Chapter 15
SADIE
And I thought Theo’s penthouse was impressive.
Turns out his ‘beach house’ is something else entirely.
Perched high above a secluded cove, it’s a blend of weathered wood, white-rendered walls, and sea-tinted glass. Stark and sculptural, yet somehow gentle, like it’s always been here, surrounded by the driftwood and windswept dunes.
Inside, every room invites the landscape in, each one perfectly positioned to capture the golden cove below, or the restless, endless sea beyond.
From the moment Lottie and I stepped out of the car, we were wrapped in its beauty – and the warm, effusive welcome of Theo’s live-in housekeeper, Isla.
A grey-haired widow with the kindest smile and brightest blue eyes, who served us a feast for dinner, then took Lottie to see the chickens in the coop.
Since then, it’s been chicken this and chicken that and all the smiles.
Now, with Lottie finally settled in bed, I pad down the hallway in search of Theo, taking in every abstract coastal print on the white walls, every sculpted piece of driftwood nestled in the recessed shelves.
Even the pale timber floor catches the eye, while the thrum of the sea fills the air like nature’s own lullaby.
Pure heaven.
Though not as heavenly as the sight that greets me when I reach the living room.
The last of the evening sun filters through the glass walls and linen drapes, softening the room’s clean lines and coastal tones… and him.
He’s stretched out on the low-slung sofa, glass of wine in hand, phone resting forgotten beside him. The light turns his skin to honey, drawing out the textured tones in his dark-blond hair and the stubble along his jaw.
His white T-shirt and pale-blue jeans wear the day’s creases, but somehow only add to the effect that’s all him. He looks undone in the most effortless way. Like he belongs here. Like this place was designed with him in mind, which it was, and yet he rarely comes here. Or so Isla said in passing.
I hesitate in the doorway, unwilling to break his peace. But I fear Lottie will come for him, if he doesn’t get to her first…
‘I hate to ruin the mood,’ I say gently, ‘but she’s asking for you…’
His eyes shift into focus, sharpening on me before softening with a smile. ‘She is?’
I nod. ‘She’s almost gone, but I reckon she’ll fight it until she gets a goodnight from her Uncle Feo.’
He places his glass on the table and rises. ‘Consider it done.’
As he passes, his hand brushes my hip – light, almost absent-minded, but enough to still my breath. For one suspended beat, I think he might lean in. Say something. Do something. But he just smiles and says, ‘Help yourself to some wine. I won’t be long.’
I watch him go, my cheeks too warm, my tummy too. I blame the car journey, being in such close proximity but with Lottie as a constant chaperone. Then Isla. But soon… we’ll be alone.
Alone for the first time since last night… the flutters within me multiply and I move before he finds me stuck in the same spot, stuck in a stupor of my own making.
I pour myself a glass and step out onto the deck. Breathe in the view as dusk settles over the cove. I can’t remember the last time I witnessed anything so quietly perfect and unspoiled by human touch.
I wrap my cardigan around me, letting the breeze thread through my hair, and sip my wine. It’s a crisp, dry white. Refreshing, but it could never quench my thirst. Not when it’s stirred by the man now returning, his footsteps soft on the wood behind me.
‘She seems quite content here,’ he says, wine in one hand, the other settling on the rail beside me. The sight of those fingers up close draws last night’s touch back under my skin and I swallow, look back to the sea.
‘Much like her mother,’ I say thickly. ‘It’s so beautiful here… I can’t believe you rarely visit.’
He looks out towards the sea with me, a small smile playing about his lips.
‘Now you sound like my mother.’
‘It was Isla who dropped you in it. She thinks it’s a travesty that the place sits empty much of the time.’
‘It doesn’t sit empty. She lives here.’
‘I think her point was more that you don’t take time out to enjoy it. Like your mother, she probably worries that you work too hard and play too little.’
It’s what I think too, but he promised not to judge me when it came to my life, and I owe him the same. Doesn’t mean I can’t pass on the message, though… and tease him a little along the way.
‘Though if you ask me, it does feel mighty cruel on the rest of us, owning a place like this and not using it. If it were mine, I’d be here all the time.’
He grins down at me. ‘Is that so?’
Turns out, the only person I’m teasing is myself. The picture paints itself so vividly – me, him, Lottie, here. Not just now, but…
I take a swig of wine, force it through my tightened throat. ‘Who wouldn’t.’
‘I can think of a few.’
‘Axel?’
He nods. ‘Too quiet.’
‘Taylor?’
He smiles. ‘She’d manage a short stint, I reckon.’
‘Katie?’
He coughs mid-sip of his wine. ‘How did you— Taylor ?’
‘She may have let slip you had a fiancée…’ I say it with all good humour, because it is.
I shouldn’t care that he has a past. Especially when I have my own…
as questionable as mine is. And he’s a thirty-seven-year-old guy who looks like he does, lives the life he does; I’d be more concerned if he didn’t have one.
No, what does concern me is that no one has stuck. That according to Taylor, he’s unable to share his life with another. And Lottie and I are living proof that’s not true. And the fact that he owns a place as incredible as this and doesn’t use it…
‘I never brought Katie here.’
‘But you did own it when she was around?’ And to be engaged, she must have been around long enough; did he really come here that little ?
He nods. ‘I bought it just before dad died.’ His gaze drifts to the view as he raises his wine glass to the cove.
‘There’s a small holiday cottage in the grounds, tucked away just down there.
It’s where my parents brought me every summer as a kid.
When it came on the market, I figured, why not?
The cottage was supposed to be a retirement gift to them both… ’
‘Oh, Theo.’ My heart breaks. ‘You never said anything about this place back then.’
He told me of his guilt. Of how much he missed his father and wished he’d been around more, wished for another family dinner, a conversation, just time. But this… to miss gifting him this.
‘It wasn’t much to write home about in those days.
The cottage was in dire need of renovation and this place was a derelict outbuilding.
I forgot about it all for a long time after Dad…
Then a few years ago, the farm next door got in touch asking to buy the land and it gave me the kick I needed to sort it out.
I paid a team to come in and refurb the cottage for Mum, redesign this place for me.
I figured one day, I’d have the time to come and enjoy it. ’
‘I bet your mum loves it,’ I say softly.
His eyes flicker over the horizon as he gives the faintest of smiles. ‘Yeah, she does…’ Then he clears his throat as his mouth quirks up. ‘Katie, though, she was more your cocktails on the C?te d’Azur type than a glass of wine in Wales.’
‘Your words or…?’
‘I think hers were that it lacked in the essentials.’
I cock a brow. ‘ Essentials ?’
‘Oh, you know – a pool, a fully-staffed spa…’
‘Ri-ight.’ I laugh into my glass. ‘Taylor said you struggled to live with her. She didn’t say she was high-maintenance, too.’
‘And now you definitely sound like my mother. Are you sure you two haven’t caught up behind my back?’
‘Promise,’ I say with a slow smile, daring to press, ‘So is that why you two didn’t work out? She was too much for you.’
He gives a tight laugh. ‘There were many reasons we didn’t work. If you ask Katie, she’d say I was already married to my job.’
Of all the reasons he could give, that one lands the hardest. Because for a man who’d been determined to see his parents work less and live more, Katie’s reason reaffirms what everyone else has said: that he’s fallen into the same trap.
Doesn’t matter what I’ve witnessed in him these last few weeks, seeing him put me and Lottie first. We’re a temporary distraction, a momentary blip in his routine, and I don’t doubt for a second he’ll return to it when we’re gone. Return to it and then some, making up for the time he’s lost.
I want so desperately to say something, but… no judgement.
‘And what about you?’ I say gently, trying a different tack. ‘What would you say the reason was?’
His eyes don’t leave the horizon, but something in his posture shifts. I start to think he’s not going to answer at all, when finally, he speaks.
‘Before Dad died, work was a way to secure the future for all of us. After… it filled a void that nothing else could fill. Not even Katie.’ He turns to me, the weight behind his eyes making it hard to breathe.
‘So, no. It wasn’t that she was too much.
It’s that I wasn’t enough to give her what she needed. ’
The confession hangs in the air, raw and real.
But all I can think is that the man I’ve come to know again has been more than enough for me. More than enough for me and for Lottie.
‘Or maybe she wasn’t what you needed to be able to give that to?’
His eyes narrow and I feel my heart slow, the meaning of what I’ve just said registering and settling in my chest. How foolish, revealing, and stupid stupid stupid.
‘But hey, what do I know? I’m hardly the relationship expert, am I?’ I chuckle into my wine, taking a sip and trying not to choke on my foolishness. ‘I have to say though, if I had to choose between the C?te d’Azur and this…’
I set my glass on the rail, fingers curling around the wood as I fix my gaze on everything Wales currently has on offer. The sun is just a deep-pink sliver now, its shifting hues rippling across the water as waves whisper against the burnished shore.