Reluctant Date

by Sheila Claydon

  The only contact she’d had with Dolphin Key since she left was to send Beth the photos she had taken of the baby. She hadn’t added a message, or an explanation, because there was nothing she wanted to say. Her behavior would be sufficient explanation for Beth. She would know just why Claire had behaved as she did, and would probably condone it. The same couldn’t be said for Daniel though. She remembered the harsh pressure of his fingers when they gripped her shoulders and shuddered, even while she allowed herself a bitter smile. At least she had achieved the outcome she had wanted for herself. Without planning to, she had found a way to leave Dolphin Key that ensured she would never be welcomed back. At least now she didn’t need to worry about having to see Daniel Marchant ever again.

  * * *

  “Going out darling?” Her mother came into the kitchen clad in her usual mismatch of drapes and scarves. Today she was wearing a black and white sarong over a scarlet blouse, and she had tied her hair up with emerald green ribbons.

  “I thought I might,” Claire said. “Perhaps the wind will blow the cobwebs away.”

  “Mmm, I suppose so.” Then, noticing the local paper had arrived she seemed to lose interest in Claire’s dilemma. Whether the group campaigning about the proposed new supermarket had been successful with their latest petition appeared to be of much greater interest to her. She carried on flicking through it as Claire took a few items of food from the larder and threw them into a small backpack. After adding sun cream and lip salve, she pushed a pair of sunglasses up into her hair in case the sun decided to come right out instead of playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds.

  “Have a good time,” her mother called as Claire opened the kitchen door and stepped outside. Then, as an afterthought, she asked her where she was going.

  “Probably as far as the lifeboat station,” Claire told her. “I need a long walk. I’ve been cooped up for far too long.”

  “Yes, I’m sure dear. Well try to get back for the evening meal won’t you, or I might start worrying.”

  As if, thought Claire gloomily as she trudged down towards the beach. She knew how much her parents loved her. It showed with every question they had refrained from asking since she returned home. It showed, too, in their casual cosseting, in the fact that her mother kept cooking her favourite meals, while her father brought home piles of books from the local library. Books he thought might interest her. She loved and appreciated them for it, but she knew they wouldn’t worry if she were home late, because they never worried about where she was. They had always said they had far too much faith in her common sense to spend energy worrying about things that might never happen, and it was unlikely that anything had changed.

  * * *

  She spent the morning mooching along the shore with her cotton trousers rolled up, kicking through the waves. It helped a little, just being back beside the sea. She tried not to mind that it wasn’t Dolphin Key; that the seagulls were different; that there were fewer shells; and that she was unraveling different tangles of seaweed. And when she thought she had cleared the memories of Florida from her mind, she climbed up to the top of a sand dune and started to eat her lunch.

  By the fourth mouthful she had lost her appetite though. She pushed the rest of the food back into her backpack, unscrewed a bottle of water, and took a long drink. Then she laid back and looked up at the sky through the spikes of marram grass that grew in random green tufts across the sand dunes.

  She was asleep when Daniel found her. He stood for a long time looking down at her sleeping face, noticing the new hollows in her cheeks. He noticed, too, that she was more slender than when he had last seen her. With a sigh he sat down beside her and waited for her to wake up.

  * * *

  Claire opened her eyes when a cloud sailed across the face of the sun. She sat up with a shiver, looked round for her backpack, and found herself staring into a pair of troubled brown eyes.

  “Your mother said I would probably find you near the lifeboat station.” Daniel gave a half smile as he pulled her jumper from the top of her backpack and draped it around her shoulders.

  “Thank you…I…why are you here?” She pushed her arms into its sleeves and pulled the jumper over her head as she spoke.

  “Because it seems to be the only way I can get you to speak to me,” he told her when she re-emerged. Her hair was ruffled into the cloudy mass of curls he loved so much. “Without your mother’s daily emails I would have gone mad. She has been keeping me up to date. Why haven’t you answered my phone calls, or the messages I sent you?”

  “Because there’s nothing I want to say to you,” she kept her eyes fixed firmly on a ferry that was sailing on the outgoing tide.

  “You had plenty to say to my father,” he reminded her. “Of course I missed most of it, but I heard enough to know you didn’t have any problem with words then.”

  “If you are expecting me to say sorry then you are going to be very disappointed.” The anger that had prompted her actions in the first place started to rekindle as she swung round to face him.

  “I’m not expecting an apology Claire. I just want to understand why you ran out on me.”

  She glared at him. “Surely it’s obvious. It was impossible for me to stay after I was so rude to your father. I broke Melanie’s confidence too. I even told him what you and Carl were going to do to the business but without checking whether you had actually gone through with it. Then, to cap it all, I encouraged your mother to abandon post and go and see her new grandson. The child of the son whose name must never ever be mentioned in the Marchant family.”

  “Yes, I know all that, but it wasn’t my question. What I asked was, why did you run out on me?”

  His eyes didn’t waiver as he waited for her answer and when surprise kept her silent he leaned forward and gently took hold of both her hands. “I can remember the exact words you used the last time you spoke to me Claire. You said, ‘find yourself someone who doesn’t care about the fact that your father is slowly destroying your family Daniel. Find yourself someone who doesn’t care about you!’ My question is, did you really mean it?”

  “Yes.” She looked down at their hands, to where his strong brown fingers had enclosed her own, and wondered why she had started trembling.

  “I thought so.” He moved one of his hands to her face and gently turned it towards him. “I’ve been such a fool Claire. There was so much going on in my life that I couldn’t see what was in front of me until you took it away.”

  “I felt so guilty about persuading you to come to Florida to work when I knew all along that I had an ulterior motive, that I took too long to tell you how I felt about you. It never occurred to me that you might feel the same way. Instead I kept remembering how vehemently you had told me you weren’t interested in dating anyone, so I decided to play the long game. That is until you started a relationship with Scott, at which point I lost all hope that you would ever…”

  “What relationship with Scott?” Claire interrupted, her forehead furrowed into a frown until she saw Daniel’s wry smile. Then she started to laugh. “Oh, you mean that relationship!”

  “Yes! The relationship he and Melanie were forced to tell me about after you blew their cover!”

  “Poor Scott! He was eaten up with worry about keeping it a secret.”

  “Mmm. That’s what he told me while I was bawling him out. He also told me I should sort out my own feelings before I criticized anyone else.”

  “Scott said that?”

  “Yes. He was the only one who had any idea how we felt about one another. He said it was about time I did something about it instead of worrying about everybody else in Dolphin Key.”

  “And?”

  “And so I’m here to do something about it,” he told her, pulling her close. Then he kissed her.

  * * *

  They didn’t say very much at all for a very long time after that. They might have stayed there even longer if a short-lived flurry of rain hadn’t interrupted them.

&
nbsp; “Thank you Scott,” Daniel murmured as he stood up and pulled Claire to her feet. She grinned at him; her eyes alight with the mischief that had been missing from her face for so long.

  “Does that mean he and Melanie are forgiven?”

  “See for yourself,” Daniel thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Scrolling through the photos stored in its memory he finally found what he was looking for, and handed it to Claire.

  A short video started to play. The picture was clear enough for Claire to see it had been taken outside his house. As she watched, the camera zoomed in to two people sitting close together on the dock. It was Scott and Melanie, and when they turned towards the photographer they started laughing. Then they waved directly into the camera.

  “Come back Claire,” they called out in unison. “Our engagement party is on the fifteenth of next month. Please be back by then.”

  “I’ve got a few other messages too,” he told her, retrieving the camera and scrolling down.

  The next one was of Beth and the baby. “We need you back here,” she told Claire. “Harris wants you to see how much he’s grown…and I, well I just miss you.”

  “Harris!” Claire whispered, her eyes swimming with tears as she looked at Daniel.

  “Mmm. Beth and Carl think it’s a good name for a boy. I think they’ve got a certain Claire Harris earmarked to be godmother too.”

  “And you have come to terms with Beth being married to Carl?”

  Now it was Daniel’s turn to look mystified.

  “You…Beth was your girlfriend until Carl came along,” she reminded him, resisting the urge to look away even though she didn’t want to see the memories she was sure would shadow his face. “That’s why you weren’t looking for anyone to date, remember. You were still coming to terms with the fact she left you for your brother.”

  “Where on earth did that come from?” Daniel asked, as he took the camera from her unresisting fingers and stuffed it back into his pocket. Then, when she didn’t answer, he shook his head.

  “Sure I went out with Beth for a while Claire, but she was never going to be the love of my life. We had fun together for half a summer and then she met Carl. Once that happened I may as well not have existed, but it was absolutely fine by me. I like Beth, love her as a friend, a sister…but that’s it. The rest is a figment of your imagination. It’s you I love, and I have done so since the first moment I saw you.”

  “But you can’t love me,” she sank down onto the ground again and covered her face with her hands. “I was rude to your father. I helped to hide Scott and Melanie’s relationship from you, I….”

  Daniel interrupted her by sitting down beside her and taking her in his arms again. “All history,” he said. “Thanks to you, we didn’t need to remove Dad from the Board after all, because he resigned before the final motion went through. And he says he’s going to take a computer course at the end of the summer. He’s joined the Talking Books Service as well. There’s a message from him on my phone too. Something about thanking you for doing what nobody else dared to do. Well that’s what he means, even if he didn’t quite put it like that,” he told her with a wry smile.

  “And your mother?” she lifted a tear-stained face hopefully to his.

  “Is in her element helping to care for her grandson. She is going to help out in the print shop as well, because Carl will be too busy running the family business to spend much time there in future. And when Harris is a little older, she and Beth intend to expand it into a working art gallery, and encourage other artists to join them.”

  He smiled at her as he leaned forward and kissed away the last of her tears. “Of course all these changes leave me without a full time job. I’m still on the Company Board. Actually I was voted in as Chairman so I will still be involved, but only part time…so I need to find another way to earn a decent living.”

  “You’re going to expand your own company,” she said, and the smile on her face was like sunshine after a storm.

  “I am. But to make it truly successful I need someone who has cataloguing skills. I also need someone who can take photographs as well as develop and run training courses. There’s a vacancy for someone who can talk to the visiting public too and…most importantly…is prepared to be around twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Do you know anyone who might be interested?”

  Epilogue

  The boat sailing away from the Marchant’s big old family home was ablaze with fairy lights. They were draped along the side rails and twisted up the poles that supported its striped canopy. A big cheer went up from the people standing on the dock, and most of them stayed where they were until the boat disappeared from view.

  “That was so romantic. How lovely to get married at Christmas, and in such an idyllic setting. If I wasn’t so happy with Mark then I might even feel a tiny bit jealous.” Jenny and her husband followed Claire’s parents back into the marquee that had been erected on the lawn.

  “I didn’t think much of her going away outfit though. Still I can see that things are done differently over here.”

  * * *

  Claire, sitting at the prow of the boat, watched the house and all of their wedding guests fade from view. When they had completely disappeared she moved across to the stern and took her husband’s hand off the throttle. Immediately the boat’s engine slowed to a soft putter.

  Daniel smiled at her. She was wearing a pink T-shirt and a matching wrap over khaki cut offs, and her feet were bare.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere more exotic than Dolphin Key for a honeymoon?” he asked her. “It’s not too late you know. We can pick up a flight to anywhere you choose in the morning.”

  “I’m sure,” she said, snuggling up against him as a night breeze suddenly whisked up a few waves and made the boat rock gently to and fro. “I’ve spent too long away from it recently to want to leave now. Besides, nobody will dare to visit us for at least twenty-four hours!”

  “You’re confident about that are you?” he asked. There was a hint of resignation in his voice as his house came slowly into view. All the lights were blazing and they could hear music drifting across the bay.

  “Completely, because I put Carl and Beth on the case,” she said. “That’s just their way of welcoming us home.”

  With a sharp intake of breath he increased their speed, only slowing down again when the boat reached the dock. With one deft twist of the rope he secured it to the mooring ring and turned off the engine. Then he bent down and kissed her hard. It was a kiss that was full of promise and it only ended when he picked her up and dumped her on the dock.

  “I know that wasn’t exactly a romantic move but give me time and I’ll do better,” he told her as he clambered up beside her. Then he swept her up into his arms again.

  She locked her hands around his neck. He was taller than anyone she knew, tall enough to make her feel small. He was strong enough to make her feel fragile and protected too, despite the length of her legs and the slender curves of her body. It wasn’t a feeling she was used to but it was one she was rapidly learning to enjoy.

  “I’m going to love living here,” she told him, kissing his cheek.

  He nuzzled her ear. “You’re a shameless hussy Mrs Marchant, marrying a man just for his property!”

  “Oh I haven’t married you just for your property,” she told him wickedly as he carried her over the doorstep and into a bedroom whose windows overlooked the midnight sea. “But you are right about the shameless hussy bit!”

  He laughed out loud then, and kicked the bedroom door shut behind him. After that it wasn’t very long before all the lights went out, and the house in the deserted cove faded into a murmuring darkness.

  The End

  About the Author

  Born and educated in the south of England, Sheila Claydon has gradually moved northwards across the UK. Nowadays she and her husband live in the northwest close to an unspoiled coastline where she finds walking a con
stant source of inspiration as well as a counterweight to the sedentary life of a writer.

  Interspersed with her writing is a long and varied career in health, education and employment, most of which involved working to improve standards and opportunities for children, people with disabilities, people who were ill, and older people. She likes to think she is a better writer because of those experiences, and also admits to basing some of her characters on people she has worked with in the past.

  As a writer she has tutored creative writing groups and organized and run workshops. She is also a published prize-winning poet. Prior to moving north she also worked with the UK’s ‘Poetry in Schools’ programme, running 3-day events with pupils of all ages.

  Although her husband, children and grandchildren have always been, and remain, central to her life, she still finds the time to read, to write, and to travel. Many of the places she has visited feature in her books. As her website says, reading them is like buying a ticket to romance.

  Sheila’s earlier books were published under the pseudonym Anne Beverley. Now that she is considerably older and no longer shy, she writes under her own name. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at http://sheilaclaydon.com where her books are listed, and where she also writes a blog.

  Note from the Publisher

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