Nearly four years later
‘ARE YOU COLD, HONEY?’
Genevieve Bliss was shivering, but not with the cold. She had been on edge from the moment she’d arrived on Nantucket and tonight’s charity dinner and auction to raise funds for an opioid clinic was not helping.
It wasn’t the cause. She knew the clinic was desperately needed. It was the location. The Merchant Seafarer Resort was the last place she would have chosen to visit voluntarily, but her godmother, recovering from a hip replacement and pleading the need of her arm, was determined to bid at the auction.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, forcing herself to relax as they approached the impressive entrance.
It would be fine.
Kit Merchant, according to his team blog, was on the other side of the world putting a new multimillion-pound racing yacht through its paces. Even if he was here, he wouldn’t recognise a girl who, for one unforgettable night, he’d called Red.
Not that she believed for one moment that it had been unforgettable for him. His playboy reputation was a gift to the gossip magazines and without the red hair to flag up a reminder, she would be lost in the crowd both literally and figuratively.
‘I’m just a little overawed to be honest, Martha,’ she said, as they made their way to the cloakroom. ‘This place is way out of my comfort zone.’
‘To be brutally frank, Eve, I’d say your comfort zone and your wardrobe are both overdue a serious shake-up.’
On the contrary, what she’d gone for was a shake-down.
Desperate to hide the red hair that could be seen from a mile away, just in case he made a flying trip home, she’d used a semi-permanent colour to tone it down. She’d been aiming for something approaching the glossy brunette on the carton; her hair had resisted the transformation and what she’d ended up with was a muddy brown.
It wasn’t pretty, and it had been a shock to catch sight of herself in a mirror, but it was temporary, and she could live with it. Her dress was, she had to admit, not flattering.
She hadn’t brought party clothes with her; it hadn’t been that kind of visit. Even if there had been room in her bag after she’d packed for Hannah, she wouldn’t have trusted the zipper on anything in her wardrobe.
Ghastly hair and the extra pounds were, she told herself, the perfect camouflage. If, by any chance, she was to pass Kit Merchant in the street, he wouldn’t notice her, let alone take a second look.
If she were with Hannah on the other hand...
Far away in London, it had been easy to convince herself that she’d done the right thing. Here, where the Merchant name was everywhere, she wasn’t so certain.
‘Where on earth did you get that dress?’ Martha asked, as she took off her coat.
‘You really aren’t helping my self-confidence, Martha,’ she said as, attempting to make a joke of it, she struck a pose. ‘This dress is a classic.’ At her godmother’s raised eyebrow, she said, ‘Honest. I found it in Nana’s wardrobe. She’d never even worn it. It still had the tags.’
Martha was not amused. ‘The last time your grandmother bought a new dress Reagan was president.’
‘It’s lovely material.’
‘It fits where it touches. At your age you should be shaking out the red curls Mother Nature gave you and wearing something outrageous to go with that tattoo you’re so desperate to keep hidden.’
‘A moment of graduation madness,’ she said, turning around to try and catch a glimpse in the cloakroom mirror. ‘I didn’t realise it showed.’ She tugged at the dress. ‘I need to lose those last few pounds of baby weight before I wear anything likely to scare the horses.’
‘Nonsense. Hidden beneath that shapeless sack of a dress you have a lovely figure.’
As Martha, unable to disguise her irritation, shook her own head, the pink streak in her sharply angled silver bob caught the light. A picture of elegance right down to her silver-topped Malacca cane, Eve’s seventy-year-old godmother made her look like a dreary governess in some nineteenth-century novel.
‘You were the loveliest girl, Eve, and somewhere, hiding beneath your grandmother’s dress and a very bad hair colour, is a beautiful young woman. What on earth were you thinking?’
‘The dress or the hair?’
She waved a dismissive hand. ‘You can take off the dress and the sooner the better. Your hair is another matter altogether.’
‘My hair was all anybody ever saw,’ she said, capturing a wayward curl that no amount of hairspray could ever quite control, pinning it on automatic, implying that the change had happened long ago and had nothing to do with her visit to Nantucket. ‘People didn’t ask my name, they just called me Red.’ Not true, only one person had ever called her Red, but there had been other names. Coppernob, Carrots, Clown. ‘And I don’t think the head of a prestigious boys’ school would employ a science teacher who dressed outrageously.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re planning to live with that look permanently if you get the job?’
She’d worn a conservative grey suit and pinned her hair up as tight as humanly possible for the interview and had somehow reached the shortlist. It had been the perfect excuse to keep her visit to her ailing grandmother as short as possible.
The best-laid plans...
‘I had to call them when Nana died to let them know that I wouldn’t be available for a second interview.’
‘Surely, under the circumstances, they would have waited?’
‘They could have held the post for another week, but the cottage was an unforeseen complication,’ she said. ‘Since I couldn’t give them a date, I had to step down.’
‘You weren’t expecting to inherit your grandmother’s cottage?’ Martha asked, surprised.
After the way she’d left, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Nana had left it to her cat. The creature was old, bad-tempered, and the rest of the family had, as one, taken a sharp step back when she’d raised the question of rehoming him.
‘I didn’t inherit it,’ she pointed out. ‘Nana left it, and everything in it, in trust for Hannah.’
The lawyers had made it plain that her plan to invite the family to help themselves to furniture and anything else they wanted, get a firm in to clear out what was left and leave it in the hands of a realtor, was not an option.
‘I should probably sympathise with the lost opportunity,’ Martha said, ‘but good teachers are always in demand. You can’t sell the cottage, but you and Hannah could live there. Stay on the island and let your hair grow out. Someone has to take care of that cat,’ she added.
With the summer approaching, Eve had to admit that it did sound a lot more appealing than going back to supply teaching in London. Apart from the cat.
Unfortunately, Hannah’s father wouldn’t stay in the southern hemisphere for ever, forcing her to face the decision she’d been avoiding for so long that it now felt...impossible.
And she wouldn’t be able to hide behind the muddy brown for ever.
She’d be for ever on edge, never knowing when she might turn a corner, with not just hers but Hannah’s unmissable bright red curls blazing in the sunlight, and find herself face-to-face with the man who’d lived up to his reputation as a serial love ’em and leave ’em playboy.
‘Once I’ve sorted out the family stuff and put it into storage I’m going to freshen up the cottage and put it on the rental market to build up a