“This could become habit-forming.” Carmen groaned and pushed her empty plate away, then downed the rest of her espresso.
“Well, I do owe you one, so you have to come back at least one more time.”
“Bugger.”
Ash laughed, the sound melodious, easy on Carmen’s ears. Then Ash also pushed her plate away and sat back in her chair, her expression thoughtful.
“What?” Carmen asked.
“Well, I don’t want to pry, but why did you need this escape so badly? You seemed…frazzled, when you first turned up.”
Carmen leaned back and sighed. “I was. It’s complicated.”
“Ah.”
“I know. God, what a cliché.” Carmen looked away. There was no way she could share with Ash. She barely knew her and— “I split up with my partner on Friday night. He and I had been seeing each other for two years, casual but exclusive, and I just reached a point where I wondered why we were bothering.”
The words left her mouth so quickly her brain couldn’t catch up with the fact that she’d actually said them out loud. To an almost stranger. Her face heated.
“I’m sorry,” Ash said.
Carmen picked at the crumbs on her plate. “You see, that’s the thing. I should be, but I’m not. That probably sounds harsh, but I wasn’t in love with him. I liked him. A lot. But that zing, that spark, it was never there. We had a good time, and he made it easy for me to fit the relationship around my work because he has a demanding job too. But it’s like it was all surface. No depth. And for a long time I thought that was fine, but now I know it wasn’t.” She wasn’t sure where all this openness with a relative stranger had come from. Normally, she kept such personal things close to her chest, only confiding in Felicity. Why had she found it so easy to say all of that to Ash?
Ash shrugged. “Then you’ve done the right thing. You should never stay with someone just because it’s convenient, in my humble opinion. Feelings are important. They should always come first.”
There was a bitter edge to her tone, and it didn’t take a fancy education to know that Ash had been hurt by someone in her past.
“You’re right. I’ve spent all weekend going over and over it in my head, wondering if I’d done the right thing, feeling guilty over hurting him. Now I do feel okay about what I did. Maybe I just needed a bit more time to come to terms with it all.”
“Or the custard tarts have worked their magic.” Ash smiled gently.
“Perhaps so.” Carmen’s laugh burst out of her.
Ash joined in her laughter, and God, it felt good to just sit in the sun and laugh .
A chime from her phone brought Carmen back down to earth. “Ugh. That’s the fifteen-minute reminder for my next meeting. I have to get back.” She stood, hooked her handbag over her shoulder, then picked up the box of pastries. She looked down at Ash, who smiled again, although not as brightly as before.
“This was lovely, Ash. I’m so glad I ran into you.”
“Likewise.” Ash withdrew a well-worn, brown leather wallet from the back pocket of her jeans. She opened it and pulled out a business card from one of the slots. “Here, take this. Call me when you want me to repay that pastry, okay?”
Carmen took the card. “I will. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Carmen walked down the street, careful to keep the pastry box steady, and puzzled over the sadness that overtook her as her distance from the café increased.
No, not from the café , she thought a moment later. From Ash .
How odd.
Chapter 6
Well, that was unexpected .
Ash grimaced as she walked to the studio. While it had been pleasant chatting with Carmen, even just for twenty minutes, the fact that her brain couldn’t seem to rid itself of the image of Carmen laughing in the sunshine was not.
God, no, you idiot. No straight women. Remember last time? Ugh.
She unlocked the studio shutters, rolled them up, but then closed and locked the door behind her when she was inside. She didn’t officially open for another half an hour and didn’t need anyone interrupting her preparations.
A small stack of mail rested on the doormat, and she bent to pick it up. A glance told her most of it was junk—catalogues and flyers from suppliers she’d never use. She threw it onto the desk, then made her way to the small room at the back that doubled as her office and storeroom. Mondays were always stock-checking days, and within five minutes she had her tablet in her hand and cast an eye over every shelf.
By the time she’d finished that and placed the order, it was noon and time to open. When she flipped the sign to open and undid the latch, no one waited to enter, but she still got the same sense of satisfaction in the actions that she’d had from the first day she’d opened for business.
Her first client was at one thirty, so she cleaned up the waiting area and refreshed the magazines and artwork folders. Then she sat at one of the benches at the back and pulled out her sketchbook. She’d been reading a high fantasy novel on Sunday afternoon and had some ideas for sketches of the characters and creatures described in the book. Sketching always grounded her.
Fifteen minutes later, she threw her pencil onto the bench and folded her arms. That wasn’t what she was supposed to have drawn. She glared at the small sketch, as if it were somehow directly to blame. What had started out as an idea to draw one of the heroines of the story had instead become a light sketch of Carmen. Even in black and white, it evoked memories of the sun in her
