Caroline Anderson, Sara Morgan, Josie Metcalfe, Jennifer Taylor

by Brides of Penhally Bay Vol. 01 (lit)

  ‘Does it go down to the beach?’ he asked, and the agent shook his head.

  ‘No. The plot’s quite small, just the half acre of garden the house sits in, but there isn’t really a beach here anyway, just a pile of rocks. You can get to the beach about half a mile away over the fields, though. They’re owned by the neighbouring farmer. It’s a lovely little cove and there’s quite a good road to it, too. It’s very pretty, and the path’s well maintained—it’s part of the Cornish Coastal Path—but, no, it hasn’t got beach access. Otherwise the guide price would be a great deal higher. There’s nothing the London buyers like more than their own private beach. And, of course, because the planners have ruled out any development of the site other than extension of the existing house within the realms of permitted development, that’s also going to keep the price a bit more accessible. That said, we’ve had quite a keen interest in the property,’ he added, as if he was worried he’d put Ben off. Or was it agent-speak for ‘This is highly sought after and you’d be foolish to miss it’?

  Maybe.

  Whatever, it was irrelevant to Ben. The house was awful at the moment, dingy and rundown and outdated, but it had the potential to be a lovely cosy family home, and it was Lucy’s dream. If he could get it for her without bankrupting himself into the hereafter, he’d do it.

  ‘I’m sorry to rush you, but I’ve got another viewing to get to. Could I leave you to go around the outside on your own?’ the agent asked, and Ben nodded.

  ‘Of course. I’ve seen all I need to.’ More than enough to make up his mind.

  He spent a few minutes looking around the outside, checking out the structure and exploring the rundown and tangled garden that Lucy obviously remembered through rose-tinted specs, and then he headed back to the hospital.

  To his relief Jo had coped without him, and it was still quiet, so he shut himself away in his office and rang his solicitor.

  ‘What’s the procedure for buying a house at auction?’ he asked. ‘Because I want you to do it for me. Friday, two o’clock, Tregorran House. And I don’t want to take any chances.’

  ‘Ah, Lucy. Got time for a chat?’

  ‘Dragan—hi. I’ve been meaning to catch up with you.’ She sat back in her chair and stretched out the kinks in her neck. ‘How’s Melinda?’

  ‘Oh, fine. Thank you both so much for sorting her arm out.’

  ‘Pleasure—well, hardly, but you know what I mean,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’m sorry you missed our meeting. How’s the dog?’

  He smiled. ‘Really sweet. She’s got a broken leg and a huge laceration on her side, but nobody’s come forward yet to report her missing. Melinda’s set the leg and she’s looking after her for now.’

  ‘No more biting?’

  He shook his head and smiled again. ‘No. She’s a sweetheart. She was just scared. Anyway, this meeting…’

  ‘Yes—really useful. Ben thinks we could do it. If we could build on out the back as we’d discussed, then he thinks it’ll be fine. Maybe reorganise upstairs a bit and have downstairs as a fracture clinic, essentially.’ She ran through the key points of their discussion. Dragan nodded at intervals, and then she sat back and stretched again and sighed.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Oh, Dragan, I’m so tired. Just the thought of another six or eight weeks before I can give up is enough to send me to sleep!’

  He frowned in concern. ‘Lucy, you shouldn’t be overdoing it. You should be resting now. We can manage.’

  ‘You’re sounding like my father,’ she pointed out, and he gave an embarrassed laugh and sat back.

  ‘OK, it’s not my job, but I care about you. We all do.’

  She flapped her hand at him, touched but still not having any of it. ‘I’m fine. I think we ought to have a meeting. Kate was talking about setting something up with the local NHS trust architect and Ben here on site, but Dad’s so anti.’

  ‘Don’t worry about him, Lucy. He wants what’s best for the patients.’

  ‘He’s just so blinkered,’ she said, thinking not only of the forthcoming meeting but also of the news she yet had to give her father—news that couldn’t possibly make the situation any easier.

  ‘I take it he doesn’t know?’

  She jerked her head up and met his eyes, her mouth already opening to deny everything, and saw the gentle understanding in Dragan’s eyes. She swallowed and looked away. ‘No. He doesn’t know.’

  ‘That will be hard.’

  ‘It will be impossible,’ she said softly, ‘but it has to be done.’ She sucked in a breath and straightened up. ‘Right, I have to get on. I’ve got a clinic in a minute. If you let Kate know when you’re free for this meeting, she’ll try and organise it.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ he said, and got to his feet, then hesitated. ‘Lucy, if there’s anything I can do…?’

  He left it hanging, and with a fleeting smile he went out. He was so kind and thoughtful. So was Marco. The two of them fussed over her like a couple of clucky old hens. It was only her father she had a problem with.

  And she was going to have to deal with it.

  Ben cooked the sea bass beautifully.

  Outside, on a charcoal barbeque with the lid shut, in the bleak and windy garden, and then brought them into the house with the skin lightly charred and the inside meltingly tender. He’d prepared a green salad and hot jacket potatoes, and then he produced the wickedest hot chocolate sauce pudding she’d ever seen in her life.

  ‘It’s a fabulously easy recipe—my mother taught it to me,’ he said with a grin, and put a big dollop of it on a plate and handed it to her. ‘Here, you need this,’ he said, and gave her a dish of clotted cream.

  ‘Define need,’ she said wryly, and he chuckled.

  ‘You have to have some treats. Anyway, it’s probably full of vitamin D.’

  ‘You don’t have to talk me into it,’ she said, plopping a generous spoonful onto the top of the chocolate goo and then tasting it.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said, and then didn’t talk any more for a few gorgeous, tastebud-melting minutes. Conversation would have been sacrilege.

  ‘Good?’ he asked when she’d all but scraped the glaze off the plate, and she laughed and pushed the plate away and arched back, giving her stomach room.

  ‘Fabulous,’ she said emphatically. ‘Assuming I don’t just burst. Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure. Coffee?’

  ‘Mmm—thanks. Can I help wash up?’

  ‘No—the dishwasher’ll do it all. You can go and sit down in the sitting room and put your feet up.’

  ‘Is that an order?’ she asked, and he tipped his head on one side and studied her closely.

  ‘That’s a loaded question,’ he retorted after a moment, a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. ‘I don’t think I’ll answer it.’

  Chuckling to herself, she went into the sitting room and curled up on the sofa, not because he’d told her to but because she wanted to anyway. She’d had a busy day, starting with Tony Penhaligan and ending with an overrunning surgery, and she’d hardly had a minute to herself in between. So she was more than happy to sit down, and after a moment she stretched her legs out, rested her head back and closed her eyes.

  There was a gorgeous smell of fresh coffee drifting from the kitchen, and she sniffed it appreciatively. It would set off the chocolate pud to perfection. She heard him come in, heard him set the tray down and felt the end of the sofa dip under his weight.

  ‘White, no sugar,’ she murmured, and he chuckled and rubbed her feet affectionately before pouring the coffee.

  ‘Here—sit up and open your eyes,’ he said, and she did as she was told, watching him over the rim of the mug as she sipped it.

  ‘Thank you for cooking for me,’ she said, wriggling her toes under his thigh.

  He smiled. ‘My pleasure. Thank you for the sea bass.’

  ‘I’ll pass it on to the Penhaligans. Good day?’

  His eyes flicked away, his attention turning to his c
offee. ‘Yes. Very good. Busy. How about you?’

  ‘Oh, busy, too. I phoned you during the afternoon to try and set up a time for this next meeting with the architect, but they said you were out of the department.’

  ‘Mmm—I had a meeting,’ he said, but he didn’t elaborate. Not that he had to tell her everything about his life, of course he didn’t, and if he started poking about in her life she’d be less than impressed, but somehow she felt excluded, and she didn’t like it. She wanted, she realised with some surprise, to be entitled to know who he’d met with and why. Probably someone on the hospital management committee, the chief exec or something, nothing interesting at all—but it would have been nice if he’d told her, or if she’d had the right to ask.

  Which was just plain silly. They hardly knew each other. Just because they had an unfortunate tendency to end up in bed every time they met, it didn’t mean they were part of each other’s lives!

  And then he said, ‘Stay with me tonight,’ and she felt an overwhelming urge to do just that. To go to bed with him, to curl up in his arms and sleep, just as she had last night. She hadn’t slept so well in ages, but she couldn’t let herself be lured into it so readily. It would be all to easy to let it become a habit, and until her father knew…

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, with genuine regret, and he sighed and smiled ruefully.

  ‘I knew you’d say that.’

  ‘It’s just…’

  ‘Difficult? I know. Lucy, if you want me there when you tell him—’

  ‘No!’ she said quickly, sitting up so fast she nearly slopped her coffee. ‘No,’ she said again, more calmly this time. ‘I just need to find the right moment.’

  He nodded, then looked down at her feet, giving them undue attention. ‘I do love you, you know. I wasn’t just saying it this morning.’

  She put the coffee down, very carefully, on the table that was conveniently in reach, and stared at him. ‘You do? But you hardly know me.’

  ‘Rubbish. You haven’t changed. We spent six months together when you were on your A and E rotation.’

  ‘And you had a girlfriend!’

  ‘Not for all of it. I ended it because she wasn’t what I wanted. I hadn’t known that until I met someone who was, and then it gradually dawned on me that I was with the wrong woman. And because I wanted to be sure, I gave us time, because I felt that this could really be it—the once-in-a-lifetime thing. Then you got to the end of your rotation, and shortly after that—’

  He broke off and looked away again, and she finished for him, ‘My mother died, and it all went horribly wrong.’

  He nodded, and for a moment neither of them spoke, then she said softly, ‘Ben, what if I’ve changed? What if I’m not the woman you think I am? What if time’s altered your perception of me and I can’t live up to your mental image?’ She swallowed, facing her fears head on. ‘And what if you don’t live up to mine?’

  He glanced over, a quick frown pleating his brow, and he searched her face. ‘So we’ll take it slowly,’ he suggested at last. ‘Give ourselves time to get to know the people we are now. But to do that, we need to spend time together, so we have to find a way to do that.’

  She nodded, knowing he was right. Marriage was for life, as the saying went, not just for Christmas, and she wasn’t sure if they knew each other well enough yet for such a huge commitment. But if everything was right between them by then, she’d much rather they were married when the baby was born, old-fashioned though it might be. Some things, she thought, were meant to be old-fashioned. And if they were to get to know each other, they had to spend time together, despite her father complicating the issue.

  ‘This weekend?’ she suggested. ‘I’m off from Friday after my morning surgery until Monday morning.’

  ‘Sure. That would be good. I’m on call tomorrow night, but I’ve got the afternoon off on Friday. I’ve got things to do but we could meet up when I’m done. I’ll book us a table somewhere for dinner on Friday night—perhaps in Padstow—and then we can come back here and chill for a couple of days. Go for a walk, toast crumpets, whatever—what do you think?’

  She nodded again, even the thought enough to make her feel more relaxed. ‘Sounds blissful,’ she said with a smile. ‘And now I really ought to go home so I don’t fall asleep at the wheel.’

  Or succumb to the seductive charm of those gorgeous blue eyes…

  He helped her up, held her coat for her, tucked it around her to keep her warm and kissed her lingeringly before waving her off, then went back inside.

  What if I can’t live up to your mental image? And what if you don’t live up to mine?

  He felt a tense knot of something strangely like fear in his chest. Please, God, by the weekend he’d have something good to tell her. Something that hopefully would help a little with the mental image she had of him?

  Oh, hell. What if it didn’t? What if it was just nostalgia for the house and not a real urge to live there? And what if he didn’t get the house after all? What if, despite all his preparation, despite getting the money sorted, pinning his purchaser down to a date, getting his solicitor to bid for him over the phone and sort out the paperwork—what if, despite all that, he was quite simply outbid at the auction? If the price just went up and up and up until it was out of his reach?

  Lucy stared out of her consulting-room window across the car park to the sea beyond the harbour wall, her emotions torn.

  He loved her. He’d said it as if he really meant it, not in a moment of passion, not as a passing farewell like before, but quietly, thoughtfully.

  And she so, so wanted to believe him, but there was a bit of her that was afraid he was talking himself into it because of the baby. Because he wanted to create the image of the perfect family, and that was the first step, the cornerstone.

  Maybe he genuinely believed he did love her, but she was too scared to believe it.

  Her phone rang, and it was Hazel, the head receptionist, to tell her that her first patient had arrived. Even the thought exhausted her. She’d been busy yesterday, and no doubt today would be the same. She hoped not, because otherwise she’d be too tired by tomorrow to enjoy her long weekend with Ben. But putting it off any longer wouldn’t make it go away.

  As she’d expected, the day was hellish, and she fell into bed exhausted at eight o’clock. She heard the phone ring in the sitting room, but she’d forgotten to bring it into her bedroom because she wasn’t on call, and by the time she’d decided she ought to get up, it had stopped ringing.

  Oh, well, if it was important they’d ring again, she thought, but whoever it was didn’t. She could dial 1471 and check, she thought, or see if there was a message.

  She fell asleep again, then had to get up in the night because the baby was wriggling around on her bladder, and on her way back to bed she checked the answering-machine and found a message from Ben.

  Damn. She should have got out of bed and taken the call, and really wished she had. She played the message, sitting in bed with the phone, listening to his voice and wishing she was with him.

  She played it again. ‘You aren’t there, or maybe you’re having an early night. It’s not important. I just wanted to talk to you. It seems odd not seeing you two nights running. Take care. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Then a pause, then, ‘Love you.’

  She looked at her bedside clock. Two-thirty in the morning—too late, or too early, to ring. Except he was on call—so either he was working or he would be asleep. Either way, she couldn’t really disturb him, and he wouldn’t ring again.

  She sent a text to his mobile.

  ‘Thanks for message. Early night. Looking forward to w/e. Lucy.’ And then, for good measure, ‘X’. She nearly put ‘Love you’ like he had, but it seemed too massively important to risk getting it wrong, and when she did tell him, if she ever did, she wanted to see his face.

  Suddenly the afternoon seemed much, much too far away…

  Ben didn’t want to be at the auction.

  He
wasn’t sure if Nick Tremayne would be there, but he didn’t want to risk it. He didn’t know how the man would feel about him buying the house, but frankly he didn’t care. This wasn’t about Nick, it was about Lucy, and if he’d thought enough of the place to hold on to it for several years, then once he and his daughter had sorted out this glitch in their relationship, Ben was sure that keeping the house in the family could only be good for all of them.

  But Lucy was his primary concern, and he had so much riding on it he felt sick.

  He’d booked the time off, but now he wished he hadn’t. He couldn’t go home and sit there, though, just waiting for the phone to ring, so he drove to the house. Well, almost. He didn’t want to push his luck, tempt fate, whatever. So he sat in the car, just down the lane, and rang his solicitor.

  He got his secretary, and asked her to get him to ring as soon as there was any news.

  ‘I’ll call you on another line,’ she promised, ‘while Simon’s bidding—that way he can talk to you at the same time, give you a chance to decide how you want to play it.’

  He felt the tension ratchet up a notch. ‘OK. I’ll keep the phone free,’ he promised, and plugged in the charger. He wasn’t going to lose the house because of something stupid like a flat battery.

  There was a woman up on the headland, leaning into the wind, her clothes plastered against her body and her hair streaming out behind like a figurehead on an old sailing ship. Except—this figurehead was pregnant. Lucy? Yes, Lucy—standing there, keeping vigil, saying goodbye while the house was sold out from under her.

  Well, hardly, because she didn’t live there, but emotionally it must feel like that, he realised, and he felt the tension ratchet up yet again. He had to get it.

  The phone rang, startling him, and he grabbed it.

  ‘Ben—it’s Simon. We’re on. I’ve got the auctioneer on hands-free so you can listen in and talk to me at the same time.’