She couldn’t help but smile back at Jago’s lopsided grin as he climbed down from the tractor, pushing his wild dark curls back to show off his piercing green eyes. ‘Hope I didn’t interrupt some kind of sacred ritual.’
‘You’ll be the first on my list if there’s a public flogging.’ She quickly wiped at her face and scraped at her hair to try and get it into some kind of order.
Jago laughed. ‘Here I am going out of my way to help you again and all I get is full-on abuse.’
Rita pointed to the trailer attached to the tractor. ‘What you got on there, anyway? I’ve got enough yurts, thanks.’
‘Hold your horses, madam.’ Jago peeled back the tarpaulin covering the long, unidentified item with a flourish. ‘Stan told me you needed somewhere for the guests to eat. It’s a marquee and a couple of long bench seats. My old man used to use it for family parties, but being on my own now, I don’t seem to have had time to follow that tradition.’
Rita blinked, her throat tightening. ‘Why are you being so good to me? I know that you and Archie were never the best of friends but I kind of never asked why?’
Rita was sure that she could see a tear in big Jago Jenken’s eye. He looked away and coughed loudly.
Avoiding her gaze, he began unstrapping the frame. ‘I just thought it might help.’ His voice tightened. ‘No big deal if you don’t want it.’
‘You’ve already helped with the yurts, fixed some fences and are paying for Stan to help me… and now this?’
And just like that, her composure cracked for the second time that day. Maybe it was thesavasana; maybe it had loosened something deep inside her, unknotted a part of her she’d been holding tight for too long. Whatever it was, the tears came again before she could stop them. Quiet at first, slipping down her cheeks insilence, then with that awful hitching breath that a big sob courted.
‘Oh God.’ She wiped her face with her sleeve. ‘Ignore me. I don’t know what’s up with me today. I was on cloud nine earlier.’
‘Hey.’ His voice had lost its usual swagger. He took a cautious step forward.
Rita turned her face away, wiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand like it might undo the moment, but it was too late. The crack had widened. She felt exposed, embarrassed by the rawness of it all.
Jago didn’t try to joke, didn’t offer some clumsy one-liner. He just stood there for a second, uncertain, then closed the distance between them.
‘Rita, tell me. What’s going on?’
She shook her head and sniffed. He reached out, slow, and deliberate, placing a hand gently on her arm.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,’ he said, his voice soft, encouraging.
And that’s when she looked up at him, like really looked. His face wasn’t mocking or smug or amused. It was open. Concerned. And maybe something else too. The silence between them stretched, and in it, something shifted. Jago brushed a thumb beneath her eye, catching a tear. The contact was feather-light. She didn’t move. Maybe she couldn’t.
Then his hand moved to her chin, cupping it gently, like he was giving her every opportunity to pull away. But she didn’t. And before she even had a chance to think if she wanted to, it was happening. Jago Jenken was leaning in to kiss her.
It was soft, tentative. There was no swagger in it. Just warmth. Sincerity. And something that felt a little like longing. For a moment, Rita kissed him back.
But then panic flared in her chest like a struck match. She stepped back sharply, breath catching, eyes wide.
‘I – I can’t, Jago, it’s too soon. I’m so sorry. It’s just… What are you doing?’
He froze, hurt flickering across his face so quickly that Rita missed it. Then he nodded once, jaw tightening.
‘Yeah. No. Of course not. What was I thinking?’ He took a step back, clearing his throat. ‘I should go.’
He turned and headed back to the tractor, boots crunching against the gravel. She watched him climb in and drive away, the marquee and benches rattling on the trailer, the released tarpaulin flapping in the breeze.
Rita stood frozen, heart thudding, lips tingling from a kiss that had not only taken her completely by surprise but had left her unsure what to feel.
TWENTY
It was a blistering hot day. Rita sat beneath the Singing Tree, knees hugged to her chest, her back against the inscription on Archie’s bench. The wind moved through the leaves above, setting them whispering in a way that always felt like they were trying to tell her something she wasn’t quite ready to hear.
She stared out across the ocean. Gulls were screeching into the wind; the horizon looked back at her, its perfect line a leveller for any human being. She let her mind drift, inevitably, to the kiss. She hadn’t seen him since. She touched her lips absently, remembering how unexpectedly tender it had been. How Jago had looked at her, not like someone to fix, but like someone already whole. And how, despite everything in her that had wanted to lean into it, her feet had carried her the other way. The truth was, she didn’t really know much about the man at all, only that he lived across the meadow and that he belonged to the Jenken family. And while the historical feud between the Jorys and the Jenkens wasn’t spoken of often, it ran deep enough to still cast a shadow.
It was when Archie was still alive that she’d first read – through the ever-entertaining Queen of the Seahaven Bay Facebook Gossip Group – that Jago Jenken had once been married. The post had been tucked between a photo of someone’s lost cat and a heateddebate about seagull-proof bins. At the time, Rita had skimmed past it, but now, with that unexpected kiss lingering on her lips and Jago’s quiet acts of kindness stacking like Russian dolls, she found herself wondering about the woman who’d come before. What had happened between them? And in a town as full of gossip as Seahaven Bay why she had not heard more.
