Alex’s sleepy, dopamine-soaked brain mulled this over and her smile spread. He liked her. Not love, thank goodness. Liking everything about her somehow sounded much,muchbetter than love. A sore spot at the back of her brain wanted to know whether she had been much liked before now, but she was too relaxed to follow the thought.
‘I like you liking me,’ she said in a whisper, squeezing her shoulders closer to Magnús’s chest. He brought his legs up to cradle hers all the more.
‘OK then,’ he murmured, low and dozy.
‘And you are also nice,’ she said in a robotic voice, making him laugh.
‘I don’t talk like that,’ he protested.
‘I like how you talk. I like everything about you too.’
She kissed his wrist and tucked his hand into the spot below her chin, holding him tight before they feel asleep once more.
Magnús, thinking himself a changed man, smiled in his sleep, knowing that tomorrow they would lazily eat breakfast and light the fire once more, turn the sign on the door, and open their shop and café again, ready to welcome last-minute gift shoppers braving the weather.
It would be another perfectly happy day, he told himself, and not one brooding, dark synapse in his sleepy brain fired a warning, like it would have done on any other night of his life, to remind him that nothing good ever came this easily to tormented, striving Magnús Sturluson.
Chapter Seventeen
23rdDecember – Rescue
The knock at the shop door was so soft it hadn’t awakened Magnús, but it sent Alex scrambling for her clothes and grimacing at Jowan who was politely averting his eyes behind the glass.
It was still dark by the time she’d dressed and tiptoed sheepishly outside to greet him. The wind swirled wildly in the little square as though it wanted to knock her clean off her feet.
‘There are some people here to see you,’ he shouted over the gale.
She’d followed him Down-along through the blast of icy rain, her heart sinking further with every step.
It had rained steadily all night, not that she’d been aware of it, and the cobbles now ran with clear water between the stones.
The first thing she saw, apart from the thick white clouds lying oddly low in a wide band above the shoreline and fringed with long fingers reaching towards land, was the little crowd around theDagalienon the beach.
Tom Bickleigh was there with a man in overalls and a yellow sou’wester who she didn’t recognise. They were drilling something into the port side gunwale so the whole thing could be wrapped in a new tarpaulin. Tom had told her he’d help and here he was, as good as his word.
The other figures shifted on the shore and it took a moment to register who they were. She wasn’t prepared to see Ben standing with his hand raised to the back of his head, and his dad beside him.
For a moment she watched their backs from the harbour wall. She’d have obeyed her instincts and run in the opposite direction if it wasn’t for the sympathy in Jowan’s eyes now fixed upon her.
‘Just see what they have to say. I’ll be right here,’ he told her.
That was when she noticed Bovis, sheltering from the rain under the gable of the old lifeboat house. She knew from his sharp eyes and redder-than-usual face this was something to do with him.
There it was again, the guilt and shame, and the feeling of being a nuisance and an embarrassment even though she hadn’t asked anyone to go to any trouble on her account. She wasn’t sure how they’d found her or what they wanted; still, her whole body reeled from the feeling of being ambushed.
With heart thumping and legs weakening, she left Jowan’s side and made her way down onto the pebbles, just as Ben’s father spotted her.
‘Alex! Darling.’ With his arms outstretched and his expression breaking into undisguised relief, the sight of him made Alex suddenly want to fold over with sadness.
‘Dad!’ Her feet carried her towards him. She loved him, even if she wasn’t going to be his daughter-in-law. He’d been nothing but kind to her over the years and she desperately wanted the hug.
He held her without an ounce of animosity about the worry she’d caused. ‘Thank God,’ he said, over and over, rocking her in his embrace even if he was fully a foot shorter than her. ‘Thank God.’ When he broke away, he kept hold of her wrists, examining her at arm’s length as though looking for injuries. ‘You’re all right, not hurt at all?’ And he turned her with his hands, trying to somehow examine her back through the layers of her rollneck and her father’s long coat.
‘I’m completely fine. Why are you all here? How could Bryony know I was here from a text?’
Mr Thompson turned her right into Ben’s path. He was crying.
Already feeling trapped, now Alex wanted to simply dissolve like sea foam. Anger seemed to creep up from her toes and build as it hit her gut. The fact that he’d pulled off his hood and the rain was soaking into his hair and running in rivulets down his face like he thought he was the dashing hero in a rom-com somehow made her even more livid. He was crying like he was the victim here.
