Page 16 of A Cornish Winter's Kiss

‘Are you telling me this was all you needed to believe in love?’ She couldn’t help smiling.

‘Maybe not the romantic kind, but its’s impossible to be here and see that… How does that awful song go? Love is all around. I suppose I can acknowledge that it exists for some people, even if I’ll never believe in the truly unconditional kind, especially when it comes to romantic love. I still think that’s an illusion.’

‘If you read the dedications, I bet you’ll find plenty of them dedicated to the partners of people who still love them, even though they’re no longer here.’ Emily held his gaze. ‘Surely that’s proof of romantic love?’

‘If it does exist, it’s a lot less common than people think and I’m struggling even more with the concept that it will for McGuigan. But I think he could feel this.’ Jude gestured around him. ‘Love for someone he lost and never recovered from. I always thought he was just a pessimist, too hardened by what he’d seen on the job to let anyone into his life. But I feel like I’ve got to know him better over the last week. I understand him andhis motivations more now that you’ve helped me realise that his backstory needed to be deepened. I’m still not quite sure how his relationship will play out, but I’m much clearer now about why he struggles with it so much. If I can reveal that to readers, maybe they’ll understand him more as well.’

‘I think they will.’ Emily wanted to tell Jude that she felt as if she understood him a little bit better now too, and to ask if he could see the parallels between himself and his lead character as clearly as she could, but she knew what his response would be. He’d laugh it off, maybe even ridicule the idea, and for some reason it mattered to her that they didn’t part on a bad note. ‘I’m really glad it helped, and at least I don’t feel as if you’ve wasted all your money now, but let’s drop it back to the hourly rate we originally agreed. I think that’s fairer.’

‘No, I want to pay you the higher rate. Otherwise you’re less likely to agree to carrying on until I’m sure I’ve got a handle on how to give McGuigan a relationship my editor will go for.’

‘I can’t carry on. Like I said, I’m going home for Christmas.’

‘It’s the twentieth of November.’ Jude gave her an incredulous look.

‘I know, I bought myself a Maltesers advent calendar yesterday and I had to hide it under the bed to stop myself from opening it, but I’m still not sure I’ll hold out for another ten days.’ Emily laughed, even though it was no joke. ‘But I’m going home tomorrow. I’ve got some prep work to do for books I’ll be working on in the New Year, and I’ve booked a few slots at a studio in Truro to do some recordings, but I’ll be home with my family for six weeks.’

‘Six weeks with your family?’ Jude pulled a face, as if he couldn’t imagine anything worse, before seeming to regain his composure. ‘We could meet up in Cornwall.’

His suggestion made Emily catch her breath for a moment and she just stared at him in shock without saying anything atfirst. It seemed like a crazy idea for him to come all the way to Cornwall just to see her. The village where she’d grown up felt like a completely different world to Emily, away from the one where she’d somehow ended up as a romance consultant on a crime writer’s novel. The thought of Jude being a part of that other world was strangely unnerving, and it somehow felt far more personal than seeing him in London. Yet she couldn’t deny the frisson of something that felt a lot like excitement at the prospect of continuing to see him, but it really was madness. ‘Why on earth would you want to trek all the way down there to meet me, even if there was anything more I could think of that would help?’

‘Because I’ve got to resubmit the book to my editor in the New Year, and because I’m spending Christmas in Cornwall too.’ Jude pulled another face.

‘Are you? Why?’

‘I was brought up there and my father and his family still live there.’ Jude seemed to stumble over the mention of his father’s family, but it said a lot that Jude didn’t see them as his family too. Emily was struggling to work out what possible reason he could have had for not mentioning he’d grown up in Cornwall before. She’d told him that was where she came from the day they’d gone to the ice rink. Either way, it was hardly like they’d be around the corner from one another, and it wouldn’t be as easy to meet up as it had been in London. Her family had a saying about Cornish miles taking far longer than the same distance anywhere else; it was the narrow country roads, and there was no racing from A to B. It was a good enough reason for her to turn down his suggestion, even if the real reason was more about self-preservation.

‘I don’t have to tell you that Cornwall’s a big place, then. We can’t just jump on the Tube to meet up.’

‘I know, but you said your family lived in Port Agnes, didn’t you?’ He paused as she nodded. ‘Well, my dad’s place is just outside Port Tremellien. So we’ll virtually be neighbours.’

This time she couldn’t stop herself from asking why he hadn’t told her any of that before. ‘Why didn’t you mention it when I told you where I came from?’

‘It didn’t seem relevant at the time.’ Jude shrugged, and Emily furrowed her brow. She wasn’t sure she’d ever understand him, but she suspected he hadn’t felt the need to tell her about the link they shared back then because he hadn’t envisaged them staying in touch. He probably hadn’t been sure if her input would be of any use, and it was only now that he’d apparently decided it was that he seemed willing to make some kind of personal connection. She wasn’t sure why the idea annoyed her so much – after all, he was paying her very well for her advice – but for some reason it did.

‘Okay, but I still don’t know why you’d want to meet up. I’ve shown you everything I wanted to show you here. You just need to use that to flesh out McGuigan’s character a bit and take it from there.’

‘You said if I met your parents, I’d know what real love looked like.’ Jude’s blue eyes were still striking, even in the semi darkness of Grosvenor Square.

‘You want to meet my parents?’

‘Yes, if you think it would help.’

‘Absolutely not. I wasn’t being literal.’ There was no way on earth she was putting her parents through that. They weren’t animals in a zoo for Jude Cavendish to stare at.

‘Fair enough.’ He shrugged again, not looking remotely put out by the strength of her objection. ‘But I’d like you to show me some of what a Christmas back home means to you, and why you still call it home, despite having lived in London for eight years.’

She was thrown off guard for a moment by the fact that he’d remembered that, but she still didn’t understand what he wanted from her. ‘You must know what a Cornish Christmas looks like. You grew up there too.’

‘I suspect my upbringing was very different from yours.’ There it was again, that little chink in the armour that allowed her to glimpse another side of Jude. A side that made her far more inclined to continue helping him than she would have been otherwise. He clearly wasn’t going to stop trying to convince her that he needed her help either. ‘You could read some of the revised draft for me too, give me your opinion on whether readers will buy into the relationship and care how it turns out.’

‘You could email it to me.’ For a moment he seemed to consider her suggestion, and she was already regretting making it, because despite how infuriating he could be, for some reason a big part of her didn’t want this to be goodbye. But then he shook his head.

‘I’ll be there anyway and I’ll need an excuse to get away from my father’s family for a while. So you’d be doing me a huge favour.’ There it was, that choice of words again –my father’s family. She had no idea what the story behind it was, but it persuaded her to agree.

‘Okay then, but I’ll have to let you know how much time I can spare you when I get down there and work everything out.’

‘I’ll be spending most of my time writing, so that works for me. Just let me know when you can meet.’

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