two charmers would swoop in and steal her from under his nose.
Mia gave him a shove in the back then ducked around him. ‘Why don’t you go and check out the barn and I’ll put the kettle on. Tea will be about fifteen minutes.’ She disappeared into the kitchen and Daniel pointed the brothers in the direction of the barn. Luke rummaged in his pocket for a notebook and his laser measure as he strode purposefully towards the ramshackle building. Aaron followed at a more leisurely pace, taking his time to examine everything around him, including turning back to survey the imposing structure of the main house.
‘It’s incredible here. I can’t believe how clean the air is after London.’ A touch of envy tinged his voice.
Daniel watched Aaron wander away from the barn to stop halfway across the scruffy rear lawn as he saw the break in the hedge and caught sight of the beach and the rolling sea beyond it. He smiled as he watched the joy suffuse his friend’s face. The whole place was working its magic and Aaron was hooked—he could tell.
‘Christ, mate, it’s paradise.’ Aaron’s words were thrown back over his shoulder as he loped across the grass towards the inexorable pull of the sea beyond.
Mia turned her back on the three men at the table as they threw ideas back and forth, discussing the correct level of light for each of the studio areas, colour schemes and textures for the floors and walls. The discussion was dizzyingly fast and the noise was something she was just not used to. She found it quite unsettling to be in such a masculine atmosphere again. Jamie had been one of four brothers and when they got together it was like they spoke their own language, often leaving Mia a little alienated.
It was so different from being one of three girls. Largely ignored by their mother, they had been left to their own devices unless they managed to draw the ire of their father. They had basically raised each other and had dwelled in a fantasy world of lost maidens rescued from fearsome beasts by handsome, but very politely spoken and entirely harmless, heroes. The reality of boys, in all their awful smelly, wonderful, disgusting glory was a shock from which Mia was never sure she had quite recovered.
The boisterous exchanges behind her now were a bit of an intrusion on the quiet solitude of the house, and Mia felt equal parts annoyed at them and guilty with herself for wanting to deny Daniel the time with his friends. He had a beautiful laugh—a deep rich baritone, which rolled through her and curled her toes. It was nice to hear him so positive and excited about the potential for the new venture of fixing up the barn. She just wished they could be positive in a slightly quieter fashion.
Mia rolled her eyes at herself and set about making tea and coffee for everyone. She stared towards the window. The black night was impenetrable and the window reflected the room behind her. Fifteen minutes had turned into three hours and dusk fell quickly this time of year. She watched the men talking and teasing each other until Daniel raised his gaze as though conscious of her eyes on him. She smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring manner but she obviously missed her mark because Daniel frowned and rose from his seat to cross the room and stand behind her.
He placed a warm hand on her shoulder and met her gaze in the reflection of the glass. Mia smiled more warmly, feeling more settled and secure under his touch, and she raised her hand to cover his.
‘All right, pet?’ Daniel was still frowning a little and Mia couldn’t stand that she was putting a dampener on his mood.
‘Really all right, Daniel,’ she whispered and patted the back of his hand. ‘It sounds amazing already. Aaron and Luke seem to be full of good ideas.’
Daniel snorted and squeezed her shoulder. ‘They’re certainly full of something,’ he muttered then laughed out loud as a balled-up tea towel struck him on the back of the head.
‘Cheeky sod, we dropped everything to rush down here and help you, worried half to death about what sort of state we would find you in and look at you! Shacked up with the most gorgeous girl, who not only looks beautiful, but also cooks like a dream and is the nicest person I think I have met. We had visions of you with your hair turned grey and bones poking out, but you’re fit as a fiddle and happier than I’ve seen you in at least five years.’ Aaron’s words were spoken in jest but there was a trace of the worry and stress he must have felt when his best friend had all but vanished off the face of the earth for weeks.
‘Shacked up?’ Mia raised an eyebrow at Daniel’s reflection in the window.
He held his hands up in protest. ‘Nothing I’ve said. The lads have put two and two together and made five.’
‘You sent her flowers, roses even. What the hell are we supposed to think?’ Luke pointed out, not unreasonably.
She caught Daniel’s eye again. ‘I love them,’ she mouthed and his lips quirked up in a shy grin.
His face became serious as he turned back to his friends. ‘I’m sorry, Aaron. I don’t know what else to say to you other than that. I had to get away from London—you’re right, it was killing me.’ The bleak expression on his face made Mia want to hug him, but that would only add to the speculation from the others about their relationship.
Aaron stood and slung his arm around Daniel’s shoulders. ‘Don’t worry about it. Seriously, mate, you look better than you have in a long time and I’m just pleased to see you getting back to yourself. If you do feel the need to redeem yourself then you could tell me some good news. Something along the lines of Mia having a sister—as glorious as she is.’
‘Two sisters,’ Luke interjected.
Mia laughed, turning towards the kettle to finish making the drinks. ‘I do have two sisters actually and they are the ones who got the looks in our family.’ Mia glanced fondly towards the pinboard on the wall where her favourite picture of the three of them was displayed.
‘The bad news is one is married and the other is living it up in New York. Although knowing her, she’s probably starving in some garret trying to capture that authentic artist vibe.’
She thought it best not to mention that Kiki’s husband Neil was an enormous arsehole who physically abused her sister in addition to a constant barrage of emotional bullying. She’d tried to talk to her so many times about it, but Kiki refused to acknowledge it, to the point of threatening to cut all contact with Mia if she raised the subject again.
After losing Jamie, the thought of her sister—almost her twin having been born less than a year apart—cutting her out of her life was too much for her to bear. Mia had maintained a reluctant silence on the matter and hoped that Kiki would one day find the strength to face the problem and deal with it.
Nee’s answer to their difficult childhood had been to fly the nest as soon as she possibly could to go to art school. She produced some incredibly dark pieces that Mia knew were her way of funnelling the frustration and upset of her childhood experiences. They were powerful and terrible in their beauty and they broke Mia’s heart every time she saw one of them. Nee had gained a bit of a cult reputation, which had led to the offer to study in America. She had been gone like a shot, seemingly needing as much physical distance from the past as she did emotionally.
Mia thought back to the period before Nee had left for the States; Kiki had just had her second child, Charlie, and Mia and Jamie had travelled back to their home town to stay with his parents and see Kiki and her new baby. Their mother had turned up at the hospital, clearly drunk at ten in the morning. She had become
