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She pulled a pearl-coloured coin purse from the pocket of her great coat and handed over the money, just as the shop door rattled violently on its hinges and the wind roared. Their heads snapped round to look at it.
Magnús made an impressed, ‘Woah!’
‘This storm isn’t calming at all,’ she said.
‘You should drink coffee,’ he told her, as though that somehow followed, and seeing her surprised smile he added, ‘before you walk back to Jowan’s, I mean. For warmth. Also I made cake and nobody’s tasted it.’
‘Well…’
That was the clincher. That and the fact she had nowhere to be and nothing to do. The call to the insurance company could wait until morning. Jowan and Aldous weren’t at the B&B to greet her, though he had given her a key and told her she could stay as long as she needed, which she’d taken to mean a couple of nights max. He couldn’t want her there over Christmas.
Jowan and the little dog had accompanied her as far as the turning for the bookshop and then they’d walked on up to the Big House to visit the mysterious Minty, who Jowan, no matter how devoted he was to his late wife’s memory, kept talking about. A bad case of mentionitis there, she’d thought.
Alex knew all about mentionitis now. Ben had caught it weeks ago. It had beenEve saidthis andEve likesthat. Funny how she hadn’t suspected a thing at the time, but the constant name-dropping now told her that Eve had occupied his thoughts.
Maybe he’d tried to stop himself? Maybe he’d fought the attraction at first? Tried to be loyal? Who knew? None of that mattered since she’d walked in on him and her best friend practically eating each other before springing apart in their shock at being discovered.
She’d been too trusting or – and the thought made her mood sink like an anchor – she’d been only too willing to be fooled, just so long as she had some kind of family to fit into.
‘Cake would be good,’ she conceded, trying not to sound too weary.
For the first time, the Icelander smiled. ‘I’m Magnús Sturluson,’ he said, and the frank way that he held his hand out across the counter weakened her resolve to remain incognito. She confessed her name was Alex. No surname necessary.
The warm clasp of his hand took them both back to the beach that morning, and Alex felt the last remnants of her brave face slipping. He’d seen her at her absolute lowest point, suddenly washed ashore when she’d wanted to hide away from the entire world for at least another few weeks. And she’d squashed him flat on his back on the beach.Ugh!
Just before another crushing wave of humiliation washed over her, Magnús led the way through the shop and into his café.
His silence felt like a promise. He wasn’t going to pry either. Just like Jowan, he understood she was holding on to her sorry story out of self-preservation. If she told it out loud – the awful truth about Ben and Eve, and all the rest of it – she’d be surrendering the last little fragment of pride she had left, and in front of strangers too.
If she explained herself she’d lose her mystery, the only thing she had to her advantage, the one thing that stopped the sympathetic looks or well-meaning but painful comments and the insensitive questions, and she’d had enough of those growing up without her mum. She wouldn’t stand for any more.
‘So, what’s on the menu?’ She knew her voice was shaky with emotion. Forcing her hands into her pockets helped.Get it together, she scolded herself.
‘Jólakakaand… something like a cappuccino. There’s no machine,’ he told her, busily washing his hands in the little sink behind the café counter where, inside a glass dome, sat a golden loaf cake studded with fruit. ‘Or you can have tea?’
She pointed to the cafetière now in his hands and found she was glad to see he was filling it up for the two of them.
‘The Icelandic Christmas cake is a family recipe,’ he added, as Alex pulled up a high seat at the counter.
‘Whose recipe?’
‘My mother’s, and Amma’s before her. I mean, my grandmother’s.’
Alex accepted a big slice of cake and watched as Magnús heated some milk then frothed it with a noisy little electric device that looked a bit like a screwdriver. He stayed on the other side of the counter until she asked him to join her. ‘You can’t stay on your feet all day, sit.’
He poured out their drinks then did as he was told.
‘So how do we do this?’ he asked eventually.
‘Do what?’ Her eyes widened in panic.
‘Have a conversation without you telling me anything about what happened to you this morning or who you are?’
So he did get it. Alex’s heart swelled with the relief, but there was embarrassment too. Clove Lore people were picking up on how prickly and sensitive she was. That wasn’t an altogether nice feeling.
‘We could talk about the storm,’ she put in quickly. ‘Jowan said this morning’s gales are only a storm front and we’ll have a better day tomorrow, and then the second storm they’re forecasting might miss us altogether, move back out to sea or something.’
‘Or we might get absolutely battered by the second storm for Christmas? I heard that too, on the radio.’
