A Will, a Wish...a Proposal

He was her beloved godmother’s nephew. Surely Demelza would have wanted her to make him welcome, no matter how bad his first impression? Hadn’t she just been remembering just how much she owed her benefactress? She really should replay the debt. Besides, he was trying to make amends. She wasn’t used to that.

A flutter started low down in her stomach. For so many years she had been told she was in the wrong, no matter what the reality. A man admitting his mistake was a novel experience.

Ellie swung the door open and stood back. ‘Come in,’ she invited him. ‘I just need to change my shoes and grab my bag.’

It would have been nice to have some more notice. She was still in the grey velvet skinny jeans she had pulled on that morning, teamed with a purple flowered tunic. Her hair was neatly tucked back in a clip and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. Not that she usually did for work, but she suddenly wished she had some armour...even if it was just a coat of mascara.

Ellie waited as Max stepped through the door, moving from one foot to the other in indecision. She needed to go upstairs, but she seldom invited other people into her flat. Would it be odd to leave him kicking his heels in the shop while she grabbed a cardigan and quickly brushed out her hair? At least there was plenty for him to read.

‘You might as well come up.’

Not the most gracious invitation, but he didn’t need asking twice, following her through the dark bookshop to the discreet wooden door at the back of the shop which marked the line between home and work.

Ellie was used to the narrow, low staircase, but she could sense Max taking it more slowly, his head brushing the ceiling as the staircase turned. He breathed an audible sigh of relief when he arrived at the top of the staircase with the top of his head still intact.

The narrow staircase curved and continued up to the third storey, where her bedroom, study and bathroom were situated, but she stepped out into the flat’s main hallway. It was simply decorated in a light olive-green, with the colour picked up in the striped runner covering polished floorboards. At the far end a window overlooked the street. Next to it a row of pegs was covered with an assortment of her jackets, coats and scarves; boots and shoes were lined up beneath them.

On her right the kitchen door was slightly ajar. Her unwashed breakfast dishes were still piled on the side. Ellie fought the urge to shut the door, to hide them. In the years she had lived with her ex, Simon, she had learned quickly to tidy up all detritus straight away. Leaving dirty dishes out for a few hours was a small act of rebellion, but it made the flat hers, the kitchen hers. A sign that she was free of his control.

‘Just go straight ahead.’ She tried to keep her voice light, to hide what a big deal this was.

The living room ran the full length of the building, with a window at either end flooding the long room with evening light. A red velvet three-seater couch and matching loveseat were arranged at right angles at one end of the room; a small dining table with four chairs stood at the other. The walls were plain white, but she had injected colour with dozens of framed posters: her favourites from her last three years of bookselling.

Max stepped inside and looked around. ‘No books?’ He sounded surprised.

Ellie laughed, a little nervously. ‘Oh, plenty of books. I keep them on the landing and in the study. I thought being surrounded by books all day and all night would probably turn me into a real hermit instead of practically being one.’

‘Here.’ He proffered the wine to her. ‘Please, take it.’

Ellie looked at it. She needed to make her position clear before she accepted the wine...before she showed him round the village. Before she was distracted again by the evening sun on a bare arm or visions of showers. She had promised herself that she would always speak out, always be honest, never allow herself to be pushed back into being the quiet, submissive ghost she had been with Simon.

Only it wasn’t quite so easy in practice.

She took a deep breath, her fingers linking, twisting as she did so. ‘I’ll be honest, Mr Loveday...’

His eyebrows flew up at her words but he didn’t interrupt, just leaned back against the wall, arms folded as she spoke.

‘You were very rude to me earlier. You don’t know me, and you had no evidence for your words. If it was up to me you would be on your way back to New York right now but for one thing. Your great-aunt. It was her wish that we work together and I intend to honour that. But if you speak to me again the way you did earlier then I will be talking to the solicitors about resigning from the trust.’

She wanted to collapse as she said the words, but forced herself to remain standing and still. Although she couldn’t stop her eyes searching his face for telltale signs. For narrowed eyes, a tightened mouth, flaring nostrils. Signs she knew all too well.

She clasped her hands, trying to still their slight tremor. But Max Loveday’s face didn’t change—except for the dawning hint of respect in his eyes.

‘Fair point—or should I say fair points? First of all, please, if we’re going to work together, do call me Max. Secondly, I don’t live in New York. I live in Connecticut, so if you do send me away please make sure I end up in the correct state. And third...’ He paused. ‘You’re right. I was rude. There are reasons, and they have nothing to do with you. I can only apologise again.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘There are things going on at home that make it hard for me to believe in altruism, and my great-aunt did leave you this building.’

‘I didn’t ask her to.’

‘No, but look at it from my point of view. I don’t know you. I just see the cold, hard facts. She was on her own...possibly vulnerable. She left her fortune in your—in our hands—and bequeathed to you a home and livelihood. On paper, that’s a little suspicious.’

Ellie hated to admit it, but he had a point—and she had been shocked by the will and her own prominent part in it. There was one thing he hadn’t taken into consideration, though.

She laughed. ‘You didn’t know your great-aunt very well, did you? I can’t see her being taken in by anybody. She didn’t suffer fools gladly.’

‘I didn’t know her at all. She moved over here before I was born. I wish I’d made an effort to see her before it was too late.’

‘You should have done. She was worth knowing. Right, I’m just going to...’ She gestured upstairs. ‘I won’t be long. Make yourself at home.’

She slipped out of the room. She didn’t care about impressing Max Loveday, but there was no way she was heading out without brushing her hair and powdering her face. Maybe a quick coat of mascara. To freshen up after a long day at work. That was all.

Trouble was, she wasn’t even fooling herself.

* * *

So this was Ellie Scott’s home. Bright, vibrant, and yet somehow bare. For all the posters on the walls, the cushions heaped on the inviting sofas, the view of the sea from the back window, there was something missing.

Photos. There were no photos. Not on the walls, not on the sideboard, nor on the mantelpiece over the cosy-looking wood-burning stove. He had never yet met a woman who didn’t decorate her personal space with family portraits, pictures of friends, holidays, favourite pets, university formals. Max himself had a framed picture of his parents on his desk in his office, and a few childhood photos in his apartment. The picture of himself aged about ten on his grandfather’s boat, proudly holding up a large fish, was one of his most prized possessions.

Maybe they were tucked away like her books, but somehow he doubted it. Where had she come from? What had made a young woman in her early twenties move to a tiny village miles from civilisation and stay there? Or had she walked out of the sea? A selkie doomed to spend her life in human form until she found her sealskin once more? With those huge brown eyes and long, long lashes Ellie certainly fitted the bill.

‘Okay, ready when you are. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long?’

When Ellie had said she would be a minute Max had been prepared for a twenty-minute wait. Minimum. Yet barely five minutes had passed since she had left. She had pulled a long light grey cardigan over her tunic, swapped her pumps for sneakers and brushed out her hair. That was it.

Yet she looked completely fresh, like a dryad in spring.

Anything less like the manicured, blow-dried, designer-clad women he worked with, dated and slept with was hard to imagine. But right now she was fresh iced water to their over-sugared and over-carbonated soda. Not that he was looking in any real way. It was the contrast, that was all. It wasn’t that he was actually interested in wholesome girls with creamy skin. He just didn’t know many. Or any.

‘Yes. Ready.’ He might be staring. He wasn’t staring like some gauche teenage boy, was he? Reluctantly he pulled his gaze away. ‘Come on, honey, let’s go.’

* * *

The sharp breeze that had greeted him earlier in the day had died away, and despite the hour the sun still cast a warm glow over the village. The gentle warmth was a welcome contrast to the heat and humidity of home and the wet and cold of the Sydney winter—not that Sydney’s worst could compare to the bone-chilling cold of a Connecticut winter, but it could still be unpleasant.

‘There are more houses up there, the school and the children’s playground.’ Ellie pointed up the hill away from the coast. ‘Useful things like the doctor’s surgery and the bus stop that takes you to the nearest towns. But I don’t suppose you’re interested in those?’

‘Not unless I was planning to move here.’

‘What will you do with the house?’ She turned and began to walk the other way, down the hill and towards the swell of the sea. He fell into step beside her.

‘I don’t know.’

The moment he had stepped into the wide hallway of The Round House, looked at the seascapes and compasses on the walls and heard the rumble of the sea through the windows he had felt a connection. But even the idea of keeping it was impractical.

‘It’s way too far away to be a holiday home, but now I know there’s a real family link I’d hate to sell it on.’

‘Trengarth has enough holiday homes. It needs young families to settle here, to put down roots. They’re talking about closing down the primary school and bussing the kids over to the next town.’ She paused and looked back up the hill. ‘Once this was a proper high street: haberdashers, ironmongers, butchers, toy shop...the lot. Your great-aunt has some amazing photos, dating right back to Victorian times. Now it’s all gift shops and art galleries, and the front is buckets and spades and surf hire.’

She sounded sad. Nostalgic for a Trengarth she couldn’t ever have actually experienced.