Escape for Christmas (21 page)

Gemma was quiet because she was too sad to speak. She loved Cal too, but there was so much that seemed to have got in the way recently that she wasn’t sure how they could ever get past it. This certainly wouldn’t happen while he was so many miles away and on the end of a phone. They needed to be together so that they could talk – really talk, and properly too, without the distractions of other people or the business. All these snatched half-conversations, with more things left unsaid and silences all too quickly filled by doubts and shadows, were part of the problem. Suddenly Gemma knew what the answer was.

“Come here, Cal,” she whispered. “I miss you so much. Please babe, just get in the car and come to the farm. It’s Christmas Eve and I want to spend it with you. That’s all I want. I don’t care about birthdays or presents. I just want us to be us again.”

But no sooner had she said this than Gemma knew she was wasting her time. It was the same discussion they’d been having for months.

“I can’t,” Cal said with another sigh. “You know I can’t. I have to appear in the live show tomorrow. It’s–”

“In your contract; yes, I know. You keep telling me.” Gemma closed her eyes in defeat. “I know you can’t break it.”

“I don’t want to break it!” Cal said. He sounded annoyed now. “Sure, and I’d hoped you knew me a bit better than this, Gemma. When I give my word and make a commitment, I keep to it. It doesn’t mean I love you any the less. In fact, it means I love you more.”

“So much you can’t or won’t explain why your ex-girlfriend has mysteriously arrived now I’ve left?” she shot back.

“Feck, I know it looks bad but I’ll explain about Aoife the next time I see you, Gemma. I promise. It won’t be long.”

Gemma walked to the window and looked out over the countryside. It was twilight now; bats were flitting from the barns and a slice of moon hung over the hillside, throwing silvery beams across the roof of the Tremaines’ house on the far side of the valley. Rob’s smiling face flashed through her vision. If Cal could spend time with Fifi and Aoife, then why shouldn’t she spend time with an old school friend?

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll talk after Christmas.”

“You could come back here?” Cal suggested hopefully. “I know Mammy can be a devil at times and the kids are a bunch of gobshites, but we miss you, we really do.
I
miss you, Gems. We could have Christmas together, just you and I, once the show is over. Celebrate your birthday properly? Sure, I’ll even try that handcuff thing again if you like?”

Gemma almost laughed before she remembered that she was cross with him. Cal was very good at talking her around; the Blarney Stone was probably yet another thing he’d snogged behind her back.

“Cal, until you can tell me why you were secretly seeing your ex and lying to me, there is no you and I.” Gemma was adamant on this and she wasn’t backing down. “If you can tell me right now what’s honestly been going on then I’ll jump in the car and drive to Kenniston straight away. Can you do that?”

There was silence and Gemma’s heart sank like a stone tossed into the creek. That was her answer then.

“I’ll tell you when I see you,” Cal repeated. He had a stubborn streak, that was for sure, and Gemma had often been a little afraid that he was more like Mammy South than she’d realised. “Just watch the show tomorrow, Gemma. Please? We’ll talk afterwards.”

He wasn’t coming. She’d pleaded with him, told him what she needed to know, but Cal hadn’t budged an inch. He’d refused yet again to explain why he was seeing Aoife, and it was clear to Gemma exactly where she stood in Cal’s list of priorities. Watch the show? The show that had driven them apart?

She’d rather be locked in a broom cupboard with Mammy South!

“Happy Christmas, Cal,” Gemma said softly. “I hope you have a lovely day.”

Before Cal could draw breath to reply, she ended the call. When the phone rang back almost instantly Gemma turned it off and shoved it in a drawer. There it would stay, she resolved, with a determination that actually surprised her. She guessed her tears were all cried out now. Besides, Cal had made his choices clear. He could have told her the truth about Aoife – and if there’d been an innocent explanation, Gemma was sure he would have done. Why else would he carry on prolonging this misery if there was any other solution? It made absolutely no sense. He really must have had an affair with Aoife.

Well, to use a seasonal metaphor, what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander, Gemma decided. Who said that she had to spend Christmas and her birthday on her own? In a couple of hours she would be in the pub with the newly gorgeous vision that was her old friend Rob, drinking mulled wine, listening to Slade and without an Irish mammy or ex-girlfriend in sight. She didn’t need Callum South to have fun, did she?

It was time she had a bath, dug an old party frock out of the wardrobe and got into the Christmas spirit. After all, a girl was only thirty once.

Chapter 19

Although Gemma’s heart still twisted every time she thought of Cal, being in The Schooner on Christmas Eve with Rob Tremaine was certainly making her feel much better. With her mobile stowed safely in her bedroom drawer, rendering her totally incommunicado, and all dark thoughts of Cal and Aoife forcefully shaken off, Gemma was determined to enjoy her evening out.

The pub, a crumpled stone building with crazy sloping floors and low dark beams that had been the undoing of many a tall and drunken visitor, was on the bank of the River Fowey and a hotspot for locals and second-homers alike. In the years that Gemma had been away, The Schooner,
like much of Cornwall, had undergone a radical transformation. Having previously been a dark and cave-like smoke-filled haunt for fishermen and farmers, who’d usually gathered by the end of the bar playing dice or eating bar snacks, it had undergone a makeover and was now whitewashed, airy and lit softly with LED spots and white fairy lights. The sausage and chips in a basket, which had been Gemma’s personal favourite, were long gone; instead, chalk boards in swirling cursive script boasted the kind of gourmet menus more often seen in Kensington. Even the cider, which had once been a local scrumpy so potent it could double as an anaesthetic should the need arise, had been exchanged for pear or cherry imposters in funky corked bottles.

“I kind of miss the sticky floor and the fag ends,” Rob said wistfully as he guided Gemma through the laughing groups of second-homers who were hogging all the tables by the window. His hand rested on the small of her back and he was taking great care that nobody pushed or shoved her. The awkward boy had certainly grown into a real gentleman, Gemma decided – and one who was sweetly oblivious to how many women threw admiring glances in his direction. Not that she blamed them. Although Rob was dressed casually in charcoal cords and a sea-green shirt that echoed the colour of his eyes, his tall, strong body and air of being totally comfortable in his own skin gave him a powerful presence. Gemma was used to people staring when she was out and about with Cal, but this was something else again.

“Please tell me they kept the Pac-Man table?” she said hopefully. As teenagers it had been a rite of passage to drink scrumpy and play Pac-Man. Gemma couldn’t count how many nights she and her friends had spent bent over the machine, steering a yellow blob towards cherries while eking out one drink and praying that their parents didn’t come in and freak.

Rob smiled at her indulgently. “You’ve been away even longer than me, haven’t you? I think that was claimed by a museum years ago. Sorry, Gemma, I’m afraid you’re going to have to talk to me – but I promise my conversational skills have improved since the school bus.”

It was on the tip of Gemma’s tongue to point out that Rob’s conversational skills weren’t the only things that had improved, but luckily she stopped herself just in time. Once Rob had bought them both some mulled wine and they were seated beside the river, toasting nicely in the warmth of a patio heater, she turned the conversation round to people they knew and old school memories. This was far safer ground than the fact that he’d turned into the sort of guy you looked at twice (and then glanced at again, to make sure your eyes hadn’t being playing tricks on you).

“So what took you to Australia?” she asked. “That seems like quite a step for a Cornish boy.”

“Yeah, it was a bit further than crossing the Tamar,” Rob agreed. He swirled his drink thoughtfully. “I think I just needed to get away from being here and always being the same guy. I was pretty shy at school, and when my uncle offered to have me come out to work for him it seemed too good an opportunity to turn down.”

“So you stayed for fourteen years?” Gemma said, a bit enviously. It made getting as far as London seem a bit lame.

“Yes and no. I travelled too. I did the backpacker thing: Thailand, the Far East, all the usual stuff. Then I had a surfy phase and lived in Sydney for a while.” His eyes twinkled in the flickering light from the hurricane lamp on their table. “It was brilliant, you know, and I loved every minute. It did me the world of good too. The Aussies I met in the outback were a hard-working bunch, and I had to toughen up pretty quickly if I was going to survive. It felt as though everything out there pretty much wanted to kill me or eat me. Including the women!”

Several of the women in The Schooner
looked as though they’d like to eat Rob alive too, Gemma thought with a smile. There were quite a few envious looks being thrown her way; that was for sure! She sucked in her stomach – her old black dress was stretchy, thank goodness – and tucked her hair behind her ears. There. She could still just about pull it off, even if the dress was a tad tight. That was Cal’s fault: she’d been comfort eating ever since his earlier phone call.

What was Cal doing now? It was early evening, so maybe he was just finishing up in the bakery? Or perhaps he was having drinks in the Hall with Lady D? Or maybe, and this felt as though somebody was dragging barbed wire through her insides, he was exchanging tender Christmas kisses with Aoife?

This thought made Gemma feel very angry indeed. How dare he? Well, two could play at that game.

“Where did you go after Sydney and the Far East?” she asked Rob, leaning forward a little to give him a good view of her cleavage. Actually, this didn’t take much effort; recently her boobs seemed to have been taking on a life of their own. The hopeless washing machine at the Lion Lodge kept shrinking all her bras.

“Then I went to New Zealand,” Rob continued. Full marks that his eyes hadn’t drifted south, Gemma thought. Ripping her thoughts back to the present she tuned into what he was telling her about life amongst the Kiwis. He had a way of talking to you that made you feel as though you were the most fascinating person on the planet – not like Cal, who was constantly taking calls, speaking to the crew or signing autographs. Cal was great fun and wherever he went he was generally the centre of attention, which sometimes made Gemma feel a bit like a member of his entourage rather than the woman he loved.

Or rather, the woman he used to love.

“So that was where I had my tattoo done,” Rob was saying with a rueful grin. “It seemed like a great idea at the time – I guess I was doing the whole Maori thing – but my mum flipped when she saw it.”

“It can’t be that bad, surely?” Gemma said. Cal had “Made in Ireland” and the Irish flag
inked on his bum, which always made her laugh, and the Dangers’
emblem was on his back. Still, he wasn’t quite at Beckham’s level of tattoos yet – although he was always on about getting her name written on his arm. She should have taken him up on it, Gemma thought wryly; maybe he could have had “Gemma’s”
inked on his willy?

In answer to her question, Rob stood up and slowly began to unbutton his shirt. Gemma gulped and heads swivelled because it was like watching a virtual reality female fantasy. In a minute he’d crook his finger and half the women in the pub would get up and follow him!

Shirt undone, Rob shrugged it from his shoulders and suddenly Gemma realised what he was doing. The midnight-black tattoo was a Maori design and covered most of the right side of his chest, coiling over his shoulder and winding its way down that strong arm. It was tribal, tracing the sinews and the strength beneath the golden skin, and very, very sexy. Gemma’s mouth was dry. Cal’s flag seemed a bit half-hearted now.

“Oh!” she said. “Did it hurt?”

Did it hurt? What on earth was the matter with her? A gorgeous man had just stripped off and shown her his amazing body and all she could think of to say was
did it hurt
? Cal had said that “Made in Ireland”
had caused him to faint, but then he was a footballer and everybody knew they were total pussies when it came to pain.

But Rob just laughed. “Yeah, it hurt like hell! I would have cried like a baby, only the guy doing it would have never let me forget.” He pulled the shirt back on and there was a collective sigh of disappointment from the nearby women. “So that’s me and the potted history of my last decade or so.”

This was where Gemma was supposed to reciprocate with tales of what she’d been up to, but all that was all pretty well documented. As she sipped her drink, not really enjoying it that much, she told Rob a bit about the business and the show.

“I must confess I have seen it,” he said, looking shyly at her from under those thick lashes (totally wasted on a guy). “Oh look, who am I kidding? I’ve seen all of the last series on Netflix.”

“You’re out of date then. I’ll have to get Seaside Rock to send you a disc of the latest one,” Gemma said, but Rob shook his head and then reached out and took her hand in his. It was large and work roughened and looked odd when she was so used to seeing Cal’s hand with its pastry-crusted nails and speckling of cinnamon freckles.

“I was only watching it because of you,” Rob said softly. The lamplight softened his face as he reached across and with his other hand gently traced the curve of her cheek. “I even came to the book signing in Truro the other week. You didn’t recognise me and it was so busy I never had time to introduce myself.”

She stared at him. Was Rob the fit guy Angel had been struck by? Duh. Of course he was.