Maeve’s shoulders slumped at the hopelessness of it all. She called across to Leo who was on the phone, ‘Tell them he’s only eleven! He isn’t used to the sea!’
‘I’ll find him, Maeve.’ Adrian rushed over to her again and pulled her close, held her in his arms for the briefest of moments. It had been twelve years since he’d held her that way and yet it felt like yesterday, the way he’d breathed in the scent of her hair, the way she’d fallen for him hard and fast. ‘I promise I will find him.’
And when he pulled away she did the only thing she could do in this moment.
She told Adrian the truth.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Adrian
Adrian stared at this woman he’d fallen for quicker than anyone, even more so than the woman he’d ended up marrying as he tried to escape his own life. He’d fallen for Maeve quickly one day when he’d been looking for solitude not love. He just hadn’t told her or admitted it to anyone else.
But now he couldn’t digest the information, he couldn’t talk to her the way he wanted to because the pull right now was to find Jonah. He had to find his son.
Maeve’s words, ‘He’s your son,’ rang in his ears as he ran from the boathouse, Nina close on his heels.
‘I’ll drive you to the marina. Get in!’ She leapt into Leo’s truck and started it up.
They barely talked on the two-minute trip to the marina. Nina said something about heading back to scour the streets with Leo in case they were wrong about the kayak, but Adrian knew deep down that they weren’t, and looking at Maeve back there in the boathouse, she’d known it too. ‘Stay with Maeve,’ he urged Nina as the car screeched to a halt.
‘Adrian, be careful!’ she yelled after him as he leapt out into the pouring rain and ran from the parking area along the jetty to his boat.
He didn’t stop running until he reachedThe Wildflower’s mooring. This moment was something he’d pushed away from this thoughts so many times before, but right now it was second nature to him. He untied the rope from the stern, his hands soaking wet but the rope familiar against his skin as he unwound it from the cleat, then did the same from the mid-ship cleat and finally loosened the rope at the bow before climbing on board.
He started the boat’s engine and began to maneouvre the vessel away from the jetty, reversing before he could go on his way and find his son. Jonah was out there in a kayak having no experience of the water craft or this kind of weather. Adrian wondered about nature versus nurture – would Jonah have some affinity with the sea like Adrian did? His mum had always told him he was born with gills he was so good in the water.
Please please let Jonah be the same.
As he headed out of the marina Adrian thought of Maeve, the panic on her face, the heartbreak, the bond as she’d told him the truth. And their boy looked so much like his beautiful mother too – all that dark hair just like Maeve’s, deep velvet brown eyes. He’d looked into those eyes many years before when he’d been drawn to Maeve. Part of him wished he could take her in his arms now and tell her everything would be OK.
But he didn’t know that. All he knew was that he had a son and he never wanted to lose him.
The other part of him wanted to yell at her and demand to know why she’d kept his own son from him for eleven years.
Eleven years!
Over time, Adrian had come to accept he wasn’t going to be a dad. Not ever. When he’d left the bay he’d needed escape and he hadn’t given too much thought as to how that escape might unfurl in the future. He’d married Harper, they’d had a good life for a while, and when she’d told him she didn’t want kids he’d thought he didn’t either. All he’d wanted was a new life and that was what he’d got.
Adrian had ended his relationship with Rhianne weeks before he met Maeve, and they’d remained friends but nothing more. Although she did like to flirt, and did so with him and others, including his own brother. When it didn’t bother him the way it should, Adrian realised how casual their relationship had actually been all along.
But it was different with Maeve, right from the start.
Adrian and Maeve had first got talking when he’d been in the library one day. Maeve turned up and, browsing shelves near to where he’d found a comfy chair, she came over to say hello. She’d already read the book he was holding and told him the reasons she admired the author, the potential the story had, what she didn’t like so much, and they’d laughed when he’d insisted he didn’t want spoilers, only to keep asking her what happened to this character and that character.
That evening he’d bumped into Maeve on the pier. He’d finished the entire book and the second he saw her he’d known it hadn’t just been about reading the story, it had been so he could talk to Maeve more when he next saw her. He’d bought a portion of chips he shared with Maeve who’d just bought a postcard to send a pen pal in France and they talkedabout the book, what they liked, what they agreed on and what they didn’t. They’d ended up strolling from the start to the end of the pier talking about that book, about others, about her studies and his love of the boat business.
A day or so later Maeve wandered down to the marina. Adrian had just finished cleaning the boat and replenishing supplies in the kitchen after taking his granny Camille out for the afternoon; they’d had scones with jam and cream in the sunshine, something he’d warned her might turn her stomach if the sea was choppy, but as luck would have it it hadn’t been.
‘What brings you down here?’ he asked Maeve, more than happy to see her.
‘I’m admiring the boats of course.’
He slung his bag over his shoulder. Granny Camille had already left, his dad had collected her, and Adrian had finished givingThe Wildflowera good clean. ‘That one’s a beauty.’ He noticed her eyeing up a yacht moored a few berths down.
‘I’d be impressed with a tiny row boat to be honest,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve been in a car, on a train, a plane, but I’ve never been in a boat.’
‘What, never? Even though you live around here. That’s almost shameful,’ he teased.
