Escape for the Summer (31 page)

“Please?” Angel repeated, her eyes wide and sad. “I’ll do anything! Lend you my Gina sandals? Introduce you to Laurence’s millionaire mate?”

“How about you clean the loo?”

Angel gulped. “You strike a hard bargain, but OK, I’ll clean the loo.”

“You really are in pain, aren’t you?” Gemma teased, since Angel was to cleaning what Cal was to healthy eating. She fished around in her bag, located her purse underneath the detritus of tattered magazines, fluffy Tampax and leaky biros, and tugged it out. Inside was all her worldly wealth until payday; paying the rent and food upfront had wiped out what little savings she did have. Andi was working hard to reimburse her but she’d yet to see a penny from her best friend.

“Oh goody, a twenty,” Angel cried, when Gemma opened her purse. “That will get us back easily.”

Gemma sighed. There went her last twenty pounds. She had been planning to spend tomorrow in Truro, but no longer.

“Bugger Truro,” Angel said cheerfully when Gemma mooted this idea. “I’ve got a much better plan for you, girlfriend! And it can be a big thank you too. Laurence’s pal has got a really cool boat and tomorrow he’s promised to take me and Andi out on it. It’ll be a blast. You can have a go in the tubes and on the wakeboard.”

A bit like Cal, Gemma could think of more enjoyable activities than water sports – like cordless bungee jumping, for example. Besides, there was no way she was letting anyone see her flabby body in a swimming costume.

“He’s got wetsuits too,” Angel continued, warming to her theme. “You’ll love it.”

Gemma couldn’t think of anything she would love less. Dressed in rubber she would look like a whale. No thanks. She was just about to refuse when a thought occurred to her: Cal would be on the water tomorrow, wouldn’t he? If she were out on a boat too then maybe she would bump into him. Somehow the thought of Cal seeing her in a swimsuit didn’t faze Gemma in the slightest. Nobody would understand better how she would feel. At the thought of seeing him again, her heart did a cartwheel. Oh dear. She was still a fifteen-year-old in her head.

“OK, then,” she agreed.

Angel beamed and brandished her iPhone. “You’re going to love Trav and honestly, babes, you’ll have the best time. You won’t regret it.”

And with this decisive comment, she set about calling the cab company, while Gemma kissed goodbye to her last twenty quid and hoped desperately that Angel was right. She had a sinking feeling and, although she was no expert on water sports, Gemma was pretty certain that when it came to boats a sinking feeling was not a good thing...

Chapter 28

It was one of those Cornish mornings when the air was Jif-lemon sharp and the light so clear it almost hurt the eyes. Although it was only seven o’clock, the heat of the day was already intense, ripe with the promise of more warmth from the gold-medallion sun. While Andi, Angel and Gemma waited on the pontoon, the Camel was already teeming with boats as holidaymakers and locals alike prepared for a day out on the water. The concentration of Breton tops, Joules tee shirts and Seasalt gear was probably higher here than anywhere else on the planet, Andi thought with a smile. And as for the rash of designer sunglasses atop perfectly styled hair – it must be really contagious, because here came Travis sporting a monster pair of Guccis and, next to him, a tall lean man with long dark hair and a panther-like grace, who was wearing mirrored wrap-around Pradas. From the way Angel lit up like Harrods at Christmas, Andi guessed this had to be the mysterious Laurence.

“All right, ladies?” Travis carolled, giving them a jaunty wave as he strode along the pontoon. He was wearing a scarlet pair of Rip Curl board shorts and little else, the sun glinting off his smooth waxed chest. He obviously worked out because he was ripped, but it was an oddly sexless look. Andi couldn’t help comparing him to Jonty, who was tanned and muscular from all his work in the boatyard and Ocean View garden. Jonty was strong, but not in an airbrushed showy way; she liked the freckles on his shoulders and the sprinkling of hair across his chest.

Andi pushed such thoughts away. Jax probably liked Jonty’s features too...

Once Jax had arrived last night, Andi had made her excuses and left swiftly. Jonty hadn’t tried to stop her. He’d been rooted to the spot, as motionless as any of the rosemary and lavender bushes beside him, and her last image of him had been of a figure so still he could have been mistaken for a statue. Whether he’d been frozen with horror or amazement Andi hadn’t been able to tell, but either way she hadn’t felt comfortable staying. Whatever had happened between Jonty and his ex, and whether Mel and Simon’s version was biased by affection or not, Andi had no idea. She only knew one thing: Jonty and Jax had a history and she was no part of it. He was her friend but, like her, he hadn’t chosen to share many details about his past. Andi wondered whether it was because this was too painful or because he was still in love with Jax? For about the hundredth time since yesterday evening she checked her mobile for a voicemail or a text, but it remained stubbornly silent. Andi sighed, and pushed it back into her rucksack. Life was complicated enough already; she ought to be grateful that Jonty was choosing not to make things even more difficult. Maybe he and Jax had spent last night talking long into the small hours and then making up until the stars faded and a small fingernail of sunshine scratched dawn into the hillside? That thought gave her a nasty twisting sensation, which Andi didn’t want to even think about attempting to identify. Instead she shoved all thoughts of Jonty away and concentrated on saying hello to Laurence and pretending to be thrilled to see Travis again.

“Delighted to meet you at last,” Laurence was saying in polished upper-class tones, as he took her hand in his. He was attractive, Andi thought, in a severe hawklike fashion, and those dark stormy eyes were definitely compelling. When he smiled down at her it was as though the sun had come out after months of cloudy skies, and she couldn’t help smiling back.

“This heatwave is marvellous, isn’t it?” he continued politely. “Simply marvellous for boating.”

He was still shaking her hand. Andi felt a bit as though she were meeting Prince William at a garden party, and had to resist the urge to curtsey.

“Angel tells me you are here for a few weeks staying with friends,” Laurence said. His vowels were so precise and his pronunciation so razor sharp it was amazing he didn’t slice his tongue. “Is that for the whole summer or will you move back with your family?”

Over Laurence’s Ariat clad shoulder Angel was pulling frantic faces. Andi hadn’t a clue what she was on about or what pack of fibs her sister had told Laurence, but the meaning couldn’t have been clearer:
don’t tell him anything!

“Mmm, that’s right,” Andi hedged. Not for the first time, she could have cheerfully throttled her sister. She hated lying, even by omission. In fact, especially by omission; hadn’t that been Tom’s forte?

“Enough of the touchy-feely bollocks,” said Travis cheerfully as he barged past, with armfuls of inflatables and ski lines. “Plenty of time for all that once we’re on the water. Time and tide don’t wait, even for viscounts.”

Laurence laughed. “They might for multimillionaires!”

Travis grinned. “They certainly do! I’d have the lot dredged and a bigger pontoon stuck in!” He leapt onto the boat and whooped. “All aboard the
Wet Dream
!”

Angel, shrieking with laughter, was already jumping down from the pontoon while Gemma, looking very worried, clambered awkwardly behind her. Although they were boating she was dressed in a white floor-length skirt, every inch of her swathed awkwardly – and inappropriately for today’s water sports – in fabric. She looked like a prim Victorian sea bather.

Andi shouldered her rucksack. She was half inclined to turn tail and just head back for the caravan. Some time on her own, the calls of wood pigeons and blackbirds the soundtrack to her day rather than Travis’s foghorn tones, was a very appealing notion. Only a nagging sense of unease and an unwillingness to leave her sister in the care of the Mr Toad of the boating world prevented her from running for the hills.

“Is he always like this?” she asked Laurence, nodding towards Travis.

Laurence gave Andi an apologetic smile. “Trav’s all right once you get to know him. A lot of that bluster comes from having to survive the public school system. You can probably imagine that a bunch of upper-class twits weren’t particularly kind to a boy whose pater sold pet food for a living. I class myself as one of those upper-class twits, by the way, but I hope I’ve grown up a bit since Eton.”

“So you’re school friends?”

He nodded. “Shared a dorm and then a study. When Pa died he was really there for me. A chap never forgets things like that.”

“I felt the same about some of my friends when my mum died,” Andi agreed, but Laurence looked puzzled.

“Forgive me, but I had no idea. Angel hasn’t mentioned it. I thought she was with your parents now?”

Andi could happily have chucked her sister, presently cavorting around the RIB in the world’s smallest bikini – which was more like three of Barbie’s hankies lashed together with dental floss – in the water and held her under until the bubbles stopped. Luckily she was saved from trying to invent some plausible tale by Travis yelling for Laurence to move his ass right now. Then the casting off, stowing of picnic hampers and digging out wetsuits began.

“I hope this isn’t a big mistake,” Gemma whispered to Andi as the girls settled themselves on the boat. Her freckled face was etched with worry and her eyes were terrified saucers. She glanced nervously at Travis, who was more interested in checking out Angel as she sprawled across the front of the boat than in coiling the dock lines, which lay in blue tangles across the deck. “Do you think he knows what he’s doing?”

Andi recalled yesterday’s trip out on the water with Jonty. Whereas he had moved deftly around the boat, coiling ropes and trimming engines with the ease that came from years of experience, Travis was galumphing about and making a great show of actually not doing very much at all. Apart from writing the cheque for the RIB, she strongly suspected that the closest he had ever come to boats was playing with one in his bath. Still, she decided not to voice her misgivings to Gemma, who was looking worried enough as it was. Fortunately, she escaped having to make false reassurances when Gemma was suddenly distracted by something going on further along the pontoon. Following her gaze, Andi saw a snot-green ski boat casting off, followed by two little RIBs crammed full with camera crew and fluffy boom mikes.

“That’s Callum South,” Gemma breathed, actually clutching Andi’s arm in excitement. “He’s filming his new show today. Look! There he is!” She pointed towards a chubby man poured into a wetsuit and surrounded by an entourage. Andi squinted against the light. If it hadn’t been for those trademark bedspring curls she would never have recognised him.

“I thought you were over your crush on Callum South?” she said, surprised at just how excited Gemma was. After Cakegate his name had been mud in their caravan.

Gemma didn’t meet her gaze. “That was just a misunderstanding. At least, I think it must have been,” she added hastily. “He probably has lots of fans doing crazy things all the time.”

“You baked him a cake,” Andi pointed out. “It was hardly an act of lunacy.”

“But it could have had anything in it,” Gemma argued. “How was he to know I’m not a stalker wanting to poison him?”

Across the water Callum was being wrestled into a buoyancy aid. One of his entourage was yanking the straps tight in the style of a lady’s maid fastening a corset. That reminded Andi of something Jonty had said and she called to Travis, “Have we got life jackets to put on?”

“They’re not compulsory, baby,” he hollered back. “But bikinis are! Come on, strip off! Don’t be shy!”

“Tosser,” she muttered. It was going to be a very long day.

Gemma paled. There was no way she was taking her clothes off! Nervously, she backed away to the stern and perched on the side of the tube.

“We can put the life jackets on once we’re out at sea,” Laurence offered, seeing the look of concern on Andi’s face. Coiling a bowline expertly, he added gently, “It’s flat calm today, so there’s no need to worry.”

Andi, recalling how safety conscious Jonty had been, wasn’t convinced.

“I’ll take one anyway,” she said stiffly. “Gemma?”

Gemma – who was busy waving at Callum South, and not doing much to prove she wasn’t a deranged stalker – shook her head.

“God, no way. I’ll never do it up. Anyway, I’m so fat I’m bound to float.”

Laurence passed Andi a life jacket before making sure that Angel, despite her protests, was safely belted up too. Then Travis turned the ignition and the quiet of the morning was blasted into smithereens as massive twin engines roared throatily into life. Travis grinned from ear to ear.

“Let’s see what this baby can do!”

“Come and join me up here!” Angel looked up from basting her long limbs in tanning oil. “You’ve got your bikini on, haven’t you?”

Actually, Andi had – but she had absolutely no intention of stripping down to it in front of Travis, who was clearly under the delusion that he was the Hugh Hefner of Rock. Ignoring her sister, she pointed to the kill cord dangling from the console.

“Shouldn’t you put that on?”

Travis grimaced. “I don’t need to lash myself down. Not while I’m manoeuvring, anyway. The thing’s a major pain in the ass. Don’t look so worried. This is one of the most powerful boats there is, not like that pile of crap you were in yesterday. She can handle anything.”

“It’s not the boat I’m worried about,” Andi grumbled. Still, everybody else seemed happy enough and it did look as though it was going to be a beautiful day. Perhaps she should lighten up and try to enjoy herself? Jonty and Jax could already be up at the boatyard, hitching
Ursula
’s trailer to his Defender and preparing for a day out on the water. They would have made a big picnic and packed their swimming gear, and perhaps Jonty would even have brought the snorkels? He’d been talking about taking her snorkelling; perhaps he would take Jax instead? Why not?