Page 9 of One Bed

Now Golly was expecting her to share the cottage with him on the very flimsy basis that they’d once shared a room? Was her godma rowing with only one oar in the water?

Why couldn’t Golly refund Gib his money and send him on his way? And, dammit, why did he make her skin prickle? He looked like Pip all grown up, and his voice made her think of long kisses under a velvet moon. A velvet moon? Jesus! She was a writer but that was way too much purple prose.

The point?

He was astranger, and she didn’t share beds withstrangers. Dear God, Golly was ridiculously free thinking, but this was patent nonsense.

Gib spoke before she could. ‘I’m not moving. I paid my money, and I like the cottage. I also like my privacy.’

He lifted an arrogant eyebrow, and his eyes met Bea’s. Her stomach did a complicated backflip. Stupid thing.

‘I’m sure there’s a couch you can sleep on in the main house,’ he added.

‘Nobody is sleeping on any couches in my house,’ Golly told him, her tone suggesting he not argue. ‘I have not, and never will, let people sleep on my furniture. That’s what beds are for.’

‘You’re shit out of luck then,’ Gib told Bea.

Bea glared at him and thought fast. There were two couches in the cottage’s lounge. One was a horsehair-stuffed divan of questionable origin. Sleeping on it was like lying on springs and nails, and it left bruises on butts and backs. The other couch, an Art Deco sofa, was more beautiful than it was comfortable, and sleeping on it would require four sessions at a chiropractor when she returned to London.

Bea had a thousand things to do this weekend, she’d be useless if she didn’t get a solid night’s sleep. With Gib taking the big bed in the room next door and her lying on one of the couches-from-hell, there was no way she was going to get enough rest. But she didn’t have time to argue the point. ‘I’ll sleep on a couch in the lounge,’ she muttered, annoyed she was conceding.

‘No!’ Gib responded. ‘I hired the cottage, and I’d like to have it to myself.’

Bea ignored him, as did Golly. She handed Bea her toiletry bag. ‘Actually, I had to burn one of the couches, it was riddled with woodworm.’

Freaking marvellous. ‘Crap,’ Bea muttered, thinking of the Art Deco couch and chiropractor bills. On the bright side, that horsehair POS-divan was finally gone. Fifty years too late, but yay!

‘I’m sure you can find somewhere else to stay,’ Gib told her.

Golly placed her pink and orange-tipped fingers on Gib’s huge bicep. ‘Absolutely not! This is Bea’s home, and she needs to be on-site to arrange things for me. Now do stop being difficult, darling.’

‘I am not the one who—’ Gib threw up his hands as Golly walked away. He looked at Bea, obviously irritated. ‘I was talking to her.’

‘She got bored with the conversation,’ Bea replied. She suspected it had been a long time since anyone had walked away from Gib mid-conversation.

Bloody hell, who would’ve thought that annoying kid with a sunburned nose, chapped lips and thin arms and legs would grow up into someone seriously gorgeous?

And masculine.

And he made her, for the first time in years, want. His arms around her, her mouth under his… She wanted to jump him. But he was too good-looking, too cool, too charismatic to look at her twice. If she was a four, maybe a five on good days, he was a friggin’ eleven.Thousand.

And no, she wasn’t putting herself down, at least, no more than usual. Her mother was stunning, Golly was glamorous, and Bea had been in a long-term relationship with the walking, talking definition of hipster cool. Realistically, Bea’s shoulder-length hair was thick but brown, her nose a little flat. Her eyes were a mix of grey and blue, and her teeth were good. She still carried the extra seven kilos Gerry had begged her to lose, telling her that no one wanted to nail a fat girl.

She sighed and dragged her hands over her face. Embarrassed by her thoughts, and sure that he could read her expression, she tugged at her heavy case again. It didn’t budge. Gib walked over to her, slammed the handle down, and picked it up with one hand. He plucked the toiletry bag from her hand and told Bea to grab her clothes bag. She automatically, and infuriatingly, obeyed his instruction. Argh! Annoying.

Reena turned around to tell her lunch would be served in the kitchen in thirty minutes.

‘G&T’s right now,’ Golly said, walking backwards, her good humour restored. Bea scowled at her, which Golly countered with a huge grin. Her godmother was up to something, and that something wasn’t good. It never was.

She’d have to have a come-to-Jesus talk with her as soon as she could shake Mr Muscles. ‘Don’t let me keep you from the beach,’ Bea told Gib. ‘That was where you were going, right?’

‘I think we first need to resolve the question of who is moving, and where to,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘And, newsflash, it’s not gonna be me. But it’s hot, so we’ll continue this discussion in the cottage.’

Bea was hardwired, conditioned by her childhood to put everyone else’s needs before her own – it was the primary reason she’d stayed with Gerry for much longer than she should’ve – and she often experienced guilt when she annoyed people, something she tried very hard not to do.

But, very strangely, she wasn’t going to move heaven and earth to accommodate this man, to find another place to stay. The cottage washerspace, the place she needed and wanted to be. She wrote a good portion of her first book while sitting at the small wooden table on the deck, banging out the scenes while occasionally lifting her head to look out to sea as she searched for a word, a sentence or inspiration.

Too bad that Gib had paid Golly, even though she could refund him in a matter of minutes. And Bea knew there was a hotel, room or stable somewhere on the island where he could stay. Or he could hop on a ferry and go to Mykonos or Eos. He could go anywhere, he just needed to leave her in peace.

---