Page 80 of The Village Inn of Secret Dream

‘Crikey, you did!’ said Pete, now agog as he stared at his chef. ‘It makes sense now. Your attitude stinks, your cooking is awful. Of course you made up the references!’

‘Only because the cruise line wouldn’t give me a reference!’ shouted Andre.

A short silence rang out before Belle heard Pete take what appeared to be a calming breath.

‘Leave,’ he said, quietly but firmly. ‘Leave our inn now and never come back.’

‘You cannot do this!’ blustered Andre.

Pete said nothing but took a step forward instead.

Andre appeared to panic at this point and grabbed his coat, wallet and phone which were nearby. ‘I am too good for this crummy little inn!’ he announced, with a sneer.

Pete grabbed him by the collar and frogmarched Andre out of the kitchen.

Belle followed to watch Andre unceremoniously thrown out of the front door before Pete locked it and leaned against it.

Belle watched as his body appeared to sag.

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Pete, almost to himself. ‘I’m such an idiot. How naive am I? He had me totally fooled and I had no idea.’

He looked up at Belle with haunted eyes and her heart plummeted for him. Yes, he had mucked up on an enormous scale. But he hadn’t meant to. None of his mistakes had been deliberate.

She found her feet moved automatically until she was standing in front of him.

His head had dropped in despair. So she reached out to touch his cheek and bring his face up to hers.

‘I’ve made everything ten times worse,’ he said, his voice hoarse with despair.

‘Yes, you have,’ she told him.

His eyes widened in alarm so she reached out to touch his other cheek and held his face in her hands.

‘But it was all done with good intentions,’ she said. ‘You’re an idiot, Pete Kennedy, but you haven’t got a bad bone in your body.’

‘I’ve let you down,’ he said.

But she shushed him by lifting her face until their lips were almost touching. ‘You tried,’ she told him. ‘That was enough.’

Then she closed the final small gap and kissed him. It was a soft kiss to begin with to ease his pain. As it grew deeper, she felt his arms close around her to hold her close.

But something held her back from letting herself go completely. The fact remained that the inn was still in peril and the hurt was too deep for her to think about anything else that evening.

So she took a small step back to smile softly at him.

‘Maybe it’ll all seem better in the morning,’ she said.

He nodded, still looking somewhat dazed after her kiss.

So she said goodnight and then walked away whilst she still had the power to do so.

Because all she really wanted to do at that moment was rush back into his arms and stay there, preferably forever.

44

Pete woke up late the following morning after tossing and turning for most of the night. The guilt of the failure of the restaurant lay heavy on him.

He could hear movement downstairs and figured it was Belle tidying up the mess of the night before.