Reach for the Stars Page 7

  One of the girls sat down on the wall along from Nick. ‘The taxi’s late.’

  ‘Give it five minutes.’ Another of the girls sat next to her friend.

  ‘Did you see Layla Rivers? I hate to see her looking so sad. Joe treated her like a doormat.’

  A flicker of tension rolled through Nick’s shoulders.

  ‘No one deserves that. Especially not Layla.’

  The rest gathered round.

  ‘She’s sweet.’

  ‘And cool.’

  ‘And so talented.’

  Nick glanced up and down the seafront hoping for a sign of the taxi.

  ‘Do you think she knew about Joe getting married?’

  ‘No one did. Not even his parents.’

  ‘Poor thing. How embarrassing!’

  Nick tried to block out the snippets of conversation. And failed.

  ‘She was as white as a sheet tonight. You’d think the last thing she’d want to do is wait tables in his mum and dad’s restaurant.’

  Nick’s jaw clenched and his fists balled up tightly. This was Joe’s parents’ restaurant?

  ‘She’d do anything for anyone. But it must be horrible for them all.’

  ‘I heard that instead of an engagement ring he gave her one those gummy sweets. You know? The ones that come in a mix with fried eggs and little hearts! He never did get her a real one.’

  ‘One gummy ring does not a fiancé make.’ The group of girls sighed in unison.

  ‘Apparently he promised to get down on one knee and propose for real in Paris.’

  ‘He proposed alright. To someone else.’

  ‘The two-faced toad!’

  ‘I heard he was never going to take her to Paris. Even before her mum had the accident and their travel plans went wrong.’

  To avoid overhearing details that made him uncomfortable Nick stood up, tense, anxious to put some extra distance between himself and the gossip.

  The taxi with its neon light swung into view, and the girls on the wall got to their feet. At the same moment Layla exited the restaurant. Far from appearing frazzled she looked phenomenally attractive.

  He strode out of the shadows, heading straight for his target – Layla. Before he could reach her, she was surrounded. One by one, teetering in heels, the girls wrapped her in hugs.

  ‘You’ll bounce back.’

  ‘Onwards and upwards.’

  ‘We’re going to a club in town if you’d like to come too.’

  Layla shook her head and whispered an excuse.

  ‘Gotta get back out there.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Layla agreed with a fixed smile. ‘It’s time to start looking for the man of my dreams. Just not tonight.’

  Desire to see genuine happiness on her face filled some deep void in Nick. He knew his limitations, but a sensational one-off performance he could do.

  ‘Hey!’ Sudden surprise turned all the girls’ heads. He stepped into the middle of the group.

  ‘Nick?’ Layla looked puzzled, but pleased. Result.

  ‘Go with this,’ he mouthed in a barely-there whisper. Seizing the moment, he pushed away the growing list of things he’d like to do better if only he could. Playing a part, he slung a casual arm across her shoulders. ‘I’m the first in line to audition for dream man,’ he announced.

  The girls’ eyes lit up.

  ‘What the …?’ Layla uttered a faint muffled sound as she attempted to speak and Nick’s lips collided with hers.

  The taxi window slid open and the voice of the driver cut through the stunned silence. ‘Do you people want to go into town tonight? Or will sometime in the next decade do?’

  Eyes on stalks the group of girls piled into the taxi. As it moved off Nick broke the kiss. In the electrified stillness he held her gaze, his arms still tightly wrapped around her. ‘I came to meet you,’ he volunteered.

  An irresistible smile spread to her lips. ‘I’m so glad you did.’

  Chapter Seven

  Layla fizzed from his kiss. He’d taken her breath away. Half the village had been wrapping around her like a security blanket. Now she had Nick Wells wrapped around her and … he felt great.

  Suddenly he was kissing her again, this time for real, and she was kissing him back. Buttoned down emotions bubbled inside her. Eclipsed by Nick, for a few fabulous moments Porthkara vanished. The delicious oblivion of physical heat blotted everything out. Her curves molded against his chest as he held her tight in his arms, strong and gorgeous. Beautiful sensations danced in her veins. His kiss had sent her into free fall. It felt unbelievably good – and kind of unsafe. Nothing like Nick had happened to her before. He pulled her closer. Heat and desire crashed together like two waves approaching the shore from opposing angles, a world of temptation condensed in his kiss.

  She didn’t know how he’d got it so right. He just had. In a single moment he’d taken her pain away, and given her hope that her pitiful humiliation would heal.

  ‘Friends?’ Nick’s question cut through the electric current.

  ‘We went to the same school. One of them’s Rosie, the owner of the chip shop. I know her quite well. We don’t hang out much. Mostly I’m too busy.’ She paused pulling back from the edge of danger, realizing that something must have been said to instigate Nick’s award worthy performance. ‘Why?’

  Nick shrugged. ‘They reckoned working at Joe’s family restaurant must be hard on you. You kept that quiet!’

  ‘News spreads like a rash in a little place like this.’ She bit her lip. It had been the most excruciating evening of her life. She’d been all too aware of the tipsy group and the whisperings at their table.

  ‘Why put yourself through that?’

  She sighed. ‘I can’t just resign. And they won’t give me the sack – even if they’d like to. One of the waitresses was a no-show because her child was sick, so I doubled up and waited tables as well as washing dishes.’ When Nick didn’t speak, she added, ‘What else was I supposed to do? They’re practically family.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘At any rate, they nearly were …’

  He took hold of her hand, his smooth palm and his fingers interlaced with hers. She felt small next to his tall masculine height, in a good way, not weak and pathetic – turning up when he did, he’d given her strength.

  ‘You and I need to get our priorities straight. For starters quit working at the Lobster Pot. That way you can focus more on what you’re good at. Your artwork in the nursery is awesome.’

  ‘I’ve barely started.’

  ‘I know. That’s because you’ve hardly any time to focus.’

  ‘Point taken. Every one of those girls is either married, or getting married, shacked up, knocked up, or both. There isn’t a single one who hasn’t got her life on track. Careers. Businesses. Kids. I feel like I got stuck in time and I can’t move forward.’

  ‘That makes two of us.’

  The rumble of Nick’s voice did things to her. Things that made her feel like nothing mattered as much as being held tight in his arms and kissed into a frenzy of deliciousness. Heading towards home, chemistry brewed intensely between them. Instead of being dead on her feet she felt like she’d grown wings. With very little effort she’d probably fly up the hill.

  At the bridge over the silvery stream he stopped and pulled her into his arms again. There was a sky full of stars and spatters of moonlight danced around their feet, the pattern of light and shade shifting with the movement of the leaves and the branches of the trees rustling above them in the gentle summer breeze. His lips brushed hers and she kissed him back with a longing so fiery, deep, and urgent that her feelings completely overwhelmed her. Their mouths moved in synchronicity as they lost themselves in each other, wordlessly spelling out desire. Finally she broke away from the spell of his incredible charisma. Fingers tightly laced with his he drew her with him into the deepening darkness hurrying silently past all the village houses with their lit windows.

  A black cat shot out from beneath the gate of a cottage gard
en. The moment the cat saw them, hackles raised and green eyes wide, it arched its back, legs stretched tall like built-in stilts. Layla jumped, almost as startled as the cat.

  ‘That’s good luck.’

  He fired her a disarming sideways glance. ‘I don’t see how. We gave it a fright and it made you jump.’

  ‘Well, in some places a black cat crossing your path is bad luck. But not here.’

  ‘You learned the superstition handbook off by heart?’

  His mid-Atlantic accent triggered tingles in her spine. She shook her head as the cat slunk between two parked cars. ‘I like lucky things,’ she said brightly, ‘But if you believe in good luck you can’t ignore the bad luck stuff. I mean I’d hate to break a mirror, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It’s not something I really think about.’

  ‘A broken mirror is seven years bad luck.’

  ‘You can take a thing too far.’ His eyes shone, full of intrigue, compelling, drawing her right in.

  They were still holding hands and there was no one here, no one to convince that she was over Joe. It was clear that it wasn’t about that any more, the energy from Nick’s touch crackled in her veins.

  ‘I want to set up a business, buy a van, design a logo, get a website. I’ve got lots of ideas. It won’t just be nursery murals. I want to decorate all kinds of play spaces. And run workshops.’ She stopped talking abruptly, finally adding, ‘That’s the plan. It might even happen – some day. I’ve been saving for a long time. I’m pretty much there, to be honest.’

  ‘So what’s stopping you?’

  ‘I’m waiting for the time to be right.’

  ‘You can’t wait forever.’

  ‘When you put it like that …’ She paused and pushed a strand of unruly hair behind one ear with her free hand. ‘… Things have been a bit unsettled.’

  ‘Go for it. Do what you really love. Start by quitting the restaurant. It’s making you unhappy.’

  She could while away hours painting and it didn’t feel like work. Her other jobs were getting in the way. Since Joe went away without her she’d had the perfect chance to make her own plans happen. Instead she felt tied to helping out the people who loved her, doing jobs she’d outgrown.

  ‘You know what? You’re right. Starting tomorrow, I’m getting my life straight.’

  ‘This is starting to sound a lot like something to celebrate.’ Nick drawled his words with a charm that sent tingles fizzing through her system all over again.

  At the cottage he went to the fridge and took out a bottle of champagne.

  ‘How did that get in there?’

  ‘Guilty.’ He ripped off the gold foil. ‘I snuck it in to leave as a thank you for letting me stay. But since we’re celebrating …’

  ‘We are?’

  ‘Certainly.’ He twisted the bottle with the skill of a sommelier and popped the cork without a single drop bubbling over.

  She wrinkled her nose and rummaged at the back of a kitchen cupboard to produce two vintage champagne glasses she’d found at a car boot sale. Intrigued by the unfamiliarity of Nick she watched him pour the champagne, his electric energy far outside her comfort zone. She clutched the glass he handed her and sipped the champagne, unnerved by this too-good-to-be-true invasion of her space but certain that she’d been in denial for months and she was ready to reboot her life.

  She clinked her glass to his. ‘A toast,’ she breathed in a whispery voice she hardly recognized. ‘To flowers, and new beginnings.’ She flashed him a brazen look. ‘And things.’

  ‘And things?’ His eyes twinkled. ‘To “And things!”’

  He opened the door and she followed him to the seats outside. She struck a match to light a candle in an empty wine bottle on the table. In the flickering shadows his distracting face looked even more attractive than it had before he’d kissed her. Clouds drifted across the sky playing hide and seek with the smattering of stars and the pale moon. A single streak of wax dripped from the candle and spilled down the side of the bottle solidifying against the cool green glass.

  ‘Thanks for tonight,’ she whispered, hardly believing that she was sipping expensive champagne under a moonlit sky with this fabulous guy, and that she was thanking him for kissing her.

  His delectable lips quirked into that smile. ‘You’re welcome.’

  Layla knocked back a slug of the bubbles, drinking like it like lemonade. ‘Last night, before you arrived, after Joe’s explosion of happiness on the internet I felt as if I’d taken a bucket and spade down to the beach, dug up my buried emotions and put them on display for everybody to examine. I was suffocating.’

  ‘What happened with you guys?’

  ‘I don’t really know.’ She didn’t feel like explaining. ‘Let’s not spoil things. I’d rather not rake it up.’

  ‘Maybe Mexico’s like Las Vegas. Perhaps he got very drunk, and woke up the next morning to find he’d said “I do” by mistake.’

  Layla swallowed some more champagne. She pushed a hand into her hair and ran it through to the ends. ‘And he doesn’t remember a thing about it? It would serve him right!’ She appreciated the comic take but gut instinct told her it hadn’t happened that way. The photographs depicted a different story. The dress. The cake. Joe’s wedding might have been spontaneous, but not falling-down-drunk-don’t-know-how-it-happened spontaneous.

  She smiled. Something had changed. Joe was in a place labeled ‘The Past’. Staying stuck in a stale relationship because it felt easier than striking out on her own had been her default setting. Joe had done the right thing the wrong way. He’d made the break for both of them.

  Totally in the moment she looked at Nick, transfixed, craving more of his heat, his touch, his body close to hers. She tore her eyes away and fixed on a line of bubbles in her glass rising and vanishing.

  ‘I hope he’s happy,’ she said, picking up the bottle of fizz and topping up their glasses.

  ‘You’ll be happy too. You just aren’t meant to be happy together.’

  Nick’s statement was blunt, but accurate.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have worn green to Maggie’s wedding. I very nearly refused. I had serious doubts. I didn’t want to bring any bad luck on Maggie and Alex. At the end of the day I’m the one that got unlucky. Maggie laughed it off. She chose green because it was Christmas Eve. And it’s top of my colour chart. The problem is she doesn’t take my superstitious tendencies terribly seriously. At least not the bad luck stuff.’

  ‘Green at weddings? Magpies?’ He held up a hand like he was begging her to stop. ‘I like you a lot Layla, but do you think it’s possible that you take this superstition thing of yours to an unhealthy level?’

  ‘It’s easier to blame bad luck than face facts. We were in a rut. A trip around the world wouldn’t have fixed it.’ She jingled her bracelet. The antique gold gleamed in the candlelight. ‘These are my lucky charms. From now on I’m only into the good stuff.’

  ‘No more counting magpies?’

  ‘That might be a stretch.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘I’m not making any promises, but I’ll try.’

  He reached across the table, took her wrist in his hand and ran his finger over the pulse point. The way he made her feel felt like some sort of wizardry. ‘If you ask me, which I know you didn’t,’ he said. ‘We make our own luck.’

  ‘Nick?’ Newly spontaneous, she breathed his name.

  ‘Yes?’ He hit her with the full dazzling force of his eyes.

  His lips twisted into a seductive half-smile and she buzzed with the urge to take a risk. His smile and his smouldering gaze were full of possibility. She dived headlong into the fizz-popping chemistry between them.

  ‘Do you get propositioned much? You know, by women wanting mind-blowing sex?’

  He leaned back in his chair, ‘I’d say that’s the champagne talking.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ She paused, assessing his comment, her neglected inner flirt unleashed. ‘Well, it is. But I’m not
legless. Or anything. Answer me.’

  He forked a hand through his hair, sexy as hell and pulled a mock sorry-for-himself face. ‘Tough gig, right?

  His eyes played with hers in the shadowy light and sweet heat spiralled through her. She couldn’t throw herself at him. Could she? She blew out the candle and stood up, ready to go look for fresh sheets to make up his bed. Picking up the bottle he followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘We’re not so very different, you and me. We’ve both got pasts to bury.’ His drawl murmured against her ear. Her heart banged against her ribs as his arms closed around her pulling her against him, her curves molded to his muscles. His heightening desire was unmistakable, his erection pressed against her tightly. Desire bubbled through her, his breath hot on her neck.

  ‘I’m learning to live in the moment,’ she whispered.

  ‘That’s what I do best.’

  Locked in the circle of his arms, her breasts jutted, taut and aching to feel the blaze of his skin on hers. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘One night of amazing … hot … you.’ His hands slipped beneath her top, smoothing over her back, drawing her impossibly closer. ‘You?’

  She moaned. ‘Same.’ She tipped her head to meet his and his mouth crashed with hers, soft and strong, possessing her with his demanding kiss. She’d stopped looking back, and she wanted him, so raw she’d topple with him into a sea of dangerous.

  Chapter Eight

  Nick could set off fireworks with just his smile. The full onslaught of his hot, heavenly body left her both powerless, and empowered. Her bones melted, the fuses of her mind blown, the future lay ahead full of possibility. Nick had done that. He’d turned everything on its head contorting her emotions into something resembling plastic that had been heated too long in the microwave.

  She swayed against him with can’t-wait-a-second urgency as if at any moment her knees might stop working and the only thing stopping gravity from dropping her onto the kitchen tiles in a crumpled heap was his strong arms, locked around her. She reeled, realizing that everything she felt was mirrored in his eyes, his lips, his urgent hunger. He wanted her as badly as she needed him. It was a powerful feeling, and it filled her with a surge of sexual confidence.