Page 10 of Animal Instincts
Gran dished up the breakfast and set it down before him, as he slumped at the battered table in the farmhouse kitchen. The farm had long gone, but the house where his family had lived for generations was still standing in all its shabby glory. A pile of toast was added, along with a steaming mug of coffee. Joss mumbled his thanks, expecting her to bustle off on some errand, her own breakfast long since done with, but instead Gran poured herself a cup of tea from the cosy-covered pot that always seemed to be full, and sat down opposite him.
And stared. And said nothing. And carried on staring.
“Is everything all right, Gran?” Joss glanced up at her between mouthfuls.
Gran grunted in reply, before she took a sip of tea, and wriggled herself deeper into her seat.
“I take it, from your glum looks this morning, the interview in Bristol didn’t go too well.”
“What?”
Joss dropped his fork, the sound of metal hitting stoneware loud in the otherwise silent kitchen. Bingo gave a startled yelp from his basket in the corner before he settled again.
“How did you—?”
He hadn’t said anything to her about the interview, superstitious about jinxing his chance. He’d wanted to sit her down, when he got the offer he’d been so sure of, and tell her about his new job, and chance of a life in the city… The new job he hadn’t got, the new life that had been plucked from out of his reach.
“Your computer, in your room. You left it on, and when I took in your clean clothes I accidentally knocked your desk and it just sprang into life. And there it was, on the interweb. Your interview.”
Gran took another sip of tea, and Joss narrowed his eyes at her. Was that a flush of embarrassment on her cheeks? She’d been snooping and they both knew it, but he didn’t have the energy to get angry.
“I thought I had it in the bag, but it seems not.”
He pushed the remains of his breakfast away. He’d lost his appetite.
A work-roughened hand clamped itself to his, and squeezed hard. Joss looked up, to see his Gran’s soft smile.
“I wish you’d told me what you were up to, love, that’s all. I know you don’t like the village—”
“No, that’s not true.” And it wasn’t. There was so much to be thankful for in Love’s Harbour, but how could he explain the gnawing need to seek out more, to find a life away from everything he’d ever known? “I just want to have the chance to live a different life, somewhere different. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, but what’s so wrong about wanting to try?”
“Nothing at all, and I understand even if you think I don’t. I’m not quite the country bumpkin you seem to believe I am.”
“I don’t think that. Or not much.”
Gran tutted, but it didn’t stop her smile, and Joss smiled back.
Leaving his gran when he did finally go was going to be hard. She’d brought him up from when he’d been little more than a year old, when his mum had decided life would be better with her new man in Canada, and without her only child. His father, whoever he’d been, had fled the scene months before he was even born. Gran was the only family he’d ever known, and a lump formed in his throat.
“If you want to make the move up country, then I’ll support you all I can. I might even miss you. From time to time. But moving away and making a new life is hard. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, although I suppose at twenty-two that’s how it seems.”
His long absent mum hadn’t found it hard, but Joss kept his silence.
“Maybe you need to find yourself a boyfriend.”
“Gran! Fucking hell!” The expletive burst out of him. “Erm, sorry,” he said when she raised her brows at him. “No, that’s not the reason for making a move…”Although…The lure of a more exciting social life — okay, sex life — was a rather large carrot in the bunch that always seemed to dangle just out of reach.
“What about that lad you work with? Declan? Very nice looking, he is.” Gran nodded appreciatively.
“No. He’s a friend, but that’s all.”
“Or what about Ryan, from The Fisherman’s Arms. I’ve seen the looks he gives you.”
“Eww, Gran…” Ryan was good looking, but like Declan the guy was a friend, and one he’d known from nursery school.
“Then what about—?”
“No. Please. Just no.” Joss pushed his chair backwards, scraping over the flagstone flooring. There was no way he was going to talk to his grandmother about boyfriends. Unnamed things squirmed in his stomach at the thought of it.
