Lost and Found on Foxglove Street (The Foxglove Street #9)

Chapter 21

21

For someone who made his living writing romantic pop songs for some of the biggest artists in the music business, Ryan found himself at a complete loss for words when his searing kiss with Grace finally came to an end.

From the moment their lips touched, magic had sparked between them. It had been a long time since he’d felt anything like that while kissing a woman.

Now, as he caught his breath and looked into Grace’s eyes, he realised that wasn’t actually true. He’d never in his life felt anything like the spark that had zapped through his heart with the power of a thousand exploding stars.

Ryan realised that these were the words he wanted to say to her, words his brain had been unable to grab hold of until a moment ago, and now that the perfect words were crashing around inside his head, he knew he had to say them, had to get them out, had to let Grace hear them so she understood the impact she had on him.

He almost said the words, too. Almost.

The dark shadow of an unwelcome memory flashed through his mind and caused him to catch the words before they tumbled from his mouth. In their place, he offered a smile instead and squeezed Grace’s hand.

If she noticed anything odd about the moment, or about him, she didn’t let on.

Instead, she simply brushed another kiss against his lips and nestled closer beside him on the bench, before looking back out at the beautiful views stretching out all around them. Releasing a soft sigh, she laid her head against his shoulder.

Perhaps words weren’t needed after all. The kiss had done all the talking necessary.

The unspoken ease between them should’ve made Ryan happy. And it did. But instead of just enjoying the moment, he couldn’t stop thinking about those dark memories from long ago which had sliced through his thoughts at the worst possible time and come dangerously close to ruining his first kiss with a woman he liked more and more with each passing minute.

Ryan rarely let his thoughts stray to those long ago days, which he’d worked so hard to put behind him. During the last twelve years, he’d succeeded in moving on, even if he hadn’t quite succeeded in forgetting. He’d only been eighteen at the time when it all happened, still just a boy, although he’d thought otherwise, believing himself to be a man already and on the cusp of taking the world by storm.

His innocence and naivety and wide-eyed hopefulness had blinded him to the dark reality of what was actually happening until it was all too late.

Then, as now, music had been Ryan’s life. Back then, however, he’d been the one up on the stage, rather than the songwriter behind the scenes. When an audition for a television music competition, The Next Big Number One , saw him selected to join three other young lads and compete as a group, Ryan had imagined his dreams of musical stardom were about to come true.

The show was a retread of the many other successful music competition format shows of the day, combining a snappy style with an acerbic judging panel. The manufactured band that Ryan became part of, Four Score, were designed to deliver mainstream boy-band pop music and trade on the good looks of the band’s youthful and energetic members.

Eighteen-year-old Ryan had believed it was the start of his dreams coming true.

But it hadn’t taken long for those dreams to turn into nightmares—nightmares that were deftly crafted and exploited by the television production company for maximum shock effect amongst the viewing audience, as well as the tabloid newspapers which lapped it up.

Alongside Four Score, another band was competing on the show to win the judge’s acclaim and the audience’s votes. Siren Kiss was a girl group, its members all in their late teens, just like the boys in Four Score. They were young and beautiful, each one sculpted for viewer consumption by the production team, and although none of the girls were particularly great singers, they worked well as an ensemble, just as Four Score did.

When the production team caught wind of the relationship blossoming off-camera between Ryan and one of the Siren Kiss members, Megan, they spied a publicity opportunity that was just too good to ignore.

Which was when Ryan’s descent into a nightmare began, although it took him several days to comprehend the jeopardy into which he’d so innocently stumbled.

The passions of young love had combined with the non-stop excitement of the talent show to leave him too euphoric to realise the dangers until it was much too late.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Grace said, breaking into his thoughts.

Ryan blinked, not realising that his memories had pulled him so far away from the present moment. Shaking them off, he gave Grace a smile.

“I’m just enjoying the view,” he said, which was true. It was impossible to look out across the South Downs landscape around them and not be impressed, and he hoped his vague words would excuse his unintended silence.

Stanley appeared at their feet, snuffling on the ground and wagging his tail before jumping up and placing his paws on the bench beside them. He let out a volley of barks.

“I think this little guy wants to keep walking,” Ryan said, and was amused when the dog let out another yap before returning all four feet to the ground and scuttling back towards the trail across the grasslands.

“He’s enjoying himself too much to pause for long,” Grace laughed, and got up as the dog tugged her onwards. “Let’s go before he yanks me off my feet.”

Ryan rose from the bench and fell into step beside Grace while Stanley scampered ahead. Taking her hand into his once more, he smiled at the soft look she gave him in response, and pushed away the remnants of the dark thoughts that had crowded his mind.

As Grace followed Stanley as he hurried off along the trail, she couldn’t help wondering what Ryan had been thinking about back on the bench.

The easy moment of silence they’d shared after their blistering kiss was one thing, but the faraway look she’d caught in his eyes had nothing to do with the view across the South Downs, of that she was sure.

Judging by the way he held her hand in his, he wasn’t regretting the kiss, or at least she hoped he wasn’t. Still, the dark look in his gaze as he’d stared blankly into the distance had made her want to know what was going on inside his head.

Perhaps, in time, she’d find out. If this was the beginning of something between the two of them, and she really hoped it was, then getting to know one another better would happen naturally. Learning more about Ryan was, Grace hoped, as inevitable as it was appealing.

She couldn’t wait to find out more about who he was and what made him tick.

“Tell me about your songwriting process, Ryan,” she said as they walked the trail together. “Do you get inspiration from places like this? The countryside and the great outdoors?”

“It depends on what I’m writing,” he said. “But while I’m enjoying being out here right now, for many reasons,”—he gave her a warm smile and a squeeze of her hand as he said this—“the truth is that when I’m in songwriting mode, I need to be at my piano or sitting with my guitar. I like to test out the notes and the harmonies as I write. Music rarely just composes itself inside my head while I’m doing other things.”

“Did you always want to be a songwriter, or did you ever perform the songs you write yourself instead of writing them for others?”

Her question caused his expression to shift and sent his eyebrows into a wary frown.

“Most songwriters have performed as singers or musicians at some point in their lives. Not all, but most, would be my guess. That’s how you get a feel for what works, by going through the motions of testing yourself in front of an audience and seeing how people respond. It builds musical muscle, I suppose you might say.”

Grace was fascinated by his answer, not just by his insight into the musical world he inhabited, but also by the fact he hadn’t actually answered her question. Curious though she found that omission, the strained look still evident on his face told her not to dwell on it. There was no point turning their lovely country walk into an inquisition.

Instead, she waved a hand to gesture towards the stunning scenery around them.

“Well, I don’t know about musical muscle, but this walk is building calf muscle, that’s for sure,” she laughed. “This incline we’re climbing is deceptively steep.”

“You’re right,” Ryan smiled, the tension in his face gone once more. “And this climb is even more evidence, if any were needed, that my grandmother had no intention of coming on this walk with us. This terrain is more challenging than she said she was up for when she shortlisted the walks she’d selected, and I feel sure she must have known that, which was why she originally opted against this route.”

“I am enjoying it, though. A good walk outdoors is just what I needed.”

Stanley paused to sniff at a patch of shrubbery that ran along one side of the trail through the grassland, and when Grace slowed down to wait for him, she noticed Ryan giving her a thoughtful look.

“How are you feeling about the promotion news you got yesterday, now that it’s had time to sink in?” he asked, his tone soft.

Grace shrugged. “I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m still out of sorts about it, and I’m definitely still sulking a bit that it didn’t turn out the way I hoped it would.” She gave a wry smile before continuing. “My instinct was to get right back on the horse and keep working hard, keep studying and learning, so that when the promotion process restarts, I’m in the best position possible. But when I sat down this morning with my laptop and tried to get some work done, I couldn’t find any enthusiasm whatsoever.”

“Your manager at work said you needed some proper time away, and that’s what I think, too. Turns out we were both right.”

“Maybe,” she said with another shrug. “I don’t find it particularly easy to take time off. Work is my whole life. I know that makes me sound sad and pathetic, but I love what I do and I just feel that…” She searched for the right words to explain it. “I just feel that when I get this promotion, and become a full manager, things will feel… secure.”

Ryan’s gaze swung towards her, his expression more curious than ever. “I thought you said all the jobs at your hotel were safe, despite all the changes that are happening?”

“They are safe. Well, for now anyway, according to my manager. But I know that once I get this promotion, I’ll feel more secure and like I’ve accomplished something important for myself.”

He seemed to consider this for a moment before saying something else. “What made you want to get into the hospitality sector?”

“It was an accident, really. When I was still in school, I got a part-time job as a waitress at the weekends working in a hotel near my home down in Portsmouth. It was a family-run place, and they had a decent-sized function room where they hosted a lot of wedding receptions and special dinner events and so on during the weekend, and they always needed serving staff to cover the work. I enjoyed it, and when I left school, the owners offered me a job working there full-time in the hotel restaurant. I was there for about a year before I got another job elsewhere, working on a hotel reception desk and learning some of the back office stuff. And things just went from there.”

“You worked your way up from the bottom,” Ryan said with a soft smile. “It must have taken a lot of effort and graft to get to where you are now, working in a five-star hotel.”

“Hard work doesn’t scare me,” Grace laughed.

“Did you ever consider going to university to study hotel management, or something along those lines? You obviously have a great knack for the business, and maybe a degree would help you get higher up into the managerial positions you seem to want so badly.”

Grace shook her head. “University was never an option. It was just too expensive. The idea of taking on all that student debt to fund a degree, it gives me shivers, and…”

She stopped herself from finishing the sentence. Talking with Ryan felt so comfortable, and it would be too easy to share things she might not want to share, not yet anyway.

But when she glanced up and saw the way he was looking at her, his expression encouraging and filled with care, it made her want to keep talking. Only worry about what Ryan would think of the story she had to share made her stay silent.

“What else were you going to say?” Ryan asked at length, his tone gentle. “You can tell me. You can trust me, too, with whatever it is.”

Holding his gaze, she knew it was true. She could trust him. She could share the unhappy story she never shared, not with anyone.

And suddenly, she wanted to share it, because sharing it with Ryan now seemed like the most natural and logical thing in the world. As they walked along the winding trail across the beautiful countryside and with the sun shining down from a summer blue sky, she realised this was the perfect place to bring such a sad story out into the light.

“The truth is,” she began, after drawing in a deep breath, “ever since I was in my mid-teens, all I wanted was to get out into the world and find a job and make a career for myself and build some security in my life. Growing up, things rarely felt secure at home.”

Ryan said nothing, just nodded for her to continue.

“We didn’t have much money when I was a kid,” she said. “My father ran his own businesses but none of them ever did particularly well. I love my father, of course I do, but he made a lot of mistakes and did a lot of stupid things that caused our family endless financial trouble. We always seemed to be stumbling from one disaster to another.”

Grace frowned as she thought about to explain it all.

“Dad was always an optimist and always believed the next big opportunity was just around the corner,” she continued. “He tried just about everything over the years. He ran a market stall, opened up his own café, set up a mobile DJ business, started a company importing wholesale beauty products, and then another company offering party planning services, and then he got into the special occasion car hire business. And those are just some of the things he took on.”

Grace sighed, remembering those unhappy days of her childhood. “Each failed business meant yet another pile of debt left behind in its wake. When I was younger, my mother worked alongside my father, helping him in these businesses he set up, but eventually she had to get a job as a primary school teaching assistant in order to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. They split up when I was fifteen. I think my mother just had enough.”

Her parents painful separation was one of the worst times of Grace’s life, and talking about it was never easy, which was why she never did it.

“My father wasn’t, and isn’t, a bad man, but he was… misguided. Maybe if he’d stuck to one business and made a go of it, things might have been different. But as soon as he hit a rough patch and couldn’t figure out how to solve the problems he was having, he just gave up and moved on to something new. Meanwhile, mum and I were living hand-to-mouth, and she was the one scrabbling to make ends meet. I know she loved my father while they were married, and tried to make him see sense, but he was like a magpie, always dazzled by the next shiny thing.”

“I’m sorry,” Ryan said. “That sounds like it must have been tough.”

“When I was very young, I didn’t know any better. It was only once I was older that I started to notice there was never much food in the house, and there always seemed to be a worry about how the rent would be paid, and we never seemed to have any nice holidays like my friends in school. When I was fourteen, we had to leave our house because my father spent the rent money buying stock for whatever new business venture he’d dreamt up the night before, and we had to go to my aunt’s house and live in her guest room for two weeks, the three of us crammed together in one space and with me sleeping on a fold-out bed while my mother searched frantically for somewhere new we could afford. With all the debt my father constantly had hanging over his head, it wasn’t easy convincing a landlord to take us on. Things fell apart between my parents after that.”

“What does your father do now?” Ryan asked.

“He works night shifts as a security guard. He’s in his late fifties now, so it’s not an ideal job at this point in his life, but he doesn’t have many options open to him. He still struggles with money. I try to help him out when I can. My mum works in childcare at a nursery school and eventually remarried to a really nice man who dotes on her and who doesn’t plunge her into financial disaster every other week. She’s happy and she deserves a quieter life now.”

Grace realised how much she’d been rambling on. The peaceful walk across the open grasslands with the summery breeze blowing around them and the comforting presence of Ryan listening quietly as she talked had made it too easy to spill her heart out.

“Anyway, that’s my sob story,” she said with a self-conscious laugh. “And that’s the reason I never considered going to university after I left school. The idea of all that student debt hanging over my head was too frightening after growing up with my father’s financial antics for all those years. I wanted to get out there and start earning a living, and that’s what I did.”

Ryan nodded, as if this all made perfect sense. “And now you want the big promotion that will give you the career security you crave.”

“Exactly. Look, I know there is no such thing as a completely secure job. I’m not a fool. But once I get that promotion, it means that if the worst comes to the worst and I suddenly need to start looking for another job, I can put on my CV that I had a full manager’s role at a five-star hotel. That counts for something.”

“Of course it does.” His gaze slanted towards her as they continued along the trail. “But from what you’ve told me, this whole promotion process is now out of your hands and the fact that it has all ground to a halt isn’t because of anything you’ve done.”

“Well, yes, that’s true.”

“And yet your first instinct was to spend your days off doing even more work and even more studying.”

“I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess,” Grace laughed. Tilting her head towards the sun, she let her eyes drift closed for a second and breathed in the sweet countryside air. “But this is just what I needed. I’m sure tomorrow when I sit back down at my laptop, I’ll be recharged and ready to work.”

Ryan’s expression shifted into a baffled frown, and as they walked the trail side-by-side, he watched her for a moment, seemingly weighing his next words.

“You said you were off work now for seven days straight,” he said. “So, take them all off. Take a proper break. Forget about work or studying. Just relax and enjoy yourself. Maybe you could even spend more time with me?”

“I thought you were supposed to be enjoying your grandmother’s company?”

“Grandma was the one who sent us off on this little adventure together. She has an agenda, clearly, where the two of us are concerned. I doubt she’ll mind if you tag along again. We’ll have fun.”

He laughed as he said this. Grace realised he made it sound so easy. She had time off work, so why not spend it doing something fun, whatever ‘fun’ turned out to be.

Yet the idea of further gatecrashing this valuable time Ryan was supposed to be spending with his grandmother, who’d been through a terrible ordeal and who deserved to enjoy her family now, didn’t sit well with her.

“Let’s see how it goes,” she said vaguely. “I’m having such a nice time right now, and we’ve got the rest of the day ahead of us, too. Maybe by the end of it, you’ll be glad to see the back of me.”

“I doubt that very much,” Ryan said, and pulled her close to brush a kiss against her cheek.

She caught the spicy scent of his aftershave, and felt the way he squeezed her hand as he kissed her and how her heart fluttered at his touch, and realised that an entire week of this sort of thing would be very hard to resist.

Stanley let out a bark, urging them to catch up. Laughing, they picked up their pace and followed the little dog along the trail and back towards the village where they’d started.