Chapter Six
“He said they have news to share. I think he’s proposed, Maddie!”
Maddie grinned, basking in the glee in her mother’s voice.
Emma, like the rest of the Whittles, had always presumed Autumn and Marley would never get married, because they had never shown any interest in it before.
Her mother had a romantic heart, though, and would be thrilled by the prospect of a wedding, as would her father and her siblings.
She really hoped that they were all right, that Marley had indeed proposed to Autumn, or else the disappointment would be monumental.
Plus, a wedding would give them all something to look forward to.
Despite the lack of confirmation, she already could not wait.
She was making a pot of tea when James appeared, fully dressed and ready for the day. Stevie Licks was hot on his heels. For a fleeting moment Maddie was worried they might descend back into not speaking, but he threw her an awkward little wave.
“Hi,” she said.
His eyes flitted to the door. “Hello.”
Maddie shook her head. “Please stay for breakfast. It’s the least I can do.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and scrunched up his face. “I don’t normally eat breakfast,” he admitted.
“Tea, then,” she said. “I know you drink a whole load of that.”
He conceded with a floppy side-smile, let Stevie Licks out into the garden, then made his way to the table and pulled out the nearest chair, the one closest to the door.
Maddie wondered if he’d done that on purpose, so that he could bolt from her company as soon as it didn’t feel impolite to do so. She found herself hoping not.
“Any news from Marley?” he asked, accepting the mug she was handing him.
Maddie shook her head. “Not yet, but he did ask Mum and Dad to meet them in the village with Benjamin for breakfast.”
James beamed. “Fucking incredible. How exciting.”
Maddie nodded. She cut two bagels and popped them into the toaster, then took an avocado and a tomato from the fridge, chopping them up and setting them on the table.
He’d said he didn’t want any breakfast, but it felt rude to eat without offering him food at least once more.
She didn’t dare look at him, but she felt his eyes upon her the entire time, with the exception of one fleeting moment when he went to the door to let Stevie back in, then took her to the living room so that she couldn’t sit and beg for food.
She wanted to ask him why he was watching her, but it felt like a rude question.
She forced herself not to meet his gaze, focusing instead on preparing a big bowl of chopped fruit while she waited for the bagels to toast. When she was done she set it all before him, handing him a side plate. He took it graciously.
“I mean, if you insist.” He helped himself to half a bagel, smothered it with smashed avocado, then took a huge bite, closing his eyes and swallowing with a satisfied smile.
Maddie laughed. “Don’t force yourself, will you?”
He opened his eyes, grinning. “Now that I think about it, not eating breakfast might be down to laziness, not lack of hunger.”
“We have breakfast in the kitchen every morning and you never join us,” Maddie pointed out.
His face fell, and he shrugged. “It never felt right.”
Maddie didn’t know what to say to that. They’d been on speaking terms for barely twelve hours, but not speaking already felt like a distant memory.
Her opinion of James had changed somewhat through the course of the evening.
The way he’d jumped to help her brother, how wholeheartedly he’d reassured her father, his eagerness to see their mission through to the very end and his banter with her in the early hours of the morning had all taken her by surprise.
“Well, from now on I hope you will,” she said, pouring herself another cup of tea.
James nodded as she held the spout to his teacup. “Thank you.”
They fell into a comfortable silence. James helped himself to a second bagel, loading this one with twice as much avocado and several chunks of tomato.
When he was done with that, he plated himself some chopped fruit, sprinkling it with quartered walnuts Maddie retrieved from the cupboard.
She watched him, working her way through a much smaller portion.
“That was all delicious,” he said, rubbing his stomach when he was done. “It’s the second cracking meal I’ve been served in a row, Maddie. You better be careful, or I’ll be moving in.”
Maddie barked a laugh and, for absolutely no reason at all, she felt herself start to blush.
She pleaded with herself not to dissolve into an embarrassed mess, but she had been so isolated for so long she wasn’t used to compliments from strange, attractive men, and her body was reacting accordingly.
Maddie, who did not consider herself a fickle woman, was furious with herself.
She stood rather suddenly, collecting the dishes from the table and waving James away when he tried to help.
“You’ve probably already gathered this, but preparing food and eating together is such an important part of our day in my family,” Maddie said, hoping words would distract him from her reddening face and chest. “It always has been. No matter what we’ve had going on, even when we were nursing Bowie through his illness, we’ve all always eaten together.
In fact, when we lost him, I think meals together were a big part of what kept us all sane. ”
He didn’t say anything, so Maddie continued talking.
“I love to cook for my family. It really is my way of showing them just how much I love them, you know?”
James didn’t answer. This time, his silence caused Maddie to look up from the pile of dirty dishes. He sat dead still, staring at the tabletop. She could tell from his form that he was tense and upset. His shoulders were slumped unhappily, his hands balled into fists.
“You OK?” Maddie asked, warily. She did not feel like she knew this man well enough to have this conversation with him, but he looked so sad.
He shook his head and rubbed his hand across his face. “I’m sorry.”
Maddie abandoned the dishes and headed for the table, sitting down beside him.
She poured them both another cup of tea.
He took it graciously. She had the unsettling urge to reach out and take his hand, but she stopped herself.
She knew enough to know this flippant approach to affection was not normal and not everyone was comfortable with it.
Although, on reflection, she realised she’d probably feel far more comfortable touching a stranger in sympathy than she would touching James.
Too much had gone on between the two of them — their initial animosity towards each other, their thawing coolness across last night, then whatever that had been outside of her bedroom in the early hours of the morning.
She’d stop short of calling it a flirtation, but it had been. .. something.
“What’s going on?” she asked softly. She didn’t know much about James, but she did know he had been away from home for quite a long time before his financial woes forced him to return to their village.
She got the impression he didn’t have many friends here, and because of how rarely he spoke about his mother and how dismissive he was when anyone asked how she was — plus the fact he’d declared he didn’t love anyone the night before in the car — she’d deduced they were not close.
He sighed. “Did you know I lost a brother, too?” Maddie’s eyes went wide. She shook her head. James met her gaze and nodded. “My older brother, Harry. We were in a car accident when I was fourteen. He didn’t make it.”
“That’s so sad, I’m so sorry,” Maddie said. She had once accused James of not knowing what it felt like to lose someone important in tragic circumstances and she felt terrible. He could have thrown that in her face back then, but he hadn’t.
James swallowed hard. “We didn’t pull together, like you guys.
It tore my entire family apart. Dad blamed Mum because she was driving.
He left us, left me there with her. She went into herself and I couldn’t.
.. I couldn’t get her out of it. She feels she deserves to die and she’s sitting there, in her bedroom basically all day and all night, waiting for it to happen.
She has no desire to seek any joy from life and I can’t pull her out of that.
Dad met someone else and had a new set of kids, forgot all about us.
Somewhere along the way, I learned people can love you and then stop loving you — because they’re too busy grieving or they think they’re protecting you or you remind them of your dead brother and they’d rather build a new family and erase the memory of you both — and that’s the absolute worst thing that can happen to anyone as far as I’m concerned. ”
Maddie listened to him intently. He was picking at his fingernails and avoiding her gaze, and she knew somehow he’d never told this to anyone.
“I was eighteen when I realised there wasn’t a single person in the world who cared about me,” he said.
“I lived with my mum and my nan until I went to university and I called them every day for the first few weeks and then I stopped just to see what they would do and we went a month without speaking.”