“It’s about your family.” Fred watched his expression freeze over, but she’d started now, so she might as well finish. “This is probably on me, but I’d got the impression that you’d had a hard time growing up, certainly emotionally but maybe financially too, and…it’s come to my attention that finances weren’t an issue for you. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
Warren looked out toward the ocean; his expression was unreadable. Finally, when she was feeling so uncomfortable that she wanted to scuttle away and hide under a rock like a hermit crab, he spoke.
“You’re right,” he said, still watching the waves. “Money was never a problem. I’m sorry if I gave you the idea that it was. My family have plenty of cash, but they were never generous with kindness, and in terms of love and affection I would describe them as emotionally bankrupt. They could never forgive me for going into journalism, instead of becoming a doctor or going into law—something that wouldn’t embarrass the family.” He took a deep breath; he looked sad but resigned. “We are estranged. Well and truly.”
“Warren, I’m so sorry…” She reached a hand out toward him, rubbed his arm.
He smiled wanly at her. “It’s fine. I’m sorry if I gave youthe impression that my circumstances were something they’re not. I can see how my words could have been misconstrued.”
“I’m sorry. I feel awful now. I just, you know…I wanted to come to you with it because I was chatting with Ryan—”
“Ah, Ryan. Of course.”
There was an edge to his voice that sent a familiar bolt of adrenaline through her, and her stomach turned over.
“No, no. He didn’t say anything,” she backtracked, panicking. “We were just chatting about something completely unrelated, but it sparked something in my mind, and it made me wonder if I’d got the wrong end of the stick, which I clearly did. This is all on me. I’m…I’m really sorry, I clearly heard something different than what you said. I took your words and formed my own story.”
He turned to her then, his expression relaxed and easy. “It’s fine.” He smiled. “Honestly. If I’d heard me talking, I’d have probably imagined I’d grown up in the Bronx.”
He was making light of it for her. Had she imagined his tone? Or was it simply her old trauma again, lurking around corners, waiting to ambush her, sending her scrambling for conciliatory gestures? Would she always be haunted by it?
“Still”—she smiled as her internal organs unclenched, easing down from high alert—“I feel bad.”
“Please don’t. You haven’t done anything wrong. How are we supposed to get to know each other, if we don’t ask questions about our pasts? I’m not offended, so you shouldn’t be worried. In fact, I’m glad you asked me, because it means that you care.”
“I do care.”
He brushed her cheek with his finger. “I want to get to know you, Fred, and I’m happy that you clearly want to know me better too.”
“I do. That’s really all it was…”
He landed a smoldering kiss on her lips, slow and passionate enough to make her toes tingle in her boots and her heart race for all the right reasons.
“To be fair,” he said, smiling as he broke their kiss, “I have a habit of embellishing the mundane. It’s the writer in me, always trying to Dickens-up any subject.”
She laughed. “You’re very sweet to try to make me feel better.” She did feel so much better!
“I’m not, honestly. Add my frustrated inner novelist to a social situation where I feel like I need to overcome my shyness, and I’m practically Baron Munchausen.”
Two black Labradors bounded past them toward the water, followed by their owners, who took a more leisurely pace while munching on baguettes.
“So, did you try anything from the food vans?” she asked. “The seafood is caught fresh every day.”
“Not yet, I’d only just arrived when I spotted you.”
“Do you want to go get something now? I skipped first and second breakfast, so I’m ravenous!”
“First and second?”
“Yup.”
“Crikey,” he said, playfully grabbing her coat. “We’d better get you fed before you start swiping fish straight from the ocean.”
She laughed and they made their way toward the food vans. Any tension had blown away with the stiff coastal breeze. It was quiet down at the vans now, but closer to lunchtime there would be a queue as people stopped by for a hot lunch or picked up the day’s catch for their dinner that night.
“How do they manage to stay open?” Warren asked, looking around. “It’s not exactly buzzing down here.”
“They supply restaurants up and down the coast. You wait till summer, when you have to fight with the holiday makers for a scallop.”
