Chapter 56
Nic sat frozen to his chair. Her words had been both on the mark and way off beam.
He had gone too far. He had broken their agreement.
He had let her down. But he hadn’t parachuted in to destroy the community, seduce the women or drive out the young.
Maybe he’d come for some of the wrong reasons, although they felt right at the time, but it wasn’t a hit-and-run.
Somewhere along the line, this place had grabbed his heart.
Or, more to the point, she had. And he’d hoped to stick around.
The air in this room was suffocating, so he slipped off his jacket and put it under his chair, examining the wedding cake Aria had compared them all to.
Could he stomach a day of small talk, dancing and eating mediocre food with people he didn’t know?
Maybe he could persuade Cal out from behind the bar, but he doubted it – the man looked swamped and Nic wasn’t in any mood to help.
While everyone else watched the bride come in, he sneaked a glance at the woman who’d stolen his heart.
She was even more beautiful in the flesh than in his thoughts.
Her neck was flushed, and he wondered if that was him or the heat.
Or perhaps she’d had champagne. When the vows were over, the couple mingled and chatted.
Nic stood awkwardly, wondering when he could leave as Justin loudly offered to give any interested parties a tour of the mobile home site later.
He noticed Aria was pinned in by Justin’s mother, who looked very animated as she gestured his way.
For a moment, he worried the fake relationship had been rumbled, but then, it didn’t really matter anymore, did it?
His reputation was probably torn to shreds by now after his dad’s meddling.
Justin broke into his thoughts by announcing to the room they had a surprise up their sleeves.
‘Lu-Lu is nervous and wants to get this over so she can have a drink with dinner,’ he brayed.
‘We’ve been practising a dance for weeks and would like to perform it for you today.
I can only hope, for the sake of the people at the far side of the room, that we pull it off. ’
Nic didn’t care enough for the couple to observe their first dance, so slipped out onto the patio where a small terrace led to the beach.
The whitewashed walls of the house looked pin-neat in the afternoon light.
This is where the Hetherington family had started out, far away from Inglemere, on the Morecambe Bay estuary.
Not so local, then. He was surprised they still kept it as their headquarters, given they claimed to be stalwarts of a Cumbrian town.
On the beach, he was lifting his phone out of his pocket to call a cab when he noticed a young lad throwing a toy for Tiger to fetch.
True to form, the dog proudly brought it back, dropping the object at the boy’s feet.
The teen flung it further and the pug chased after it.
Nic couldn’t help smiling to himself as he recognised the unfortunate rubber duck.
Then, with an overarm throw a cricketer would be proud of, the lad threw the toy to the edge of the water where a wave carried it out a little.
The dog stopped there but the duck floated further out.
Nic had secured his cab, but something made him stop and watch.
His own distrust of water perhaps, or a curiosity about what might happen next.
Tiger went in. Nic expected the pug to shiver, turn and come straight back, but the toy floated out some more and Tiger committed too.
His backside went under as he doggy-paddled with his front legs, his head just about above the water.
He swam out, or more accurately splashed around, in the direction of the rubber toy.
As the duck bobbed to one side of him, the dog opened his mouth to grab it, but missed.
He tried again, failing to cram it in. The third time he was lucky, but the duck dragged him down once he got his jaw around it.
Or maybe the current did – either way, he appeared to be struggling.
Nic watched as the poor dog tried to right himself in the water but went under again.
While he managed to hold his nose out of the water for intervals of a second or two, his legs were fully submerged along with most of his body.
The boy was calling to the dog, and Nic opened his mouth to call for Aria.
But the pug wasn’t made for swimming, and he disappeared completely.
Heart thumping, Nic willed Tiger to surface again.
Adrenaline coursed through his body as it had last year.
But this time he acted, throwing off his shoes, running down the length of the beach to the sea and plunging in.