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Well. He still had the restaurant, anyway.
He paused at the door as he saw Mia farther up the street, and it took him a full thirty seconds to realize that not only wasn’t she alone, he didn’t know the man she was with. Or why she was holding his arm. Or what he’d said to make her laugh so openly, her face shining and bright with the sort of relaxed joy Charlie had never yet managed to get her to show.
Charlie blinked. Mia hadn’t noticed him at all, and was already leading her friend farther along Main Street, toward the tiny rundown cinema. She’d tell him all about it later, he was sure. There was probably a perfectly innocent explanation.
Except it didn’t need to be innocent, did it? Because he had absolutely no claim on her anyway.
Depressed once again, Charlie pushed open the door and retreated into the dream restaurant that had become a nightmare.
Chapter 2
Becky waited until she saw Tony and Mia take the turning down Water Street, toward the Esplanade, before she ducked out of the newsagent’s doorway and over to the A to Z shop next door.
It had been a good idea, having Tony lure Mia away first; this was a family matter, after all. And Mia, for all they’d been friends as kids, before the thing with her dad, was never going to be family. She’d wondered how he’d managed it, but not for very long. Tony always seemed to manage to get what he wanted one way or another, often leaving the other party thinking it had been their idea in the first place. It was one of the reasons Champion Casinos were such a success.
The other reason, of course, was that Becky got what she wanted pretty much all the time, too. When they worked together, they were unstoppable.
The thought made Becky smile. Aberarian was going to roll over and beg for them to save it.
It was a good feeling, knowing she was just one deal away from ruling her old hometown. She hadn’t been ready last time she’d come back. They hadn’t taken her seriously. But this time, they weren’t going to have a choice.
She’d have her business, she’d have Charlie, she’d have her dream life. And, yeah, she’d have Tony to thank for it, she supposed. But he was a businessman. He’d understand the importance of shaping circumstances to get what you wanted.
She was his protegee, after all. He’d probably be proud of her, once he got over the part about not being able to sleep with her anymore. It was almost a shame, that part. They were as fantastic together in bed as they were in business.
Becky paused at the window of the A to Z shop before going in. No customers, of course. She hadn’t seen a single tourist all the way in from the station.
Roll over and beg.
Ditsy sat behind the counter, pouring over something–either the accounts or the crossword, probably. You could never tell with Aunt Ditsy. Becky paused, hand on the door, remembering better times for the shop, when Uncle Henry was still alive and sneaking sweets to his favorite niece. When she was still the town’s sweetheart and her biggest responsibility was remembering to keep the jars of lemon drops on the L shelf filled.
With a deep breath, Becky pushed the door open, bracing herself for surprise and hugs and amazement. What she got instead, when Ditsy looked up from her papers, was a look of utter shock.
“Hello, Aunt Ditsy,” she said with a calculatedly nervous smile.
“I thought...” Ditsy still hadn’t moved from behind the counter. Becky felt a twinge of concern. Not the best start. “When you didn’t come home for your Aunt Hannah’s funeral, I thought we’d never see you in Aberarian again.”
Ah. Right. “I felt just terrible about that, Auntie. I just... It was too soon for me, so soon after everything.” Ditsy nodded, the movement jerky, and Becky decided the best thing was probably just to steam ahead and hope Ditsy would forget, eventually, some of Becky’s failing as a niece. “But I’m back now. Things have been going really well for me in Manchester. And now I’ve got the opportunity to share some of my success...”
But before Becky could get into the revelation that had prompted her return, the shop door opened again, its brass bell jingling as Mrs. Heather Jenkins entered and bustled straight up to the counter without acknowledging Becky’s presence at all. That wouldn’t last long. She was going to show them she mattered in this town.
“Now, Ditsy, what’s all this about a letter from Mia’s father?” Mrs. Jenkins hadn’t become any less blunt over the years either, it seemed.
Ditsy gave a frustrated sigh. “Heather, since I don’t want to spend all afternoon repeating myself, and now Mia’s out of the way I’m sure you’re not going to be the last to ask, could you just get Jacques to amend his story when he’s telling people? He just needs to tell them I have no idea who the letter was from, what it said, or even if Mia’s got any plans to open the damn thing. She certainly hadn’t when she left here.”
Heather Jenkins gave an almost-snort of polite disbelief. “And I’m sure if she had you’d have told me all about it.”
“Then why did you bother to ask?” Ditsy said with raised eyebrows. Check and mate. Aunt Ditsy had obviously been practicing that comeback.
But even as Mrs. Jenkins left, grumbling under her breath, Becky could see the vicar, Dafydd Davies, striding purposefully toward the shop. Ditsy dashed out from behind the counter with surprising speed and flipped the sign on the door over to Closed, smiling with false apology at Reverend Davies while he fumed outside the window.
“Never known a man of God to gossip so much,” Ditsy muttered, watching him turn and leave.
Becky decided to seize the opportunity. “Since you’re closed early for the day,” she said, her mind already playing out the next part of her plan, “Why don’t we go and get lunch at StarFish? I’ve got a...business proposition I’d like to discuss with you.”
Ditsy snorted, but reached for her coat. “You just want to see Charlie again.”
Becky smiled. The plan was coming together just fine. Tony would be so proud.
* * * *
Mia led Tony along Main Street, toward the Esplanade, and stared at the town she’d lived in all her life with new eyes. It looked shabbier than she remembered, more rundown. And when had so many shops closed? One at a time, she supposed, and it was always sad when they did, but then two weeks later she’d forget about them. Until she had to find a way to make Aberarian interesting to an outsider, and she realized the whole place looked abandoned.
Maybe she should tell him the tragic life of Mia Page, so he’d run screaming for the hills now, saving her the bother of scaring him off slowly, over time.
Instead, she guided him down Water Street, past the bright blue and gold sign of StarFish, and drew his attention to the beautiful holiday homes on the other side of the street, rather than the charity shop and the Neil’s bucket and spade stall. She glanced into StarFish’s window, but it didn’t look like Charlie was there anyway, so there was no point stopping.
On the corner of the E
splanade, she directed him to the window of Treasures, Kim Williams’s tourist trap, selling overpriced slate objects and Celtic-designed jewelry made overseas. That was what people wanted from a seaside town these days, wasn’t it?
Although, if she was honest, Tony didn’t seem particularly interested in the town anyway.
“So, you work in the A to Z shop?” Tony asked, turning away from Kim’s overly sentimental window display to point at a plaque beside it declaring the smuggler A to Z Jones had once stayed there. “Named for the man himself, I assume?”
Mia shrugged. “Probably. Story goes he could get you anything from A to Z. A bit like an illegal Harrods. But it’s mainly because everything in the shop is arranged alphabetically.”
“Really?” Tony paused in the middle of the pavement. “How the hell does that work?”
“Badly, most of the time,” Mia admitted.
“Huh.” Tony smiled. “Well, you did say she was crazy.”
Mia didn’t reply, just took his arm and carried on in the direction of the beach. Maybe the sea views would win Tony over.
But somehow, with Tony beside her, even the beach had lost some of its appeal.
“Are those...jellyfish?” He stared, horrified, at the shoreline.
Mia winced. “Yeah. They... We tend to get a lot of them, this time of year. They wash up with the tide and wash out again later. Usually.” Tony still looked horrified. “You’re not really seeing it at its best.”
“What if you step on them?”
“They sting.” Perhaps it was time to take Tony away from the jellyfish.
“Well, you wanted the coast,” Mia said, leading him up to the Esplanade. Aberarian wasn’t the most exciting place on the planet, but it was her home and she loved it. And for some reason, it was important to her Tony like it too. “This is it.”
Tony turned to her and smiled again, and Mia felt some of her worries fade away. “It most certainly is.”
Not feeling she was making any progress, Mia started along the Esplanade, saying, “Well, there’s more to see, still.”
