hattie agreed.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Two weeks later

  Hattie’s breath caught in her throat as she stared up at the painting of Buddy. It was so lifelike, the colours so vibrant. Marcus had caught the cheeky parrot’s personality so well. She couldn’t believe that this one hadn’t won first prize. Marcus really was talented.

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ she told Marcus, who was standing by her side. ‘I can almost feel the feathers. I expect Buddy to open his beak and squawk “Bugger off!” any minute.’

  ‘It is spectacular, and I’m sure it would have won a prize, but an artist is only allowed one award no matter how many paintings they enter, and the one of you is absolutely stunning,’ said Lady Thomwell, who was standing on the other side of her.

  Hattie felt her cheeks flush. She felt a bit uncomfortable being the centre of such attention, and still hardly believed that Marcus had secretly painted a portrait of her and entered it into this competition.

  ‘You must be dying to see it?’ Lady Thomwell said, turning to look at her.

  She was. Yet she felt self-conscious too. She nodded. ‘I am curious.’

  They carried on walking along the room. Marcus held her hand as they gazed at the different paintings on the wall. There had been so many talented entries, what had made them choose Marcus’s painting of her? Hattie wondered.

  ‘Here we are, my dear,’ Lady Thomwell said.

  Hattie looked up at the wall, then gasped at the woman who almost leapt out of the frame at her. Black-leather clad Hattie, straddling her motorbike, the zip of her jacket undone enough to reveal the top of her sun-kissed breasts, her unruly blond hair blowing behind her in the wind, her ruby-red lips parted in a half-smile, her sapphire-blue eyes twinkling with mischief. She looked sexy, wild, exciting. And anyone who looked at this painting would have no doubt that the artist loved the woman in it. Love was there in every stroke of the brush, every tiny detail, breathing so much life into the painting that it looked as if the rider might rev up the bike any moment and come racing out of the picture. It took her breath away looking at it and knowing that Marcus had painted it in secret. That he had refused to sell it because this was his memento of her. His declaration of love, even if maybe he hadn’t realised that at the time. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. Then she realised that Marcus an
d Lady Thomwell were waiting for her reaction.

  ‘It’s . . .’ She sought around for an adequate word to describe it. ‘Amazing,’ she plumped for, even though that sounded so lame. She turned to Marcus. ‘I can’t believe it’s me. It’s so . . . alive.’

  ‘Which is how I see you. Alive. Free.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘And incredibly sexy.’

  She felt her cheeks flush again.

  ‘It’s an arresting portrait. The judges were apparently unanimous in their decision to award it first prize,’ Lady Thomwell said. ‘And it’s this portrait that made Estelle realise that she didn’t stand a chance with you.’ She was talking to Marcus now. ‘The love for the subject is so evident. It leaps out at you.’

  So, she wasn’t the only one who had seen that. Marcus had painted her out of love. He had secretly loved her all those weeks. Just as she had secretly loved him.

  ‘Can we have a photo of the artist and the woman in the painting together?’ a photographer asked.

  Hattie and Marcus obliged, standing hand in hand in front of the painting. Then they were both interviewed, the reporters wanting to know how Hattie had felt when she realised Marcus’s secret painting of her had won first prize. ‘Astonished, proud . . . honoured,’ she said, smiling at him.

  Much later, when they got back to the hotel they were staying in for the night, Marcus wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. ‘Do you like the painting?’

  ‘I love it!’ she nestled into him.

  ‘I’m sorry I did it in secret, I should have told you, but that would have meant . . .’

  ‘Telling me how you feel?’ she asked gently.

  He nodded. ‘And I wasn’t ready to confess that yet, not even to myself.’

  ‘Neither was I,’ she admitted. ‘I needed time to get used to Port Medden, to fall in love with this place first, before I admitted I loved you. I had to make sure that I was staying here for me, not for you, that I would be happy to still live here if you didn’t love me.’

  ‘And would you?’ he asked softly.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I feel like it’s my home, I never want to move.’ She looked up at him, suddenly serious. ‘But I am glad that you love me. It would have been so hard to see you every day, otherwise, and to see you with someone else.’

  ‘That will never happen,’ he promised. And then they were kissing again. And then the kissing deepened and they were making love.

  The next morning, they set off for the journey back to Cornwall in Lady Thomwell’s chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. The two paintings were in the boot.

  ‘Let me know if you ever want to sell one of those paintings, Marcus,’ Lady Thomwell said when they had pulled up at the back of the cottages and Marcus and Hattie were taking the paintings out of the boot. She smiled as her eyes rested on Hattie. ‘Although, I doubt if you ever will.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he told her. ‘They are absolutely not for sale.’

  They waved as Lady Thomwell drove off, then looked at each other. ‘What are you going to do with the paintings?’ Hattie asked him.

  ‘Well, I was going to hang them up in my lounge to remind me of you and Buddy when you’d left,’ he said.

  ‘But now we’re not going . . .’

  ‘I’m going to put the one of you in my bedroom, so that you’re the first thing I see when I open my eyes every morning,’ he said, kissing her.

  ‘And the one of Buddy?’

  ‘I thought you might like that. You could do with a couple more paintings on your walls.’

  She smiled. ‘I would love it. If you’re sure.’

  ‘Absolutely sure. Now, how about I take my painting in, then come and hang yours up for you?’

  ‘I’ll leave the catch on the door for you and put the kettle on,’ she told him.

  Buddy was pleased to see her when she walked in, squawking, ‘Hello, Hattie!’ and dancing along his perch. Seeing how happy he was to have company again gave Hattie an idea. When Marcus arrived a few minutes later with the painting of Buddy, she asked him to put it up on the wall opposite the cage, so that Buddy could see it. As she had thought, the parrot was fascinated with the painting. He cocked his head on one side, whistled, then started talking to it.

  Marcus grinned. ‘I think you’ve found the perfect solution to Buddy being lonely when you’re out.’

  ‘It’s so realistic, it’s incredible,’ she told him.

  She looked around the cottage and breathed out a sigh of happiness. ‘I can’t believe this is my home. I’m so glad I don’t have to leave it.’

  ‘So am I.’ Marcus wound his arms around her and kissed her. ‘I can’t imagine my life without you.’

  ‘I don’t even want to think of mine without you,’ she replied. Then they were in each other’s arms again, their kisses deepening, their caresses getting more urgent, and the coffee went cold.

  Much, much later, they made fresh coffee, and a sandwich, then went for a walk along the beach, hand in hand. As she gazed out across the shimmering ocean, Marcus’s arm around her shoulder, Hattie thought that this was exactly where she wanted to be, by Marcus’s side. Forever.

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