She eyed me as I slumped at the kitchen table. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
I scowled at her in a perfect demonstration of our family dynamic. My parents had started their family young—teenagers when they’d had me, which had meant our relationships weren’t like most of my mates and their parents. Even now, Fran was only forty-six, young at heart, and way cooler than me. And now that I was old enough to not need the mothering she’d often found so difficult, she was my friend. “Gus’s sister is in town. I saw her in the chip shop.”
“Gus’s sister? That’s what you’re calling her these days?” Fran brought me a mug of tea and set it in front of me. “And I’m pretty surprised you didn’t know already. That new florist shop is the talk of the town.”
“You knew?”
“Of course I did, and so would you have if you were a little more social.”
My mum, ladies and gents, the terminal social butterfly. My tearaway brother was just like her, in all the wrong ways, but I took after my dad. I liked my own company—when I wasn’t sulking over running into my ex—and didn’t understand the rest of the world’s need to be up in everyone’s business.
Apart from days like today.
Fran came back to the table with a glass of wine for herself and the local paper for me. “There.” She pointed at an article on the third page. “She’s taken over the old salon at the end of the high street. Opens in two weeks.”
If I’d been flummoxed by the idea of Mia merely visiting Gus, the prospect of her being permanently back in Rushmere pretty much gave me a fucking stroke. I stared at the newspaper, and white spots danced in front of my eyes. I’d come home because the Navy had sucked me dry, and Mia, to the best of my knowledge, had left Rushmere behind to start a new life after her mother died. If I’d known—If you’d known what? Her little brother still lives here. He works for you. There was every chance you’d cross paths with Mia again someday.
The devil on my shoulder was a righteous bastard. I pushed the paper away, drank my tea, and tried to come to terms with the fact that perhaps I’d wanted this all along.
Chapter Three
Mia
I circled Gus like an angry wolf. “You didn’t even tell me he was back, let alone that you were working for him.”
“I’ve always worked for him,” Gus said mildly, barely glancing up from the apple tart I’d rage-baked when I’d made it home from the chip shop. “It’s a family business.”
“Don’t technicality this bullshit. You work for his uncle.”
“Not for the last year. Jon retired. I told you in my emails, but you stopped replying to them, so I’m assuming you stopped reading them too?”
Of course I’d stopped reading them. My life had been falling apart, and hearing about the grief pit I’d left behind had cut too deep. Besides, my email account wasn’t secure, and I’d had nothing to say to Gus that would’ve been true.
A face less welcome than Luke Daley’s flashed into my mind. I gritted my teeth and pushed it away. “So, Luke’s been back a year? Why? I thought he was in the Navy for life?”
“Why don’t you ask him? I’m not gonna play messenger between you two. I did enough of that when I was a kid.”
This was nothing like that. Back then Gus had pushed notes under my bedroom door that Luke had passed him at football practice. Notes I’d carried with me to France until I met someone else to turn me bitter and cold. “I’m not that interested,” I snapped. “I’m just pissed off you didn’t tell me.”
“Why?” Gus pushed his empty plate away. “You haven’t mentioned him, like, ever, and the last thing I knew you were shacked up with some rich French dude. What the fuck is Luke to you?”
I had no answer to that, because while fourteen-year-old Gus had been the only soul in the world who’d known Luke was sneaking in and out of my bedroom window every night while his father had lain dying in his own house, I’d never told him how much I loved him. I’d never even told Luke.
Because he never gave me the fucking chance.
Exhausted, I claimed a chair at the table and dug out a craggy wedge of tart with a spatula—the closest utensil Gus had to a serving spoon. I picked at it sullenly while Gus stared at me, and tried to ignore him. Luke-fuelled rage was hardly new, but it been a long time since my veins had buzzed with such irrational fury, and I hated him all over again for doing this to me, for leaving me, and for being so damn lovable in the first place.
Gus kicked me. “You okay?”
I sighed and ate more tart. “Yeah. Just tired.”
* * *
Somewhere between Paris and Rushmere, I’d naively convinced myself that running a florist in an English market town would be easier than running one in the French capital.
I was wrong—very wrong. For starters, my shop in Paris had been gorgeous long before it had ever belonged to me, housed in a pristine building with original fixtures and natural light, and not crammed between a bank and a bakery that made the Greggs bakery across the street look like the Ritz.
Still, at least it kept me busy. For days I saw no one but Gus and delivery men. Spoke to no one but suppliers and clients. By the end of the first week, most of my disasters were in hand. I’d joined the gym, the stock refrigerator I’d agonised over wiping my finances out to purchase had been installed, and I was expecting my first delivery of high-class blooms.
I waited and waited for the sense of achievement to mean something. For my long dead pride to reawaken and take notice. But nothing happened. I traipsed home to my brother’s house every night, ate dessert for dinner, and fell into bed pretending I wasn’t checking one direction for my worst nightmare, and the other for my broken heart.
Girl, you’re such a mess.
Two days before opening, a hard-backed envelope arrived at the shop from France. The handwriting on the address label was unfamiliar, the contents unexpected, but the name printed on the paperwork no surprise. It was only a matter of time. The shock vibrating through me was only for the speed at which he’d found me.
Gus peered over my shoulder. “What’s that?”
“Divorce papers,” I blurted before I caught myself.
Gus paused in the process of shoving a banana pretty much whole into his mouth—Jesus, does he ever stop eating—and blinked, his dark eyes widening enough to make him seem like a cartoon. “Whose divorce papers?”
I was too blindsided to treat him to some heavy side-eye. My brother was sweet, kind, and good to the bone, but he’d never been particularly sharp. It was a full ten seconds before the penny dropped.