Chapter Twenty-Two
Olivier – Brighton Beach
‘So, here we are.’ Ashleigh raised her eyebrows at Olivier after they left the aquarium and he’d asked if she minded going down to the beach. ‘Down on the beach, freezing our noses off.’
‘We don’t have to stay here,’ Olivier offered, watching her bury her hands in her coat and snuggle her chin into her collar.
‘I’m just teasing. It’s okay.’ The wind whipped her long hair across her face, and she picked it away and tossed it behind her as she rolled her eyes. ‘Even if it is cold. It’s lovely down here.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Of course not.’ She tilted her head. ‘You’re not very good at putting what you want first are you?’
He frowned at her observation and shrugged. ‘Compromise is a good thing, no?’
‘Sure, to a point, but…’
‘But what?’
‘But, with what you said about how your dad is, I just wondered if maybe you’re…’ She trailed off awkwardly and bit her lip.
‘Maybe I’m a pushover?’ He finished the sentence for her and squinted out at the sea. If anything was going to make his manhood wilt away, it was the most beautiful girl he’d ever known making the observation that he was a complete doormat.
‘No.’ Her blue eyes widened, and she squeezed his arm. ‘No. That wasn’t what I was going to say at all. I was going to say that maybe you’re so used to compromising, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to do something just becauseyouwant to.’
He forced a laugh. ‘I think that’s a little bit of the same thing.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just…you convinced me last night to do the Christmas lights for myself; it got me wondering, how often doyouchoose to do things just because you want to?’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘I never know when to keep my thoughts to myself.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said automatically. It wasn’t like he could blame her for thinking it. Bertrand thought it too and he probably knew him better than anyone. Perhaps this was the whole reason he was struggling to make a choice about the promotion. He did know what he wanted, he just knew that it wasn’t what his papa wanted to hear. ‘Shall we grab a cup of tea and walk down to the sea?’
They went to the fish and chip shop that was open on the parade and bought takeaway cups of piping-hot tea with plastic lids. The smell of salt and vinegar was heavy on the air. They picked their way over the large pebbles down the sloping beach to the water.
‘I think I had better balance on the ice the other night,’ he joked as his foot caught a particularly big stone and made him lurch.
‘You definitely did after the first five minutes.’ She laughed at him and put her arm through his. ‘Not much further. It keeps you fit, trying to walk over the pebbles. Some people run it. And swim in the sea.’
‘Even at this time of year?’ he asked, his voice admirably normal, despite how close she was now, her shoulder rubbing against his arm, her hair blowing in his direction, tickling across his neck and into the collar of his coat. How deprived had he been of female contact that the brush of her hair felt intimate? But then, it could be a very intimate thing, if she was leaning over him as they lay on his bed, the strands creating a curtain all around them…
‘Some people are crazy,’ she said, and he struggled to remember what they were talking about. Ah, yes, swimming in the sea.
‘A cold shower is meant to be good for you in the morning.’ It would be good for him, right about now.
‘I can understand the shower. You get in, you get out and put your clothes on, warm from the radiator, feeling energised. But getting in that sea…I think that’s a different thing entirely. It’sfreezing.’
‘Colder than a cold shower?’
‘Of course.’ Her blue eyes flashed at him, like he was crazy.
‘Have you tried it? Maybe the salt makes it feel different.’
‘Aren’t you a chef? Salt doesn’t make things warmer…does it?’
‘Not strictly speaking – but it changes the amount of energy needed to heat it, so perhaps the water will be warmer than we would expect. Shall we find out?’ The smell of the salt and the roar of the waves was buoying something up inside him, like it always did. Like he was about to go on an adventure.
He was such an imbecile really.
‘How?’ She cut a sideways look at him.
