One Summer in Cornwall Karen King (positive books to read TXT) 📖

would be the peace and tranquillity he’d grown to love. Well, it had been good while it lasted.

He had to admit though that it wasn’t losing the peace and tranquillity that bothered him so much as losing Hattie. He was getting fond of her, too fond. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to invite her to Lord Thomwell’s birthday party. Ever since Kaylee, he’d sworn not to have another holiday romance. He’d fallen for Kaylee hard when she’d come down to spend the summer with her grandparents. He’d always known she’d be going back to university but they’d agreed to keep the relationship going – then he’d taken the train up for a surprise visit one weekend and discovered that Kaylee had replaced him. He’d been devastated for quite a time. After that he’d vowed to stay clear of holidaymakers. Not that Hattie was a holidaymaker, but she was only passing through, there was no future for them and he was a bit too attracted to her. Then he thought of Estelle, and the risqué picture she’d sent him. He had to get her off his back, without hurting her feelings if he could, and this was the only way he could think of doing it. Besides, he was a big boy now, not a love-struck teenager. He could handle Hattie moving on.

Hattie uploaded the wedding photos to her laptop ready to edit them. The wedding had been lovely. Ellie and Reece had looked so happy, their faces wreathed in smiles. And Sue had been beaming with pride as she had walked along the red carpet with her daughter on her arm. Hattie smiled with relief as the photos appeared on her screen. They were good. Very good. She had even managed to capture the moment when Reece had turned to see Ellie walking towards him and their eyes had met. It had been a perfect wedding, and a perfect reception, and she was going to make sure she did them a perfect album of photographs to match.

Not the sort of wedding she’d want, though. The thought crept into her mind and she stopped to explore it. The only time she’d considered getting married was a couple of years ago when she had found out that she was pregnant. At first she’d been shocked – she and Adam had been so careful – then she had started to feel pleased, imagining a little son or daughter, thinking that maybe she and Adam could get married, build their own little family. But Adam hadn’t been pleased. He’d been cross, spouting off about not being ready to be a father yet, not wanting to give up his freedom. When Hattie had miscarried a couple of weeks later, Adam had hardly been able to conceal his relief, whereas she had been devastated. Seeing how upset she was, Adam had hugged her, tried to console her, told her it was for the best – and she’d known it was, because she and Adam weren’t right together. Even if they had decided to take the plunge and get married, it wouldn’t have worked out and then their child would have been the casualty of a divorce. To be honest, she didn’t know many marriages that had lasted the course; look at her parents, and Mali and Ricki, and Ellie had told her that Reece’s parents were divorced too.

Sometimes Hattie thought of the baby she’d lost. She knew that someday she wanted a child, but only when she had found the right partner. Marcus’s face appeared in her mind and she pushed it away, she suspected he would be just as reluctant to settle down as Adam had been.

Marcus knocked on Hattie’s door, wondering what she had decided to wear. Not that he minded – she looked amazing in anything. She opened the door and his eyes widened as he saw that she had taken him at his word and was wearing her motorbike leathers. She looked sensational, the trousers clung to her like a second skin and the top was sexily unzipped to reveal her cleavage.

‘Will I do?’ she asked.

He grinned. ‘You definitely will.’

She grinned as she looked him up and down. ‘You’ve spruced up well too.’

‘Thanks.’ He’d changed his mind about the cream chinos, deciding on a pair of black skinny jeans and a white collarless shirt, matched with black loafers. ‘Right, let’s do this.’

‘Can we go on my bike seeing as I’m dressed for the part?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got a spare helmet. Or don’t you like motorbikes?’

‘Yes, I do, I had one myself for years.’ But he’d always been the driver and didn’t know if he fancied riding pillion, not being in control. There again, he did fancy wrapping his arms around Hattie’s waist and cosying up to her. And it would be fun to pull up in front of the manor on Hattie’s bike. That would make quite an entrance and he could just imagine Estelle’s face. ‘Sure, let’s take the bike,’ he said.

‘You okay going pillion?’

‘No problem.’

Everyone turned to look as they roared up the drive. Hattie gave her bike a final rev before coming to a halt. She’d enjoyed the ride here, with Marcus sitting on the back, his hands holding her waist. Adam had always refused to go on the back of the bike, she wasn’t sure if it was because he hadn’t felt safe or because he didn’t like the idea of sitting behind a woman – not that he would have ever ridden a bike himself, he was definitely a car man, the sportier the better. Whereas Marcus hadn’t seemed at all bothered about sitting behind and holding on to her. He was self-assured, confident of his own masculinity, and not so much of an opinionated chauvinist as he had first seemed.

They both dismounted just as a woman in a glamorous floral dress with a wide-brimmed hat almost floated over the lawn towards them. She looked about sixty, was very elegant and her clothes were