Page 64 of The Key to the Last House Before the Sea

‘I don’t sleep in my suit,’ said Gabriel, noticing how pretty Nessa looked when she blushed. ‘I also own at least a handful of T-shirts at home and, when I went to Tobago, I wore a mankini.’

‘Are you joking?’ gasped Nessa.

‘Fortunately for the people of Tobago, I am.’

It was a stupid joke but he wanted to show this woman that, whatever she thought of him, he wasn’t just a sad, humourless arse with a destructive streak. He felt a glow of contentment when she grinned.

‘As long as you didn’t sit on the beach in Tobago in a suit.’

‘I ditched my suit for the entirety of the holiday.’

‘That must have been quite some holiday.’

‘It was memorable,’ he said, watching Lily splash in the waves without a care in world.

It was memorable, but for all the wrong reasons: arguments with Seraphina, her habit of flirting with the waiters, his habit of working even while they were away.

She’d been waiting for a proposal that holiday and he’d felt like a heel for disappointing her. But he hadn’t loved her enough to make a life-long commitment. And she would have been just as unhappy as him if they had married.

‘You could have had affairs. Everyone does it.’That was what his father had said when he’d told him why he and Seraphina had broken up. But Gabriel didn’t want to have multiple affairs. He wanted the real deal. A relationship for life. But maybe he was being ridiculous and a man like him was expecting too much.

‘Gabriel!’ Lily’s high-pitched voice pierced his thoughts. She was waving to him from the sea. ‘Come and paddle with me. There are lots of shells. I can show you.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no peace when my daughter’s around,’ laughed Nessa. ‘But don’t let her bully you into something you don’t want to do.’

Gabriel waved back at Lily, who was still beckoning to him. He could simply sit here on the sand, soaking up the sun. But it was getting hotter and it was hard to resist Lily.

‘A quick paddle will be OK, I guess.’

He rolled up his trouser legs to above his knees – he must look like a right old fogey now – and stood up, shaking off the sand. Then he undid a couple more buttons on his shirt and pulled it out from his waistband before walking down to the shoreline. The breeze billowed the cotton and cooled his back.

‘Hooray!’ said Lily when he reached the waves gently whooshing onto the shore. ‘The water’s not cold.’

She was lying. Gabriel took a sharp intake of breath as a wave broke around his legs and eddied around his ankles.

‘It’s absolutely freezing, Lily,’ he told her, and she gave a throaty giggle.

‘I know.’ She laughed again at his expression. ‘Let’s go and find the dolphins.’

The two of them began walking along the shoreline together, gazing out to sea.

* * *

Nessa lay back on her elbows in the soft sand and watched her daughter and Gabriel paddling through the surf. They had their heads bent together and seemed to be chatting about some shells that Gabriel had picked up.

He seemed like a different man down here on the beach. Less stuffy and formal. He’d even made a terrible joke. And he looked so different with his trousers rolled up and his shirt untucked and billowing around his body. His dark hair was being whipped around his eyes by the breeze.

He looked handsome. He looked like Mr Darcy, striding across the lawn at Pemberley after taking a dip in the lake.

An image of Gabriel standing at the window of Driftwood House in nothing but his pants flitted across Nessa’s mind. That, and an image of him in a mankini, which was less appealing.

She sank her hands into the sand and focused on the grains, letting them trickle through her fingers.

Gabriel’s attractiveness had crept up on her. He was very different from Jake, but that had been a disaster anyway.

She brushed her hands together. There was no point in being attracted to Gabriel because she was merely an obstacle in the way of his plans. And no point in Lily getting attached to him either because he’d be gone soon enough. Just like Lily’s father.

Nessa got to her feet when Gabriel’s phone, abandoned on the sand, began to ring.It sounded urgent and wrong in this peaceful place.

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