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“No problem.” Allie leaned back in her chair and winced. Talking business was all very easy, but she wasn’t sure what to say now. Should she mention Saturday night or just ignore it? “How’s your week going?” Apparently she was ignoring their previous embarrassing conversation. He could bring it up if he wanted to.
“It’s okay. How about you?”
It had been terrible, but only because she couldn’t stop thinking about him, so she couldn’t exactly mention that. “Also okay,” she said.
“Busy?” he asked.
She leaned on the desk, scratched at her forehead. “A bit. Not too bad. You?”
“I had to go and meet with a client in Exeter, and I had a deadline to finish another project, so pretty busy.”
Allie smiled, happy that he didn’t seem to be in a massive rush to get her off the phone. “Was it a new client you met with?” It amused her to think that when she’d first met Hugh, she’d found talk about his job entirely uninteresting. Whereas now she’d happily listen to him talk about his job all day. She’d listen to him talk about anything. As long as he was talking to her, there was hope that things might work out between them.
“Yeah a new client,” he said. “They were nice and I think they were impressed with my ideas.”
“That’s great,” she said, possibly with a little too much enthusiasm.
“Yeah.” He paused. “Listen, I should let you get back to work, but it was good to talk to you.”
“You too. I can make a plan for Saturday and email you about it. And if Emmy wants to chat about it she can give me a call. Oh and if there’s any dietary requirements or anything just let me know.” She was waffling now but couldn’t help it.
“Yes. I will. That all sounds great. Thanks again.”
After ending the call, Allie slumped back into the chair. It didn’t take long for her to tie herself in knots trying to unpick the conversation. Ten minutes later, she went in search of help, hoping Daisy had time to chat.
* * *
If being busy with work wasn’t enough to distract Hugh from thoughts of Allie, he also had to prepare for Emmy’s birthday at the weekend. Shopping for gifts and decorations, as well as snacks for her friends who were staying over on Saturday night, meant that he barely had a spare moment all week.
Given the way things stood between him and Allie, he’d gently made a couple of different suggestions for Emmy’s party while knowing they wouldn’t be acceptable. It gave him a reason to call Allie without having to get into any deep conversation at least. Although once he’d got over his nerves on the phone, he was half tempted to switch to more important subjects.
He could have just apologised for being an idiot on Saturday night and asked if they could pretend he hadn’t said anything. That wouldn’t be very fair though; they needed to at least discuss it. Except he had no idea what to say, and he couldn’t fully silence the voice in his head that said things would never work out between them.
As was tradition, Emmy got to plan the entire day on Saturday, and she chose to start her birthday at the beach. The two of them went out on paddleboards for an hour and were just getting out of the water when the rest of the gang began to arrive. Damian was already at the shack, of course, but Amy turned up with the twins, and Leo and Caitlin were only a few minutes behind them. Alice only wanted to crawl around on the sand while everyone else greeted each other.
Emmy accepted gifts while shivering in her wetsuit.
“Why don’t you get warm and dry before you open them?” Hugh suggested.
Emmy shook her head. “I’ll open them later. I’m going to surf with Billy and Marty.”
“And me!” Amy declared, then ushered the boys away to get into their wetsuits.
“I’m surfing too,” Leo said.
Caitlin gave him a quick kiss. “Alice and I are going to put our feet in the water and watch you.”
“You can go too,” Damian offered. “I’ll watch Alice.”
“Or I can,” Hugh put in. “I just need to get changed quickly.”
Caitlin insisted she was happy staying out of the water and was down by the shore when Hugh walked out of the shack after getting changed. The rest of them were in the shallows with their surfboards, and Damian stood on the patio looking out at them.
“Thirteen,” he said when Hugh stood beside him. “How the heck did she get to be thirteen?”
“No idea. It doesn’t feel like any time since she was crawling around like Alice.”
“Time flies.” Damian moved to sit at the table nearby, a slow smile creeping over his features as he continued to watch Amy and the twins playing around with Leo and Emmy. “I bought a ring,” he said, eyes darting to Hugh.
