Page 82 of The Sunrise Sisterhood

Her mum had brought her up to be wary of men, of letting them in, trusting them not only with your heart but with your most precious thing – your child. And her own father had been at the root of that mistrust. He had let Clare down, and Skye too it turned out, time and time again. And Adam? Was he the same?

Clare glanced through the patio doors, where she could just make out Liz in the kitchen. Her gaze flicked quickly upstairs to her bedroom window. Skye had closed the bedroom curtains, but was peering out through the tiniest gap.

Maybe she could tell Adam the truth in pieces, bit by bit as he earned her trust. He deserved to know that he had a wonderful daughter, just as Ivy deserved to know about her dad. But, at the same time, she needed to protect Ivy from potentially being abandoned by a man, as she had been. Clare drew in a breath and prepared to start telling the truth.

‘Actually, I’m not a location scout,’ she admitted with a sheepish smile. ‘Nowhere near as exciting as that. I’m just a teacher.’

‘Oh.’ He sat back, confused. ‘Wow.’

She winced. ‘On the day I met you, I’d had a spa day at the hotel with my mum. After she left to drive back to Salcombe, I decided to stay for another drink. I was putting off going back to my flat, where I’d have ruined the effects of my de-stress massage by opening up my laptop for yet another game of guess the government’s new shiny idea for buggering up the education of our kids.’

Adam looked bemused. ‘You sound like my mum.’

‘Thanks. That was exactly the tone I was going for.’

‘By which I mean that she’s a teacher,’ he corrected himself swiftly. ‘Or was. Now she’s a retired head teacher. Four decades of biting her tongue and muttering that if politicians spent as much as one hour in a school before meddling with the system, then education would be a much calmer ocean to navigate.’

Clare grinned. ‘I’d probably like your mum.’

‘She’d probably like you.’ He held her gaze. ‘And, for the record, I’m much more impressed with teaching as a career than a location scout. What made you make up something like that?’

Her face flooded with heat and she dipped her chin. ‘Look, it’s ridiculous and I’m totally embarrassed to admit it. But “normal, sensible me” would have turned down the offer of dinner with a good-looking stranger and dashed off home. And I thought that, for once, I’d try on a different personality. So,’ she cleared her throat, ‘I became Sexy Saskia for the night. I just made her up on the spot.’

Adam stared at her. ‘So your name’s not even Saskia?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s Clare.’

He gave a laugh of surprise. ‘That explains why we couldn’t find any trace of you online. Do you have any idea how many location agencies exist? How many Saskias there are on LinkedIn?’

‘Not a clue,’ she said, trying to keep the smile from her lips. He really had tried to look for her.

‘So if you were there for the day, do you live near Bath?’

‘Yep, right in the centre.’

‘Cool.’ He nodded. ‘I live—’ He broke off and gave a sheepish laugh. ‘I live within walking distance of the hotel.’

‘OK, so you were there because …?’ She eyed him quizzically. A row with his partner, maybe, and she’d kicked him out. She’d put money on it.

‘This is embarrassing,’ he laughed under his breath.

‘Go on, what did you do?’ she prompted. Expecting, but not wanting, to hear the worst.

‘I locked myself out.’ Adam bit his lip and grinned.

A bubble of laughter burst out of her. ‘No way!’

He nodded sheepishly. ‘I was having the house renovated and had just come back that day from visiting my parents. I had a row with the builder on the front doorstep. He stormed off site and the door slammed, leaving me locked out until the next morning. I was too annoyed with him to ring and ask him to come and let me in.’

Her lips twitched. ‘So you booked into the hotel. Why didn’t you tell me that?’

‘Well, Saskia,’ he teased, ‘I was already the clumsy oaf who’d knocked into you, I didn’t want to be the loser who’d also managed to lock himself out of his own house.’

‘I might have thought it was endearing.’

‘And I might have thought taking your mum on a spa date was endearing, Clare.’

He’d said her real name. A shiver ran down her spine. Was this flirting? It felt like flirting. After twenty months of being a grieving daughter, a pregnant head teacher, a single mum, she felt like Clare again. Granted, she was sensible Clare this time around, not Sexy Saskia, but still, it felt good.