Authors: Jill Mansell
‘That isn’t true!’ Millie exclaimed. ‘You asked me to give you the clues. You were bursting to show off how clever you were. And that's something I really can’t stand in a man.’
‘I was trying to help you out. I felt sorry for you because you were obviously thick. Anyway, it's a man thing. We can’t resist showing off our superior knowledge. Through here,’ Hugh gestured as they reached the entrance to the park. ‘It's a shortcut to the square.’
‘What I
also
hate is someone new to the area thinking they know more about the shortcuts than somebody who's lived here all her life.’
He laughed; she saw his teeth gleaming dazzlingly white in the darkness.
‘Fine. We’ll do whatever you say. You tell me the best way to get to the square.’
‘Through the park, dipstick.’
‘Now that,’ Hugh announced, ‘is something I do like. A girl who can admit when she's in the wrong.’
‘I didn’t say I was wrong.’ Millie was in her element now. ‘I’m just saying this time you happened to be right, but don’t assume you’ll always know best. Because I am, in fact, the shortcut Queen of Newquay. Trying to out-shortcut me would be like offering to show Delia Smith the best way to bake a cake. It's like demonstrating to Michael Schumacher how he should be taking his corners.’
‘Like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.’ Hugh nodded gravely.
‘Oh yeeuch, I hate that saying. Makes me feel sick.’
‘You mean you try not to, but you can’t help picturing it? And you just know she's going to have bits of broken egg shell around her wrinkled mouth and raw yolk dribbling down her whiskery old chin?’
Millie started to laugh. How could he possibly know that?
‘Exactly! You too?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Hugh. ‘Every time.’
Swooooosh…
It was one of those moments, Millie realized, that she would remember for ever. Captured in her mind as efficiently as a butterfly in a box. Every sense was heightened; she could feel the blades of grass tickling her feet, the warm night breeze on her bare shoulders. The silhouettes of the trees shifted in the darkness. She could hear the rustling of the leaves and shouts of revelry in the far distance and the sound of Hugh's breathing. She could smell his aftershave and the sweet green scent of the just-cut grass. His blond hair glistened in the reflected moonlight. His dark eyes were—for the moment— completely serious, as if he too had realized what was happening.
Millie's body felt like a buzzing bundle of electricity. It was at this precise moment that she realized just how in love with this man she was.
Completely and utterly and helplessly.
Not to mention pointlessly, seeing as he’d made it abundantly
clear to her that what had happened before would never ever happen again.
Millie closed her eyes in defeat. She may have thought she’d known it before, but now she truly knew it. This was so much more than mere physical attraction and the realization that here was someone you got on fantastically well with.
This was the man with whom she knew she could spend the rest of her life.
He was The One for her. There couldn’t be anyone else.
And who did she have to thank for this discovery? Some toothless old egg-sucking grandmother.
‘Hear that?’ said Hugh, turning his head.
Oh, don’t worry, it's just my heart breaking, shattering into a zillion pieces.
‘If I’m not mistaken,’ Millie pronounced, ‘it's the mating call of the greater-spotted, swallow-tailed, ring-necked redwing.’
Obligingly, at that moment, a bird sang out from one of the trees overhead.
Hugh gave her a pitying look.
‘If there's one thing I can’t stand, it's a smug intellectual. And if you listen again I think you’ll find that's the call of the
lesser-spotted
, swallow-tailed, ring-necked redwing.’
‘Tell you what,’ said Millie, ‘let's just shoot it anyway.’ Peering ahead into the darkness, she glimpsed movement. ‘There's somebody over there.’
‘That's the noise I heard. Two people talking. I can see them now,’ Hugh added as they followed the curve of the path and drew nearer. ‘Over there on that bench.’
The bench was close to the park's exit gates; to get out they had to pass it. As they approached, Millie saw that the couple were entwined in a pretty intimate embrace.
‘I hope they aren’t having sex,’ whispered Millie.
Sounding amused, Hugh whispered back, ‘Why? They’re the ones who’ll be embarrassed.’
Yes, you big nitwit, but I’ll be jealous!
They had almost reached the park bench now. The couple on it were kissing passionately… and audibly.
‘Yuk,’ Millie murmured. ‘I hate noisy kissers.’
‘They haven’t seen us. They don’t know we’re here.’ Hugh spoke in an undertone. ‘Otherwise I’m sure they’d do it more quietly.’
Millie was tempted to clear her throat and startle them out of their passion-fueled snog. Thankfully, it appeared to be no more than a snog, although the two of them were by this time practically horizontal on the bench. It couldn’t be comfortable either—those narrow wooden slats had no give in them—and from the look of the couple they weren’t what you’d call spring chickens. Not that Millie could see their faces, but the man's shoes and trousers weren’t the kind anyone under the age of thirty would be seen dead in, and it stood to reason that no female under thirty would be seen dead with the kind of man who went out in public dressed like that.
The next moment two things happened more or less simultaneously. The man who was lying almost on top of the woman stopped kissing her noisily for just long enough to let out a groan of longing. Cupping her face in his hands, he sighed passionately, ‘Oh God, you drive me
insane
.’
‘It drives me insane when people say that,’ Hugh whispered in Millie's ear.
But Millie didn’t hear him; she was too busy being in shock.
Surely not. It couldn’t really be her ex-boss, could it? Tim Fleetwood? It sounded exactly like him, but how could it be?
Because apart from anything else, the woman lying underneath him sure as hell wasn’t his wife, scary Sylvia.
A split-second later the woman's shoe, which had been dangling from her toes, slid off and fell to the ground. It was an elegant lime green stiletto with a leather bow on the heel and a gold lining.
Millie promptly went into triple shock. The shoe was a size three and a half. She knew this because she had tried it on last week. Or, at least, had tried to try it on. Being a size five herself, it hadn’t fit.
‘Oh darling, you look just like one of the ugly sisters,’ the owner of the expensive new shoes had trilled with her customary lack of tact.
Millie closed her eyes but it was too late, she’d already recognized the slender stockinged leg now minus its shoe. There was surely no mistaking that leg, nor the hands that were entwined in Tim Fleetwood's hair—although maybe entwined was putting it a bit strongly, considering there wasn’t actually that much of it.
But the clincher, the absolute clincher, was the jewelry. Those rings, that bracelet, the narrow gold watch.
‘WHAT WAS THAT ALL about?’ demanded Hugh thirty seconds later. He rubbed his arm where Millie's fingers had dug in so hard she’d left a series of nail-shaped indentations. One minute they’d been wandering at a leisurely pace through the park; the next, she had seized his arm and with superhuman strength practically dragged him out through the gates.
Millie didn’t reply. Seemingly unaware of her surroundings, she was heading away from the square at a rate of knots, her spine rigid and her arms folded tightly across her chest. Hurrying to catch up, Hugh marveled at the pace she was setting.
‘Millie? Slow down a minute. Tell me what's going on.’
When she turned to look at him, he saw that her face was white.
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You have to.’ Seeing her like this, Hugh's chest tightened with concern. He wanted to protect Millie from whatever had upset her. Put his arms around her and make everything better. He couldn’t bear the thought of anyone hurting her.
As if I haven’t hurt her enough myself.
Millie was trembling violently. Her green angora cardigan was tied around her waist. Gently, Hugh untied the sleeves and helped her into it as if she were a child.
‘That man on the bench back there.’ The words came out jerkily, between chattering teeth. ‘I know him. It's Tim Fleetwood, my old boss.’
‘Okay.’ Hugh nodded slowly, wondering what all the fuss was about. He knew why Millie had left the travel agency; she’d told him all about the downtrodden husband and his possessive, wildly jealous wife. But why would seeing him now—
‘I know the woman too, the one he was with,’ Millie blurted out. ‘Oh Hugh, this is awful, I’m so ashamed. It's my mother.’
Down on the beach, the tide was in. An almost-full moon lit up the inky water. Millie sat on the dry sand above the high-tide line and hugged her knees. Hugh, sitting next to her, allowed her to talk.
‘I mean, we knew she was seeing someone and we’d guessed he was married. In theory I could cope with that. It's just the shock of actually seeing them together, your own mother kissing some man… it's so gross… and in
public
, where anyone could have seen them! And to cap it all she had to choose Tim Fleetwood!’
‘At least she didn’t see you,’ said Hugh.
‘Of course she didn’t see me, she was too busy sticking her tongue down her hideous old boyfriend's throat… ugh, double-gross! Just the thought of it makes me feel
sick
.’ Repulsed, Millie covered her face with her hands. ‘I wanted to yell at them, throw a bucket of water over them, anything to make them stop pawing each other like that!’
Hugh hid a smile. Poor Millie, she was upset, but actually there was a funny side to this. Picturing her flinging a bucket of cold water over her mother and her ex-boss, he struggled to keep a straight face.
Lucky, really, that there hadn’t been any buckets lying about.
‘Why didn’t you yell at them?’ In fact, he was surprised she hadn’t; it would have been a Millie thing to do.
‘I couldn’t. I couldn’t. It would have been too embarrassing for you.’ Her voice rose again. ‘I’m so ashamed—God, my own mother! How would that have made
you
feel?’
Touched, Hugh put his arm around her.
‘You idiot. You know, I think I could probably have coped.’
‘Tuh,’ Millie retorted. ‘You might have been able to, but I couldn’t.’
His mouth twitched.
‘Why not? What did you think I’d say? Ugh, get away from me, Millie Brady, I don’t want anything to do with a girl whose mother cavorts shamelessly on park benches with married men?’
Millie picked up a pale grey pebble and lobbed it—plop—into the sea. Funnily enough, this was almost exactly what she had expected Hugh to say. Well, maybe not
say
, because he simply wasn’t that rude. But she could picture him thinking it, which was just as bad.
Still, he had his arm around her waist, which wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was extremely nice, even if she knew it didn’t mean anything. It was a cheer-up-and-don’t-worry-about-your-delinquent-mother gesture rather than a romantic one. Then again, beggars can’t be choosers, and right now any friendly gesture was better than none, especially when the merest physical contact was making her go zingy all over and want to writhe helplessly with pleasure like a puppy having its stomach tickled.
Millie's breathing grew shallower and more rapid as Hugh's fingers, idly stroking her hypersensitive skin, began to head in a direction they really shouldn’t have been heading.
Oh, but he was doing it so seductively she didn’t know if she could bring herself to stop him.
‘Please don’t,’ croaked Millie.
‘I want to. I have to,’ Hugh whispered back, his breath warm on her ear. ‘You’ve kept me in suspense long enough. I can’t stand it any longer.’
‘No. You mustn’t.’ Summoning all her mental strength, Millie clamped her hand over his fingers and peeled them away from her leg. She took a deep breath. ‘No, no,
no
.’
Hugh grinned.
‘Spoilsport.’
‘I promise you,’ Millie said with feeling, ‘you don’t want to know.’
She kept the flat of her hand firmly over the tattoo as she spoke. To her relief Hugh didn’t persist.
‘Okay, fair enough. But there's something else I’m curious about. Why didn’t you tell Orla about us?’
Actually, not that relieved.
‘Because it was a one-off. It didn’t mean anything,’ Millie lied— since it had, of course, meant the exact opposite. ‘It wasn’t… relevant,’ she floundered on, ‘and I knew you wouldn’t want to be included, no matter how much Orla disguised your identity. Anyway, I’m allowed to keep some stuff private.’ Especially stuff that makes me look like a wally and a complete pushover. ‘I didn’t happen to think that was any of Orla's business.’
Hugh raised an eyebrow.
‘I thought she paid you to tell her everything.’
‘Look, what Orla doesn’t know won’t hurt her.’ Shifting uncomfortably on the sand—her bottom was going numb—Millie retorted, ‘You aren’t going to tell her, are you? And neither am I. So basically, Orla's never going to find out.’
‘You’re sure that's not cheating?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’ Honestly, what was he suggesting, that she gave the five thousand pounds back to Orla? ‘She's got heaps of stuff to write about.’ Getting huffy, Millie tugged the gooseberry-green angora cardigan up over her shoulders. ‘The thing is, you’re acting as though what happened between us that one night was important, and it wasn’t. Compared with all the other stuff that's been going on, crikey, it was nothing! It
meant
nothing. It was just a… blip.’
Silence. Millie wondered if she’d gone too far. It was, after all, the kind of declaration at which a man could take offense.
Finally, slowly, after studying her face for what seemed like an hour, Hugh tilted his head to one side.
‘A blip. Of course it was. You’re absolutely right.’
The taxi drew to a halt outside Millie's house. Hugh, who was traveling on to Padstow, said, ‘I’ll move to the front.’
It was an excuse to get out of the cab and say good night to Millie. This evening's events had shaken him more than he cared to admit, even to himself, and he was fighting to keep his feelings under control.