the busy newsroom. Even though she had her own office, most people kept their doors open and the chatter and phones ringing had been a shock after the peace of Cornwall. She’d been reminded of her first day as a reporter, way back in the day, when she’d been amazed that anyone could ever focus on their own work amid the din and distraction.
The music thundered out but Tiff’s mind was still three hundred miles away in Porthmellow. Her life there seemed a distant memory now. She’d been anxious about leaving her cousin, especially with the situation with Nate not finally resolved, but she was in regular touch with her and expected a visit from Marina within the next few weeks. Most of all, she felt confident that Marina had good friends around her, and now she had Lachlan at her side. He was a good man, like Dirk … Marina would be fine.
For the umpteenth time, she made a conscious effort to remind herself how happy she was, how it was all for the best, and to dismiss Dirk from her mind.
Weren’t you supposed to emerge from an experience like hers by having learned some lessons?
If the purpose of her fall from grace was to persuade her to give up being a journalist and settle down to a life of embroidery in front of the fire, it was never going to happen.
Dirk had recognised that. She was never going to change her love for her career, and why should she?
Had she emerged from it as a nicer person? She didn’t know, but what she had taken from Porthmellow – from Marina and the locals and above all from Dirk – was that she could still love someone, with her whole heart.
He’d reminded her that she was a decent human being. You had to make hard decisions in her job – in his too – but he’d never wanted her to be anyone but herself. She knew that he hadn’t even tried to persuade her to stay because he cared about her.
Should she have given him the chance by agreeing to see him? The signs weren’t pointing in that direction. He texted her and she’d WhatsApped him a few times in the past few weeks, but that was their only contact. Light-hearted stuff about London and Porthmellow … nothing heavy. The relationship, from his side at least, seemed to be already dying.
She lay back again, having deliberately put her phone in the bedroom out of reach. If Elvis came back to life, if Lord Lucan was found working in a pasty shop in Porthmellow, it would have to pass her by for the next fifteen minutes while she tried to calm her thoughts.
Ten had gone by before she heard it ringing, and she dashed into the bedroom to answer it.
‘Tiff. Why aren’t you answering your phone?’
‘Because I’m trying to have a bloody life, that’s why,’ she tossed back. ‘What I could say is “Dirk, why are you calling me?”’
‘Because I want to know if I have the right flat.’
‘What do you mean “the right flat”?’
‘Look out of your window.’
‘What?’
Her stomach was doing an Olympic floor routine when she rushed to the window and flicked the blinds open. Dirk was standing by the wheelie bin under the orange streetlight. He spotted her and waved.
‘What is this? A Richard Curtis movie?’ she said, unable to stop her heart from racing.
‘I don’t have a bunch of cards declaring my true feelings for you, if that’s what you mean,’ he said tersely. ‘Can you please open the front door before I get arrested for stalking?’
She pressed the buzzer to give him access and thirty seconds later he was walking into her sitting room. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘Nice to see you too,’ he shot back.
In a black reefer coat and jeans, he filled the small space. He was even more heart-stoppingly handsome than in her wildest dreams and there had been many of them since she’d walked out of his cottage.
‘I can’t cope with you out of context,’ she said, in wonderment at his presence.
He frowned. She loved him frowning. She’d got it so bad … ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked
‘It just feels strange you being out of Cornwall,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to process that you’re here now.’
He arched an eyebrow. ‘Would it help if I had a box of pasties with me?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She laughed, but what she’d told him was absolutely true. She simply couldn’t