“It’s freezing out here. Why don’t we have a quick five-minute beachcombing competition to see who can find the most pieces of glass, or pottery?”
Bella wasn’t surprised when her mother immediately agreed. “Go on then,” she said, not wishing him to see how relieved she was that he had cheered up slightly. “Let’s split up and meet back at the stairs in five minutes.” Bella checked her watch. “Right, go!”
Bella watched Jack run for a few yards. Her heart pounded. She couldn’t help imagining what it must be like to be taken in his arms and kissed. Lucky Nicki. Stupid Nicki, for trying to make him return with her to London.
“Stop daydreaming about Jack,” her mother whispered, snapping Bella out of her reverie. “Get looking for glass. If he catches you gazing at him like a lovelorn teenager he’s going to know you’ve got a thing for him.”
She turned to her mother and opened her mouth to argue.
Claire raised a finger and shook her head. “Don’t waste your time, young lady,” she smiled, giving Bella a kiss on the cheek. “I might live away, but I know you well enough to be able to read you like a favourite romantic novel. Now…” She pretended to look at something in her hand and spoke through the side of her mouth. “He’s looking over here and probably wondering why he’s the only one taking part in this mini competition.” She pushed Bella lightly. “Go and scavenge, before he suspects what’s going on.”
Bella didn’t need telling twice. She should have known her mother would have worked out how she felt about Jack. Claire had always been perceptive, especially when you didn’t want her to be. Bella spotted a small shiny orb in the wet sand and bent down to inspect it. Picking it up carefully between two fingers, she wiped it against her trouser leg and saw that it was a marble, but a very old one. She popped it into her jacket pocket and carried on walking slowly along the beach, by the tidemark where the sea had most recently reached its height at high tide.
She could hear Jack cheering and it made her smile. She glanced over and saw him wiping a small piece of something in his hand before dropping it in his trouser pocket. She heard a seagull calling out for its mate and watched as two of them swooped and dived near to the café. Someone must have brought food outside, she decided, looking to see if it was anyone she knew.
“Hey, Dilly Daydream,” Jack called. “Are you still with us, or are you more interested in those birds?”
“Shut up, Jack,” she said, unable to help laughing at his teasing. “I’m doing fine, thank you very much. I’m looking to see what treasures you’ve discovered.” She pulled up her sleeve and checked her watch. “Only two minutes left.” She really didn’t have a clue when the five minutes were up, but thought it would give her enough time to find a few more bits to add to her marble.
Spotting a strange-shaped pebble, Bella bent to pick it up and brushed off the excess sand. There was nothing beautiful about it, but she liked its shape and in the absence of any gems, this would have to do.
“Okay, time up,” Claire called, coming back to join them. “Hold out your hands and let’s see what we’ve all found.”
Jack liked Bella’s marble. “I haven’t seen anything like that before,” he said, examining the odd-shaped stone. “What do you think of this?”
She picked up the opaque ruby-coloured bottle stopper, its shine dimmed by years of being washed against grains of sand, and smiled. “You can still clearly see what it was originally,” she said, studying it from all angles. “Which is amazing, bearing in mind that it’s been bashed about in the sea for years. I love it,” she admitted. She placed it back in Jack’s palm and turned to Claire. “Mum? What did you find?”
Her mother gave her a telling look, so that Bella couldn’t miss her mother’s surreptitious message that her main discovery had been about Bella’s secret feelings towards Jack. She glared at her mother. “Well? Are you going to show us, or not? I’ve got to go back to the cottage and start packing the heavy stuff, I can’t hang around here much longer.”
Claire smiled. “Here.” She opened her hand to reveal a heart-shaped stone made from a worn-down brick.
“It’s beautiful,” Bella said, examining it. “What do you think, Jack? Who’s the winner?”
He looked from Bella to Claire and with a twinkle in his eyes said, “It has to be the heart, doesn’t it?”
CHAPTER SIX
Bella returned to the cottage, unsure what, if anything, Jack had meant. She stopped at the open door of her cottage and watched as Jack ran off in the direction of the hill to Lexi’s house. Relieved to have a moment to gather her thoughts while he fetched Lexi’s car, she decided almost immediately it was simply her wishful thinking that his words had been a declaration of his feelings.
She stared at her reflection in the nouveau mirror in her hallway and pulled a face at it. “You are an idiot.”
“I think that’s a bit harsh, darling,” Claire said, entering the cottage.
Not wishing to discuss her feelings for Jack, Bella focused on pulling out packed boxes of treasures from inside larger pieces of furniture. “Help me with this, will you, Mum?”
“You can change the subject as much as you like,” Claire said, taking the second box from inside the wardrobe and carrying it over to where Bella had placed the first one. “But we both know that as darling a man as Jack is, and he is,” she raised her eyebrows and winked at Bella. “He will need a bit of a nudge where you’re concerned.”
Intrigued, Bella stopped what she was doing and stared at her. “Why? What makes me so different?”
Claire placed a hand on Bella’s right shoulder. “Sweetheart, I might have lived away more than I’ve lived here, but even I remember him asking you out when you were teenagers and you turning him down flat.”
So did she. The memory still made her cringe. She also wished she could forget his humiliation when his friends teased him for weeks after she rebuffed him.
“Didn’t he kiss you once, after that?”
Bella nodded. “I was sixteen that time,” she said, recalling only too clearly how Sacha had gone mad. “He’s Sacha’s big brother,” she said, wondering how many times she wished her best friend hadn’t made her promise never to go out with him. “And anyway, he shouldn’t have asked me out in front of all our friends at that earlier beach party.”
“Poor lad, your nan was mortified for him.”
“I know,” Bella said, wincing. “She gave me a right telling off. I didn’t intentionally humiliate him though. It was just how it happened.”
“That’s as maybe,” Claire said. “But despite that being years ago, maybe he still assumes you’re not interested in him.”
“I think you could be right,” she said, sighing miserably, wondering how it would have been between them if things were different.
Jack was always the best looking and fittest boy in their group and she would have given almost anything to be his girlfriend. Anything, but her friendship with Sacha, and nothing was going to change the fact that Sacha was Jack’s sister and that she had made a solemn promise to her never to date him.
“Surely Sacha would think differently now?”
“Maybe, but she made such a fuss, for months, until I stopped mentioning it. I daren’t broach the subject now. I think she assumes we’re just really close friends, which we are.” Bella paused. “Anyway, I’m not sure he is actually interested in me. That could stir up a whole new problem. I love him living here, and don’t want to mess it up.”
Claire thought for a moment. “You could always pull on your big girl pants and ask him?”
“Ask who?” Jack said, pushing the door open. Bella glared at her mother. Why did she never think to close doors properly? “And why are you talking about pants?”
Horrified that he’d walked in on them, and hoping he hadn’t heard anything more of their conversation, Bella shook her head, trying not to show how flustered she felt. “Just Mum talking nonsense. Thanks for collecting the car, Jack,” she said. “Can we
start loading those larger items first, then these smaller boxes can go on top.”
“No problem.” He and Claire helped her load the bigger items of furniture.
“I think that’s as much as we can fit in,” he said twenty minutes later, studying the small spaces. “Though a couple of boxes can be left at the market overnight.”
Bella showed him the rest of the things she wanted to take.
“Why don’t you put some boxes inside the wardrobe and bedside cabinets,” Claire suggested with a wide, satisfied smile on her face.
“Clever lady,” Jack said, motioning for Bella to follow him back into The Bee Hive to collect them. “These should be safe overnight if you lock them in with the furniture, shouldn’t they?”
Bella agreed, relieved that she would have fewer things to take to the market, early the following morning.
She got into the passenger seat of the car and waited for Jack to hand her two more boxes, putting one in the footwell between her knees and the other on her lap. “This is getting rather claustrophobic,” she said when her mother stopped Jack to chat to him about what they were all going to do for lunch. “Mum,” she interrupted, “why don’t you go back to the café and Sacha will give you lunch. Tell her it’s on me and I’ll settle up with her when I finish unloading this lot.”
Her mother stuck out her tongue at Bella and gave her a wink. “You’d better get a move on,” she said to Jack. “Otherwise my bossy daughter will have one of her tempers.”
They got into the car and put on their seat belts. Jack glanced at Bella as he started the ignition, before reversing the car slowly along the boardwalk.
“What my mother just said.” She cleared her throat, irritated with Claire for joking and making Jack doubt her. “She’s only referring to my tempers when I was little. My nan always teased me, saying that my terrible twos were more like the foul fours because they went on for so long. I’m not like that now.”
She wished she could shut up and stop explaining herself to him. Jack had known her long enough to be aware that most of the time she was level-headed and certainly not prone to tantrums. She did have a temper, but only when pushed to the limit.
“Take no notice,” Jack said. “My dad is always teasing me about things that I did when I was a tot. Damn.”
“What’s the matter?”
“If I’d had any sense I’d have reversed this thing to your cottage when it was still empty.”
“Good point,” she said, sitting back in her seat so he had a clear vision of the car’s wing mirrors. “I never thought of that.”
Finally, they reached the end of the boardwalk. “I won’t make that mistake again,” he said, turning the car around. “It wouldn’t be so bad if this was my car, or if I was used to driving it.” He tilted his head at Bella. “And, as for your tantrums, I can only remember one and that was a full out fury.”
“When?” she asked, unable to recall the incident.
“You know,” he said, smiling. “That time you caught some bloke nicking from your nan’s place. It was during the summer, about ten or so years ago?”
She thought back. Recalling the lanky, greasy-haired man grabbing one of her nan’s silver candlesticks from a table near her doorway and making a run for it, her irritation with him returned. “I remember chasing him down the boardwalk,” she said. “But I couldn’t catch up with him.” She smiled at Jack, remembering he had come to her aid. “You were coming off the beach after a surf. You chased after him.”
“Yes,” Jack laughed. “Best unintentional rugby tackle I ever did. Bruised my right knee for weeks, that did.”
“Gave that idiot a fright though. Never saw him down here again.”
“Your nan was most impressed and bought me a big breakfast at the café.”
Bella giggled. “Which Sacha refused to take payment for.”
They sat in companionable silence for a few moments. Their eyes locked and Bella wished she could have more of these moments alone with Jack.
“That’s why I love it here so much,” he said eventually. “It’s the close-knit community. We all look out for one another, but at the same time respect each other’s privacy.”
Bella thought of his aunt Rosie and smiled. “Maybe Aunt Rosie can be a little bit nosy at times,” she joked.
He nodded. “Yes, but only when it’s something titillating. She’s not interested in the mundane.”
His mobile rang but instead of checking to see who it was, Jack shrugged. “It’ll be Nicki wanting to have another go at me.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve given Nicki her own ringtone, so I know when it’s her calling.”
“Clever move,” Bella said, liking the idea.
They drove for a few minutes along the narrow country lanes, stopping to let cars pass in the opposite direction, or slowing down to pass horses and riders on their way for a gallop on the beach.
She spotted the familiar sign, jutting into the road from a granite gatepost and pointed. “The market is in there.”
Jack indicated and turned slowly in through the gateway and down the long gravel drive. “Ah, yes. I know this place. Shall I park behind the house?” he asked as they both gazed in admiration at the recently renovated farmhouse.
“Yes, at the back by the courtyard of outbuildings. We need to park near the large barn. My stock will go in there overnight.”
“This is some place they’ve got here now they’ve finished working on it,” he said, giving a whistle between his teeth. “Could you leave the boardwalk to live somewhere like this?”
“No,” she said, without hesitation.
Jack helped her unpack the car and set up at the area where her stall would be. “Are you still going with Lexi, Sacha and Jools to the black butter-making event tonight?” he asked, referring to a Jersey specialty, which wasn’t actually butter, but a spiced apple conserve.
Bella winced. She had completely forgotten about the annual event, which she usually attended with her three closest friends. It had become one of their traditions. Betty always accompanied them and loved to sit with the other locals, peeling apples from local harvests for the first stage.
Jack gazed at her suspiciously. “You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?”
She nodded. “Don’t tell them, will you? I’ve been so busy with sorting out my stock and going to London, and Mum’s unexpected arrival, that it slipped my mind. Bugger.”
“You don’t have to go,” he said, giving her an amused smile that told her he knew she would never back out and let the others down. He was right.
“I do. It’s the last night,” she said, thinking of the laughs everyone had as they sat on their chairs, peeling thousands of apples before they were taken to be slowly cooked in a mixture of lemon juice and liquorice on an open fire in a large cauldron.
“You all seem to enjoy it.”
She smiled at the memory of last year’s event. “We do have fun,” she said dreamily. “I love listening to the chap who plays his accordion, and catching up with friends I don’t see for most of the year. And that familiar smell as the butter is slowly stirred while it cooks for hours and hours. No,” she said, determined. “I will go. But I’ll need to get a move on and sort this lot out.”
Spotting an elderly couple looking a bit lost, Jack pointed at them. “I’ll just go and see if I can help over there.”
Bella watched him go. He was so unaware of the effect he had on women, especially her, with his easy ways and broad shoulders. She reminded herself that he was also kind and thoughtful, as she continued sorting through her boxes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“You not ready yet?” Jack asked, entering the cottage and giving Bella a fright.
She glared at him. “Why are you always so energetic?” she asked as he leant against the wall, the keys to Lexi’s car dangling from one of his fingers. She could see he was trying to remind her of something, but what?
“The black butter making,” he said. When she kept staring at him vacantly, he
added, “I’m giving you four girls a lift there, so you can have a cider, or two.”
What was he on about? She went to stand, realizing her legs were almost numb from kneeling on the floor for so long, sorting out her stock. Then it dawned on her. “It’s tonight, I forgot.”
“Again.” He laughed, shaking his head. He held out his hand and Bella gratefully took hold of it, letting him pull her up to her feet.
“How much time do I have to get ready?”
He tilted his head and glanced at his watch. “I’d say about three minutes.”
“What?” She winced as she made her way to the stairs. “Give me five and I’ll be ready.”
Who was she kidding? she thought, hurrying up to her bedroom to change out of her creased top. The jeans would have to do. She hadn’t got around to putting on a wash for a few days and was running out of suitable clothes to wear for the evening. She changed her top and washed her hands before brushing her hair, applying a little lip gloss.
Running back down to join him, she grabbed her jacket and bag and raced out of the front door, leaving Jack shaking his head in amusement.
“Come on, Jack,” she teased. “The others will be waiting.”
She got into the car to find Sacha and Jools already sitting in the back, waiting for them. “You’re hopeless at time keeping,” Jools said.
“It’s because she becomes so absorbed in what she’s doing,” Sacha added. “I suppose we all do sometimes.”
“Sorry, everyone,” Bella grinned, winding her scarf around her neck and zipping up her jacket. She noticed Betty wasn’t in the car. “I thought Betty would be here. She’s okay, isn’t she?” she asked, aware the older lady would hate missing out on one of her annual traditions.
Autumn Antics: Escape to the seaside with the perfect autumn read! (The Boardwalk by the Sea Book 2) Page 6
