I had a million questions, but it was clear Jackson wasn’t going to answer any of them.
‘It’s her news to share, not mine, Ells, you’re just going to have to wait until they get back and then see if she wants to see you.’
‘Do you think she will?’ I asked, sounding more than a little desperate.
His smile was soft. ‘She’s Mel,’ he said, as though that explained everything. And in a way, it did.
Chapter Eight
I closed the office early, which wasn’t as surprising as the total lack of guilt felt as I set the alarm and locked the door two hours before quitting time. The high street was still busy with shoppers milling around the stalls set up on both pavements. Friday was market day and the road was closed to traffic, which was why I had arranged for Rhys to pick me up for our ‘non-date’ at the corner of a nearby residential street.
I was about ten minutes early, so I perched on a convenient bench to wait and lifted my face to the sun. The wooden slats were warm beneath my bare legs, and there wasn’t even a whisper of a breeze to stir the leafy trees that lined the road. Behind my sunglasses I could feel my eyes begin to close.
I didn’t hear his car pull up. Nor the sound of the driver’s door opening as Rhys climbed out. I only woke up when he stood before me, his shadow blocking out the late-afternoon sun.
‘Ellie.’
I jolted upright, momentarily thrown to be caught napping in the middle of the day. My sunglasses fell from my nose as I jerked awake and Rhys bent to retrieve them, kneeling at my feet to haul them out from beneath the bench.
A noisy thumping sound filled the air. Still half asleep, I wondered if it was my heart, which had a habit of pounding louder andharder whenever Rhys was around. But it was only an approaching car full of teenagers, the stereo ramped up to a level their eardrums would one day regret. It slowed down as it drove past, and heads leant out of the rolled-down windows.
‘Say yes!’ one of them called.
‘Let’s see the ring,’ yelled another.
Rhys was grinning as he straightened up with my sunglasses in his hand. I grabbed them and hurriedly slipped them on, wishing they were larger so that my blush had a chance of hiding behind the tinted lenses. I’d wanted to appear so cool and composed today. Unflappable. But just five minutes in and I’d already failed in that mission.
‘Well, that was embarrassing. Can we start over?’ I asked as he held open the passenger door for me, still smiling.
He gave an easy-going shrug. ‘We can if you want. But I think the Sleeping Beauty intro and the proposal bit are going to be hard to beat.’
I gave a reluctant chuckle.
‘Mostly, my dates tend to fall asleep at the end of the night, after I’ve bored them rigid. And I’ve always been more of a propose-on-the-third-date kind of guy.’
I giggled, caught his eye, and we both burst out laughing, and it felt so right, so easy, like something we’d done a thousand times before, even though we hadn’t. It intrigued and scared me.
‘This isn’t a date,’ I reminded him, feeling the need to draw boundary lines in the sand one more time before one of us forgot what they were and did something stupid.
‘Whatever you say,’ Rhys said amiably, pulling smoothly away from the kerb.
I was still holding the denim jacket which I’d brought but doubted I was going to need.
‘You can throw that on the back seat, if you want,’ Rhys said, his attention now on the traffic, which was beginning to build up as rush hour approached.
I swivelled around to do as he suggested. The jacket landed on the upholstery, beside a large white paper bag. It was the kind you get from pharmacies when you pick up a prescription. There was a label on it, but I was too far away to read it. And anyway, it was none of my business. But something about the bag bothered me. Even though I laughed at all the appropriate places in an amusing story Rhys related as he drove, the bag kept snagging at my thoughts and tugging at the hemline of my conscience like an impatient toddler.
We stopped just once on the journey for petrol, and my inner Pandora finally got the better of me. When Rhys left the pump to go inside to pay, I twisted around as far as my seat belt would allow. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see on the bag’s label, but I don’t think it was his daughter’s name. I bit my lip worriedly, knowing I was being overly curious – or downright nosy – but that looked like an awful lot of medication for one little girl.
Twenty minutes later we swung onto the gravelled forecourt of a pub I’d never been to before. Despite the hour, the car park and the bar were already busy.
‘Shall we try the garden?’ Rhys asked, resting one hand at the small of my back to guide me towards a pair of glass doors that led out to the patio and a lawned area beyond.
‘Sure.’
His hand fell away the second we emerged into the lingering warmth of one of the hottest June days I could remember. For late afternoon, even the beer garden was surprisingly full. We scoped the area and ended up snagging the only free table, which happened to be next to an enormous lavender bush. From the low hum ofbees who were buzzing in and out of the foliage, it was easy to see why this had been the last table to be claimed.
‘Would you rather sit inside?’ Rhys asked, his eyes following the flight of a bee as it circled my head.