She turned to leave the shop and that’s when a little table caught her eye on which was a large cardboard sign which read, “Staff recommendations”. And there in the middle of the display were three of Callie’s very own books from her Perdita series, including a reprint of Perdita’s Key – the book which Sam was trying to find her a first edition of.
She breathed a sigh of relief and beamed a smile at one of the shop assistants as she left.
Heidi had grabbed a seat in a quiet corner of the small cafe and was there waiting for Callie.
‘I’ve ordered two huge hot chocolates to fend off the cold,’ she told Callie who nodded in approval. ‘So, tell me everything that’s been going on with your wild man of the woods!’ Heidi insisted after giving her friend a warm hug.
‘Oh, you know,’ Callie said evasively.
‘No, I don’t know,’ Heidi said, ‘because my so-called friend doesn’t keep me updated with all the gossip! Honestly, Callie – normal girlfriends text each other all the juice every five minutes.’
‘But there isn’t any juice,’ she said, wrinkling her nose at Heidi’s use of that particular word.
The hot chocolates arrived and Callie hoped that Heidi would change the subject, but quickly realised that that wasn’t going to happen.
‘So, you’re telling me that nothing is going on with the gorgeous Leo Wildman? You’re not totally immune to his tremendous masculinity, are you? I mean, a blind nun would be tempted by him!’
‘Heidi!’ Callie cried, but she couldn’t help but laugh at her friend’s outrageous comments.
‘Don’t tell me you’re still not over Piers because I won’t believe you.’
Callie stirred her hot chocolate. ‘He visited me.’
‘Nooooo! When?’
‘Last week,’ she said. ‘He wants us to try again.’
‘You’re kidding!’ Heidi said. ‘What did you do? What did you say?’
‘What do you think I said?’
‘I don’t know,’ Heidi said. ‘I can never quite tell with you.’
‘I told him it was too late,’ Callie said.
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Heidi said. ‘For a minute there, I thought the reason things were on hold with Mr Wild Man of the Woods was because you were rekindling things with your ex.’
‘Please! Give me some credit.’
‘I can’t believe the nerve of him. He ignores you when you’re living in the same house as him, but suddenly drives to the middle of Suffolk once you’re gone.’
‘I know,’ Callie said. ‘I pointed out that we were getting divorced and that I’d bought my own house. He genuinely seemed to have forgotten those details. But–’
‘What?’ Heidi asked.
Callie took a deep breath. ‘He did say sorry.’
Heidi swallowed hard and reached out across the table to take Callie’s hand. ‘I should think so too,’ she said. ‘But that’s way too little way too late, isn’t it?’
‘We can never be together again,’ she whispered. ‘I feel like the part of me that loved Piers died along with our baby.’ Tears swam in her eyes.
‘Now, don’t you go getting all upset about it all again!’ Heidi said, her voice firm. ‘You have made yourself a brilliant new life and virtually have the whole of the male population of Suffolk after you.’
Callie smiled.
‘Anything happening with that bookshop guy, by the way?’
Callie dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, glad that her friend had moved the conversation away from Piers. She’d had her fill of him that day.
‘I had lunch with him,’ she said.
‘You had lunch with the book guy and didn’t tell me?’ Heidi’s eyes widened and she shook her head in exasperation.
‘Lunch with him and his whole family. Well, most of them. One of them was away, I think.’
‘You went to his house?’ she said. ‘I’d say that was pretty serious.’
‘Not really – it was quite by accident,’ Callie explained. ‘And it wasn’t his house; it was his parents’ house. His car broke down in my village, I gave him a lift and his mum insisted I stay for lunch.’
‘Well, I’d say that is far more serious than him inviting you round to his own home,’ Heidi said.
‘It was just a casual thing.’
‘A friend thing?’ Heidi said, suspicion in her voice.
‘Exactly,’ Callie said.
Heidi nodded. ‘So, let’s get back to Mr Wildman,’ she said with a naughty twinkle in her eye. ‘How do you feel about him? I mean, really?’
Callie looked thoughtful. ‘Leo’s so carefree,’ she said at last. ‘He’s so much fun to be with and I feel so light and breezy around him.
‘Light and breezy is good,’ Heidi said, ‘especially as you said you didn’t want anything serious.’
‘But–’ Callie paused. What was she trying to say? That she knew she wasn’t the light and breezy sort of girl? That she could never just have a fling because she wasn’t made like that.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly changed your mind about that?’ Heidi said. ‘Have you?’
Callie sat staring at her empty cup. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’ Heidi’s eyes narrowed as she scrutinised her friend. ‘Have you gone and fallen in love?’
‘What?’ Callie cried.
‘Because that would be exactly like you, Caroline Logan! You’re a hopeless romantic and you would sooner fall head over heels in love than have a nice light-hearted fling, wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said defensively.
‘Yes you do,’ Heidi said, ‘and you’re blushing. I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve fallen in love, haven’t you?’
Callie didn’t say anything; it was probably best not to because, until Heidi had mentioned the word love, the truth of the matter hadn’t really registered with Callie, but it was true, wasn’t it? Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she’d been falling in love, even though she’d done her very best to shut those feelings down inside herself.
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ Heidi went on, squeezing her hand again. ‘Really wonderful. Good for you.’
But whereas Heidi was talking about Leo Wildman, Callie was thinking very much of Sam Nightingale.
Chapter 18
Once Bryony Nightingale had an idea in her head, there was no stopping her and there was definitely no shutting her up.
‘Come on, Sam – it’s a brilliant idea!’ she said, pacing the carpeted area of her children’s bookshop, her long patchwork skirt swishing madly in a medley of colour.
‘I don’t know,’ Sam said, scratching his chin and generally looking uncomfortable.
‘I don’t see what’s not to love about this,’ she said. ‘I run a children’s bookshop, and a children’s writer – one of the most famous of the last five years – has just moved to Suffolk and is already best friends with my brother.’ She gave him a cheeky little grin.
‘But you saw how awkward she felt about the whole thing when you were pressurising her on Sunday.
‘I wasn’t pressurising her!’ Bryony said.
‘No? Are you sure about that?’
‘I was just being enthusiastic.’
‘Oh, is that what it was?’ he said.
‘You know what I’m like,’ she said, unclipping her wild curly hair and stuffing the pin in her mouth as she twisted her ponytail and retied it.
‘I do know what you’re like, but Callie looked absolutely petrified by that enthusiasm and I really don’t think you should push things with her. I want to keep her as my friend, all right?’
‘Do you?’ Bryony said.
‘Of course I do.’
‘Just as a friend?’ Bryony asked.
‘Don’t start that again,’ Sam said.
‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘I worry about you.’
‘Yeah, well don’t.’
‘Everyone’s worried about you after that
awful business with Emma and her mad brother.’
‘That’s all in the past,’ he told her. ‘I want to forget about it.’
‘Yes, but it’s only the very recent past and you’re still letting it affect your present,’ she said, sinking down onto a beanbag.
Sam groaned. ‘You sound exactly like Mum,’ he said, flopping down on a beanbag opposite his sister, his long legs bent like a grasshopper’s.
‘Which proves my case exactly,’ Bryony said. ‘Everyone wants to see you happy again, Sam, and that can’t happen when you refuse to let love into your life.’
‘Good grief, Bry – have you been reading some self-help manual?’
‘No I haven’t. I got that phrase from an online dating agency. “Let love into your life” is their slogan,’ she said with a giggle.
Before Bryony could continue the examination of her brother’s love life, the little bell above the door tinkled and a young man with neat, sandy-coloured hair entered the shop.
‘Hi Colin,’ Bryony said. Tellingly, she didn’t get up from her home on the beanbag.
‘Just taken a batch of fruit scones out of the oven,’ he said with a grin. ‘Thought you might want first refusal.’
‘Oh, you do know how to spoil a girl,’ Bryony said. ‘Bring half a dozen round. What I don’t eat will go straight in my freezer for evenings in front of the TV.’
‘Sure thing,’ he said with a nod before leaving.
‘Are you two seeing each other?’ Sam asked as soon as the door was closed.
‘Not yet,’ Bryony said. ‘Not officially.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means– ‘ Bryony paused and puffed out her cheeks.
‘It means you’re hoping somebody better will come along and sweep you off your feet in the way that poor old Colin the baker never could?’
‘Sam Nightingale! What a thing to say,’ she said in outrage.
‘So I’m right, then?’
She sighed. ‘Colin’s just – well – Colin, isn’t he?’
‘You could do a lot worse than Colin,’ Sam said. ‘He’s a good guy.’
‘I know,’ Bryony said, flapping her hands in the air, ‘but he’s not terribly exciting, is he? I can’t imagine ever getting really excited about being with him and that’s not right, is it? Love should be mad and thrilling, shouldn’t it?’ She looked at him with wide brown eyes dancing with light.
‘You’ve never really got over Ben, have you?’ Sam said.
Her mouth dropped open. ‘I thought I told you never to say his name again,’ she snapped, getting up from her beanbag.
‘So it’s okay for you to put my love life under the spotlight, but it’s not okay for me to talk about yours?’
‘That’s right,’ she said.
He shook his head and got up from the beanbag. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m off.’
‘Oh, don’t go, Sam!’
‘Bry – we just seem to be goading each other.’
‘But I didn’t mean to goad you,’ she said, crossing the shop and putting her arms around him, and how could he be angry with her when she did that?
‘You’re such a girl,’ he told her.
‘And you love it,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek.
When he returned to his own shop a moment later, Grandpa Joe was waiting for him at the till.
‘You missed a huge rush of sales,’ he told his grandson.
‘Did I?’
‘Nope,’ he said with a wink before shuffling off in his slippers to his favourite sofa in the back room where he was reading a book about the history of cinema. He would occasionally read little bits and pieces from it in an attempt to convince Sam that he was actually reading it and not just looking at photographs of Brigitte Bardot.
Standing in the silence of the shop, surrounded by millions of words, Sam wished he could formulate at least a few of his own to describe how he was feeling. But the truth of the matter was, he’d been trying not to think about how he was feeling over the last few days. Or months. It had all been much too painful. But his whole family seemed determined to make him think about it all.
So, what was going on with him? He’d been telling everyone he was fine. He was getting over Emma, or at least he had been until that nasty business with her brother. He’d made himself a great little home in the flat above the shop. It was a tad smaller than the marital home and there wasn’t a lot of furniture, but he was happy enough there and the commute to work was, of course, unbeatable. Work was good. In the secondhand book trade, one could always happily use a few more sales here and there, but business was generally good. He had nothing to complain about and no real worries, so why were his family so concerned about him?
But he knew why. Sam had always been happiest when he was in love, from the early teenage girlfriends he’d bring home to lunch, to the serious relationships throughout his twenties, to his marriage with Emma. There hadn’t been much time in his life when he hadn’t been involved with someone. Maybe that’s where he’d been going wrong, he thought. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be with anyone. That was the message he’d taken from the disastrous marriage, and his brief flirtation with the idea of dating again when he’d met Callie Logan had been well and truly trounced by her rejection. If only his family would let him get on with the business of being a born again bachelor.
‘Like that’s going to happen,’ he said, picking up a rather battered copy of love poems by the Romantics and putting it back in its rightful home.
Callie had done her best to throw herself back into her novel as soon as she’d got home from London, and she’d done her very best to stop thinking about Sam Nightingale too, only that wasn’t so easy. When she’d made up her mind to leave Piers, she’d told herself that she was never going to let herself fall in love again. She just couldn’t put herself through that sort of pain a second time. But the human head and the human heart were two very different things and Callie hadn’t been able to stop the feelings that seemed to be surfacing whenever she thought about Sam.
She thought about the easy way they talked to each other, sharing their passion for books and the written word, she thought about his gentle humour and his warm smile, and she thought about that desperate look on his face when he’d asked her out and she’d said no. Had he truly forgiven her for that, she wondered? She’d probably lost him forever because of her abruptness and she was regretting it because, although they had a lovely friendship, she had a feeling that it would never be anything else now because of the night she’d told him no.
Sitting at her desk, she felt so unutterably sad about the whole thing and couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if she’d said yes to Sam. That was one of the curses of being a writer: one spent far too long thinking about the ifs and maybes of life.
‘If I’d said yes, where would we be now?’ she whispered into the empty room, allowing herself a brief moment of daydreaming about finding a soulmate in Sam Nightingale who would help erase all the heartache of the past. But then she silently cursed herself for even going there with her silly ifs and maybes. She would just have to forget about him and the whole Nightingale family. Maybe it was best if she never even went into Castle Clare at all. She’d probably be better off shopping in Bury St Edmunds or driving into Cambridge.
She was just printing out her latest chapter so that she could edit it the old-fashioned way – with a red pen – when the phone rang.
‘Callie?’
‘Hello?’ Callie said, not recognising the woman’s voice.
‘It’s Bryony. Bryony Nightingale.’
‘Hello,’ Callie said, instantly on her guard.
‘I was wondering if you’ve given any thought to doing an event in my children’s bookshop.’ Her voice was warm and light-hearted, and Callie immediately felt guilty because she knew she was going to say no.
‘I haven’t, I’m afraid,’ she said.
‘It would be an honour – a real honour – to have you in our littl
e shop. We have great links with the local primary school and the reading club at the library. It would be so much fun. The kids would love it. They’re a really brilliant bunch in Castle Clare too. I’m sure you’d love them. So what do you think?’
‘I – erm – well–’
‘Now, I know we can’t promise tube posters like your big London events, but we can run to a few simple A4 posters and flyers.
Callie didn’t know what to say so she said nothing which meant there was an awful pause.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Bryony said at last. ‘Sam told me not to push things with you and I’ve gone and pushed anyway.’
‘What did he say?’ Callie asked.
‘He told me not to be a bully and to leave you alone, but I can’t. I just can’t! I found your business card in that big old book Sam keeps in the shop and, well, you’re a children’s author and I’m a children’s bookseller. That’s a match made in heaven, isn’t it?’
Callie couldn’t help but smile at that.
‘I just had to push this a little bit more,’ Bryony went on. ‘I hope I haven’t offended you.’
‘You haven’t offended me,’ Callie assured her.
‘Oh, good!’ Bryony said. ‘Because I’d never forgive myself if I had and Sam would absolutely kill me if he found out I was ringing you. He’s very fond of you, you know?’
‘Oh?’
‘And he’d absolutely kill me if he knew I’d told you that as well.’
Callie caught her breath. Sam Nightingale was fond of her and he’d told his sister not to bother her. Did that mean he cared about her?
‘Bryony?’
‘Yes?’
Callie was on the verge of saying no, very politely but very firmly, but then she remembered all the fears and insecurities that had surfaced when she hadn’t been able to find her titles in the little bookshop in London and, although she’d finally spotted some of her Perdita books, they might easily have been overlooked or not even in stock. There were so many variables in the publishing business and she would be considered truly mad by her fellow writers at turning down such a wonderful opportunity as doing an event with Bryony. It was publicity on a plate and, what was more, it might actually be good fun.
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