Page 41 of The Cornish Cream Tea Bookshop
She smiled down at him. ‘Have youeverseen a two-person photo booth?’
‘I just thought—’
‘First photo coming in three, two, one!’
The flash came while they were looking at each other. Ollie had time to shift her position, turning towards the camera in time for the second flash. The third one, she felt Max put his head on her shoulder, thought he was probablymaking a face at the camera, so she turned, intending to say something, but he must have been about to speak to her too, and she found her lips millimetres from his.
‘Oh.’ She exhaled, drowning in his green gaze as the flash came for the final time.
‘All done, lovelies!’ The woman sounded very far away.
Max turned his head, and though Ollie didn’t think their lips were touching, it had, somehow, become very hard to tell. If she leaned forward, even a centimetre, they would be kissing, and then—
‘We should go,’ he whispered, while at the same time tightening his arms around her waist.
‘OK,’ she murmured.
He shifted position, and before he let her go, Ollie was sure – almost 100 per cent – that he’d let his lips graze along her jaw. But had he really done it, or had she imagined it? When he dropped his arms she stood abruptly and pushed through the curtain. She smiled at the woman, while every nerve ending in her body was tingling, jumping, alive with what Max had just done. Hehaddone it, hadn’t he?
She watched him take his wallet out, slide out his card, ready to pay, give the woman his email address so she could send him the photos. Ollie touched her jaw, but already the moment had become a mirage. Had it really happened, or had she imagined it because she had wanted it to?
The woman handed Max their photo strip and, before showing her their pictures, he took her hand again and dragged her out of the stall.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and get a drink.’
‘I thought you couldn’t because you were driving?’ But she let herself be pulled along by him.
‘I’ll get fizzy water with ice and a slice. At least that way, I can pretend it’s gin.’
‘OK then,’ Ollie said, laughing as they wove their way through the drizzle-soaked Christmas market, thinking that the evening couldn’t possibly take any more unexpected turns.
Chapter Seventeen
There was a pub called the Seven Stars across the road from the beach, and Max led her into its warm, bustling interior, to a corner booth that seemed to be waiting for them. The window was fogged up, the view of the market and the sea beyond distorted. Max had his sparkly water with ice and a slice, and Ollie had a large glass of white wine.
‘What made you come to Cornwall?’ he asked, almost as soon as they sat down. It was as if he was studiously ignoring what had just happened. Were they going to keep having these moments of closeness, followed by a sort of silent denial?
‘I had a cosy encounter with a man in a photo booth, and couldn’t face him afterwards,’ Ollie said, scrutinising him as she sipped her wine.
Max chuckled, his gaze firmly on the scarred wooden table. ‘Yeah. That was … not my brightest spark of spontaneity.’
‘You didn’t enjoy it?’ Ollie pressed.
He looked up, and she saw his cheeks were flushed. ‘I did, but I feel like I forced you in there; forced you to sit on my lap.’
Ollie shrugged. ‘I could have refused to come in with you. I said no at the beginning because I thought you wouldn’t want to do it. When you held out your hand …’
‘What?’ he asked quietly.
‘I didn’t want to say no after that. Not at any point.’ She wanted to ask him if he’d kissed her jaw, or if it had been the phantom of her longing, but she would sound like a needy sixteen-year-old. So she decided hehaddone it, then consigned it to history. ‘And I came to Cornwall because my friend Melissa, who’s Liam’s granddaughter, told me he needed someone to type up his life story for him.’
Max raised his eyebrows. ‘You left London, moved all the way to Cornwall, to type up the memoir of your friend’s granddad?’
‘OK, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.’ She paused as a group of men bustled into the pub, almost tripping over each other in their haste to get to the bar. They were wearing long red and white scarves, like a lacklustreWhere’s Wallystag-do. She turned her attention back to Max. ‘I fell out of love with my job in a London bookshop, mostly because my boss lost faith in me. I split up with my boyfriend, who …’ She cast around for the right way to put it, ‘he wasn’t there for me, when I needed him the most. He showed his true colours, and they weren’t the glorious rainbow I thought they’d be. Then I got a windfall, and it gave me a rare opportunity to change things up: that cushion that gives you time to find a new place, put down a deposit, allthe moving costs. It all came together, and Port Karadow – with Liam and his memoir, the job advert for A New Chapter – seemed to be the answer to my problems.’
‘Seemed to be?’
‘Oh, it is! So far, anyway.’
