Page 42 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
‘Do you want to stay and have breakfast? Coffee?’
He thinks about it. ‘Yes, I do, but I can’t. I can’t do it again, Mick.’
‘Breakfast?’ I ask, knowing hedoesn’tmean breakfast.
He shakes his head, taking a long while to come up with the real meaning behind those words. ‘I can’t not be enough for someone again.’
It’s so exposed and vulnerable, and I can feel my heart splintering at the thought of him thinking it would be the same with us, withme, if this ever went further than a kiss on the cheek. No matter how much time has passed since the breakdown of his marriage, the scars of feeling responsible for it rundeep. ‘What if it was the someone who wasn’t enough, and not you?’
‘That’s a… nice thought.’
He doesn’t say he believes it but it’s something.
After he leaves, I walk to work, filled with a new sense of purpose. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, not just because of the beautiful man sleeping on my sofa, but because, in my mind, I couldn’t stop turning over all the things we discussed last night, and that conversation this morning has reinforced my niggling thoughts. The shop has got to change,now, and the only person who can change it is me.
13
‘We’re going toWay-els, we’re going toWay-els!’ Ava sing-songs as she runs over and flings her arms around me for a hug. ‘We’re going to find out what really happened in 1899 and prove that mermaids are real! Best summer holiday ever!’
‘We’re really, really unlikely to prove that a fictional sea creature is real.’ The voice of reason appears in the doorway behind her, looking suitably less excited about the prospect of a trip to the Welsh coast. ‘Don’t get your hopes up.’
Ava ignores Ren’s grouching. ‘It’s no Disneyland, or Alton Towers, or Thorpe Park…’ She continues reeling off a list of what are obviously her bucket-list summer holiday destinations, and while Arfordir-Môr-Forwyn is nowhere near the top, I guess anywhere that’snotthe Wye Valley is better than nothing.
‘Howdid you persuade him? What spells did you cast?’ She releases me and looks around like she’s searching for the Fairy Godmother’s magic wand. ‘He never changes his mind about anything. And the most exciting place we usually go is to McDonald’s.’
‘Believe it or not, I didn’thaveto persuade him, it was his suggestion. I think your dad’s much more of a great big softie than he’d have anyone believe.’ I meet his eyes and grin at him across the shop.
‘Oh, you do, do you?’ Ren beams back at me and pushes himself off the doorframe he was leaning against without dropping eye contact.
My grin gets implausibly wider. ‘Good morning, Mr Montague.’
His cheeks redden at the throwback to the riverbank last week, and even though it’s impossible to tear my eyes away from Ren, I can sense Ava’s head whipping back and forth between us before she eventually declares, ‘Oh my God, get a room!’
‘We’ve got a room,’ Ren mutters. ‘Unfortunately it’s onlyoneroom.’
It’s Friday and once we’d decided on this weekend for our road trip – leaving this morning, staying three nights, and then coming back on Monday afternoon – he tried to book a place to stay. Unfortunately, it’s a small coastal village with only one hotel and it’s smack-bang in the middle of the summer holidays, so every room was booked, although they’d just had a cancellation foroneroom, which he sensibly snapped up, but still.
‘It’s giving “classic rom com”!’ Ava squeals.
‘It’s giving “Ren sleeps on the floor and ends up with a bad back because Ren is too old to sleep on the floor.”’
‘Ren is too young to complain this much,’ I counter. ‘Ren is like a forty-one-year-old with a ninety-one-year-old living inside him.’
‘Touché.’ He grins, but it’s with a teasing, jokey wink and he can’t stop smiling. ‘The receptionist said they could provide a folding camp bed, so I’ll have that while you girls share the nice, comfortablerealbed.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ Ava calls from where she’s looking around the shop, before she reappears with a concerned look on her face. ‘What happened in here?’ She turns to her dad. ‘What did you make Mickey do to her shop?’
‘Actually nothing,’ I answer for him. ‘That was all me.’
‘I thought it was odd that I didn’t get concussed by a Victorian birdcage on the way in.’ Ren looks around with an approving nod.
‘You’ve made me realise where things have gone wrong lately. Everything has got so cluttered and I’ve lost sight of what I always wanted this place to be. It’s supposed to be an undersea treasure trove with an ocean theme, and that’s got lost along the way. Ilovemermaids and all things oceanic,that’sthe direction I was intending to go in when I took over while my dad was still alive, but when he died, the waters got muddied, andyou’vemade it seem clear again.’ I nod to Ren, loving the way his cheeks redden.
‘I know that feeling,’ he mumbles, out of Ava’s hearing.
‘I want my stock to be more curated. More selective. Lissa’s the curator of the Colours of the Wind museum, and she’s going to help me decide on what to keep and what to sell off. I’ve talked to Witt – the guy who owns the castle and has organised the antiques fair – and he’s agreed that we can have a big sale in the castle grounds on that weekend. I’ll display the diary as we’ve planned to give people something to talk about, and Lissa and some of the other shopkeepers are going to run separate stalls full of the other bits and pieces and sell them at a reduced price in an attempt to get rid of them, so loads of stuff is boxed up ready to be taken up to the castle, and?—’
‘You haven’t chucked the dragon fruit table, have you?’
