Snowflakes on Silver Cove: A festive, feel-good Christmas romance (White Cliff Bay Book 2) (13 page)

‘You have a plan, don’t you?’

‘Yes I do.’

‘Right, I’m going to bed. Night George.’

‘Hang on, you have to sleep with me tonight,’ he said, wiggling his eyebrows in what he hoped was a saucy way.

‘What?’ she looked confused.

‘Doctor’s orders.’

‘The doctor ordered that I have sex with you? I didn’t know that was a prerequisite for a bang on the head, to be banged elsewhere as well.’

‘The doctor’s actual words were that I should keep an eye on you tonight, just in case you fell into a coma or something careless like that. I can’t keep an eye on you if you’re over there and I’m over here. Besides, you might go wandering again, you might stagger vacantly onto the beach in a confused concussed state. You’d trip, smash your head on the rocks and then the tide would come in and take your body out to sea. You’d wash up in Skegness in a few days’ time, dead and mutilated by the fishes, and they’d only be able to identify you through your dental records.’

‘Oh no.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Skegness? Really?’ she said, disdainfully.

‘Yes.’

‘You paint quite a picture. So what you’re saying is that if I don’t sleep with you tonight, I’ll be dead by the morning, and fish food by the afternoon?’

‘Yes, case in point I think.’

‘OK, if it’s doctor’s orders, I guess I have to,’ she shrugged. ‘Though I’m still not sure that having sex with you will help, but if it’s doctor’s orders…’

She started walking towards the bedroom, pulling off her hoodie and throwing it over the chair, so she was only in her pyjamas. She flashed him a sexy look before she disappeared into the bedroom.

He stared after her in shock for a second. He had expected her to laugh at his proposal and go back to her own flat. And he hadn’t actually meant that they should have sex, he’d just meant to insinuate it by suggesting that she sleep in his bed. Was Libby now lying in his bed, naked? He quickly stood up and followed her in. She was lying with the duvet pulled up to her chin. He had no idea if she was still wearing her pyjamas. Luckily he didn’t have to undress in front of her as he was already wearing his Christmas tree pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt with a huge snowman on it. He switched off the light and slipped into the bed by her side. In the light of the moon he could see her watching him and, as soon as he got himself settled and comfortable, she slid across to his side of the bed, cuddling up to him with her head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, swallowing nervously.

‘I’ve never had this with a man, not really. I never had a man who I wanted to spend all my time with. Dating is nice but it seems like a big front and, once you’re used to the person or slept with them, then no one makes any effort any more, so I don’t really miss that. But this. I like this. Did you and Josie used to cuddle?’

‘We never cuddled, ever.’

‘Oh, do you not like cuddling?’ She started to pull away but George held his arms tight around her.

‘She didn’t, I do. You ever want to cuddle in bed, you can come over here any time.’

She snuggled into his side again. ‘And if Giselle is here?’

‘Well, there’s probably room in the bed for the three of us.’

Libby laughed. ‘We could make a George sandwich.’

‘Yes, I like the sound of that, a rose between two thorns.’

Libby laughed even louder and then she leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Good night, George.’

He watched her close her eyes and within minutes she was fast asleep. Though it took significantly longer for him to go to sleep. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman in his bed. And it wasn’t just any woman, his best friend, the most beautiful woman in the world. Every time he dozed off, he kept waking himself back up to check he wasn’t imagining it. She lay there all night, with her head on his chest, arms wrapped round him, their legs entwined, her breath warm on his neck. It didn’t matter that they weren’t making love, this was infinitely better. It was quite simply the most beautiful moment of his life and he never wanted to let her go.

L
ibby woke
the next morning and smiled to find that she had spent the whole night wrapped in the arms of her best friend. She also found she had a burning desire to write. She carefully extracted herself from George’s arms without waking him and left a note on the pillow that said:

Last night was amazing, thank you Big Boy x

before heading back over to her flat.

Unfortunately as she opened the door to George’s flat and walked out she came face to face with Giselle who was heading out the main front door. She faltered for a moment as she saw Libby, clocking her pyjamas and her hair everywhere, and pennies quite clearly dropped into the wrong place. Giselle quickly regained her smile and hurried out the flat, leaving Libby with her mouth flapping as she desperately tried to think of a reason why she could be leaving George’s flat in her pyjamas so early in the morning. The door closed behind Giselle and Libby sighed. George’s chance with her was getting slimmer by the day.

She couldn’t let it distract her though, she was inspired to write for the first time in months and she had to get it down before she forgot it completely.

L
ibby was writing furiously
, the words coming easier than they had for a long time, when she was disturbed by the buzzer being pressed insistently. She glanced at the bottom of her screen and realised she had written over two thousand words since she had left George earlier that morning. As the buzzer didn’t seem to show any sign of stopping any time soon, she rushed to the intercom, pressed the entry button without checking and flung open the door.

A big bunch of flowers were suddenly shoved into her face. Yellow roses. They smelt amazing.

‘Delivery for Miss Joseph,’ came a muffled voice.

She took them in confusion. ‘Thanks.’

The delivery man, who clearly didn’t get a lot of satisfaction from his job, mumbled something to himself, and left.

She took the flowers to the dining room table and admired them. They were beautiful. But who was sending her flowers? She took the envelope from the depths of the bouquet, and opened it.

T
o My Lovely Libby
, I’m very much looking forward to our second date tonight, yours George x. PTO.

S
he flipped
it over and read the message on the back.

S
even days
before Christmas my true love gave to me…

S
he smiled
, grabbed one of the roses and ran across the hall, letting herself into his flat. George was in the shower; she hovered for a second, then clamped a hand over her eyes, and pushed open the bathroom door.

‘Jesus, Libby,’ came George’s angry voice as what sounded like a bottle of shower gel clattered to the floor.

‘I can’t see anything.’

The shower was suddenly turned off and the cubicle door was opened. There was something very tantalising about having him naked and wet and so close. She stifled a giggle, as she heard him get out in front of her and wrap a towel round himself.

‘I just wanted to say thank you for the flowers, they’re beautiful.’ She risked a peep through her fingers, and thankfully he was now decent. She took her hand away and tried to gauge whether he was really angry. She brandished the flower as a peace offering and he took it begrudgingly.

‘The normal response is to text your thanks,’ he said, grumpily.

‘I’ll text you when I get back.’ She checked her watch. ‘I better get back actually. I did say I would pop up and see Kat later, what with Dave being out on the farm all day.’

‘Good luck. She’s one mad, scary pregnant lady.’

‘George! She’s not mad, she’s just fed up. I hope you’ll be more understanding when you have your own kids.’

‘Sorry, you know I love Kat, but you’ve got to admit, she has gone a bit… unhinged.’

Libby didn’t say anything, knowing it would be disloyal to Kat to do so, but she did think that poor Dave was having a bit of a rough time.

‘Polly and Linda are holding a cake sale at lunchtime, all the money they make this afternoon is going straight to the Lifeboat appeal. If I get back in time I said I’d go,’ Libby said.

‘Mmmm, I do like Polly’s cakes; I’ll probably pop along myself.’

‘You like Polly, you mean,’ she said, feeling a sudden unexpected surge of jealousy.

‘What’s not to like? A beautiful woman who can bake, she’s like my dream wife.’

George must have seen the frown on her face, because he caught her hand. ‘But I bet her bacon sandwiches aren’t anywhere near as amazing as yours. I hear rumours that there are white chocolate and raspberry muffins.’

‘I hear…’ Libby looked around to make sure no one could hear them, ‘that there’s rum and raisin fudge.’

‘Well, that’s definitely my treat then.’

‘I’m a very cheap date, George, one bag of rum and raisin fudge and I’m anybody’s.’

‘And what if I buy you every scrap of fudge in the shop?’

‘Mmmm, I wouldn’t let you out of the bedroom for a week.’

‘Jesus Lib, what are we still doing here, there’s fudge to be bought.’

She laughed. ‘Well, I’ll see you this afternoon for our date – if I don’t see you drooling all over Polly at the cake sale later?’

She left, suddenly vowing that she would learn to cook.

W
ednesdays were
Amy’s day off, in the sense it was the only day she didn’t work; well, not for money. She volunteered for the local charity Cancer Awareness. Her boss, Mia, was one of the most colourful people she knew and she loved her dearly. Mia had lost her own husband to cancer years before, and had since set up the charity to bring more awareness to people. Every Wednesday Amy would be doing something different, sometimes face painting in White Cliff Bay or selling cakes to raise money for cancer research, sometimes it would be liaising with the local surgery and taking a tour bus to nearby towns and villages offering free health checks and sometimes… her day was… a little bit odd.

She surveyed herself in the mirror, laughing at the costume that Mia had brought round the day before. If she thought dressing up as a blackberry was bad, this was a million times worse.

Today she was a penis. A seven-foot-tall penis complete with two large round hairy testicles that her feet had slotted into. Mia wanted her to promote awareness of testicular cancer. Amy’s job was to go up and hug as many men as she could and once they had calmed down from being attacked by a seven-foot penis, she was then to hand out a leaflet about testicular cancer and the importance of regular checks.

Mia certainly had a good imagination.

Amy had a short while before the taxi came, so she walked backwards and forwards across the lounge trying to get used to moving with the costume. The head of the penis kept dragging on the ceiling, rather painfully she imagined.

As she neared the back window, her heart dropped. The wind was up today and her little rotary line had been blown over. Her knickers that she had washed and hung out earlier were nowhere to be seen.

Opening the French windows, she stepped outside, wondering where they were. Then she saw a spotted pair, fluttering like a flag on one of the bushes that divided her garden and Judith’s. Shuffling closer, she saw to her horror that every single pair of her knickers – stripy ones, lacy ones, flowery ones – were now dotted over Judith’s garden like rare tropical butterflies.

What was the protocol in a case like this? Could she go round, knock on her door and politely ask for her knickers back like a kid asking for her ball? But what if Judith refused and spitefully kept all her knickers? Those were some of her best ones out there in the garden. Would it be best to forget them and buy a whole new drawer full? But that would still mean Judith finding them, and knowing her, she would probably think that Amy had done it deliberately. Realising that the only course of action was to retrieve them before Judith noticed, she shuffled closer to the small dividing wall at the top of her garden. The penis costume had taken ages to get into and she didn’t have time to get out of it and back into it before the taxi came.

She eyed the low wall and, praying that Judith wasn’t near her window, she took a deep breath and rolled herself over the top.

J
udith was sitting
in her lounge, bored. The book club she had started many years before had seemed a good idea at the time. But the ladies who frequented it were as dull as ditch water. They talked about their plants, their grandchildren, the latest cake recipes, none of which interested her. And the books they read, she hated every single one of them. Over the last four years, they had read and deliberated over
Pride and Prejudice
,
Jane Eyre
,
Wuthering Heights
,
Great Expectations
,
Oliver Twist
,
Moby Dick
,
Middlemarch
,
War and Peace
and even some of the works of Shakespeare. She had rented
Much Ado About Nothing
on DVD, rather than reading it, just so she could have something to talk about. She’d actually really enjoyed it, though that might have something to do with the rather lovely Denzel Washington, rather than the quality of the book. Upstairs, by her bed, waiting to be read, was
Eclipse
, the third instalment in the
Twilight Saga
, the latest story by Eve Loveheart and a romance thriller by her favourite author Nora Roberts. None of which she would admit to in front of these well-to-do ladies.

What Judith wanted more than anything was to go on a world cruise, where she could curl up on a sun lounger with all manner of trashy books en-route to locations she had only dreamed of. If only Marie hadn’t made her promise to look after Seb after she had gone, she would have left White Cliff Bay years ago. Her lifestyle bored her, White Cliff Bay and its elderly residents bored her. Nothing exciting happened; it was the same day in and day out.

She looked out on her garden as Brenda, the chairwoman of the Woman’s Institute, waxed lyrical about
The Christmas Carol
that they were reading. Brenda was talking about the character of Scrooge and how he hadn’t changed his ways because this was the right path but because he was scared of what the future held.

Suddenly a penis rolled over the wall of the garden and started shuffling around her hedges.

Had she gone mad? She had just been reading Eve Loveheart’s book that morning, the sex scene was quite detailed; with Chad’s very large manhood, was Judith now manifesting her very own large penis?

But as the book club grew deathly quiet, and they all turned round to look at the seven-foot penis as it strode purposefully round her rockery, she knew she wasn’t hallucinating after all.

Verity Donaldson, next to her, burst out laughing. ‘Well now, that’s not something you see every day.’

‘Disgusting,’ Brenda said, huffily.

‘I don’t think so, there’s nothing wrong with the male sex organ, especially not one that big, eh, Judith?’ Verity nudged her in the side.

Judith looked at Verity, and felt a smile spread across her lips. The first smile she had felt in five years. She liked Verity, she decided. She liked her a lot.

L
ibby sped
up the drive of Two Hill Farm as quick as the windy road would allow. She beeped her horn at Big Dave as she drove past him in his tractor and he waved hugely. Pulling up outside the large farmhouse, she let herself into the cosy warmth of the kitchen.

‘Kat?’ she called, moving into the empty hallway.

‘Up here,’ sobbed Kat and Libby’s blood turned to ice in her veins. Taking the stairs three at a time she ran quickly into their bedroom. Kat was sitting on the bed, sobbing.

Libby quickly enveloped her into a big hug, not an easy feat considering how huge she was.

‘What’s wrong, what’s happened?’ she said, into the side of her hair.

‘I can’t put my shoes on, I’ve been trying for the last hour and I just can’t do it.’ Kat wiped her nose, noisily.

Libby sighed with relief, and pulled back. ‘Well, I can help with that.’

She kneeled at Kat’s feet, tugged her boots on and did up the shoelaces, then she heaved her to her feet, noticing she was wearing one of Dave’s shirts and his tracksuit bottoms today.

‘So, where are you going now you’ve got your shoes on?’

‘I was going to go down to the field and shout at Dave,’ Kat said, like a petulant child.

‘Well sure, that sounds like something worth doing … but how about I take you out for an ice cream instead, and then if you really want to shout at Dave when you come back, we’ll both go down there and throw our shoes at him?’

Kat wiped her nose again. ‘I do like ice cream.’

‘Well, you can have a sundae if you want, with marshmallows, and sauce and chocolate brownie pieces. Amy’s not working there today but she’s working nearby. If we’re lucky we may see a big penis molesting some poor unsuspecting men as we eat.’

‘A penis?’ Kat sniffed, her eyes lighting up.

Libby grinned. ‘I’ll explain on the way.’

K
at sat
opposite Libby with love in her eyes. The sundae she had chosen, the triple chocolate, strawberry and coconut dream, was almost as big as her head.

Libby’s two scoops of mince pie ice cream looked tiny in comparison.

Sucking the chopped nuts off her spoon, Libby glanced out the window as the seven-foot penis chased a man down the road. The man looked genuinely terrified but Amy was unrelenting.

For a big girl, dressed in what Libby presumed was a heavy costume, Amy was very fit – the penis was moving very quickly.

She smiled. It was when Amy had been working for Mia that they had first met. Libby had been living in White Cliff Bay for about three weeks and had been driving back from Apple Hill along the windy lanes when Amy’s little red Mini had swerved across a sharp bend, cutting Libby up and ending up in a field of sheep that barely moved as the Mini came to rest amongst them.