Kara shook herself. ‘Got any idea what time it is? I’m pooped, and I’ve no idea if we’re sticking to the schedule.’
Dani shook her head. She didn’t own a watch. ‘Does it matter?’
‘It does if we don’t want fifty guests staying for a sleepover. High tide is just before midnight tonight, and the causeway floods about forty minutes before that. We need to get everyone fed and off.’
‘I left my phone up at the fort,’ Xane said. ‘Sorry. I was sick of listening to it bleat.’
‘Are the guys still trying to reach you?’ Dani asked, once Kara left. She was sure it’d be less stressful all round if he simply answered their calls. ‘I expect they want to know what happened between you and Steve.’
‘I’m sure they’ve had that first-hand from him, and second-hand from anyone with an opinion.’
‘Don’t you want them to hear your version?’
Xane lifted his broad shoulders slightly. ‘I’d rather they just left me the fuck alone, actually. What occurred between me and Steve is none of their business. I’ll speak to them when I’m goddamned ready.’
Dani reached across and squeezed his hand. That was an improvement on earlier. Previously he hadn’t wanted to speak to them at all, ever. Now he was at least contemplating a reconciliation.
‘Eat some dinner. Things are always better on a full stomach.’
He didn’t argue but tucked in, pausing every now and then to rub his side.
‘Are you still hurting?’
‘Absolutely not. It’s a twinge. Probably indigestion.’
As if she believed that for a minute. ‘Better take it easy. I don’t want you out of action.’
Xane waggled his fork at her. ‘That bit is working perfectly. Sneak away with me right now and I’ll prove it.’ He even raised himself out of the chair.
‘After the dessert,’ she said, laughing, and pushed him back into his seat.
‘I thought I was dessert.’
‘You’re not covered in ice cream and strawberries.’
He made to rise again.
‘Don’t!’ she pleaded, unable to stop grinning at the thought of him covered in two of her favourite foodstuffs. ‘Low profile, remember.’
‘Yes, but ice cream and strawberries,’ he muttered.
‘Hold that thought. Save it.’
Xane grumpily returned to eating. ‘Spoilsport,’ he muttered.
Dani ignored his brooding and turned her attention to the other diners. ‘Who are these people? I’m sure I should know some of them.’
Xane barely glanced up. ‘Bigwigs. Ric’s art cronies. People with money and cheque books.’
‘Including your brother and sister?’
‘Let’s not bother mentioning them.’
‘Aren’t you even going to say hello?’
‘What for?’ His brow creased into furrows. ‘They’ll only say something shitty.’
Dani pressed her lips together and decided it was best not to mention they’d already approached her. She did have one niggling question about them that she’d like answered, though. ‘Xane, why are they both Bletchleys if you’re a Liddell? Did your mum remarry?’
‘Same parents. They married just before I was born.’
‘So Arthur and Maude have your mother’s name?’
Xane shovelled a forkful of food into his mouth. He chewed slowly and swallowed. Dani suspected he was deliberating his answer. ‘Mum was the Liddell. She and Ric’s dad were brother and sister. My father’s name was Bletchley.’
‘Eh? That’s completely back to front. Normally the children born out of wedlock are the ones who take their mother’s name, aren’t they?’ She looked at Xane and realised he’d set his cutlery down.
‘What’s wrong? Did I say something I shouldn’t have?’
‘In my father’s eyes, I was always the bastard. He never openly acknowledged me.’
‘Oh, Xane, I’m sorry. I had no idea. Is that why you were passed around between au pairs and relatives?’
He grinned humourlessly. ‘He made it pretty obvious I wasn’t wanted, and my mother avoided showing me any sort of affection so as not to annoy him. God forbid she lose her allowance. I used to wish they’d have me adopted.’
‘Christ!’ Dani reached out and covered his clenched fist with her hand. She squeezed reassuringly. ‘That must have been crushing.’ It’d been hard enough for her losing one parent, but to not be wanted by either … it was no wonder he’d ended up on stage. Where better to find adoration, or to shout, ‘Here I am. Hey, look at me,’ and actually get an answer.
‘Did they never acknowledge you?
He grimaced. ‘Let’s put it this way – remember that scar I showed you on my leg?’ She nodded. She’d appreciated how normal he’d made her feel by showing off his own battle scars. ‘Well, I didn’t just fall down a ravine. I sat at the bottom of it for thirty-eight hours until Ric chanced upon me. My parents hadn’t even noticed I was missing. I was nine. What sort of parent doesn’t know where their nine-year-old is?’
Dani sat on the boulder wall overlooking the sea, wrapped in a tablecloth for warmth. The last of the fancy guests had gone, after only a little prodding from Ric. He’d been mentioning the incoming tide for the last half-hour, and she could now see why. It was only minutes since the final car had left the causeway, and the path had already flooded, cutting them off from the mainland until the tide went out again. The bollards that had blocked her and Xane’s arrival, she’d learned, were the sort that retracted into the ground at the push of a button. They were a recent innovation, according to Kara, installed partly to keep out unwanted visitors and partly to stop idiots being caught by the tide. There seemed to be a story there that hadn’t yet been told.
Xane had been subdued since their conversation about his family. At the moment, he and Ric were down by the shore skimming pebbles over the water and talking in that clipped way that guys seemed to use whenever any emotions were involved. Dani sat too far away to overhear them, and maybe that was a good thing. She didn’t really want to listen to Xane talking about his ex. Watching them was interesting, though. They bore more than a passing resemblance to one another; one that she suspected would be even more pronounced if Xane reverted to his natural hair colour. She tried to imagine what they’d look like performing together on stage. Pretty goddamned hot, she reckoned. Maybe that’s what they were discussing: the possibility of Ric rejoining the band, not Xane’s turbulent love life. Then again, given the odd looks Ric kept casting in her direction, maybe they were discussing her. She hoped Ric wasn’t advising Xane against getting involved again so soon after the end his previous relationship.
‘Admiring their sexy butts? Mind if I join you?’
A man she assumed to be Zach, the owner-cum-chef of Blackwater’s, sat down on the wall beside her. He was dressed head to foot in black: black moleskin trousers, a black button-neck T-shirt and a cute little barista’s apron. He held a glass in one hand and a bottle in the other. ‘Cooking sherry,’ he said, offering her the glass. He wedged the bottle between two rocks and threw himself back against a tuft of grass and sand so that he was looking at the stars. ‘God, I’m knackered. We need to halve the number of tables or offer fewer dishes, or else Ric just needs to stay out of the goddamned kitchen. I can’t deal with him and cook at the same time.’ He propped himself up on his elbow and cocked his head to one side to look at her, so that the long strands that had been smoothed back from his brow flopped over his squarish forehead. He breathed out: the hair lifted slightly and fell back untidily.
‘I’m Zach, by the way.’ He offered her his hand to shake. ‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced. You’re here with the sexy ghost man, right?’
‘Dani.’
Zach had big hands but very slender wrists. All of him seemed oddly oversized, as if all his features were a little too large for his frame. It made him seem interestingly loose-limbed.
‘If by “sexy ghost” you mean Xane, then yes. Why do you call him that?’
‘Dracula was already taken,’ he chortled, as though that were a fantastic joke. ‘Geist means spirit or ghost, right. And he’s pretty hot.’ He turned his head to admire Xane, who was now walking towards them up over the shingle. ‘I wouldn’t say no to going for a ride with him.’
‘Oh.’ Dani muttered, attempting to keep her horror off her face. She was used to women expressing lusty thoughts about Xane, but not men. Guys normally enthused about his talent as a musician or quoted his lyrics. They never expressed an opinion over his looks beyond a very general ‘he’s cool’ or by copying his style.
Plus, gay men made her nervous. She struggled to relax around them, which all harked back to losing her dad. Mum had never let her forget the reason he’d abandoned them.
‘The food was lovely,’ she said, trying to shrug off her negativity and her suspicions about Zach’s sexuality. He didn’t deserve to be scrutinised in such a way. Really, it wasn’t any of her business.
A wolfish grin spread across Zach’s face in response to the praise. ‘Did Ric tell you to say that?’
He made merry eyes at the other man, increasing Dani’s discomfort.
‘No. We’ve not really spoken yet.’
‘Well, thank you. I wasn’t sure I could do it. Hopefully it’ll be calmer once we open for real and I’m not busy trying to impress the hoi polloi.’ He grabbed the bottle, offered her a top-up, then took a good swig. ‘So, tell me about Mr Hot Stuff. Where’d you meet him, and how’d you snag him?’
‘Wasn’t that the topic of yesterday’s breakfast news?’ The way she and Xane had been behaving, she suspected every detail of her life was now in the public domain. Maude had certainly implied it.
‘I dunno.’ Zach shrugged one shoulder. ‘I haven’t seen any TV in months, and I don’t really follow celebrity gossip. Reckon you’ve made a good catch though.’ He got to his feet to greet Xane, who joined them along with Ric. Kara arrived too, carrying several wine bottles and an acoustic guitar. ‘Campfire,’ she said hopefully.
Zach groaned.
‘I suspect Xane and Dani would prefer to get some rest,’ Ric said, provoking a frown from Kara.
‘Nah, a fire’s good,’ Xane replied. ‘I don’t get much time to hang out any more.’ He noticed Dani shivering inside the tablecloth and adjusted his enthusiasm. ‘That’s if you’re not too cold, Dani?’
While she’d definitely have preferred to snuggle up with him in a toasty warm bed, she figured chill-out time was probably what he needed, so she buried her discomfort and said, ‘I’m good as long as I get to keep the wrap.’
‘I think we can go one better than that,’ said Ric as he removed his dinner jacket and offered it to her. It was thick wool, expertly tailored, and smelled of expensive cologne.
Ric yanked the knot of his bow tie too and unfastened the top three buttons of his shirt, then pulled the shirt hem free of his trousers. ‘Finally, I can breathe.’
‘I’m surprised you haven’t taken the lot off,’ Kara remarked. ‘It must be because we have guests.’ She winked at Dani. ‘I’ll do the fire. I came prepared.’ From her apron pocket she produced a bundle of foul-smelling white cubes. ‘Anyone going to help fetch some wood?’
‘I’m on it.’ Xane bounded off towards the beach.
‘You know that’s cheating, using those,’ Zach remarked. The comment earned him a jab in the stomach.
‘It’s not cheating. It’s common sense. Why make things more difficult than they need to be? Come on, Dani.’ Kara grasped Dani’s hand and dragged her down the beach towards a patch of sand amongst the shingle.
‘We’ll be with you as soon as we’ve locked up,’ Zach called. He and Ric returned to the restaurant, where lights began blinking out.
Down on the shore, they soon had a decent collection of driftwood. Xane fashioned them into a neat cob-house arrangement with a tiny tepee of twigs at the centre, which Kara then surrounded with firelighters. ‘Shoot! I’ve forgotten the matches.’
‘I’ll go,’ Dani volunteered.
‘Would you? Thanks. They’re just inside the Bunker. I must have left them on the table. Can you chivvy Ric and Zach along a bit too?’
All the external restaurant lights were out. Dani wormed her way between the tables, relying on the moonlight and touch. The darkness further deepened inside the Bunker, or B
LACKWATER’S,
as the overhead sign read. She groped around on the table just inside the door and found the matches exactly where Kara had said they would be.
‘Guys?’ she called, but got no immediate response.
Figuring they must be in the kitchen, Dani stumbled through the cave-like room towards where a glow of pale light outlined a pair of steel doors. She swung open the partition. ‘Kara says to hurry up.’
Dani froze. She squeezed both her lips and her eyes tightly closed. ‘Oh, sugar!’ She scuttled backwards. She did not need to witness that. She tried not to be judgemental about people and their choices: everyone had a right to love in whatever way was right for them, and she could hardly criticise them for doing something in private, given how badly she’d recently behaved in public, but witnessing two guys going at it in quite such a hardcore fashion – she didn’t need that burned onto her retinas, which it unfortunately now was. It sat there in all its Technicolor glory, alongside an older, grainier not so dissimilar image from her past, taunting her as she hurried back into the open and beat a hasty pathway back to the beach.
‘Here.’ She thrust the matches at Kara, cocooned herself back inside the tablecloth and tried, unsuccessfully, to forget all the visceral detail that time had worn away.
Dad hadn’t been gone when she’d come home from school. He’d been upstairs. She’d seen him, and so had mum when she’d come home from work. Dani had been sent off to the corner shop for milk and bread. When she arrived home again, that’s when he was gone. He and the ridiculously pretty young man from next door, whose parents refused to speak to her and mum ever again, as if it were all somehow their fault.
‘Still cold?’ Xane hunched down beside her. ‘The fire’ll be lit in a moment. Come here.’ He pulled her into his lap. ‘Let’s see if I can’t warm you up a bit.’ He landed a kiss on her nose and one on her lips.
Dani gratefully accepted the comfort. It helped chase the painful memories away. ‘It’s been a long day,’ she said, trying to hide the cause of her distress.
‘Everything should calm down a bit now.’