Chapter Seventeen
It took a little longer than Charlotte had expected to get over to Four Mile Creek.
When she pulled up in the parking lot, she looked around.
The place was impressive. She’d seen photos of it online, but they didn’t do justice to the real thing.
She didn’t have time to stop and admire it now, though.
She’d need to hurry if she was going to be on time for Holly.
She just made it. She walked into the store at eleven-thirty on the dot.
There were a couple of customers browsing the racks of clothes.
Holly looked up from where she was sitting behind the cash register and smiled.
“I’ll be with you in just a few.”
Charlotte nodded, and wandered around. She could see herself coming back here to shop; the lines Holly carried were gorgeous. She took down a cornflower blue dress and held it up against herself.
“That’d really suit you, you know your colors.” Holly was now standing behind her and met her gaze in the mirror.
Charlotte smiled. “I don’t know about that, I know I love this blue.”
“It suits you. But you’re not here to buy clothes, you’re here to help me figure out how to sell more of them. Come on through to the back. I’ve been looking forward to sitting down with you.”
Charlotte followed her through to the office in the back of the store.
“I thought we should spend some time going through the website and talking about how I build an online presence before we go for lunch,” said Holly. “Otherwise I can see us spending all afternoon sitting and talking and not getting any work done at all.”
“That sounds like a good idea to me. It’d be far too easy to just go and have a girly afternoon.”
“I’m hoping we’ll get lots of chances to do that, but I thought we should start out on the right foot. I’ve had people working on the website for months and it’s never gone anywhere. I’m banking on you being the one who makes it all happen.”
“That’s what I do,” said Charlotte with a smile. She pulled up a seat at the computer. “So, let’s see what you’ve got.”
A couple of hours later she sat back and smiled at Holly. “What do you think?”
Holly grinned. “I think it sounds awesome. Tell me what you need and how much it’s going to cost, and I say we get started as soon as possible. I also think you need to talk to Laura, Smoke’s girlfriend; have you met her?”
Charlotte shook her head. “She’s been away, in London I understand, since I arrived.”
“Well, you’ll meet her this weekend at Renée’s party.
I know she’ll be back for that. She designs jewelry and her store is just a couple of doors down from here.
We’ve been moaning to each other for months that we need to figure out the online thing.
I know she’ll be as thrilled as I am to get to work with you. ”
“Neither of you can be as thrilled as I am. I can’t believe I’m stepping back into life here and getting to help everyone out by doing work I love.”
“It seems to me that it’s a win-win for everyone involved,” said Holly. “And I just love those.” She looked at the clock up on the wall. “Wow! I didn’t realize it was so late. Do you still have time to come for lunch? Or do you need to get over to see Emma?”
“I’d love to have a quick lunch. Emma said she was fine for me to get there anytime this afternoon or tomorrow.”
“In that case, let’s go. I’m starving.” She picked up her purse and led Charlotte out into the street.
When they reached the main square of the Plaza, Charlotte smiled. It was beautiful. “It really does look and feel like a little Mediterranean village.”
Holly laughed. “Be sure to tell Jack that when you see him. He’s the architect and Mediterranean village is exactly what he was aiming for.”
“He succeeded. I love it.”
They took a seat at the table on the terrace of a sidewalk café and Charlotte nodded to herself. “This is great. I can see me coming over here for lunch often.”
“Good, count me in. Hopefully, you’ll have lots of reason to be over here, helping me and Laura.”
Once they’d ordered and the server had brought their drinks, Holly held up her glass in a toast. “Here’s to you being back here, to you and Ben being happy, and to all of us building the future of Summer Lake.”
Charlotte smiled and raised her glass. “I can certainly drink to all of that.”
“It must be really weird for you, to be back here after all this time.”
“It’s weird, but at the same time it’s not. It feels right. It’s where I always knew I was supposed to be. If I’m honest, all the years I wasn’t here felt much weirder than this.”
Holly nodded. “I can’t imagine how that must have been. In the early days, Pete and I broke up for a little while, and it was awful. I went back to my life, the life I’d been living before I knew him, but it didn’t feel like my life anymore. I knew my life was supposed to be with him.”
“Then I think you do have some idea of how it was for me. I wasted too many years, living the wrong life, in the wrong country, with the wrong man.”
“I guess all you can do is try to make up for it now. You can’t get back all the years you lost, but you can make the most of every day now you’re back together.”
Charlotte smiled. “That’s what we’re trying to do. Ben always used to say that I was chasing tomorrow, now it’s time to live like there’s no tomorrow; make every day count, you know?”
“I do. I …” Holly’s voice trailed off and Charlotte followed her gaze. Angel was making her way across the square toward them, at least toward the café. Holly looked at Charlotte and raised an eyebrow.
Charlotte’s heart raced, which surprised her.
She didn’t know what to do. It would be rude to simply ignore Angel, and yet she had no clue what to say to her.
Angel took the dilemma out of her hands by putting her head down and hurrying past them.
She went inside to the sandwich counter.
Charlotte let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
Holly gave her an inquiring look. “I take it there’s no love lost between the two of you?”
Charlotte shrugged. “It’s not like that, it’s not like there’s bad blood or anything. It’s just a bit awkward, you know? If I hadn’t come back when I did, I’m sure she and Ben would be together by now. And I kind of feel bad.”
Holly looked surprised. “I don’t think he would ever have gotten together with her, whether you came back or not.”
“You don’t?”
Holly shook her head adamantly. “He was never going to get together with anyone who wasn’t you.”
Charlotte got up. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go and talk to her.” She went and waited by the door while Angel paid for her sandwich. Her throat went dry; she had no idea what she was going to say. She just knew she needed to say something.
Angel’s stride faltered when she saw Charlotte standing there. She took another few steps and then stopped. She met her gaze, looking uncertain. “Hi.”
Charlotte smiled. “Hi. I just wanted .... I don’t know what I want, other than to say hello. I was
rude the other morning and I’d like to apologize for that.”
Angel smiled. “I think we were both taken by surprise. There’s no need to apologize.
I feel as though I should be apologizing to you, but I don’t even know why.
Well, that’s not true. I do know why. I want to apologize because I feel as though I did something wrong.
But I know I really didn’t do anything wrong.
” She lowered her gaze and gave a slight shrug.
“Other than have the world’s worst timing. ”
“I know how you feel on that one. My timing pretty much sucks out loud, for both of us. There were years and years when I could have come back with no problems at all. Yet here I am now, it might have worked out so differently for all three of us if I came back a year ago or a year from now.”
Angel shrugged again and looked up with a smile.
“One thing I’ve learned in life is that there is no use thinking about all the could-haves and should-haves.
All we can do is make the most of what is.
” She held out her hand and Charlotte shook it.
“I’m glad we could talk. Hopefully now there won’t be any awkwardness between us.
” She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Well, at least not too much.”
Charlotte nodded. “It’s a shame, I think we could have been friends.”
“Maybe we still can. We obviously have one thing in common.”
“Yeah, we do. I’ll let you get on, I should get back to Holly.”
“I’ll see you around.”
Angel left and Charlotte made her way back to Holly. She sat down and Holly raised an eyebrow. “How did that go?”
“It wasn’t as weird as I expected. She seems really nice.”
“She must be, after all, Ben took an interest in her.”
“She seems like our kind of person. It seems a shame to me that she’s being left out in the cold.” Holly looked shocked. “If she wasn’t, you would be.”
Charlotte laughed. “I don’t mean by Ben. I mean by everyone else. We have such a great group of friends, it seems wrong to me that only she or I can be part of it. Surely there’s room for both of us?”
“I’d say that would be up to Ben. I know a few of the others weren’t keen on her, purely because she wasn’t you. But now you and Ben are back together, and you’re okay with her, I don’t see why anyone else would have a problem with her.”
Charlotte thought about that. How comfortable would she be hanging out with Angel in the future? How comfortable would Ben be with that? She looked up at Holly and smiled. “I guess we’ll just have to see how it all goes.”
Holly nodded. “I guess.” She looked at her watch. “I need to get back to work.”
“And I should get over to see Emma. I’ll go over everything we talked about today and draw up some notes. I’ll email them to you tomorrow, but give me a call if you think of anything else, won’t you?”
Holly smiled. “I think we covered it all. I’m excited to get started.”
“Great, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
~ ~ ~