Just Say Yes (16 page)

Fiona covered her face with her hands and groaned.

“Oh, Fi, don’t go all holier-than-thou on me. It was your idea to make me a stressed out highflier. All I’ve done is act in character. It’s not my fault that Sara Pentire doesn’t like me.”

Fiona frowned. “What makes you think she doesn’t like you? I don’t think the fact that she asked you to a party counts. Sorry, Miss Hyde, but the jury isn’t convinced by that explanation.”

Lucy hesitated, unsure how to describe her encounter with Josh. “She caught me—saw me—with Josh in the yard today and she didn’t seem too pleased. And by the way, I am not Miss Hyde.”

Fiona’s ears pricked up and Lucy thought that she was starting to look a tiny bit like Hengist. “What do you mean, ‘caught’? What were you doing with Josh?” she said.

“I went for a walk by the estuary and Hengist and Tally ended up snogging on Hannaford Beach. They were both covered in that smelly mud, so Josh suggested we clean them up in the farmyard.”

Fiona wrinkled her nose. “My God, Hengist must reek. He’s not in the cottage, is he?”

“He did whiff a bit, but he’s beautifully laundered now. Josh helped me rub him and Tally down. That’s when Sara came along.”

“Oh, is that all? Then I can’t see the problem. Hosing down a Great Dane doesn’t constitute infidelity, does it?”

“Not in my book, but Sara might see it differently. She seems very attached to him.”

Fiona nodded. “They’ve been going out quite a while, and I’m surprised she hasn’t moved in with him yet. Then again, maybe he’s running scared. Sara’s a tad possessive, in my opinion.”

“She’s welcome to him,” said Lucy, thinking of the way Josh’s hand had slid to Sara’s waist the moment she’d reached his side. He’d evidently been very relieved not to be alone with Lucy any longer.

“So you’re on speaking terms with Josh now?” asked Fiona.

“We’re not hurling central-heating wrenches at each other, but I wouldn’t call it speaking. He is a man of few words, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“He doesn’t need to say much,” said Fiona, her eyes lighting up mischievously.

Lucy hesitated, hearing the whirr of a reel as Fiona prepared to do some fishing. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

Fiona poked a finger in the direction of the window and lowered her voice. “Who needs to talk when they’ve got assets like that?”

Pushing herself out of her chair, Fiona beckoned Lucy to the bedroom window. The old panes were warped and smeary but still gave a clear view of the front garden of the cottage. Through the glass, Lucy saw Josh crouched down by the gate. “I saw him on his way back from the sailing club and asked him if he’d mind mending the gate. After all, I can’t have Hengist escaping and being shot for sheep rustling, can I?”

When Lucy saw Josh, it was all she could do to stop from letting out a little gasp.

Stripped to the waist, his back was dappled alternately with evening sunlight and shade. His combats had slipped partway down his lean hips and she could see the hard curve where his spine met his buttocks. There was a definite line between the tanned skin and paler flesh.

Fiona gave a long, drawn-out sigh. “Absolutely criminal, isn’t it?”

“What?” murmured Lucy, her eyes still fixed on Josh’s body.

“Having a bod like that and showing it off so blatantly. It’s like Abercrombie & Fitch meets
Prison
Break
. I tried, you know, a few summers ago, but I think Sara had already got him moored in her berth. You never know, he might be open to offers.”

Lucy twisted round. “When I said I never wanted to look at another man after Nick, I meant it.”

“Well, a girl’s got to live. You can’t be a nun forever.”

“Even if I was single…”

“Which you are.”

That struck deep. Fi was right. She was single now. She wasn’t a fiancée, which had been her decision, and now, she wasn’t even a girlfriend.

“Even if I am single, I’m not looking. It’s only been a few weeks since Nick. It’s still too…” She struggled for the word. “Too soon.”

“Ah, but that’s just where you’re going wrong. What you need is a no-strings one-night stand with a hot guy. Someone uncomplicated who’s only interested in your body, not your mind.”

“I’m not sure Josh is as uncomplicated as he looks and I’m not in the market for a guy right now. I need more time…”

Fiona snorted in derision. “You need a shag.”

Lucy shook her head firmly. “OK. I admit I like sex, but it’s sex with Nick
specifically
I miss, and even if I was looking, I wouldn’t go for a guy like Josh.”

“Come on! You have to be joking. The man is hotter than a hundred suns.”

Lucy couldn’t help peeping out of the window again. Josh was still kneeling on the flagstones beside the gate. Where the setting sun’s rays slid over the curve of his spine, his bare skin glistened with perspiration.

“He’s too… blond for a start. From what I can see of his hair, that is, it’s so short.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “Hmm. The Wentworth Miller buzz cut. A pity, in my opinion. Last summer, he had hair to die for, thick toffee-blond and almost down to his shoulders. God knows why he cut it short like that, unless he’s making some sort of statement.”

“He’s just not my type,” said Lucy, yet unable to banish the image of a bronzed Josh with golden hair.

“He has beautiful eyes,” teased Fiona.

Lucy couldn’t help thinking back to their conversation in the farmyard. Josh
did
have stunning eyes and not just because of their color, which reminded her of the sea off Tresco Cove on a calm day. They were eyes that didn’t seem to belong with the hard jaw, the cheekbones, the “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough” buzz cut. Then she thought of Nick, with his sculptor’s hands, his caramel-latte skin, his dark espresso eyes.

“Nick was beautiful.”

“Why didn’t you marry him, then?”

Lucy caught her breath.

“If he’s so wonderful, why didn’t you say yes?” repeated Fiona.

“That’s not fair, Fi, and you know it.”

“I think it’s fair, hon. You’ve had a couple of weeks to think about it now. If you want to change your mind, you still could. All you have to do is pick up the phone and ask him to take you back.”

“And this is the woman who reckons the word marriage should be deleted from the dictionary,” she laughed.

“I’m talking about you not me. I’ve tasted marriage and I didn’t like the taste but you’re a romantic. You need that fairy-tale ending.”

“You’re wrong. I don’t want a fairy tale; I want a real-life story. Just straightforward honesty.”

Fiona raised her eyebrows and Lucy remembered Josh’s uncompromising views.

“Well, honesty on his part, anyway. And actually, I have phoned Nick,” she said.

“And?”

“His PA answered and I chickened out.”

Fiona gave a knowing look. “So he’s got an entourage already?”

“I expect he’s got a complete army of staff and advisers by now. Sir Denby and the TV people would have taken care of all that.”

“So why did you phone if you didn’t really want to talk to him?”

“I just wanted to make sure that he’s OK. I can’t bear to think of him being in the same world as me and hating me.”

“You mean you want him to let you off the hook?”

“He didn’t do anything wrong. Not technically. But I did wonder why he asked me then. Right at that moment, in front of everyone, almost as if he wanted the maximum impact, almost as if he was playing to the crowd. It’s that part of the whole thing that stung me the most: the fact that I might have just been part of one huge drama.” Lucy halted, expecting a smart comment from Fiona but instead, her friend just waited patiently. “Oh God, Fi, I just wish we could have carried on as we did before! You know, getting to know each other, having a normal life. Or something.”

“Maybe that’s too much to ask. Too easy.”

Lucy nodded. “Yes. Probably.” Because she had to admit, life had never been simple with Nick. There had always been doubt in her mind, even when things had been going well between them: his flashes of temper, his unreliability, his need to control every situation, a nagging feeling that she was being used. The suspicion that he was a player had always been hovering at the edge of her mind. After all, she hadn’t known him very long and certainly didn’t know him well enough to make a lifelong commitment to him. In fact, she had to admit, a large part of their time together had been spent in bed. They’d both seemed content to just enjoy the drama and the sex as far as she’d been concerned. Even the bust-ups had led to some spectacular making-up sessions, but nothing that had happened between them had ever seemed to be leading to forever. Even if, in a moment of madness, she had said yes to his proposal, she doubted very much if they would have lasted beyond a year’s subscription to
Cosmopolitan
.

Glancing out of the window again, she saw Josh had straightened up and had a bottle to his lips. She imagined rather than saw his Adam’s apple bobbing as he drained the water. She strained her eyes, trying to make out the tattoo on his neck. Just as she moved her nose perilously closer toward the pane, he looked directly up at her. She scooted back into the room, breathing hard.

“Oh God, I think he saw me. He must think I’m a total pervert!”

“He already thinks you’re a sad nutter, so why worry?” said Fiona, laughing.

“I can’t see a way of wriggling out of this barbecue unless I can think of a very good reason,” said Lucy, rapidly changing the subject.

“Well, I can come with you—I presume I’m invited too.”

“Of course.”

“Or maybe you can have an executive relapse.”

Lucy shook her head. “No way. It would play into Sara Pentire’s hands. I’ll have to bite the bullet and go.”

“So you’re not worried about someone recognizing you?”

“Do you think they might?”

Fiona chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Not really. From what I know of the sailing-club crowd, they’re mostly locals who live and breathe sand and salt. I shouldn’t think many of them spend their time flopped in front of the TV.”

“Isn’t there a yachty set? They might read the gossip mags.”

“Not the low-life papers and you didn’t make the quality mags.”

“Well, I can’t stay in here forever. Hengist will be worn down to a chihuahua, he’s getting so many walks. I have to face people sometime so maybe this can be a trial run for when I go back to the real world.”

Fiona smiled in a knowing way. “The real world? Are you sure you want to go back to that?”

Lucy smiled back, but her stomach flipped at the thought of going back to London. “I’m not sure about anything right now.”

As she carried a book and a glass of wine into the garden later that afternoon Lucy found she couldn’t relax.

She was disturbed more than she cared to admit by the warm, tingling sensation that had flooded her limbs as she’d watched Josh in the garden. She tried to tell herself that her response was merely a natural reaction to the sight of a very good-looking and half-dressed guy. She’d need to be made of granite not to heat up with so much naked provocation.

The rest of the week passed by uneventfully, which Lucy ought to have been grateful for. However, all that time to herself also made her think way too much. After three weeks in Tresco, she was beginning to wonder if she was getting too fond of hiding away.

She hated pretending to be someone else, but spending her days walking on the beach and the cliffs was deliciously addictive.
Too
addictive, and that’s why one Friday morning, she found herself wedging the Land Rover into a space in one of Porthstow’s few parking lots. Fiona was at the cottage, having a phone conference with her editor, and Lucy had decided that a trial run at the “real world” was necessary. Besides, she needed some sunglasses.

Once a humble fishing village, Porthstow had outgrown its gray harbor a few centuries before, its stone houses, shops, and pubs now crawling inland from the sea wall. On one side of the harbor, a small beach of buttery sand stretched along the coast to the headland. It was a warm day, almost exactly midsummer, and plenty of people had been tempted to shed their clothes and grab a spot on the beach.

In the harbor, fishing boats rode at anchor on the full tide and the smell of fish and diesel mingled in her nose. Gulls squabbled outside the fish and chip shop on the quay. Lucy spotted a booth by the harbor wall and couldn’t resist buying an ice cream cone. It was like being eight again, wandering along with her mum and dad before he’d started having affairs with half the girls in the Southeast—or at least, before she knew about it. The memories back then were still cloudless and sunny, just like the sky today, and Lucy was going to enjoy her first taste of freedom in four weeks.

Her ice cream finished, she stopped at the first likely shop she came to: a quaint little pharmacy with a bow window bearing faded samples of sunscreen, perfume, and support stockings. Inside the shadowy interior, she managed to find a large and very dark pair of shades and went up to the counter, the exact cash ready in order to minimize any delay.