‘Maybe if I were drunk I’d take a Picasso-esque turn. I think I’d have to be tanked to create what he did.’
Grey blobbed more red paint onto the plate, screwed on the tube’s lid and set it down, then sat back and picked up his glass of beer. ‘To be honest, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Picasso is the only artist I can remember from what we learned at school. That’s why I said his name. Or is it a her?’
Stop engaging with the enemy. Inner frustration rose as he mentally slapped himself about the cheeks. Was this Amethyst’s fault? Was her being here, causing Hannah to relax and be herself, making him like her more? Or was it a case of being polite in front of his guest? Not wanting to make their evening awkward by avoiding Hannah?
The last one. Definitely.
And even if it wasn’t, he refused to admit it to himself.
Hannah met his gaze and shook her head, her lips curling up with amusement. ‘You never did have any idea when it came to art.’
‘Never wanted to,’ Grey shot back.
‘You don’t know your art from your armpit.’ Hannah snort-laughed, and Grey joined her despite knowing they were treading on territory he’d deemed unwalkable. “No talking about the past”. Worse, he’d been the one to bring the past up. He was breaking his own rules. Although, was it really breaking a rule if it had nothing, or at least very little, to do with their former relationship?
‘You two have known each other forever, huh?’ Amethyst picked up a paintbrush, and with a nod of permission from Hannah began to dab green along the edges of the pencil outlines Hannah had created.
‘Mum reckons we used to gurgle at each other from the moment we discovered we could make sounds.’
The hint of a smile on Hannah’s face grew wider, and warmer, triggering uncomfortable feelings inside of Grey. Feelings he’d been trying to ignore, to stamp out, since he’d first felt them earlier that day in the truck.
Reconnection. Happiness. Homecoming.
Every shared joke, every smile, each memory of a happier past shared stirred up feelings for Hannah he’d long refused to think about. Preferring to shove them in a tiny box, which he’d pushed deep to the back of his mind, wrapped chains around and padlocked, then poured concrete upon for good measure.
Liar. You never forgot. You couldn’t if you tried.
He closed his eyes to the voice of truth. It was right, of course. For all his ‘not thinking about Hannah’ promises, he’d thought only about Hannah.
Each thought twisting and turning, morphing from hurt, into pain, eventually settling into anger. Anger felt safe. Anger kept his heart in check. Stopped him from making the same mistake again. From trusting, from falling, from being left without a second thought. Again.
Once bitten twice shy?
Turns out he was a slow learner. It took two bites, both of which stung equally as badly – first, his father leaving, followed by Hannah – for him to rein in his trust once and for all. Since then it had been easier, safer to keep people – even the Beety family – at a distance.
‘That really is forever.’ Amethyst turned her startling emerald-green eyes in his direction, her brows rising, waiting for his take on he and Hannah’s situation.
If there was a time to put some space between him and Hannah, to remind her that all was not forgiven, and never could be, it was now.
‘Not quite forever. We hadn’t spoken for ten years up until Hannah’s most recent return. It wouldn’t be wrong to say I know nothing about the adult Hannah.’
He let the fact sit between the trio. The longer the silence grew the tauter the tension in the room became.
Amethyst unfurled her long legs and stretched them in front of her. ‘Well, I would say “unresolved issues, much” but I’d hate to be making an all too obvious point.’ She reached and out and hooked her fingers around the sides of her feet, then pulled herself downwards, causing one side of her face to be shielded by a sheet of hair, hiding whatever expression he suspected she was directing at Hannah.
‘Unresolved would be understating it, Ams.’ Hannah picked up a clean brush, dipped it in a bright red paint and began dabbing the strawberries into life. ‘But Grey has made it quite clear that he doesn’t want to talk about the past. I’m trying to respect that.’
‘Indeed.’ Amethyst released the stretch then rolled her shoulders backwards. ‘Maybe that’s the right thing to do…’
Grey braced himself for the truth bomb he could hear coming a mile away…
‘Or maybe it’s not. My therapist says it only hurts us more in the long run if we hold on to things. If we don’t talk things out and get closure.’
Grey stifled a snort. Therapist? Closure? Hurting more? He was expecting a truth bomb not a bunch of hippy-dippy lying-on-the-couch talk.
Besides, he couldn’t hurt any more than he had when Hannah first left. It was impossible considering these days all he felt was numb. At least, that’s what he told himself he felt, even if that didn’t explain the renewal of the anger he’d done his best to smother when he first saw Hannah standing by her rental car[HN38], or the tingles of renewed interest that kept sparking up.
‘Does that derisive snort you tried to hide just now mean you don’t believe you can move on? Or you simply don’t want to?’ Amethyst nudged Grey’s knee with her foot. ‘Because from where I’m sitting I see a whole lot of stubborn.’
‘Ams.’ Hannah’s tone was steel, even though the word was soft. ‘Leave him alone. He has every right to his feelings. And it’s not like we’re tearing each other’s throats out. The fact that we’re sitting in the same room and the smell of certain death by hatred isn’t in the air is more than I could have ever asked for.’
A series of three beeps filled the air. Hannah’s mobile lit up, a smile stealing over her face when she saw who it was.
‘Matt wants to know if I want to meet him up at the pub in a bit.’ She looked up at Amethyst. ‘You want to come, Ams? He’s a good guy. I think you’d like him. You come too, Grey. If you want.’
‘Matt’s got your number?’ Grey glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Could he sound any more put out? Or jealous? ‘What I meant to say is, since when did you two become such good friends?’
Grey cringed as soon as the words were out. Nope. The second attempt at sounding not possessive was no better.
‘Matt got your tongue, Grey?’ Hannah winked, and Grey tried to ignore how cute she looked with the tip of her tongue peeking between her lips as she smiled.
‘Is this a case of setting a Matt amongst the pigeons?’ Amethyst chimed in with her own wink and a crinkling of her nose.
‘More of a case of curiosity killed the Matt,’ Grey shot back, then groaned as he realised what he’d said. ‘Not Matt. I’m not going to kill Matt. He’s a good worker. Just… give the dog a bone on all this cat/Matt talk, okay?’ He pushed his hands together. ‘I’ll even shout a round if you shut up.’
‘And I’ll shout all the rounds after that, Grey, if you promise to call me Ams all night. No Amethyst. No Jackson. Just Ams.’
Grey nodded his agreement even though he had no idea what Amethyst was on about or why she was so intent on him using her nickname. ‘Will do, if that’s what you want.’
‘Well then, that’s that settled.’ Hannah finished texting, then set her mobile down and began to gather up her brushes. ‘Right, I’ll clean this up and I’ll see if Grandad can run us to the pub.’
‘And I’d better hop across to the cottage and change into something a bit more pub-appropriate.’ Amethyst stood up, pulled a hair tie out of her short’s pocket and tied her hair into a low bun.
‘Go for the short brown.’ Hannah nodded.
‘Perfect.’ Amethyst agreed. ‘Spot on.’
Grey looked between the girls and tried to understand what they were on about. Amethyst in her white linen shorts and navy blouse was in perfect pub attire. What she needed a ‘short brown’ for, whatever that was, was beyond him.
Still
, who was he to try and figure females out? He’d been trying to ever since Hannah up and left, and all that pondering had never gotten him anywhere.
It certainly hadn’t gotten him closure.
‘Remember that time we were on set and that dick of an actor wouldn’t stop calling you sweetheart or baby and kept accidentally brushing your bum every time you had to touch up his lip balm, which was every ten seconds, since I swore he licked it off the moment you got close just so he could get all handsy?’
Hannah shuddered and screwed her face up in disgust at the memory. ‘Such a cretin. At least he stopped when I added chilli powder to my “especially made for him to suit his lip tone” balm. It was totally worth losing the job over.’
‘You didn’t?’ Matt leaned in towards Hannah, so they were almost shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm. ‘I mean, clearly you did, but I can’t believe it. You seem so…’
‘Goody-two-shoes?’ Hannah held her hands up under her chin and batted her eyes, giving him a butter-wouldn’t-melt look. ‘I am. Mostly. But “the dick” as Ams so eloquently put it, wouldn’t take no for an answer and I had to take matters into my own hands. My bum is my bum and no one else’s.’
‘No one else’s?’
Matt’s grin widened, and Grey had to forcibly loosen his fists, which he’d had to keep hidden under the pub’s table so no one – no one being Amethyst, since it seemed nothing got past her – saw how much Matt’s flirting with Hannah was getting to him.
‘No one else’s… currently.’ Hannah widened her eyes then relaxed them.
Grey’s fists clenched once more, partly at Hannah’s flirtatious return, but mostly because he was bothered by his own reaction to said flirting. He shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t be irritated. Shouldn’t be secretly, just a little, glad that Hannah was single. That her heart hadn’t been stolen by another.
Stolen? Like it still belonged to him? He picked up his pint glass and took a gulp. He was being an idiot. Thinking like one too.
‘What about you, Grey?’
A foot connected forcefully with his shin under the table. He didn’t have to look to know it came from the bearer of the question. Amethyst, now known as Ams, her alter-ego. With her short brown wig, simple tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses and not a scrap of makeup, he wouldn’t have picked her as the famous woman she was in a million years. And, despite asking her if they’d met before, Matt hadn’t caught on, and Grey guessed that was why Amethyst was able to relax and be herself.
‘Does your bum belong just to you? Or are you sharing it with someone else?’
Grey quickly swallowed his mouthful before he spat it over the table. Was Amethyst flirting with him? He eyed the brown liquid warily. Had the brewer put something in this batch to make those drinking it amorous? Usually his conversations at the pub circled around the weather, football, farming and eventually descended into who should win the latest season of whatever dance show or bake off was currently on the telly.
‘Er, me. Just me. My bum is single. Er, solo.’ Prickly heat washed over Grey and he looked down at the floor and silently begged it to open and swallow him whole. And to preferably never spit him out again.
‘And does your bum like flying solo?’ Amethyst pressed, seemingly unaware of his discomfort, or – knowing how good she was at reading people and situations – refusing to acknowledge it in order to get him to open up.
‘Ams, give Grey a break.’ Hannah’s voice was amused, but kind. ‘He’s gone as red as a strawb. You’ve embarrassed him.’
Grey felt a light touch on his forearm. He glanced at it and saw trimmed fingernails, with traces of dirt. Hannah’s hand. He thought to pull away. Not wanting her touch upon him. But there was something so comforting, so caring, so real about the weight of her hand upon his arm that he couldn’t bring himself to.
‘Ignore her, Grey. She’s so used to people asking her anything and everything, giving no thought to her own comfort zones, that she does it to others.’
‘Ay? What are you on about?’ Matt’s attention turned to Amethyst. ‘What did you say you do again, Ams?’ He angled his head to one side and then to the other. His expression, not for the first time that evening, was that of someone who thought he knew someone from somewhere but couldn’t figure out from where or how, let alone who.
Amethyst ran her hand over her brown bob, then straightened her glasses. Actual, for real glasses, she’d confided in Grey as they left his cottage to pick up Hannah. Ones she wore at home, but never out in public. Unless, like now, she wanted to go unrecognised. Then if she wore the specs with a wig, no one looked twice at her. No one saw the blonde bombshell.
Matt stroked his dusting of beard thoughtfully. ‘Do you surf? Have I seen you at the beach?’
Amethyst laughed. ‘No. I don’t surf. Or go to the beach all that often.’
Grey followed Hannah’s lead and held his tongue. Gave nothing away. If Amethyst wanted her cover blown, it was up to her to blow it.
‘I’ll figure out where I know you from.’ Matt nodded decisively. ‘Or I’ll tickle you until you tell me.’
‘Information by torture.’ Hannah shook her head and clucked her tongue disapprovingly. ‘Here I was thinking you were a good guy.’
‘Oh, I’m good. Very good.’ Matt left the entendre hanging in the air for a few beats as he took a mouthful of beer then set his glass down. ‘Only the luckiest of ladies figure that out, eventually.’
‘Oh, you didn’t just say that.’ Hannah rolled her eyes and playfully shoved Matt’s arm, sending his beer, which he held in mid-air ready for another sip – flying up and over the rim of his glass and into Amethyst’s lap.
Amethyst leaped up and began dabbing at the wet patch in her lap, which was spreading further with every second.
‘Of all the days I choose to wear white linen shorts,’ she muttered as she swiped ineffectually at the stain. ‘I can’t stay here looking like this. What will people think?’
Grey stood up and waved his hand in the air, catching the landlord’s attention. ‘John? Tea towel?’
A blue and white checked tea towel flew through the air two seconds later. Grey caught it and passed it to Amethyst. ‘Don’t know that it’ll do much, but it’ll stop your knickers showing through if you drape if over your lap. Means we won’t have to leave…’ His ears burned with embarrassment once more as he realised what he’d just said. Just suggested. ‘Not that I can see your smalls. Or that I was thinking about them.’ He put his hands up surrender-style and hoped Amethyst believed him. Wouldn’t call him out. Or take offensive. ‘Because I wasn’t. Honestly. Truly.’
His beer appeared to magically levitate in front of his face.
‘Drink it. Breathe,’ Hannah instructed, ‘and relax.’
‘What Han said.’ Amethyst settled back into her seat, the tea towel covering her shorts. ‘And don’t worry, I know you weren’t being pervy. You’re not that type of guy. This one here, however…’ She jerked her thumb in Matt’s direction. ‘We can’t be so sure about.’
‘Hey.’ Matt held his hands to his chest, his mouth dropping into a pout. ‘I’d be wounded, but you’re not wrong.’
He started to laugh, and Amethyst and Hannah soon joined him.
Grey stared at the three and wondered what the heck he’d gotten himself into, agreeing to have a beer with this mad trio.
He caught Hannah’s eye, and she doubled over in a fresh bout of laughter.
‘Your. Face. Grey.’ The words were panted out. ‘Hil. Air. Rious.’ Her eyes were closed as tears streamed down her cheeks. Her mouth open to reveal two rows of perfectly straight, white teeth, except for the one lower canine that had always jutted out, just a tad, in the cutest way.
He tried to tear his gaze from a still-laughing Hannah. Couldn’t. As he’d struggled to for most of the night. Not when Hannah was being Hannah, his Hannah, the one he’d fallen in love with the moment he knew how. Fun. Funny. Open and free.
What would it be like to be like that? To r
elax, to laugh, to joke…? Maybe even to flirt.
Because it seemed with this group, you could flirt all you wanted and it didn’t have to mean anything.
Even if, in his case, whether he liked it or not, it still did.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hannah finished up the smoky eyeshadow look she and Amethyst had decided would look good with the clothing she’d be wearing on the shoot, then bent over and dabbed a green colour corrector on Amethyst’s chin, her cheeks and around her nose, and shook her head in despair. ‘I knew we shouldn’t have stayed for that last beer. Look at the state of you.’
‘Hannah, mind your tongue.’ Jill chided as she settled onto her bed, a mug of tea in hand. ‘That’s not how we speak to guests.’
Hannah and Amethyst had agreed to set up her makeup station in her parents’ bedroom. The light was good, it was more private than the kitchen or sitting room, and it would give her mum a chance to get to know Amethyst better.
‘Amethyst is not technically a guest.’ Hannah glanced over at her mother, her heart lifting as she noted the sparkle in her eyes, the fullness returning to her face, then picked up a brush, returned her attention to Amethyst and began to blend the green cream out. ‘She belongs to Grey.’
Amethyst rolled her eyes. ‘God, you make it sound like he and I are a thing.’
Hannah picked up her foundation palette and eyed the one she used on Amethyst in the summer when she’d caught a bit of sun. ‘Pretty sure I caught wind of something between you two. All that talk of bums…’
‘Really?’ Jill sat up straighter. ‘Tell me more. I’m starved of news. All your father does is report on how the strawberries are going and what the weather’s looking like. Your grandfather just asks me if I’m feeling better. And your gran twitters on about everything and nothing, while checking my temperature every ten seconds even though I tell her I’ve not got one. I swear her palm is imprinted on my forehead.’
Amethyst tilted her head as Hannah began to dot foundation on her face. ‘Grey’s a friend. Of the reticent, putting-up-with-me variety. No more. Besides…’ She reached out and lightly held Hannah’s hand, stilling it. ‘I wasn’t the one Grey couldn’t keep his eyes off. I get the feeling that you two have way more of a history than you’re letting on. My spiritual advisor would say there’s some past-life resolution that needs to be done, although I think the past-life part is more to do with the current life.’
Sunrise at Strawberry Farm: As delightfully delicious as strawberries and cream, this is the perfect summer romance to read in 2020. Page 10
