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I’ve never looked neater. The mirror reflects a different person than I expected. Me, but better. “Wow. Thanks.”
He’s instantly all smiles, and that suits him so much better than worry. He also leaves me in the bathroom, pausing in the doorway. “Not that I really think you need help pitching tents.” His gaze doesn’t drop to my towel, thank fuck. “But I did mean what I said. I’ve had plenty of practice with tents lately. Icanhelp.”
“You don’t need to get on with your work?”
“Me? There’s plenty of time for that. Days and days.” He glances away before admitting, “I need to make revisions to a story. To drawings of a journey.” He tags that last point on while frowning, and that isn’t a first. I saw him frowning with his fists curled earlier, didn’t I?
That anger was about me scaring a bride. Now he’s pissed off with himself. “I still haven’t figured out how. Doing something else might actually help.”
I don’t know why that edge of rawness means I accept his offer, but Rae sits next to me in my Land Rover as I leave the school and head along the coast road with him and two more passengers.
A tense groom also travels with us, as does a surly sixth-form student who throws offleave me alonevibes. I can guess why. I almost walked into him saying goodbye to Sol’s nephew on my way back to the stables, and that goodbye didn’t look easy, so I strain for some way to involve him.
That’s tough when Finn sits beside him and won’t stop talking about the wedding. Not that I blame him for worrying we won’t pull off something as special as the party they’d planned and paid for, but I keep glimpsing teen misery in my rearview mirror. I saw that plenty of times in team changing room mirrors after getting benched, so I can’t ignore it. I wish I had after I say, “You been to any good weddings lately, Teo?” to a kid who looks like he’d rather die than answer.
Rae makes a save by joking, “In Peckham? That’s where you’re from, right, big man?” He looks Teo’s way over his shoulder. “Pretty sure all weddings there start with setting a pile of tyres on fire outside a KFC and end with riot vans and tear gas.”
Teo snorts. He also sucks his teeth and tsks as if insulted, but I know banter when I hear it. So must he. This grumble is low but not unfriendly. “I ain’t from Peckham, blud.” They chat about different parts of London, or Rae does at least, and Teo seems easier in his skin, especially when we’re flagged down at the entrance to a farm lane by a redhead.
Marc’s younger brother, Noah, climbs in, and they must know each other. Teo offers a fist that Noah bumps, and I start the engine again to drive past a sign for Love-Land Weddings with more company than I’m used to.
I like my own space. My own pace. Peace and quiet too.
But this company?
I glance sideways. Dark eyes do the same in my direction, and…
I’m not one bit mad about it.
It’s beena while since I sat in on a pre-match team talk. I give one today, only not on a touchline. I create this game plan in a farmyard, unsure of the strengths and weaknesses of my players, so that’s where I start collecting data. Noah is an old hand at camping. That’s good. Both boys are more help than I expected at loading tents onto the trailer I hitch to the Land Rover. I face Rae next, and Finn—who has a worried Willow on the phone, I guess, when I overhear him sounding a lot steadier than he looks.
The poor guy is frazzled.
“There really are enough tents. They’re nice ones called...” He looks to me for help.
“Bell tents. Some people call them glamping tents. Glamour while camping.”
He pounces on that description. “It’s going to be good, babe.”
I overhear more data.
“What’s that? Luke’s found a way to keep everyone busy until later this evening?” He laughs. “Unpacking boxes and getting classrooms ready? Good.”
Thatisgood news. It’s already midafternoon. I don’t want a crowd wading through thigh-high grass at twilight or tripping over guy lines. Mowing pathways is a priority, followed by pitching these tents and extending the lighting.
First things first. “Can either of you drive a tractor?”
“Yes.” Finn is no stranger to farm life or grass cutting. He still has his phone clamped to his ear. “I spent last summer with Willow on her parents’ farm.” He smiles before rephrasing, now speaking to her. “Okay, okay, it’s a ranch.”
I pass him a set of keys. “Great.” That’s another massive timesaver. “Follow us down to the headland. I’ll show you the marquee.”
Willow must overhear that and ask a question because Finn laughs. “No, a marquee is a really big event tent.” He flashes a worried glance my way and I nod. Stef and Marc’s marqueeismassive, their biggest investment in a wedding business that is usually booked solid.
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
I drive across fields, leading the way to this wedding party solution, and it’s pure luck that I glance in my rearview mirror just as Finn sees the headland for the first time.
“Wow,” Rae says from beside me, having the same reaction as Finn, who stops driving to take in what I can’t help thinking is one of the best views in all of Cornwall. It sounds as if Rae agrees. “That water… the colour of it.”
