Mo’s disappointment was overwhelming, and suddenly she felt very foolish. The dress she’d borrowed from Summer, the heels that were pinching her toes, the time spent taming her wild curls into ringlets and applying make-up – none of these things were her at all. What on earth had she been thinking, playing these games and dragging kind and generous Richard into them? If she wanted to see bloody Ashley then why the hell hadn’t she just charged over to Mariners, barged the Pollards out of the way and hammered on the door until he answered it? That was what the old Morwenna Tremaine would have done.
What had happened to her lately?
“You look stunning,” Summer said encouragingly when Mo and Richard joined her and Jake at their table. As always, Summer was looking model gorgeous; she really did look like a goddess this evening, in the simple Grecian style one-shouldered dress she’d chosen. Jake could hardly take his eyes off her – and nor could several of the other men in the room.
“I feel absolutely stupid,” Mo muttered, but it wasn’t really her outfit she was referring to. Helping herself to a bread roll and slapping some butter on it, she decided that she may as well enjoy the food. Simon’s sun-dried tomato and Parmesan bread was to die for.
“You really do look wonderful,” Richard whispered into her ear. “I’m the luckiest man in the room to be here with such a beautiful woman.”
Mo nearly choked on her bread roll at this and the doctor had to hit her hard on the back, which rather spoiled the effect of his words. It took Mo several glasses of water to clear her windpipe again. In that time, Jules had said grace, the chowder starter had been served and every bowl had been scraped clean. It was hard to get her puff back in such a tightly corseted dress, and Mo was still red-faced and wheezing even now. Ella looked on with delight, which was hardly any wonder: a quick glance in a spoon revealed that Mo’s mascara had run and her carefully arranged hair had mutinied against the hours of styling to boing back into a riot of curls. She looked like something from an eighties-themed night. Great. That was all she needed.
And of course it was just at this moment that the restaurant door flew open and Ashley Carstairs strode in. Once again Mo found that she was struggling to breathe, but this time she couldn’t blame her brother’s baking. There was a rushing in her ears and the restaurant seemed to swim.
Tall, broad shouldered and simply dressed in a white shirt, dark jeans and another beanie hat, Ashley drew all eyes to him. He’d lost more weight though, Mo noticed. His face looked even more finely sculpted than ever and there were tense lines around his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. For some reason her heart lurched. Something was wrong; she just knew it. But what? And how could she kid herself that she knew anything about him at all?
For the briefest of seconds an expression of surprise flickered over Ashley’s face when he glimpsed Mo beside Richard. Then his usual deadpan expression returned, before his lips twitched upwards in a sardonic ghost of a smile. It looked to Mo as though he nodded too, although it was just the slightest of gestures. He was turning his attention to Kelly now, who was waiting to collect his ticket.
“Sorry, I’m late, Vicar,” he said to Jules, handing the ticket to Kelly and passing her his jacket. “It’s been a busy day.”
A busy day doing what? Mo wondered. He’d not been seen in the village, his boat hadn’t been touched for weeks (if Jake was surprised by Mo’s sudden interest in all things nautical then he was wise enough not to say so) and his horses had yet to enjoy a visit. Still, he did look exhausted. There were violet smudges under his eyes and his stubble suggested that even shaving would be an effort.
“Shall I take your hat?” Kelly asked, holding out her hand.
What was it with that bloody hat? He’d even been wearing one when they’d been up on the cliffs. It wasn’t a vanity issue, she was certain of that. Ashley Carstairs oozed confidence and self-assurance.
Ashley stepped back quickly. “No thanks, angel. Bad hair day. I’ll leave it on, a bit like the Tom Jones song.”
Kelly looked blank. She was probably trying to work out which boy band Tom Jones was in.
Ella screeched with laughter as though this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard and flicked her blonde mane about like a show pony. Mo felt like drowning herself in her cold chowder. This had been a big mistake. Why hadn’t she just stayed at home with her horses?
While Ashley took his seat in between Ella and Silver Starr, Mo knocked back her champagne and tried to feign interest in a long-winded tale old Dr Kussell was telling about Polwenna in bygone days. As much a fixture in the village as the harbour wall and the seagulls, the doctor was retelling the story of the secret smugglers’ passage rumoured to run from the caves beyond the beach to the cellar of The Ship. Mo had heard it all a hundred times, but newcomer Richard was agog. She supposed that at least it saved her making conversation.
As she picked at her main course, a delicious bass in lemon butter, Mo sneaked a glance across the table. As if Ashley’s total indifference hadn’t stung enough, she saw now that Ella was talking to him animatedly and treating him to a view of her racked-up boobs. Why she didn’t just shove the trio of fish off his plate and serve herself up as the main course, Mo had no idea.
Summer put her fork down and laid a hand on Mo’s arm.
“Babe, are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” said Mo. It might have been true – if feeling like somebody had ripped her heart out and was trampling all over it in steel-capped rigger boots was fine, that was.
“You’re stabbing that poor bass as though you’ve got a personal vendetta against it,” Summer commented.
“I think it’s well and truly dead,” agreed Richard. “I won’t attempt CPR, if it’s all right with you.”
“Just checking it for bones,” Mo said. Across the room Ashley was laughing at something Ella had said. Stab, stab, stab, went Mo’s knife. God, Ella was lucky it wasn’t a voodoo bass.
“If you don’t like bones you could swap for my risotto?” Richard offered, ever the gentleman.
“If you don’t like bones, why have bass?” said Jake. “Mo, you’re being bloody weird lately.”
Summer shot him a warning look. “She’s working too hard, that’s all.”
“She’s always worked hard,” Jake pointed out.
“There are quite a few bones in her fish,” said the diplomatic Richard.
Enough was enough. “I am here, people!” Mo said. “I’m just not that hungry, that’s all.”
“Not hungry?” Her brother’s blue eyes widened. “OK, now I am worried. Mo, you’re always hungry. You’re a bottomless food-eating pit and this meal is fantastic.”
Jake was right. In fairness to Symon, the meal was perfect and it wasn’t his fault that Mo’s taste buds had decided to turn to cardboard.
No, seeing your arch-enemy make a play for the man you were in love with would do that. As, of course, would suddenly realising that you were head over heels in love with Ashley Carstairs.
She was in love with Ashley Carstairs? How the bloody hell had that happened? She hated him. He wanted nothing to do with her. They had nothing in common.
But none of this seemed to matter in the slightest to Mo’s heart. She had been such an idiot thinking that coming here tonight was going to make a difference. She’d thought that if Ashley saw her again, looking like a woman rather than a walking haystack, and with a good-looking man in tow, his reaction would be… would be…
Mo wasn’t actually sure what she’d thought it would be, but she was pretty certain that polite indifference hadn’t been on the list. Mo, governed by her heart, couldn’t bear this. She had to talk to him. She had to! Something very odd was going on and she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until she discovered what it was.
While the meal continued and the courses kept on arriving, Mo felt as though she was having an out-of-body experience. The bustle of the restaurant, the chinking of cutlery against china and the bubbles of chatter seemed to fade, and
all she could see was Ashley’s head in that hat. Sensing her, he turned and their eyes met for a fleeting moment before he gave her a brief shrug and returned his attention to Ella and Lucas. Mo couldn’t have eaten even if she’d wanted to; her throat was too tight with misery. Instead, she reached for her wine glass. By the time coffee was served she was starting to feel light-headed.
“Go on! It will be such a laugh!” Issie’s excited voice scraped through Mo’s thoughts like fingernails down a chalkboard. Having finished her meal, her younger sister had abandoned Teddy St Milton and, holding her hand out with the palm upwards, was pleading with Silver Starr. “Read mine! Go on! Please?”
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly,” demurred Silver, hand to her throat and bracelets jangling.
“No, she really couldn’t possibly,” Jake whispered to Richard, who was looking taken aback. “She’s about as psychic as this table.”
Mo wasn’t so sure about this. Hadn’t Silver drawn the Lovers from her tarot pack on the day of the Water Carnival? And hadn’t Ashley arrived just at that very moment? Although the crowded restaurant was warm, the fine hairs on her arms stirred.
“Please, Silver?” pleaded Issie. “Just my palm.”
With much feigned reluctance, Silver reached out and took Issie’s small hand in her own. Leaning forward, swathes of her hair swinging in front of her face, she peered myopically at Issie’s palm.
“I see travel!” she declared theatrically. “You will cross the water.”
“I do that every day when I walk over the bridge to the village shop,” Issie pointed out. “Could you be a bit more specific?”
“You’ll see stars,” Silver pronounced. “And one so bright it will almost burn itself out and you with it if you don’t take care.” She dropped Issie’s wrist and passed her own hand over her eyes. “Oh, it takes it out of me when the spirits are here.”
Jules frowned. “Silver, this is a church fundraiser. I’m not sure fortune telling is entirely appropriate.”
“Chill, Rev,” said Issie. “We’ve just done the sexy calendar, so this is nothing in comparison.”
Jules flushed. “And I’m not convinced that was a great idea.”
But Issie wasn’t listening. “The stars? What does that mean?”
“Maybe you’re going on the Mars mission?” Danny suggested. Turning to Silver, he added, “My turn now, please. Well go on! What are you waiting for? I’m holding my hand out.”
“Stop being mean,” Issie scolded him, while Silver looked in confusion at the empty sleeve where Dan’s right arm should have been. “Hey, Ted! Why don’t you have a go?”
“Go on then,” said Teddy. Mo got the impression that he would have done pretty much anything her sister asked, but then men generally did. She really must find out what Issie’s secret was. As Silver read Teddy’s palm and then Chris the Cod’s, Mo turned her attention back to Richard, who was professing a startling desire to learn to ride horses. Now would be a good time to swap her wine for coffee, she realised, so that she could come up with a sober enough argument to put him off. But their discussion was interrupted by the harsh scrape of chair legs over the Delabole slate floor and the clatter of cutlery as a diner rose in haste.
“I said, no! I don’t want my fortune read. What part of that can’t you understand, you stupid woman?”
Ashley Carstairs was on his feet and glowering across the table at Silver, who must have made the mistake of trying to include him. His eyes burned with anger and his face was dangerously pale.
“It’s just fun,” Silver said shakily. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Anyway, you’ve nothing to get upset about. I can’t see anything at all when I look at you. It’s ever so weird; there’s just blankness.”
Ashley slammed his hand on the table. All the coffee cups rattled in their saucers. “Are you as dim as you look? I said, no! But that’s never good enough, is it? What is it with people here who just can’t accept that I mean it when I say I’m not interested?”
Mo knew those words were aimed at her like deadly daggers into her heart. She bit her lip and stared down at the table, unable to face his contemptuous expression. Moments later the door slammed, making the whole restaurant tremble, and Ashley was gone, striding away into the dark and probably out of her life.
“What did I say?” Silver was asking, her voice still trembling. “I didn’t tell him anything, I promise. There was nothing to tell. He’s such a misery my guides don’t want to talk to him. They couldn’t see his future anyway. It’s like he doesn’t even have one.”
And then, in a swift and gut-wrenching flash of clarity, Mo suddenly understood everything. Oh dear God, how she wished she didn’t. She would have given anything to go back a few minutes in time to blissful ignorance, when Ashley was just a selfish bastard who had used her and didn’t give a damn how she felt. The truth, though, was the exact opposite.
Ashley was stepping away from her because Silver Starr was right. The clues had been there all along, if she’d only had the wit to see them rather than wallowing in her own insecurities and self-pity.
Ashley Carstairs was a man who feared he didn’t have a future.
Chapter 17
Ashley had come to realise that mornings were his best time of day. If he rose early enough he could manage maybe three or four chemical-free hours before the dull thrum of pain began to beat against his temples – although with every day that passed, the misery began a little sooner. Ashley hated to admit defeat but, after an hour or so of it, he had no choice but to give in and take the heavy-duty painkillers his consultant had prescribed. Come lunchtime he was already slowing down; by mid-afternoon he was heavy-eyed with more drugs; and once the evening fell it was as much as he could do to drag himself upstairs and into bed. Not taking the tablets, as he’d discovered the night before, was no longer an option. The pain was unbearable and his temper, never great at the best of times, became more explosive than Semtex.
Ashley wasn’t going to think about the events of the previous evening, or at least not until he had a mug of coffee in his hand and was sitting outside on Mariners’ terrace, looking out to sea and watching the sun rise. This silent pink-and-peach dawn was his golden time in every way; there was no point in spoiling it. Each day he treasured those wonderful few moments on first waking, when everything seemed normal. Then, even as the bleak realisation stole back in with the sun’s first rays, at least he was rested enough to feel something like his old self. How much longer this would last Ashley had no idea. He guessed it wouldn’t be very long at all, if his consultant was on the money – but for as long as he had some normality, Ashley was determined to cling onto it.
It was funny how your world could turn upside down so suddenly, Ashley reflected as he stood barefooted in his half-finished kitchen. Even a few minutes waiting for a kettle to boil seem like a waste of precious time. He glanced around Mariners, a breathtaking architect’s wet dream of open spaces and huge windows framing the sea into a moving work of art, and felt his guts twist that it was so close to coming together, yet maybe not quite close enough. He’d moved in even though the place was unfinished. He didn’t like to think about why he’d felt the need to do so; maybe it was down to the look on his consultant’s face last time they’d spoken or perhaps the insidious sapping of his energy. How ironic that for a guy who had it all – the cars, the boats, the houses and more money than he could ever spend in this lifetime – he couldn’t buy the one thing he really wanted. Ashley would give everything he owned away in a moment if it meant that he could have more time with Mo, or even any time at all. The pain of knowing that they would never stand a chance and that he could never tell her how he truly felt was worse than anything this bloody tumour could throw at him.
Don’t think of her! Ashley told himself sharply as he sloshed boiling water onto the granules and stirred the drink vigorously. Think of how you need to call the office and check in with the Vice Director. Think about that shopping-complex development you’ve te
ndered for. Christ, he’d even think about reading through the notes the consultant had given him. Anything but think about Morwenna Tremaine.
It was too late. There she was in his mind’s eye, her hair a fiery halo of curls and her eyes bright with life, just as they had been last night at the meal. Seeing her there had been a shock and it had taken every bit of self-control he possessed not to just stride across the restaurant and pull her into his arms. She’d looked at him and the hurt in her eyes when he’d barely acknowledged her had felt like a blow to his stomach, as had the realisation that Mo had been sitting with the doctor. Doctors weren’t high on Ashley’s list of favourite people at the moment and the murderous rage he’d felt towards Richard Penwarren had shaken him to the core. And when that stupid old hippy had started on about not being able to see his future? Well, that had been the final straw. Never mind the hammering in his skull; he’d had to leave before he really lost his temper.
Mo living her life is what you wanted, Ashley reminded himself sternly as, barefoot and coffee in hand, he padded across the rough unfinished floorboards to the French windows. Dust and wood shavings drifted in front of him, dancing in the air before falling softly back to the ground. Would he ever see these wooden floors waxed and polished? he wondered. From what he’d been told last week this was looking less and less likely, which was why he should be pleased that Mo was spending time with the doctor. Better that than wasting time with him.
You wanted her to be free to find somebody she might actually stand a chance of being with long term, he reminded himself sharply, remember? That was the whole point of his stepping right away. Letting Mo think he was just a bastard would be easier for her in the long run, wouldn’t it? Far easier than allowing herself to grow close to somebody who was about as likely to be there for her in six months’ time as the Pollards were to finish this bloody house before—
A Time for Living: Polwenna Bay 2 Page 16
