Friday August 15th 2025 #2
Actually do find it super hard to eat when I’m in one of these phases—generally just exist on juice and tea for a while.
“You know, it’s OK if you found that whole situation with the committee tough. They were kind of…arseholes to you.”
The corner of his mouth lifted in a small, sympathetic smile.
I could feel tears coming on again, and then I started to go red, because crying in front of this man would be intolerably humiliating, so my face decided to blush, because that was better, and then I just had to leave, because of all the stuff going on in the face department, and then said something like, “Oh, I’m fine, thanks, though, nothing I can’t handle! ”
Even though it would have been obvious to absolutely anybody, let alone my unsettlingly intuitive life-double, that I am not handling this well at all.
Fled to the bedroom. And now here I am, googling Pouque Rock (not Pook Rock, apparently), just to bloody spite him.
Which is me all over, isn’t it? What was it Brianna said when we first talked about the idea of me coming here?
“Have you ever in your life done something because you wanted to, and not because you thought it would impress someone else?”
Wednesday August 20th 2025
Dramatic morning at the shop. Had a biscuit-related showdown. More soon.
Got there early this morning to finish repainting external window frames.
Found Jones already doing it—had wondered where he’d headed off to so early, after scattering his coffee grounds across our kitchen counter.
Could’ve had a lie-in if he’d told me he was doing the windows today.
Swallowed back a grumpy comment to this effect when I spotted that Red was also here, sitting on the counter inside, eating a pot of chocolate ice cream.
“I paid for it!” she told me when I came in, hastily swallowing her mouthful.
Her blue-streaked curls were scraped back, and she was fresh-faced and dewy, with a blob of chocolate ice cream melting on her nose.
Of course Red had paid for her ice cream.
She strikes me as the sort of person incapable of deviousness.
“You know you don’t need to be here for another”—I checked the time on my phone—“two hours, right?”
“Rosie’s getting a mural painted on the wall at the farmhouse,” she said, wiping her nose. “Something that commemorates the Nicole family history. Toby’s painting it.”
“Oh, he’s an artist?”
She nodded, eyes briefly lighting up. “He’s really good.”
“Wow, who knew! And you’re therefore here avoiding Toby because…”
She froze, caught out. “No, I didn’t mean that! I was just hungry. For ice cream.”
As predicted, she was an abysmal liar. She wiped her hands on her board shorts.
“Let’s get started! I can help you with stuff, since I’m here,” she said. “My dad’s a builder, I’m great at DIY if you want to redo the shelves like you said the other day?”
She might be bad at lying, but she was good at distracting me. Have used this trick a few times myself over the years, but nonetheless, it worked.
“Ooh, really? I want to rearrange that whole wall.” I pointed. “Fewer shelves, and wider ones, so that we can really showcase the— What? You hate it?”
Red was pulling a face.
“Sorry! Sorry. I don’t hate it, but Galoshes will,” Red said, dropping her voice slightly. “She said the other day that she’ll see stock reduced ‘over her dead body.’ ”
“I did not know anyone could care so much about dried goods.”
Red laughed, and then immediately looked repentant.
“Galoshes is kind of scary, isn’t she?” Red said, dropping her voice even further.
“No,” I said, even though I literally lay awake last night thinking exactly this. “All right, we’ll leave the shelves for now—I want to create a little cake stand area by the till, start selling coffee and some of Doc Laurry’s amazing biscuits.”
“Absolutely not,” came Galoshes’s voice from behind me. “We are not a café.”
Red’s face froze as she stared at Galoshes over my shoulder. I turned slowly. Galoshes was dressed all in black, bar her pink glasses, and was wearing a truly formidable expression.
She is scary.
“Lots of farm shops double up as—”
“It’s a no,” Galoshes said. “And that’s that.”
“You can’t actually decide that.” Was trying to sound confident but was already starting to sweat.
“You think the committee will vote for what you want? Nothing happens on this island without my say-so, Miss Charlie Jones, and the sooner you learn that, the better.”
She turned on her heel and walked out. Don’t even know why she walked in. It was still almost two hours until anyone’s shift started.
“I think she’s probably right about that,” Jones said through one of the barn windows.
Had almost forgotten he was here, still painting the woodwork outside. Could’ve piped up when it would actually have been useful, couldn’t he? Felt hot and embarrassed. Wished he’d not seen all that.
“I didn’t realize managing the shop was a spectator sport,” I said to him.
He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
“You could’ve helped instead of just watching me.”
“Oh, because you would have loved me to barge in and manage that situation for you.”
He was leaning his forearms on the window, infuriatingly nonchalant, a smear of paint on his neck.
Having a comanager was a lot less useful than I’d expected.
He just distracted me, did the things I wanted to do before I did, or did things I didn’t want done at all.
I’d shown him my updated profit-and-loss calculations yesterday and he’d said, “Yeah, these match mine,” though he’d not even told me he was going over the accounts. And it had taken me ages.
Folded my arms and looked at him through the window, taking a deep breath and reminding myself to play nice.
“I’ll go tidy the space where you guys wanted to put those new picnic benches,” Red said, scuttling toward the barn door as the tension thickened.
“You’re right, actually,” I said to Jones once she’d left. “I do prefer you just spectating. You can stay out there and keep your thoughts on how I manage Galoshes to yourself.”
OK, so, not my best playing nice. But nobody else was around to see, so felt safe to let a little snark out.
“I didn’t say anything about how you manage Galoshes.”
Grabbed the broom and started sweeping the floor—just needed to do something, really. Jones stayed where he was, leaning on the windowsill.
“Not walking off midconversation this time?” I shot at him.
“I thought you told me to stay out here and spectate.”
Glanced at him as I attacked the shop floor with my broom. There was amusement on his face now. He leaned his chin on one hand, waiting for a comeback I didn’t have.
Fine, I thought. You want to watch? Then watch.
I leaned the broom against the potato sacks and shrugged out of my jumper.
Underneath I was in a tight cami and low-rise jeans, the ones that cling to my hips.
My skin prickled as I turned my back on him again.
I wasn’t cold. It was the brazenness of it, I think.
Ostensibly there was nothing wrong with what I’d done—nothing indecent about what I was wearing, and it wasn’t exactly seductive, was it, sweeping the floor?
But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like I was saying, “I know you’re watching me, waiting for me to put a foot wrong. So look at me, then. Look at me on my terms. Look at me the way I keep finding myself looking at you.”
Jones said nothing, but he didn’t move away, either.
My skin seemed to fizz. Suddenly every move I made felt deliciously deliberate.
I’ve played to the male gaze plenty of times in my life—sucked myself in, hitched myself up, been the beautiful thing a guy wants to see.
This wasn’t that. It was about where the power lay, I think, and my intention.
There’s something in the way Jones looks at me. That intensity I’ve been trying to find a name for. It’s as if he really sees me, instead of just looking—and he’s calling bullshit every time he meets my eyes.
It’s unnerving. It puts me on edge. But it’s kind of thrilling, too.
So I was playing, I think, when I shrugged out of my jumper. This time I wasn’t going to duck away or dodge his gaze, I was going to make it mine.
There was no sound but the sweeping of the broom. Heard him breathe in, just once, when I bent to shift a couple of crates. An unsteady two-part inhale that went right to the core of me. My heart thumped, but still I didn’t give him my attention. I just held his.
He didn’t move off until Red came back in, chattering about the plans for the picnic benches, and the spell seemed to break. She didn’t react at all to the sight of me, which reminded me how ordinary it was to be sweeping the floor in old jeans and a strappy top.
Crazy, really, because for a moment there, I felt the sexiest I’ve felt in a very long time.