Page 47 of The Bookshop By the Loch

I clung onto the peeling, painted rail, admiring the view down over Loch Bracken.

Tobias leant beside me, his strong profile inches away.

“Isn’t there somewhere else you should be?” I asked him, noting the generous curve of his mouth and not sure what I was doing up here with him.

“Nope. I had been invited to a friend’s art exhibition in Glasgow tonight, but I cried off.” A corner of his mouth flickered. “After a hard day charming Bracken Way ladies into parting with their hard-earned cash, I figured I needed a break.”

My lips hinted at a smile. “Yes, it must’ve been exhausting for you.”

We mirrored each other, savouring the swish of the water. The castle had closed for the day and sat there behind us, as though discreetly listening to our conversation.

Tobias angled himself round. “You know, you don’t have to feel raging emotions or guilt, Lexie, about your dad. You don’t have to feel anything.”

He swiped some hair away from his face. “I don’t pretend to know what things were like between you and your father, but I heard you say he wasn’t there for you or your mum.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Go on then. Tell me.”

I must have looked pained.

His voice was comforting. “Come on. Talk. It might make you feel better.”

I shrugged my bag from my shoulder and set it down by my feet. I couldn’t believe I was standing up here with Tobias, on the verge of confiding in him about my estranged father. “Ok. You’ll regret saying that.”

And he towered over me and listened, while I regaled him about my dad’s obsession with a successful career in journalism and the painful debris he left in his wake. “He never looked back. He just vanished to London and then moved to the States.”

Tobias considered this.

I shook my up-do, as though I was struggling myself to comprehend what I was saying. “He’s never been a part of my life. He was too busy chasing his dreams to give Mum and me a second thought.”

Tobias mulled it over. “Perhaps his diagnosis has made him realise what’s important.”

I pulled a dismissive face. “He should’ve realised twenty-three years ago what was important. He shouldn’t need a degenerative illness to make him think.”

A couple of small children rattled along the loch shoreline below, swinging their arms and pursued by their exhausted parents.

A guilty rush of feelings charged through me. “How am I meant to feel, Tobias? I’ve never wished my father to come to any harm, but I pushed him out of my life years ago.” My chest sagged under my dress. “Right now, I don’t know anything.”

He gazed down at me. “If I were you, I’d take time to process everything. You’ve had a real shock with him turning up like this, let alone the news about his dementia.” He continued to hold me to the breezy spot by the railings with his magnetic expression. “Take some time to get everything straight in your head. Don’t be hard on yourself.”

I bit my lip. “I’m going to have to tell Mum about him. She’ll want to know. I messed up with my job situation and didn’t tell her straight away and she was really upset about that.”

“Job situation?”

I focused on the wavy outline of the loch. “I was supposed to be a shoe-in for promotion at the publisher I worked for in Glasgow, but they ended up giving the job to a big name from the States.”

“Ah.”

“So, I took a sabbatical of around three months, so I could think about what I wanted to do and then your uncle offered me the manager post at Book Ends.”

Tobias shook his head in disbelief. “Sorry you didn’t get the job. That must’ve stung.” He awarded me a look from under his thrusting lashes. “Maybe it was a blessing in disguise.”

I feigned shock. “Steady, Mr Black. That sounded almost like another compliment.” I gave him a long look. “Do you know, you’re pretty easy to talk to? In fact, too easy.” My lips performed a ghost of a smile. “You get my life story out of me without even trying. You should work for the security services.”

“How do you know I don’t?”

“You’ve got a point there.”