‘It’s good to get out of the car,’ Jake agreed. ‘Good to get out of London,’ he added slowly, realising for the first time in years that it was true. He had been feeling restless and uneasy, but now, with the waves crashing relentlessly onto the shore, the wind in his hair and Cassie beside him, he had the strangest feeling of coming home. ‘It’s been…busy,’ he finished, although the truth was that he had deliberately created work for himself so that he didn’t have time to think.
‘Has anyone said any more about our engagement?’ Cassie asked after a moment.
‘Nobody seems to talk about anything else,’ said Jake. ‘My staff are giving me grief that I haven’t introduced you, and you’ve been specifically included in endless invitations to drinks and dinner and God knows what else. I’m running out of excuses.’
‘I don’t mind going,’ said Cassie. ‘But you probably don’t want me to,’ she added quickly. ‘I know I don’t exactly fit in.’
Jake stopped to stare at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I was so out of place at that reception,’ she reminded him. ‘I know I looked crass and ridiculous compared to everybody else there. It must have been really embarrassing for you.’
‘I wasn’t embarrassed,’ he said. ‘I was proud of you. You didn’t look crass. You looked wonderful. Nobody could take their eyes off you. Do you have any idea of how refreshing you were?’
‘Really?’ she stammered, colouring with pleasure.
Jake began walking again. ‘You ought to have more confidence in yourself,’ he told her. ‘You might not have a profession, but you’ve got social skills coming out your ears, and they’re worth as much as any qualification. Look at what you’ve achieved down here.’
‘I haven’t really done anything,’ said Cassie. ‘The contractors are doing all the work.’
‘They wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t for you. You had the idea; you’re getting them all organised. It’s time you stopped thinking of yourself as such a failure, Cassie.’
‘Easy to say,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But it’s hard when you’ve spent years being the under-achiever in the family. Social skills are all very well, but it’s not that difficult to chat at a party.’
‘It’s difficult for me,’ Jake pointed out. ‘I never learnt how to talk easily to people. There were no parties when I was growing up, and precious little conversation at all. We didn’t do birthdays or Christmas or celebrating.’
He walked with his eyes on the sand, remembering. ‘My mother did her best, but there was never enough money, and she was constantly scrimping to put food on the table. She was a hard worker. She didn’t just clean for Sir Ian, but at the pub and several other houses in the village. When she came home at night she was so tired she just wanted to sit in front of the television. I don’t blame her,’ he said. ‘She had little enough pleasure in her life.’
And how much pleasure had there been for a little boy? Cassie wondered. Starved of attention, brought up in a joyless home without even Christmas to look forward to, it was no wonder he had grown up wild.
‘It was hard for her trying to manage on her own,’ Jake went on. ‘I barely remember my father being at home. He was sent to prison when I was six. After he was released, he came home for a couple of weeks, but nobody in Portrevick was going to employ him. He went off to London to find a job, he said, and we never heard from him again.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Cassie quietly, thinking of how far Jake had come since then. From village tearaway to chief executive in ten years was a spectacular achievement, and he had done it without any of the support she, her brothers and sister had taken for granted from their own parents. ‘I can’t imagine life without my dad,’ she said. Her father might be a bit stuffy, but at least he was always there.
‘You’re lucky,’ Jake agreed. ‘I used to wish that I could have a father at home like everyone else, but maybe if he had been around I would have ended up following in his footsteps. As it was, I inherited his entrepreneurial spirit, but decided to stick to the right side of the law. But it was touch and go,’ he added honestly. ‘I was getting out of control. When you’ve got no money, no family life and no future, it feels like there’s nothing to lose.
‘Sir Ian’s offer came just in time,’ he said. ‘It made me realise that I could have a future after all, and how close I’d come to throwing it away. I knew then that if I was going to escape I had to get myself under control. I built myself a rigid structure for my life. I worked and I focused and I got out of Portrevick and the mess my life had become, thanks to Sir Ian.’
He glanced at Cassie. ‘But there wasn’t much time along the way to learn about social niceties. You said you felt out of place at that reception, but you belonged much more than I did. I’m the real outsider in those situations. It’s one of the reasons I was so drawn to Natasha,’ he admitted. ‘She fits in perfectly. I could go anywhere with her and be sure that she would know exactly what to do and what to say. It sounds pathetic, but I felt safe with her,’ said Jake with a sheepish look.
‘But you look so confident!’ Cassie said, unable to put a lack of confidence together with her image of Jake, who had always been the coolest guy around. ‘You were always leader of the pack.’
‘In Portrevick, and the pack was a pretty disreputable one,’ said Jake. ‘And I can talk business with anyone. It’s a different story in a smart social setting, like that reception, where you’re supposed to know exactly how to address Lord This and Lady That, how to hold your knife and fork properly, and chit-chat about nothing I know anything about.
‘You could do it,’ he told Cassie. ‘You chatted away without a problem, but I can’t do that. It makes me feel… inadequate,’ he confessed. ‘It’s one of the reasons I resent Rupert so much, I suppose. He’s colossally arrogant and not particularly bright, but he can sail into a social situation and charm the pants off everyone. Look at what he was like with you,’ said Jake bitterly. ‘All over you like a rash, and never mind that you’re supposed to be my fiancee and I’m standing right there.’
‘I think it’s just an automatic reflex with Rupert,’ said Cassie, hugging this hint of jealousy to her. ‘He flirts with every woman he meets.’
‘Does he give them all his number and tell them to call him?’
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘And most of them no doubt will ring him. But I’m not going to. I’ve thrown his card away.’
Jake felt a tightness in his chest loosen. ‘Good,’ he said, and when he looked sideways at Cassie their eyes snagged as if on barbed wire. Without being aware of it, their steps faltered and they stopped.
Cassie was intensely aware of the dull boom of the waves crashing into the shallows, of the familiar tang of salt on the air, and the screech of a lone gull circling above. The wind blew her hair around her face and she held it back with one hand as she finally managed to tear her eyes from Jake’s.
He looked different down here on the beach, more relaxed, as if the rigid control that gripped him in London had loosened. She was glad that he had told her more about his past. It sounded as if his childhood had been much bleaker than she had realised, and she understood a little better now why he had been so insistent on a formula for relationships. If you had no experience of an open, loving relationship like her parents’, fixing on a partner who shared your practical approach must seem a much better bet than putting your trust in turbulent emotions that couldn’t be pinned down or analysed.
It was sad, though. In spite of herself, Cassie sighed.
Beside her, Jake was watching the wet-suited figures bobbing out in the swell. Even at this time of year there were surfers here. Portrevick was a popular surfing beach, and lifeguards kept a careful eye from a vehicle parked between the two flags that marked the safe area.
Following his gaze, Cassie saw one of the surfers paddling furiously to pick up a big wave just before it crested. He rose agilely on his board, riding the wave as it powered inland, until the curling foam overtook him and broke over him, sending him tumbling gracefully into the water.
‘Why don’t you surf any more?’ she asked him abruptly.
‘I can’t.’
‘But you were so good at it,’ Cassie protested. ‘You were always in the water. I used to watch you from up there,’ she said, pointing up to the dunes. ‘You were easily the best.’
Jake’s mouth twisted. ‘I loved it,’ he said. ‘It was the only time I felt really free. When things got too bad at home, I’d come down here. When you’re out there, just you and the sea, you feel like you can do anything. There’s nothing like the exhilaration you get from riding a big wave, being part of the sea and its power…’ He trailed off, remembering.
‘Then why not do it again?’
‘Because…’ Jake started and then stopped, wondering how to explain. ‘Because surfing is part of who I was
