A Return, a Reunion, a Wedding

by Annie O'Neil

  He loved her. Always had. Always would. What form that love took... Well, that was still up in the air. But it certainly felt nice to know he was finally doing something about it other than drawing invisible lines that they both kept moving.

  He looked over at Jayne, who was distractedly quartering some cherry tomatoes at the table where the children were colouring. Her hair, as usual, was coming loose from the French twist she’d pulled it into. Her blue eyes kept darting up to meet his. Her lips had that extra deep red flush that came from one thing and one thing only: heightened emotions.

  It was taking all his brain power not to pull the mostly cooked chicken out of the oven, pop it on the table then take Jayne by the hand and walk very, very quickly down the river lane to his house.

  Just as well giving Maggie and her family salmonella was on the no-no list.

  He popped the bowl of salad he’d just filled onto the table. ‘Tomatoes can go in there when you’re done, love.’

  All the eyebrows in the room shot up at that one. He’d not called Jayne ‘love’ before. Judging from the streaks of red on her cheeks and the flash of her smile, she didn’t mind all that much. Perhaps a bit of good old-fashioned wooing was what they needed. Courtship. Manners. Respect.

  ‘Nice pinny, Sam,’ said Cailey, Maggie’s littlest.

  ‘Do you think it matches my eyes?’ Sam tugged at the edges of the apron and struck a pose.

  Maggie’s children applauded. Apparently pink roses and frills suited him.

  He didn’t know why he was being such a show-off. Maybe to counterbalance just how quiet Jayne was being. Not in a weird way, as if she was going to bolt or anything. It was more...she was being shy. Though he knew that at heart a lot of her bluster and bravura was a front, he hadn’t seen the shy girl he’d fallen in love with for years.

  Maggie’s wolf-whistle broke through his thoughts. ‘Gorgeous!’

  He caught her throwing Jayne a saucy wink.

  ‘And I’m not just talking about the chicken.’

  Jayne, much to his satisfaction, flushed even more deeply.

  He chopped up a few bits of bacon and slung them in a small frying pan. Maggie claimed her children wouldn’t eat peas. Today they would. Today he could do anything.

  ‘Where did all the village fete artwork go? I thought you lhad a gallery’s worth of artwork in progress?’

  ‘We did.’ Maggie shrugged. ‘Jayne’s moved everything.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To our bedrooms,’ Connor said as he finished his drawing of a tree with a flourish. ‘She said she didn’t want you to think she always lived like a heathen.’

  His eyes shot to hers. ‘Oh, she did, did she?’

  She licked her lips. ‘As if... We just needed room at the table.’

  ‘You normally just push everything to the side,’ Cailey said, as she too wrapped up a drawing of abstract bunny rabbits.

  Maggie was cackling away in the corner.

  ‘I’m glad my cleaning attack has amused you all so deeply,’ Jayne sniped imperiously.

  ‘Oh, is that what we’re calling it?’ Maggie teased.

  ‘Why? What would you call it?’ Jayne asked, then immediately looked as if she regretted doing so.

  ‘I’d call it trying to impress a boy,’ Maggie said through another wave of laughter.

  At which point the children began singing a song about going on a date. ‘A date! A date! Jayne’s going on a date! She’s going on a date and the boy is Sam.’

  Jayne dumped the tomatoes into the salad and announced that she was going upstairs to change. ‘I’ll meet you at the pub.’

  ‘What? I thought I’d walk you there, just as soon as I set supper out for this lot,’ said Sam.

  The children and Maggie turned to her as if they were watching a tennis match.

  She shook her finger back and forth. ‘No can do. If this is going to be our first proper date then I want to make an entrance.’

  For the next fifteen minutes, while he pulled Maggie and the kids’ meal together, he whistled.

  * * *

  Jayne stared at her reflection, then grabbed the make-up remover and swiped off her third attempt at casual, sexy, smoky but not too horny eyes. Maybe she should simply give her lashes a swipe of mascara and have done with it.

  She closed her eyes against her reflection, trying to figure out what on earth had possessed her to go along with Sam’s hare-brained scheme.

  Hormones had obviously played their role, but basically she’d agreed to date him for the rest of the summer. Madness.

  An image of Mr Sedlescombe opening the door for his wife as he teetered along on his canes popped into her head, along with Sam’s voice. ‘I want what they have.’

  Had she said yes because somewhere deep inside her she did too?

  He’d been right about one thing. She cared for him. Deeply. More than that. She loved him. But loving him and doing right by him were two totally different things. The last thing she wanted to do was break his heart again. If she had any sort of bravery she’d rip the plaster off and tell him tonight. She was the reason Jules was dead. Her guilt was what had fuelled their break-up.

  The only mercy had been falling in love with surgical paediatrics. She adored her job. But being back here was a vivid reminder of how she had absolutely no life beyond the hospital walls.

  As strange as it was to admit, she was really enjoying being back in Whitticombe. Running all Maggie’s errands. Taking the children to birthday parties and playdates. Working at the clinic...

  Being here had thrown a spotlight on a side of village life she’d never experienced as an adult. Maggie was right. It was nice knowing you could actually borrow a cup of flour from your neighbour, or tap on the window of a shop that had just closed if you needed a pint of milk. People here were kind. Thoughtful. Generous.

  The same people who didn’t know that she was the reason her sister wasn’t alive and well in London instead of her.

  It’s your life. Live it. She heard the words as if Jules herself had said them.

  Fault lines had begun to appear in the narrative she’d been telling herself for years. Though she’d been through it a thousand million times, was there even the slightest chance that Jules would have slowed down even if Jayne had been able to catch up with her? Jules had always been a daredevil. She had always thrown caution to the wind. She’d never played it safe.

  It’s your life, that voice in her head said again. Live it.

  * * *

  ‘What do you mean you’re off the market?’ Ethel was looking at Sam as if he’d just grown an extra pair of ears. And feathers.

  ‘I mean, thank you, Ethel for offering to set me up on a date, but... I think I’m okay for now.’

  Ethel’s eyes narrowed. He knew that look. It was her I-might-be-your-publican-but-I-am-also-your-friend look.

  ‘It wasn’t your manners I was quizzing you about, young man. I was quizzing you about your nous. You won’t be finding yourself a wife by holing up at the surgery or in that big house of yours.’

  ‘I know. I’m not saying that’s the plan.’

  ‘Oh! So you have a new plan now, do you?’ She pursed her lips at him and started pulling a pint. ‘Are you going to let me in on this new plan of yours?’

  She handed him the pint and didn’t wait for an answer, which was fine. He didn’t want to say. Not just yet. Ethel was about as protective as his sisters when it came to his love-life, so picking The Golden Acorn to show rather than tell everyone his plan was bordering on insanity.

  He smiled and took a long draft of his pint. He was obviously infuriating Ethel, but she’d see what he was talking about in a matter of minutes. Seconds, if he was lucky.

  Ethel swiped at the counter with a cloth before he put his pint down. ‘What’s this really about, Sam? It isn’t like yo
u to be a quitter.’

  Oh, he wasn’t quitting... He was—

  Oh, hell.

  The front door to the pub had opened and framed by a million summer roses was Jayne Sinclair.

  A hush fell over the place, much the way it did in Wild West films when a woman with all the right curves in all the right places walked into a saloon in a town that hadn’t seen so much as a flicker of a feminine touch in years.

  Sam swallowed. Hard.

  Jayne’s hair was down. Flowing over her shoulders like liquid silk. Her blue eyes were clean of the make-up she often wore. Maybe a swoop of mascara. Nothing on her lips. She didn’t need it.

  And her dress...

  It was a knock-your-socks-off number.

  The blue fabric matched her eyes to a T, and the nineteen-fifties style was modest...but it was making the most of her beautiful figure. The cuffed sleeves weren’t so much covering her shoulders as offering a bit of a tease of the soft, creamy skin it was resting on. The bodice hugged her torso just so, before arrowing in to a slim belt where the skirt flared out from her hips.

  In the driest tone he’d ever heard from Ethel, she intoned, ‘I think I understand what your plan is a bit more clearly now, Sammy boy.’

  He nodded at her, still waiting for the air to return to his lungs. Jayne certainly knew how to knock a man sideways.

  That shyness he’d noted earlier was still wafting round her like a brand-new perfume. He crossed over and leant in to give her a kiss on the cheek. Mmm. Cinnamon...and something else. Orange? Whatever it was, it was a new perfume, and it smelt about as delicious as she looked.

  He looked at the lemons dotted all over the fabric of her dress, then back up at her.

  Jayne smoothed her hands along her skirt, then said, ‘I decided to make lemonade.’

  Wow. There was a lot in that simple statement. He hadn’t ever thought about life handing her lemons, but there was the obvious. No one would have equated her sister’s death to anything good, but he’d always presumed she saw her sister’s accident as just that. An accident. Cruel, bad luck. A tragedy.

  But tonight was about fresh starts. And making lemonade. He put out his arm, just as Terry Sedlescombe would for his wife. ‘May I?’

  Jayne smiled and tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

  They stopped by the bar and got a glass of wine for Jayne. Ethel shot her a difficult to read look. Half smile, half don’t-you-dare-mess-with-our-boy. To Jayne’s credit, she smiled and complimented Ethel on how nice the pub looked—which, of course, immediately put her back in the good books. Ethel’s life was this pub, and anyone who lavished it with compliments couldn’t go wrong.

  ‘I’ll send someone over with a couple of menus,’ she said as they picked up their drinks.

  After they’d sat down and ordered Sam lifted up his glass. ‘Cheers, my dear.’

  ‘Cheers to you, Sam.’

  They clinked glasses and drank.

  ‘So,’ Sam said, suddenly very keen to make good on his silent promise to court Jayne, ‘tell me about yourself.’

  * * *

  Three hours later Jayne couldn’t remember when she’d laughed so much. She’d forgotten what a good storyteller Sam was, and life in Whitticombe had given him anecdotes in spades.

  She loved watching him relive the stories as he told them. The way his green eyes lit up bright when it was a happy one...the way they darkened when it was sad.

  She nearly spat out her wine when he embarked on a story about a woman who’d got her arm caught in her daughter’s hamster cage, had been bitten by the hamster, then walked into the surgery with the entire thing still attached!

  ‘She was screaming away. Swearing she’d build the hamster a little raft and set it loose on the river. Her daughter was with her, sobbing, “No, Mummy. No! Fluffy doesn’t know how to swim!” Poor Greta was beside herself.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Washing up liquid.’ He mimed easing the mother’s arm out of the cage door. ‘Her hamster bite was treated and her tetanus jab was boosted and the little girl carried her fluffy pet home, scolding it all the way for being so mean to her mummy. The next year it won Best In Show at the village fete pet show.’

  ‘Hilarious.’ She wiped away a couple of tears. ‘We don’t get too much in the way of that sort of drama at the London Merryweather. At least not in my department.’

  Sam’s smile dimmed. ‘I suppose things are a bit more of the life-and-death variety there?’

  She nodded. They are. The last thing a parent would want is for their child to be admitted to the London Merryweather because it means only one thing: it’s their only hope.

  ‘But you enjoy it, right? It’s your dream?’

  She took a sip of her wine to delay answering the question. The London part? Not so much. The work part? She loved it. But discovering it wasn’t enough had been one hell of a knock to her blinkered quest to do a heart transplant.

  Admitting as much? She wasn’t quite there yet. So she did what she always did. Changed the topic.

  ‘How’s your dad getting on? You know...on his own? It must be weird, knocking around that big house on his own.’

  Despite the sombre topic, Sam laughed. ‘You think my sisters let him knock around the house on his own?’

  Jayne didn’t have to think about it that long. ‘No.’ She grinned.

  He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands along his chair’s armrest. ‘When Mum died he volunteered to look after Elf. Now whenever I come to pick the dog up he looks as though I’m tearing him away from his bestie, so it’s looking like I’ll be in the market for a new dog soon.’ He gave a little laugh. Half wistful. Half sad.

  Her heart ached for him. It was easy to see how much he missed his mum. She reached across and touched his arm. ‘I am so very sorry about your mother.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s kind.’ His voice was gruff.

  ‘And very, very overdue.’ She was about to apologise for not staying for the wake, but even making it to the church service had taken a Herculean effort. Funerals and Whitticombe weren’t her thing.

  Sam stopped playing with his beer mat. ‘Have you heard anything from your parents?’

  She shook her head, almost feeling the weight of her conscience dragging her chin down to her chest.

  ‘Are you planning on calling them?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am. But it’s...complicated. Once I left for London we...’ Oh, God. Her voice was beginning to crack. ‘We found it easier, I guess. Moving on from things in our own way.’ Which begged the question... ‘Why did you never come to London? We’d talked about it. You doing a year or so in one of the hospitals there.’

  ‘You know why,’ Sam said, his eyebrows doing that little swan-dive towards the furrow between his brows. ‘You told me not to. “Don’t follow me. Do your thing. We’re through.”’

  ‘Crikey.’ She covered her face with her hands, then dropped them. ‘I was pretty horrible to you.’

  ‘I won’t disagree with you, but it wasn’t as if life was a bed of roses for you either. So long as you’re happy in London, I guess it’s all turned out for the best.’

  She blew some air up at a few errant hairs, then blurted out the truth. ‘I love the hospital. I really love the work. But...’

  He took hold of her hands and gave them a squeeze. ‘But...?’

  She saw everything she’d always wanted in his eyes. Kindness. Love. Trust.

  Here goes nothing.

  ‘I don’t really have a life.’

  ‘What?’

  He dropped her hands and instantly she felt the loss of his touch.

  ‘I thought you were always out and about. Going to the clubs. Dating. Living the life.’ He did a little dance move as if that would make it all true. Sparkly and delightful.

 
She was out. She was out a lot. At the hospital.

  ‘There might’ve been just an itty-bitty bit of fibbing about how social I’ve been.’ She pinched her fingers together, then squished them tight.

  She’d tried to do a few of the things she’d thought Jules would love when she’d first got her job at the London Merryweather. Clubbing. Zany charity events. Skydiving... The mere thought of that last one sent shivers rippling along her arms. None of them had stuck. No matter how hard she’d tried, they’d scared her silly.

  ‘Looks like someone should’ve brought a sweater.’ Sam tipped his head at the goose pimples skittering all the way up to her neck.

  Jayne took the comment as a chance to skip over the obvious follow-up question. Why do you stay in London, then?

  It had used to be super-obvious.

  Because Jules couldn’t.

  Because Jayne needed to live the life Jules never would.

  But she wasn’t exactly doing a stellar job of it, was she? Would Jules have settled for second-best if there had been a better fit for her somewhere else?

  She looked towards Maggie’s cottage. ‘You’re right. It is cold. Maybe we’d better head back so I can help get the kids to bed. Give Maggie her night-time foot-rub.’

  * * *

  Sam pulled out Jayne’s chair and held his arm in the direction of the rose-covered path that led to Maggie’s.

  As first dates went it had hardly been the stuff of rainbows, unicorns and floating cupids. They’d covered his ex-wife, his recently deceased mother, his widowed father and then—skirting it, but touching on it—what sounded like her not entirely happy life in London.

  But, hey. They were on a date and speaking to one another. Openly and honestly. It wasn’t as if he had been expecting her to tell him she was going to give notice on her job and move back for good.

  Communicating this way felt healing. It was a hell of a lot better than the hollow-eyed looks he’d received when he tried to talk to her after Jules had died.

  When they reached Maggie’s, Jayne gave him a soft smile. ‘Thanks for dinner?’