Snowflakes on Silver Cove: A festive, feel-good Christmas romance (White Cliff Bay Book 2) (9 page)

‘George!’

‘What? No one will know.’ He gave it to her and she was touched by the sweet gesture. She cradled it in her hand, afraid it might break or suddenly melt. ‘You can put it in your freezer when you get home.’ He started singing, ‘
Nine days before Christmas my true love gave to me, an ice rose that was all slippery.
’

‘Your poetry is terrible.’

He shrugged as she stared down at the tiny memory from their wonderful date. He took her by the hand and she quickly slipped it into her pocket as they walked past the security guard trying not to look guilty.

‘Come on, we have a date with Leo and Rose.’

‘I thought we were going to watch
Psycho
.’

‘Your choice, Lib, do you want to watch something scary so you can cuddle up to me, or watch
Titanic
so I can cuddle up to you?’

‘
Psycho
definitely. There’s no better way to end a date than cuddling with your boyfriend on the sofa. But we’ll watch
Titanic
tomorrow, I know you need your weekly fix.’

He smiled and she followed him out.

T
he pub was slowly emptying
, the locals shouting their goodbyes to each other across the pub, and Amy was just getting her jacket on ready to leave herself when Seb walked past her with a tray of empties.

‘I need to speak to you. Stay back after everyone else has gone, will you?’ he said, as he moved behind the bar.

She surveyed him. ‘My shift finished fifteen minutes ago. Whatever you want to say to me you can say when I’m next on shift.’

He banged his tray down, stirring Jack from his slumber, and started forcefully throwing glasses into the dishwasher.

‘What’s wrong with you tonight? You’ve been snappy, getting orders wrong. You’re like a bear with a sore head.’

‘Oh, you noticed, did you? I didn’t think you would have. Matt and Polly seemed to hold your attention avidly all night.’

She looked away so he wouldn’t see the smile of satisfaction on her face. So it had worked. ‘I have to be up early for work tomorrow, so I’d appreciate you discussing the finer points of my shifts or how to clean the dishwasher either right now or leaving it till tomorrow.’

‘Damn it, Amy, you make me so angry. Nobody gets under my skin like you do. For God’s sake, can you not spare me a few minutes?’

She slung her bag over her shoulder. ‘We both know why I make you so angry, it’s because you want me and you continue to deny it. And no, I can’t spare you a few minutes. I don’t want to be alone with you any more, it’s driving me insane to be with you and not touch you or kiss you.’

‘That’s what I want to talk to you about,’ he muttered, as she moved to leave, freezing her in her tracks.

Judith suddenly approached. ‘I’m off now, my love, unless there’s anything you want help with?’

‘No, that’s fine, I’m nearly done here and then I’m going straight to bed,’ he said, shooting Amy a quick look of desire and her mouth nearly fell open. Did he mean he wanted to go to bed with
her
? He walked round the bar towards Judith. ‘I’ll see you Thursday.’

She hugged him, giving him a fond kiss on the cheek then looked at Amy.

‘Amy, would you like a lift home?’

Amy was sure that if her mouth hadn’t fallen open before at Seb’s surreptitious offer of sex, it certainly had now at Judith’s sudden generosity.

‘I… actually need to talk to Amy about something to do with work, so…’ said Seb.

‘I don’t mind waiting,’ Judith smiled cheerfully and Amy suddenly wondered if she planned to kill her, to get her in the car and then do away with her, burying her body in a shallow grave in the hills between here and their road.

‘It will take a while actually, Judith, so there’s no point in waiting.’

Judith stood in the silence that followed, her eyes narrowed, her nostrils flaring, before she admitted defeat.

‘OK, I’ll cook your favourite Thursday, spaghetti bolognese.’

Seb smiled and Amy watched him as Judith let herself out.

The pub was empty now and she found her mouth was dry as he turned towards her.

There was a silence, punctuated only by the ticking of the clock and his breathing, nervous, accelerated. She didn’t seem to be able to breathe at all.

‘I want you, you know that,’ he said, stepping towards her.

She couldn’t speak either, so she simply nodded.

‘I need you.’

She found her hands were trembling as she reached up and touched his face. She watched as his eyes filled with desire and suddenly his mouth was on hers.

S
eb’s heart
hammered against his chest. There was so much heat in that kiss, so much pent-up need, passion and desire. Amy was already reaching for his jeans, undoing his button. He had planned to take her upstairs, to do it properly, but he wouldn’t make it, he would have her here, on the floor of his pub.

He moved his mouth to her neck, tasting her, devouring her.

‘Shit, Seb, stop,’ she muttered, trying to push him away.

He didn’t think he could.

‘What?’ he growled, but then he saw the look of guilt and horror on her face and he whirled round to see what she was looking at, but he already knew.

Judith was standing horror-stricken in the doorway.

‘Judith…’ But there were no words he could find which to explain.

‘How could you?’ Judith said, her voice choked with grief. ‘With her of all people, did Marie mean nothing to you?’

‘Judith. I’m sorry,’ Amy started.

‘Don’t talk to me, you disgusting… you whore.’

‘Judith!’ Seb said. ‘Don’t talk to her like that.’

‘I should go,’ Amy said quietly, and he watched her leave, his heart aching for her.

He turned back to Judith, not sure what he could do or say to make this better. If he had taken Amy into the office or upstairs Judith would never have known. Greed was a horrible thing; he hadn’t given Judith a single thought as he had kissed Amy, his only thought had been of Amy, of touching her, kissing her, being with her. Shamefully, Marie hadn’t entered his thoughts either.

‘I left my handbag here.’ Judith stalked back to where she had been sitting and snatched it up.

‘I’m sorry, I really am.’

‘For kissing her or that I found out?’

That she found out obviously; he never wanted to hurt her. But he could never regret that kiss.

‘And in case you’ve forgotten, tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of Marie’s death. I didn’t want to mention it, thought you’d honour her in your own way. I had no idea you planned to do it by jumping into bed with the town slut.’

Seb opened his mouth to protest but she was already gone.

He sat down in a chair with his head in his hands and Jack nuzzled against him, sensing he was upset. He pulled the dog’s ears absently – he hadn’t remembered. The date of Marie’s death had meant nothing to him. When she first died, he had no idea what date it was. For the six or seven weeks immediately after her death, he had been a mess, life had moved as if in a thick fog, and he had very little recollection of those weeks, even the funeral was a blurry haze. His friends had rallied round and kept the pub running in his absence, while Judith had arranged the funeral, sorted out all the paperwork, cooked and cleaned for him, made him get dressed in the mornings, until slowly he could cope on his own, until the grief became manageable. But if he thought his grief was bad, it was nothing compared to what Judith went through a few weeks after Marie’s death. It shocked him to his core to see this woman, who had always been so in control, now a complete wreck. The grief did not subside for months and there was now a role reversal where he did everything for her instead. Judith eventually stopped crying, but he knew she’d never really got over it.

About two years after Marie’s death, he had been asked out on a date and had said yes. When he had told Judith about it, she was livid. They’d had a big row and she’d stormed off. That night she’d had a heart attack. Seb, still recorded as her next of kin, had been called out in the early hours of the morning, and to see her looking so vulnerable, so small, made him writhe with guilt. He also felt an enormous amount of responsibility too; he was all she had now and Marie would have wanted him to look after her. He felt so ashamed, as if
he’d
nearly killed her. Judith had insisted it wasn’t anything to do with him, that she had been feeling a bit poorly for a few days, but it was a bit too much of a coincidence for him. He swore to himself he would never put her through that again. The girl hadn’t been anyone important, she was lovely, but not someone he could see himself spending the rest of his life with. So why fight with Judith over her? Why hurt her over someone who was just a nice girl, no one special?

But if that had been Judith’s reaction when he was tentatively going out on a first date, what would her reaction be to him falling in love again? Would it be different now that so much time had passed?

Five years. He shook his head. He deliberately did not want to mark the day of Marie’s death. He preferred to honour her, to remember her on happy occasions, the date of their marriage and her birthday. But five years was too long to grieve. Marie was a firm believer that life was for the living, that you only have one life and you should grab it with both hands. If she had been here now, she would have slapped him round the back of the head – as she used to do when he did something to infuriate her – to see that he hadn’t moved on in the last five years, that he was honouring a promise he had made to her mum across her death bed. It was high time he moved on, found someone else to love, someone he could take to Judith and say, this is the person I’m going to marry. So why had fate decreed that the one person he wanted would be the one person who Judith hated? He smiled, wryly to himself as he stood up. If Marie was here now, she would have found the whole thing hilarious.

‘
P
opcorn
,’ Libby said, coming in from the kitchen with a large bowl. George lifted the duvet so she could crawl under and, taking her usual place on the opposite side of the sofa to him, she plonked the bowl of popcorn between them. The log fire was roaring nicely, sending golden shadows across the room,
Psycho
was ready to watch on the TV, everything was perfect. He hoped the film would scare her enough that she would need his arms around her for protection. One night they had been watching
The Blair Witch Project
and after about twenty minutes Libby had left her side of the sofa, lifted his arm and curled up into his chest. He’d barely registered what the rest of the film was about, just that there had been a lot of running around the woods and screaming, which had made her press herself tighter against him.

He had tried many different horror films since then, and occasionally he got lucky and found one which scared the crap out of her. Usually the psychologically disturbing ones rather than the gory had the desired effect, which meant she needed his arms around her, but mostly she stayed resolutely and annoyingly on her side of the sofa.

‘So, as first dates go, how did ours rate, marks out of ten?’ he asked.

‘Ten definitely. There was romance, a great meal, the view, great conversation, and even funny moments with Mani’s violin playing, plus the incredible ice carvings afterwards. If that was a real first date, you’d definitely get a second.’

He smiled. He wanted a second date with her, and a third and fourth.

‘So tell me, is this the sort of thing you’d do with Giselle on your first date – that after your meal you’d come back to your sofa to watch a scary film?’

‘I guess this is the sort of thing couples who have known each other for a while would do. Me and Josie used to do this occasionally, but she didn’t share the same taste in films as I did. Nor did she like popcorn.’

‘How can she not like popcorn?’ she asked, incredulous.

‘Exactly.’

‘So what would your ideal first date be?’

‘Well, a drink down the Bubble and Froth, maybe a meal. You can tell a lot about a woman by what she eats – is she only going to be on the rabbit food, or does she like her food as much as I do? Then afterwards a walk along Silver Cove beach. It’d be cold so we’d have to cuddle together, and the wind would be whipping around us but we wouldn’t care because we would be with each other.’

‘Aw, George, you really are rather romantic, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. Then it might start to rain and we’d have to run back to the flat, we’d be all rosy-cheeked from the wind and giggling about getting caught in the rain, and we might share a kiss for the first time, a sweet, tender kiss.’

‘Aww.’

‘Then I’d rip her clothes off and have really dirty sex.’

She laughed loudly. ‘How romantic, what a perfect end to the evening.’

‘Sounds pretty perfect to me.’

‘So a few years down the line, and you and Giselle are still together, would you get married again?’

‘Yes, of course. Just because my first marriage didn’t work out doesn’t mean it won’t work out the second time. I’ve grown as a person now.’

‘OK, so you’re married. Kids?’

‘Yes, definitely, two girls and a boy.’

‘Sounds wonderful.’ Her smile was wistful.

‘Do you not want that – marriage, babies, the happy ever after?’

‘Maybe. No. I don’t know.’

‘You don’t want children?’

‘Yes I do, lately more than ever, but…’

‘That requires trusting the man you’re with.’

She nodded.

‘What happened to you, Lib, what happened that made you so scared of that?’

She glanced over at the TV and he knew she wasn’t going to tell him; she never revealed anything from her past.

She sat up and he thought he had pushed her too far and she was going to leave. He didn’t know why he’d felt the need to rock their happy little equilibrium. They had two weeks until she left, he wanted everything to stay wonderful between them until then. There was nothing he could do to make her stay, so why spend their last few weeks together pushing her and knocking the way she lived her life? It was none of his business.