made of sterner stuff. Just.
She straightened her shoulders, met his eyes with a challenge. ‘After all, you must have a lot to be getting on with.’
The smile deepened. ‘Good to see work is still your priority, Lawrie.’
It was. And it evidently was a priority for him as well. So why did he sound so amused?
‘The staff entrance is round the back, but you can use the front doors. Just this once.’
Once again Lawrie was following Jonas, moving behind the stylish reception desk and through a door that led to the offices, kitchens and staff bedrooms.
‘I have an office here, of course,’ he said. ‘But I do prefer to work at the Boat House—whether it’s because I designed the office there, or because it’s where this all began I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘A business psychologist would probably have a field-day, trying to work it all out, but I’m not sure I need to know as long as it works and the business keeps growing.’
‘You don’t live in your parents’ apartment?’
He looked surprised at the question. ‘Oh, heavens, no. This place needs a whole team of managers and some of them live in. The general manager and his family have the apartment. I bought a place on the seafront a few years ago. One of the old fishermen’s cottages by the harbour. You’d like it.’
She nodded, maintaining her cool, interested air even as a stab of pain shot through her. It had always been her ambition to own one of the stone-built cottages clustered around the harbour. On moonlit nights she and Jonas had strolled along, hands entwined, as she’d pointed out her favourites, and they had laughingly argued over decorating plans, colour schemes, furniture.
Now he lived in one of those cottages, without her.
It was ridiculous to feel wounded. To feel anything. After all she had spent the last five years living in a beautiful flat with another man; very soon she fully intended to be in an apartment of her own somewhere completely new. Yet the thought of Jonas living in the dream house of their youth filled her with a wistfulness so intense she could barely catch her breath.
He had opened a door to an empty office and held it open, motioning her to move inside. Swallowing back the unexpected emotion as she went through, she saw the office was a large room, distinguished by two big sash windows, each with a cushioned window seat, and furnished with a large desk, a small meeting table and a sofa.
‘This is supposed to be my office,’ he explained. ‘I never use it, though, so you may as well have it while you’re here. As I said, it’ll be useful for you to be based on site. I’m sure it’s all in your notes, but the hotel itself usually hosts the bands, VIPs and essential staff, and most festival-goers camp in the grounds—although quite a lot book out the local B&Bs and caravan parks too.’
She nodded. Of course she had read all this yesterday, but it was still hard for her to comprehend.
Jonas had started this festival during her first year at Oxford, getting local rock and folk bands to play on the beach for free, raising money for a surfing charity that campaigned against marine and beach pollution. The first ever festival had been a one-night affair and the festival-goers had slept on the beach...if they’d slept at all. Food had, of course, been provided by the Boat House. Lawrie was supposed to have returned to Cornwall for it, but at the last minute had decided to stay in London, where she’d been interning for the summer.
Her refusal to promise that she would attend the third festival had led to the final argument in their increasingly volatile relationship. She had packed her bags on the eve of her twenty-first birthday and gone to London for another summer of interning. At the end of that summer she had returned to Oxford for her fourth and final year. She had never returned to Cornwall.
Not until a week ago.
And now that little beach festival had grown—just like the Boat House, just like Jonas’s business. Everything was so much bigger, so different from the small, comforting life she remembered. Three nights, thirty-six bands, family activities, thousands of festival-goers, raising substantial funds for charity—yet still local, still focussed on the best of Cornish music, food, literature. It was daunting.
Not that she was going to confess that to the imposing man standing before her.
Lawrie had never admitted that she needed help before. She wasn’t going to start now.
‘This is great, Jonas,’ she said. ‘I can take it from here.’
His mouth quirked. ‘I have complete faith in you,’ he assured her. ‘You know where I am if you need me.’
She nodded, but her mind was completely made up. She did not, would not need Jonas Jones. She was going to do this alone. Just as she always did.
JONAS LOVED THIS drive. The winding lanes, the glimpses of sea through the dense green hedgerows. If he put the top down he could smell the intoxicating scent of sweet grass and gorse, feel the sea breeze ruffling his hair.
And he loved the destination. The hotel he owned. The hotel he had bought. The hotel where his ex-wife was right this moment sitting at his desk, taking care of his festival.
It had been an unexpected couple of days. Of course the village gossips were having a field-day. Again. What would they do without him? He should start charging a licence fee for the resurrection of their favourite soap opera. He would always be that no-good boy who’d broken his parents’ hearts, and she would always be the no-better-than-she-should-be teen bride, flighty daughter of a flighty mother. Their roles had been set in stone long before no matter how they tried to redefine them.
Well, the viewers were doomed to disappointment. Reunion episodes were always a let-down. He had no intention of allowing this one to be any different.
Pulling into the gates of the hotel, he felt the usual spark of pride, of ownership, zing through him. Who would have thought the prodigal son would return in such style?
It would be nice, though—just once—to drive through the gates and not be assailed by memories. By the disapproving voices of his parents and their disappointed expectations.
When he’d failed his exams at sixteen his parents had wanted to send him away to boarding school—ostensibly to do retakes, in reality to get him away from his friends. It showed a lack of character, they’d thought, that rather than befriend the other boys from the private school they’d sent him to he preferred to hang around with the village kids.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Yes, he probably should have studied rather than sneaking out to swim and surf. Taken some interest in his exams. But his achievements—his interest in food, his surfing skill, his hard-won A* in Design and Technology—had meant nothing. His father couldn’t, or wouldn’t, boast about his son’s perfect dovetailed joints on the golf course.
His parents hadn’t ever lost their tempers with him. Cold silence had been their weapon of choice. There had been weeks, growing up, when he could swear they hadn’t addressed one word to him. But they’d come close to exploding when Jonas had refused to go to the carefully selected crammer they had found.
Some parents would
