Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
LUCY
It’s almost ten on Saturday morning when I push through the door of Black Rock Tea Rooms, and I’m immediately hit by the sweet smell of coffee and freshly baked cakes. I order a raspberry tea and a slice of Victoria sponge and take a seat by the window, looking out over the harbour.
I can see the cottage from here, right on the edge of town, and my mind goes to Bram as I spot it.
I wonder what he’s doing right now. He was nursing a cup of tea as I left, stealing a slice of black pudding from the remains of the fried breakfast he made for us.
I hadn’t even realised there was food in the fridge.
He looked different this morning – fangless and with every last trace of eyeliner scrubbed off his face, of course, but it wasn’t just that.
He finally looked relaxed in the space, and that made me relax too.
It was comfortable, like an old routine, and not at all like the truth, which was that I was sharing breakfast with a near-stranger.
Although, after everything that happened yesterday, he’s beginning to feel less and less like a stranger.
My time at Bitten gave me butterflies I can still feel today, and though it could have been down to the three gin and lemonades, there was a hum in my chest the whole night.
If you’d have told me a week ago that I would end up at a vampire-themed bar, let alone that I’d enjoy it so much, I’d have thought you were losing your marbles.
But I honestly think that was the best night I’ve had for a long time.
The atmosphere, the acrobatic drink preparation, the fangs – I loved it all.
Meeting everyone afterwards was the icing on the cake.
I mean, I’m halfway in love with Fox already – it feels like we’re two different shapes cut out of the same batch of cookie dough – but all of them made me feel like an old friend.
Like I belonged there. They felt like a family, and they welcomed me into the fold without question, which meant more to me than any of them could have known.
And Bram? He walked me home like a gentleman, made me hot chocolate when I was cold, and didn’t look even slightly fazed when I drunk-blurted one of my darkest secrets at the top of a windswept cliff.
Not my finest moment, I grant you. But it’s out there now, and the world didn’t actually crumble around me the way I’d suspected it might. Onwards and upwards, as my grandpa always used to say.
It’s just unfortunate that my onwards for today starts with Dean Ratcliffe.
I still have a bad taste in my mouth when I remember the way he spoke to Fox last night.
He was drunk, I think, or at least it seemed that way, but his snide little comment about her gender identity really rubbed me up the wrong way.
And combined with the bad vibes I got from him at the interview yesterday, well, let’s just say I’m not looking forward to meeting him again.
But Jon set up a follow-up chat for us in – I glance down at the clock on my phone – three minutes’ time.
And as this is, after all, my job, I’ve had to suck it up.
Especially as Jon had nothing but good things to say about Dean, and as we’ve established, I’m desperate to impress Jon.
I remember our call last night, and I can’t help the flutter in my chest at the memory of his words.
I’ll take you out to celebrate when you absolutely smash the story.
Just the two of us.
And that’s what I really want – much more of Jon than a few stolen kisses in the back of a taxi. The chance for something real between us. It’s what I’ve wanted the whole time I’ve worked at the Gazette.
And who knows, maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe Dean just had an off day yesterday, and today will be better.
If nothing else, cake will help.
Dean pushes through the door of the tea room bang on ten, and he smiles broadly as he clocks me, sliding into the seat opposite without ordering anything.
‘Lucy Lou,’ he says, by way of greeting, and though the overfamiliarity of the nickname makes my teeth clench, I smile past it. When Mina calls me it, it feels affectionate. Coming from Dean? Patronising. He doesn’t know, I tell myself. He’s probably just trying to be friendly.
Probably.
‘Dean,’ I reply. ‘Nice to see you again.’
It isn’t, actually, but I’m a professional and a people-pleaser, so I’m quite sure that Dean thinks I’m being genuine, even if having to tell the lie in the first place sends a little rumble of nausea through me.
He doesn’t mention our run-in at the bar last night, and I’m grateful for that. I just want to get through the next half hour with as little fallout as possible. We make small talk for a couple of minutes until we’re interrupted by the arrival of my tea and cake.
Dean raises an eyebrow. ‘Cake for breakfast?’
‘I’ve had breakfast already,’ I say with a shake of my head. I almost added with Bram but caught myself just in time. I don’t know if Dean knows we’re staying together at the annexe, but I feel like I don’t want him to find out. So I smile instead. ‘It’s a mid-morning treat.’
He laughs, but there’s a split-second delay to it, and I notice. He excuses himself and goes to the counter to order something for himself.
While he’s gone, I pull out my notebook and turn to a clean page, writing Dean’s name and the date in the top margin. And then I take the opportunity to study him now that his back’s turned and he won’t know I’m doing it.
He’s not quite as tall as Bram, but a little broader, with almost-black hair slicked back from his face and a beard just shy of hipster.
They dress similarly too, which is no surprise, but while I’ve only ever seen Bram in a T-shirt, Dean is wearing a dress shirt, his sleeves rolled to expose a cascade of tattoos down his forearms.
I eat a forkful of cake and look back out of the window before he can catch me appraising him, and when he slides back into the chair opposite me, he looks out to sea too.
‘I never get tired of this view,’ he says, and I register that this is the first genuine thing I think I’ve heard him say. I jump on it.
‘You grew up here.’ It’s not a question, I already know he did, but he nods anyway.
‘Born and bred,’ he drawls, one tattooed hand smoothing over his beard as he contemplates something.
‘I moved to the city for a little while, but when I got the idea for Ravenskull, it seemed the obvious choice to come home.’ His eyes dart to mine.
‘There’s really only one place a Dracula-themed bar belongs. ’
He smirks, and it feels like a challenge. I can’t resist rising to it.
‘Weren’t you worried that there was already a Dracula-themed bar in Whitby?’
A muscle tenses in his jaw. ‘No,’ he says after a beat. ‘Because I knew mine would be better.’
I can’t decide whether or not I’ve hit a nerve.
To be fair to Dean, I’ve never been into his bar.
It genuinely could be better. It doesn’t matter how I feel about Dean personally – I owe it to my article to be more objective here.
Of course I get the feeling that there’s more to this story, but I definitely need to hear both sides of it to really understand what’s going on.
So, with a new swell of determination, I smile and grab my pen. ‘I’d love to hear more about it.’
That’s all it takes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about him in the short time that we’ve known each other, it’s that Dean Ratcliffe’s favourite subject is Dean Ratcliffe.
When he’s talking about himself, he’s warm and witty and charismatic – charming in a way that makes me think of when neighbours say he always seemed like such a nice guy about someone who’s just gone on a murder spree.
It’s not normally in my nature to judge people so harshly, particularly people I’ve only just met, and I do feel bad about it. But I’m also quite sure that I’m right, and that Dean’s veneer of niceness is as artificial as his smile.
He doesn’t talk about his bar the same way Bram does.
When we got back to the cottage last night, Bram gushed about it over our cups of hot chocolate.
He told me about the way Emmy has revolutionised their cocktail list, giving old classics a dark new twist and coming up with a whole range of themed drinks.
How Quinn turned himself around, going from a troubled kid to the hardest worker on the team, even if he can be, in Bram’s own words, insufferable.
How it was Fox who introduced the flair tricks, putting her own spin on what were seen as quite dated moves, and the whole thing going down so well with the customers that it prompted him to learn a few tricks too.
He even told me about Sammi – how he doesn’t know how she balances being a hotshot lawyer with being their business manager.
He was brimming with pride the whole time he was talking about them.
Ok, he called Quinn an idiot about five times, but there was genuine affection in his eyes as he did.
It’s obvious that he sees them as family, and after spending just an hour with them last night, I can see why.
In contrast, Dean’s been talking for almost ten minutes, and I don’t know the name of a single other person who he works with.
For all I know, based on this conversation, there is no one else, just him, wearing every single hat.
I do kind of admire his confidence, if I’m honest. I’m willing to bet it’s brought him a long way.
As he speaks, my eyes find his face. He’s handsome in quite an obvious way, with his dark hair and piercing blue eyes.
His beard and eyebrows are neatly groomed, and his teeth are so perfect that they’re nowhere near passing as real.
If it weren’t for the kink in the bridge of his nose and the small scar cut across one eyebrow, I might think he was some kind of humanoid robot.
He stops talking when he sees me looking, and one hand goes to the scar.