Chapter One
Jade’s thumping headache matched the thunder outside the cottage and the way she felt this morning mirrored the dreariness she imagined lay beyond the dormer window. Rain continued to lash against the glass and she wondered if the weather had decided to rob summer from the entire country or if it had saved its worst to batter just Heritage Cove, the picturesque village where she lived on the east coast of England.
She groaned, put the pillow over her head and tried to block out the rumbles. Running a bakery, she was used to getting up and about early and, normally, once awake, she’d open the blind to let in the light, fling open the window to allow the smell of summer to filter in and around the top floor of the cottage. What had once been a dingy loft had gone through a conversion to give Jade and her sister Celeste two bedrooms and a beautiful bathroom upstairs at the home that was mere metres from their bakery business. They often laughed about their terrible commute, the thirty-odd steps you had to take from the back door of the cottage to the bakery and its rear entrance.
Today was supposed to be the first lie-in, the first chance to recharge. The girls had finally given the go-ahead to renovate the bakery and its kitchen space; they’d be closed for three weeks, so their workload would be reduced somewhat. They had a few summer-function orders from businesses in the area, some locals had put in their regular orders with the girls, unable to fathom going to the supermarket for their bread or their rolls or their cinnamon rounds, and Jade had cake orders to fulfil.
She couldn’t blame anyone other than herself for how rough she was feeling right now. Last night she’d made the most of the lack of early starts at the bakery and hadn’t held back in celebrating with the locals at the village pub, The Copper Plough, old and young alike raising their glasses to the upcoming wedding of everyone’s favourite septuagenarian, Barney. His fiancée, Lois, had officially sold her house in Ireland and moved to the Cove, and with every day that crept closer to the wedding, excitement was mounting, because at last they’d found their happy ending after decades apart.
Jade had willingly leapt in and agreed to do the wedding cake last night, but it wasn’t talk of flavours and styles that had been the problem at the pub. The real issue had been Celeste and the other girls all seeming to be determined to zone in on Jade’s love life. With the entire village consumed with wedding fever – what with Barney and Lois’s nuptials and the village’s annual fundraising event, the Wedding Dress Ball, taking place on the same day – it appeared everyone was focused on happy endings. And Jade could understand why. The dress code for the ball requested previously worn wedding gowns and suits – or, at the very least, attire smart enough that it could be worn for the occasion. Some went for debutante dresses, others had their own garments adjusted as the years went on and kept up the true tradition for the event, and that in itself sparked a lot of interest. With all the buzz in the village, yesterday Jade had overheard Zara who ran the ice-creamery telling a friend she’d met the man of her dreams, the day before she’d been in the convenience store and Lottie who ran the local shop had been pondering over who would be the next to be lucky in love in the Cove, and even Benjamin, the chef at the pub, had picked himself up again and was a bundle of positivity despite a recent messy breakup with his long-term girlfriend.
Now, as Jade tried and failed to find a comfortable position in bed, she shuddered, remembering exactly why she’d become the focus last night. She’d had one too many glasses of prosecco and had made the open admission to Melissa – and anyone else in earshot – that she’d fallen in love with a man not so long ago and she’d never got over him. As soon as the words were out she’d wished she could stuff them all back in again, because she had been doing her very best to move forwards over the last eighteen months.
Melissa, who was engaged to be married, had then floated the idea of honeymooning in Italy. She’d been telling the girls that she and Harvey couldn’t make up their minds where to go – they could go to New York in the winter months and experience Christmas there, they could go on a safari, or they could go and do Sardinia with its architecture and breathtaking turquoise waters. Melissa went on to talk about how romantic a honeymoon in Italy would be, all the places they could see, and Jade only managed to finally steer the girls away from the topic of all things Italian by talking about the wedding cake for Barney and Lois. Celeste was always happy to talk shop so it wasn’t a problem getting her to talk about something else and Melissa, being a lover of the bakery, fell in line soon after to Jade’s relief, because a mere mention of the country and the man she’d left behind had already left her feeling once again the pain of what she’d found there and lost.
Jade turned over in bed to see if covering her other ear might work better to drown out the noise of the storm but it didn’t make an ounce of difference. She reached over and picked up her clock: 6 a.m. Wide-eyed, with no hope of drifting off again, she threw back the covers and lay there on her back staring at the ceiling.
Her thoughts briefly drifted to Italy until she registered that it wasn’t thunder that had woken her up and continued to disturb her but something else – a relentless thump-thumping that was starting to make her head hurt. She padded over to the window and lifted the blackout blind, not squinting as she usually would when the sunlight streamed in. It was still raining but it wasn’t half as gloomy out there as she’d imagined. And as she peered out, her eyes fell to the kitchen at the back of the bakery and the light coming from inside.
‘Seriously,’ she muttered. Harvey was in charge of renovating the bakery for them and had told her he’d hired someone called David to make a start today while he was busy with his main job as a loft fitter, but he’d also agreed they wouldn’t start at an uncivilised hour for the first week, giving the sisters some time out. Obviously whoever it was making the racket wasn’t used to listening to a boss’s instructions. And that was a red flag to Jade.
Huffing and puffing, she reached for the cream cardigan hanging on the rounded handle of her wardrobe that, small in height, slotted in nicely below the eaves. The space might have been converted but it was still quirky and characterful and, being close to five-foot-ten, she had to watch her head in certain areas, including around the wardrobe. She didn’t always manage it when she was this sleepy and irritated and so cursed now when she banged the top of her head just as another almighty clatter made her jump.
She tugged the cardigan around herself to cover the camisole top of her pyjamas and stepped out onto the landing. A bathroom and the staircase leading down separated her bedroom from her sister’s and she crept towards the half-open door and peeked in on Celeste. But Celeste was fast asleep. Growing up, Jade had never ceased to be amazed at how she could do that. She’d slept through a fire engine roaring up the road for their next-door neighbour in the early hours one bright spring morning, she’d slept through the tent blowing down in a gale on a family camping trip, their parents successfully transferring her to the car from the air bed she’d been on without her stirring until they pulled into the driveway at home; Jade on the other hand had been wide awake and soaking wet as she’d helped gather everything up to shove in the car. And then when they flew to New York for an adventure in their early twenties, Jade had spent the flight getting irritated by the passenger behind who kept kicking her seat whilst Celeste had shut her eyes the minute they’d boarded the flight and not woken until it was time to disembark.
Jade closed her sister’s bedroom door quietly so at least one of them could get the rest they both needed, and as yet another thump-thump threatened to disturb the entire village’s peace, she went back to her own room, where she looked out of the window again to see the back door to the bakery kitchen wide open and what looked like a huge length of wood flying out. Good job it wasn’t Harvey. She liked him – but a lackey she could handle, and she had no qualms about setting down some ground rules. Harvey obviously hadn’t made it clear enough. But she would.
Or maybe it was a bad idea to confront whoever it was, especially while wearing only flimsy pyjamas. She downed the glass of water by her bed and instead hunted for her phone. Perhaps it would be better to get hold of Harvey and have him lay down the law instead. But after looking in all the usual places – the bedside table, the chest of drawers, on the floor by the bed – she still couldn’t find her phone.
‘Where is it?’ she groaned, unable to find the device or even her bag. Admittedly there were clothes strewn everywhere – she’d neatly piled fresh washing on her bed ready to put away, but chucked it all to the floor when she flopped into bed last night. She looked under the detritus on the floor, beneath the bed, in the wardrobe just in case she’d put it there. And before she could go downstairs to call her phone using the landline she had to stop and sit on the edge of her bed as her hangover reminded her she’d planned to spend most of today sleeping it off. She didn’t stay there long, however, because regardless of the noise levels and her distaste at being woken so early, she had more pressing issues. Where was her bag, her phone and her purse?
She tugged on a pair of jeans and a pink cotton shirt that tied at her midriff. She now had no choice but to go outside and confront whoever was in her bakery, and after she’d done that she’d have to hunt down her bag and belongings. She ran her fingers through her hair to tug it into something semi-presentable. Her graduated bob was easy maintenance and the ebony strands that fell against her face didn’t take long to tame. She rinsed her mouth with mouthwash in the bathroom because even though she’d had all that water, it still felt so dry she wasn’t sure she’d be able to make conversation – and laying down the law didn’t sound half as effective if your voice cracked and broke when you were midway through trying to make your point.
Out the back of the cottage Jade made a run for it in her flip-flops, neatly jumping from one paving slab to another in the hope of not getting entirely soaked. She’d almost made it to the back door when, next thing she knew, something came flying right at her.
She cursed as a piece of wood whacked her on her temple. She stumbled against the open back door and didn’t register someone grabbing hold of her to stop her falling completely.
‘Get inside out of the rain,’ the voice encouraged.
She was so discombobulated after the wooden missile that she didn’t think to question going inside with a man who was a stranger.
‘Can I take a look?’ he asked, brow furrowed in concern as he inspected her head.
She gingerly took her hand away as he stepped closer.
‘There’s a bit of blood.’ He washed his hands at the sink and then opened up the first-aid kit that sat on the shelf by the door. He looked at her as he fished through for what he needed. ‘I’ll clean it up for you. I’m so sorry.’
‘I can go back to the house and sort it myself,’ she said, beginning to move, but he was back beside her already.
‘It won’t take a minute. And I’d hate for the blood to drip onto your shirt.’ Instead of waiting for her to make a choice, he reached up and gently dabbed her temple with a piece of damp, warm cotton wool.
It was more soothing than she expected and she forgot for a moment that she’d come in here to give him a piece of her mind.
‘I’m really sorry I threw the wood at you.’
‘I’m kind of hoping it wasn’tatme,’ she smiled, because despite the early wake-up call and the knock to the head, this man seemed kind and she wasn’t so affected by the noise or the morning-after feeling that she failed to notice the way his slightly-too-long-on-top hair curled in places, his tentative smile had a hint of cheekiness, and glossy ocean-blue eyes kept bringing his attention back to her.
‘You’re right, it wasn’tatyou. I wasn’t exactly expecting anyone to walk in at this time of the morning.’
