‘I have been genuine and honest with you. After I left you that day, all I could think about was you and when I would see you again.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘It’s true.’
Florrie was confused. ‘Am I meant to be reading between the lines here?’
‘I’m not here just for the charity conference. I also came because I was hoping to see you. Then, when I got here, all hell broke loose. Those two weeks we spent together were the best I’d ever had. Fun, carefree and wrapped in the arms of someone I’d found attractive for over two years. It was the first time in ages that I felt like myself.’
Florrie stared at him. ‘Say that again.’
‘It was the first time in ages I felt like myself.’
She swiped him playfully. ‘Not that part.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t think I didn’t see you sitting up on that sand dune every time I trained.’
‘I’m not admitting to anything.’
‘I found you attractive from the first moment I saw you, I just didn’t have the courage to speak to you. You were cool, hip and trendy whereas I was stuffy and so not cool.’ He grinned. ‘I knew then there was something about you.’
In the last ten minutes Florrie had let down her guard and had begun to once again get caught up in the mesmerising web of Tom Houston. She shook herself out of it. There was a bigger picture to think about here.
‘It’s all very well taking a trip down memory lane but what matters is the here and now. The reality is that I’m losing Aunt Ada’s home, Rose Cottage’s gardens are going to be flattened and your family business is taking away everything that meant the world to my aunt Ada.’ Florrie finished her drink and put money on the table for it. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your troubles with your father, but you’re your own person and this situation tells me that you’re more like your father than your grandfather. William would never have allowed Rose Cottage to be demolished. Not when it clearly meant so much to him.’ Florrie stood up and left him with one final blow.
‘I’m going to be shouting about those gardens, and doing whatever it takes to create as much publicity as possible. The newspapers got it right, we’re simply university friends in a tug of war. Actually, no, there is one part they got wrong … because we were never really friends, were we?’
Tom opened his wallet and placed some cash on the table for the drinks, handing Florrie her money back.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I can’t carry on like this. This may backfire, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.’
Tom held out his hand to her.
‘And where do you think we’re going?’
‘To see Dolores. You need to know the truth.’
ChapterTwenty-Five
Bizarrely, they walked hand in hand to Dolores’s apartment. Tom’s grip was firm and Florrie couldn’t work out if it was because he actually wanted to hold her hand or because he was scared she might break free and run away. He needn’t have worried. Whatever Dolores was going to share was already weighing heavily on her mind and she wasn’t going to miss it for the world.
They crossed the road and walked towards the door leading up to Dolores’s apartment. Tom unlocked it and ushered Florrie quickly inside.
‘Why do you have your own key?’ she asked. He didn’t reply.
They climbed the stairs to the front door. Tom knocked and pushed down the handle. ‘It’s only me,’ he shouted before stepping inside.
Wide-eyed, Florrie followed him into the hallway. ‘Do not think the worst when you walk into the room,’ Tom cautioned her.
Florrie didn’t have time to question him because Tom was already walking away. She’d heard about the inside of Dolores’s apartment from Aunt Ada and had thought she’d exaggerated a little, but now she realised Ada had described it exactly how it was. The walls were lined with faded photos and magazine articles about Dolly Parton, along with photos of Dolores with royalty, pop stars and her closest friends in Heartcross. ‘I knew she was a huge fan of Dolly but this is on another scale… I don’t have any words.’
Tom looked over his shoulder. ‘It’s something else, isn’t it?’
‘And there’s Ada and Martha. They look so young,’ Florrie observed, wondering – and a little frightened of – what was on the other side of the door.
Passing an old-fashioned olive-green telephone on a small round table with a brown velvet stool tucked underneath it, Florrie followed Tom as he opened the living-room door.
