With a surprising speed for a woman of her age, Grace slipped past Will and could be heard beetling down the stairs.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Ginger, no longer able to summon up any hostility. It had been months, after all. Although why Will was walking her great-aunt’s dogs made no sense to her.
‘Looking for you. Trying to make it up to you.’
‘Why? You were never interested in me,’ she said flatly.
‘Who told you that?’ said Will and he moved so that he was sitting on the bed beside her.
‘Carla—’
‘Very reliable woman, Carla,’ said Will. ‘Great liar. I knew that by the time I’d agreed to go to the ceremony with her, but I couldn’t back out. And then—’ his eyes, those amazing brown eyes that looked so stunning with his blond hair, darkened, ‘when you left with that smug git, I knew there was no point.’
Ginger bit her lip.
‘Except I couldn’t live without you.’
‘You appeared to manage,’ Ginger said tartly.
‘I had to when you blocked my number and ignored my note. I also thought you were seeing Tyson,’ he replied. ‘And then Grace got in touch.’
‘Grace got in touch?Is she secretly CIA?’ Ginger asked.
‘Let’s just say I think she has a good grasp of Facebook and she knows all your secrets.’
‘I have to stop telling her things,’ Ginger said, beginning to grin.
‘So, do you think you would give me the pleasure of taking one of the most beautiful, strong, clever women I’ve ever known out for dinner?’
Smelling of wet dog, Ginger did something she’d never done in her life: she sat on a man’s lap and didn’t think for even one second that she might be heavy, that she might crush the life out of him. Will Stapleton wanted her and she wanted him. Had wanted him since that night in his jeep.
‘I might,’ she said and then his hands cupped her face and he was kissing her.
This was how it was supposed to feel, she realised, as she felt him holding her like she was something precious.
This was worth waiting for.
And a week later, in her pretty bedroom in her tiny house, Ginger found that kisses were not the only thing worth waiting for.
‘I understand all those romantic novels now,’ she said, as they lay together, panting, smiling, bodies touching because they couldn’t bear to be apart.
‘You’ll understand it more the second time,’ said Will. ‘I love you, Ginger Reilly. Every glorious inch of you.’
PART FIVE
The Next Birthday
Callie
Callie’s car had finally given up the ghost.
‘Goodbye sweet car,’ said Poppy, patting it affectionately as it was towed away. ‘You have been a good and faithful servant.’
Callie laughed out loud.
‘Once, you barely wanted to sit in it,’ she said fondly, putting an arm around her daughter.
‘Yeah,’ said Poppy, ‘I wasn’t an enlightened being then. And do not say I was a spoiled brat, Granny,’ she warned her grandmother, who’d come out to witness the farewell.
