Page 124 of A Secret Cornish Wish
‘She’s tuckered out,’ he said, looking at Rosie sound asleep.
‘Must be all that shopping! Can’t say I blame her – it’s all I can do to stay awake myself. I really need this coffee, thank you.’
‘My pleasure. In fact, these last few days have been my pleasure too. It’s been wonderful to have you here at last – both of you. It’s been some time coming, eh?’
‘Yes, it has. But we’re here now and I’m so grateful to you for taking time out to show us around.’
Mack looked at me a little oddly. ‘When I said it’s been my pleasure, Frankie, it really has. I feel guilty now for not coming back to St Felix again. But you know with my dad and all.’
‘Please don’t apologise. Your family comes first. It must have been incredibly difficult for all your family to deal with. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease.’
Mack nodded. ‘His passing has been a blessing to be honest – both for us children and my mom. He didn’t know us at all towards the end.’
I put my hand on Mack’s arm to comfort him. And Mack stared at my hand.
I was about to remove it, wondering if I shouldn’t have done that, when slowly he raised his head.
‘I wanted to, you know,’ he said quietly. ‘To come back and see you. But as time ticked by, I wondered if . . . well, if I’d dreamt some of it up.’
‘Some of what?’ I asked innocently, wondering if he was thinking the same thing as me right now, which was how much I wanted to kiss his gorgeous, soft mouth and run my fingers through his dark wavy hair.
‘This . . . ’ Mack gestured with his hand between us. ‘This feeling I get when I’m with you. Do you know what I’m talking about, Frankie?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know . . . exactly what you mean.’ I’d always thought Mack was an attractive man, but this trip made me realise he wasn’t simply attractive, he wasincrediblyattractive . . . especially to me. ‘Are you feeling it right now?’ I asked him, in what I hoped was a suitably seductive voice. I felt very rusty. I hadn’t been in this kind of situation for a very long time.
Mack nodded his head slowly and then he glanced over at Rosie. ‘Would it be wrong to kiss you when your daughter is asleep on my sofa over there?’ he whispered.
‘Not if we don’t wake her, it isn’t . . . ’
Mack leant across on his green velvet sofa and kissed me ever so quietly, and ever so gently, and it was one of the sexiest kisses that I’d ever had the pleasure of enjoying . . .
‘Mack?’ I say now, in a voice almost as quiet as that evening in New York. I clear my throat. ‘Mack?’ I say again. ‘What are you doing here?’
He turns towards my voice. ‘This is your gallery, then?’ He smiles. ‘I thought the paintings looked good.’
‘I can’t believe you’re here?’ I stumble to my feet and hurry towards him. Then I stop myself. I haven’t seen him in nearly five years; his feelings might not be the same as mine any more.
But the look on his face suggests otherwise.
He moves towards me too, and without saying anything else he pulls me into his arms and kisses me, and it’s every bit as wonderful as the first time.
‘Mack is here?’ Claire asks, as I breathlessly tell her what happened this afternoon in my shop. ‘Why?’
The huge, dopey smile, which hasn’t left my face since Mack walked through the door a few hours ago, immediately drops.
‘I don’t really know,’ I say, hating having to lie to Claire like this. ‘I think he’s come to see Rob.’
This isn’t exactly a lie. Mack is here to see Rob. He’s also here to see the pub Rob has asked him to buy.
‘You’re going to buy the Merry Mermaid?’ I asked when Mack told me why he was actually here. ‘Why?’
I closed the shop as soon as Mack and I could finally bear to pull ourselves away from each other. I tidied myself up a little, washed away the day’s paint from my hands, and we went for a walk. Partly so we could talk, and partly in an effort to suppress our feelings, as my little shop, on a busy street in St Felix, perhaps wasn’t the most private of places to resurrect our relationship, and I think we both knew if we’d stayed there then things would have got very steamy indeed.
‘I know you know why,’ Mack said as we paused high up on one of the cliffs to look out over the beach and the sea. ‘Rob told me he’d told you everything.’
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. ‘Oh, thank goodness you know. I couldn’t bear to keep this a secret from you as well.’
‘I know. It’s the pits, isn’t it? But Rob seems to be bearing up quite well.’
