Page 27 of Curse of the Stag's Eye
I cleared my throat. “He told me he never really believed in ghosts. He only pretended he did so he could get into your knickers.”
“Oh.” He rubbed his upper arm. “Dawn was right, then. He did like me.”
I swallowed a laugh. “Didn’t you already know that?”
“Not a clue. I’m not very good at picking up on that sort of thing. If someone is flirting with me they practically need to be holding a placard and ringing a bell announcing the fact. Otherwise, I just assume they’re being nice.”
“When you said you had dinner with a man from the Trust, you didn’t mention that he was a gorgeous, six-foot-two hunk. Were you attracted to him?” I don’t know why I asked that.
“He’s okay, I suppose. I thought you fancied him actually. I thought that’s why you two had been sparking all evening.”
“He’s bloody sexy. That face. Those arms. Those thighs. Shame about the personality.”
Rhys shrugged. “He’s not really my type. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed, like, but I prefer a man with more meat on his bones. And he was a bit too abrasive for me.”
“You prefer someone easy-going?” That didn’t bode well. After my temper tantrum in the kitchen, he would have every right to never want to speak to me again. I would have imagined being stuck in a glorified airing cupboard with me was akin to torture for him but if it was, he never let on. “Do you have a boyfriend? Or a husband?”
Rhys blurted out a laugh. “Where did that come from?”
His voice was deep but not overly so and his accent made me a bit weak at the knees. I’ve always had a thing for the Welsh lilt. “I can't just wait here in silence, it’ll do my head in.”
“I'm used to it, I suppose. I spend lots of time sitting quietly in dimly lit rooms. It's probably why I'm single.” He twisted the aerial. “My last boyfriend thought all this was a silly waste of time. He tried to convince me it was all in my head. Then he tried to convince me that I was imagining the money disappearing from my wallet. He’d lie to me about where he’d been, who he’dbeen with, and about things that happened between us. He tried to make everything my fault.”
I frowned. “What an absolute bastard.”
He sighed. “I know. And I put up with it for far longer than I should have but I didn’t feel like I had much choice. For a long time, I thought I needed to be with someone else to feel complete. Like I needed someone to be my other half. But after a while of being mistreated by him, I realised that I was enough. I wasn't half of anything if I wasn't with someone, I was whole in and of myself. Together, he and I should have made something new and exciting but, instead, we just made each other miserable. Now, I'll admit, I get lonely sometimes, but who doesn't? The difference is I'm not looking for a piece of me that's missing.”
“Because there isn't one.”
“Exactly. I eventually saw sense and left him. What about you?”
I leaned my shoulder against a wall. “I find it hard to keep a relationship going, to be honest. I'm prone to dropping everything and taking off for a few weeks. Hiking, or travelling, or just...getting away. A change of scenery. I can't bear being bored and I don't do well with routine. I'm amazed that I've stuck with the fundraising job for so long. I think it's the kids that make the difference. Talking to them, hearing what they're going through. And knowing that I can help them. It wouldn't be right to just take off and leave them in the lurch. And it feels nice to do something that matters, for a change.”
I rubbed my nose. “I suppose I've lived quite selfishly for most of my life. I've never really thought about it before. See, this is what happens when I sit around in silence, I start to stew in my own thoughts.”
I started pacing as best I could. I could feel the walls closing in on me, a shortness of breath. My heart was pounding, my fingerstingling. I thought about the remarks Nikesh and Michael had both made. “Look,” I said. “I don’t have a placard or a bell but for the avoidance of doubt, I do—” And then suddenly Rhys was in front of me and I didn’t need to say another word. He pressed his lips to mine and held me in his arms. In the cold, in the dark, his warmth gave me life. He nuzzled at my neck, nibbled my ear, I rubbed my hand through his hair, into his beard, and I kissed him, deeply, passionately, I ran my hands down his back, I squeezed his big, firm bum, he grabbed my hips and pulled me in tight. I wanted to tell him everything but I couldn't bring myself to break the spell, to ruining the moment. And I didn't have to. The lighthouse did it for me.
The walkie-talkie hissed and stopped. Then another hiss, and then a click. A hiss, then a click, then a pop. A hiss that ran on and on. I waited for Dawn's squeaky tones or Nikesh's excited questioning. But neither came.
Rhys held the walkie-talkie closer to his ear, straining to make some sense of the static. The hiss continued, growing louder and louder until it burst into a voice, a man's voice, speaking, shouting, a garbled sentence and then one word, loud as thunder.
“LEAVE.”
Rhys dropped the radio as he quickly covered his ears.
I winced. The radio cracked open on the tiled floor of the storeroom. I grabbed the two halves and clicked them back together. It switched on. “Maybe we’ve picked up on a local signal, some fishermen out on the water or something.” I pressed the button. “Hello, Dawn? Nikesh? Did you hear that?”
The radio hissed. “Hear what?”
I stood up straight. Rhys bit his lip. We waited for a few seconds but the radio made no more noise. I pressed the button. “Stay there. We’re coming up to you.”
After locking the storeroom door behind us, Rhys took a couple of steps up the staircase and stopped. Ahead of us, something rattled. Dawn and Nikesh were two floors up but the noise was much closer. Another rattle, then a tapping. I brushed past Rhys and ran up the stairs as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast at all, if I was being honest. I was built for comfort, not speed.
Rhys hissed at me to wait but I ignored him. I rushed into the first bedroom to find books strewn on the floor and the papers from the writing desk flying through the air. In the middle of it all came a deafening shriek and then a guttural squawk as something flew past my face on the way to the window, knocking me on my arse.
Rhys arrived and quickly slammed the window closed.
“That was a bloody big and very vicious seagull,” I said.
