Page 62 of The Princess Sister Swap

‘I know. Don’t forget I grew up with an actress. I see the same determination in you that I saw in her.’ She picked up her phone. ‘I need to get back. Make sure you let me know how the audition goes. Bye, Jack.’

He raised a nonchalant hand as if he hadn’t got plans to spend the evening at hers once he’d dropped Tansy off at her new friend’s house, a fellow aspiring actress she’d met at the theatre.

‘Dad...’ Tansy was watching him ‘... I like Rosy. I really like her.’

‘We all do, she’s been a good friend to us.’

‘Dad, you know, it’s okay if you want to start dating someone. Clover and I wouldn’t mind. Not if it was someone like Rosy. You like her, don’t you? I mean,likeher like her.’

Jack stilled. His girls had idolised their elusive, fragile mother. ‘Tansy...’

‘Mummy’s been gone for a long time now. I just wanted you to know we’d be okay if you wanted to see someone.’ Her blue eyes were filled with hope and Jack’s chest tightened. This was everything he’d tried to avoid.

‘Rosy is great, and you’re right.’ He made the decision not to lie to his daughter. ‘I do like her, and if things were different, who knows? But her life isn’t here, kiddo. She doesn’t belong in Polhallow, she has a really important job in Asturia. So, friends is all we can be and that’s great. You can never have too many friends.’

‘But you don’t have to stay here. Couldn’t you do your job in Asturia?’

‘Honey, we’ve only just moved here. We don’t want to keep moving.’

Tansy shrugged. ‘I’m just saying that if you and Rosy did like each other we could move again.’

Jack searched for the right words, not wanting to quash her honesty nor raise her hopes. ‘Thank you for saying that, but we have only known Rosy a few weeks. It would be far too early, even if weweredating, to be talking about moving. Sometimes, Tansy, the timing just isn’t right, and you just have to accept that. It’s part of life. What time are you due at Clara’s?’

But she clearly wasn’t going to drop the topic. ‘Clover thinks you should get married, but that’s because she wants to be a bridesmaid. It’s too early to think ofthat, but I think it’s silly not to at least try if you like each other. Rosy likes being with us. She looked all worried when we first met her and now she laughs all the time. I like it when we all laugh. It’s fun to be in a big group.’

Guilt pierced him. He’d done his best to provide his daughters with everything they needed. More, a good education, the kind of exclusive experiences most children dreamt of. And the three of them were a tight bubble of love and laughter. But outside of that bubble there wasn’t a great deal of humour or socialising. Lily had preferred the dramatic to the everyday and was so often absent, and there was no extended family of cousins and uncles and aunts. Nor did they have a large social circle. In some ways, their childhood was as solitary as his had been. As Rosy’s had been.

‘Tansy, I’m glad you and Clover like Rosy so much.’ He searched for the right words. ‘And it’s good to know that you’d be okay if I started dating again. It’s not a priority, but who knows what will happen? But darling, it can’t be Rosy. She goes home next week.’ He hated to disappoint her, but he also needed to nip this in the bud. Any prevarication and they might carry on hoping.

‘Like I said, her home is far from here and we are building lives here. Friendship is just as important as romance, Tansy. Don’t forget that. Romances can flare and disappear as if they never were, but a good friendship lasts for ever.’

Tansy’s eyes were clouded with disappointment as she nodded and ran upstairs to pack a bag for the night ahead. Jack watched her go, heart heavy. He’d done this, roused hopes in his girls he couldn’t fulfil. They’d tried hard to be discreet but the connection between them was so palpable even his girls had picked up on it.

There were just a few days left. They needed to be more discreet than ever. And he needed to heed the words he’d said to Tansy because they were true. He and Rosy might not be able to have a real romance but maybe they could be friends. Hell, he had few enough of them. Maybe there would be a way of keeping her in his life, because there was no way he was ready to let her go for good.

CHAPTER NINE

ITWASANOTHERbeautiful afternoon. In fact, every afternoon over the last week had been beautiful. There had been something restorative about the light summer rain that had punctuated the week before, something dramatic about the sheets of rain that had cleaned the beaches and outside tables the day before that. Every type of weather seemed fresh and restorative. But today was the best afternoon of all: hot but not humid, sunny but gently, glowing not glaring. And every atom in and around Arrosa was glad to be alive.

She laughed a little self-mockingly as she shook flour into the mixing bowl and reached for the cubed butter she’d cooled earlier. She knew she was being slightly ridiculous—more than slightly—but she couldn’t help it. And if this was what good sex, lots and lots of sex, did to a person then she’d clearly been missing out all those years. Those long afternoons of listening to speeches, soothing the overinflated egos of local bureaucrats and top politicians, of dress fittings and hair appointments and ribbon-cutting would have been a lot easier with this sated languor playing through her body. The radio switched to another song, one she loved, and she joined in, singing loudly as she continued to rub the butter into the flour.

Jack was coming over later, and she wanted to wow him with home-made scones as if they were a real couple, as if this was just another date, not the beginning of the end. Because the truth she was denying was that Arrosa was running out of time. Next week Clem would return and they would switch back, and she would have to say goodbye to her life here, to her friends—and to the small family who had captured her heart. How had this happened? What had started out as a flirtation had developed too quickly and too intensely. She knew Jack felt it too—the other evening he had suggested that maybe there was a way they could remain friends once she returned.

In one way she wanted to, but in another she thought it would be harder to have Jack in her life but not by her side. She spent long hours imagining introducing Jack to her life in Asturia, the girls to her pretty lakeside villa. Her imagination worked when they were in the palace grounds; it was the wider world where it failed completely. Her life was one of formality and discipline; there was little fun there for two girls still learning how to smile again after tragedy had robbed them of so much.

Any consort of hers would spend their life in the spotlight. Every word, every look and expression dissected. Jack was an intensely private man; how could she ask him to give up that privacy and allow his past to be raked over after just a couple of weeks of an idyllic summer romance? She couldn’t.

So she needed to push any daydreams of the future aside to enjoy the here and now. To focus on the good part, to remember that Jack had shown her that she was capable of loving and being loved. That there was a living, breathing woman in the proper Princess.

Arrosa’s hands stilled. Where had that thought come from? Capable oflove? Attraction, of course. Desire? Liking? Yes and yes. She really, really liked him and she really, really desired him. But she couldn’t have fallen inlove, not in just five weeks.

But, then again, how could shenothave fallen in love with Jack? Her mind ran through memories like a movie montage: Jack strolling over the beach, Clover on his shoulders, explaining the tides. Jack handing over his ice cream to Clover because she’d dropped the one she’d bought. Jack hearing Tansy’s lines yet again. Jack spending many anxious moments deliberating over whether the hoodie he was buying her was too babyish or too adult or just right. Jack pacing on the stage, explaining his vision, lit up with an enthusiasm that inspired her too. Jack sitting opposite her, confiding things she instinctively knew he had never confided to anyone before. Jack holding her, touching her, kissing her, making her feel like a woman reborn.

How could shenotlove him? It was impossible. As impossible as loving him.

With a herculean effort she pushed the thought away, resuming singing and rubbing the sticky mixture, focusing fiercely on the here and now until the sound of her phone made her look up and she realised she’d missed a call. She used her voice to activate the voicemail, still humming along to the music.

‘Arrosa?’ And, just like that, her mood evaporated.

---