Chapters (51)
- Cover
- Praise for A Season for Second Chances
- Also by Jenny Bayliss
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Discussion Guide
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“I’ll be going home on Sunday.”
Neither of them spoke for a couple of minutes, letting that sink in. A hare bounded past them and disappeared into the herbaceous borders. Overhead, an owl hooted.
“It’s only an hour or so away,” Isaac said, breaking the silence between them. “Technically I get the weekends off; I only tend to work them because I’m here anyway. I could come to London . . .”
“And I could come down here. I don’t work Sundays, and I’ve been saying for ages that I ought to take another day off in the week.”
They reached the back door, and when they kissed good-night, it wasn’t with the urgency of a few hours ago, but with a tenderness that made Nory want to stay in his arms forever.
The cotton sheets on her four-poster felt cold and stiff when she climbed into bed. She lay awake for some time, wondering if they could make it work from a distance and realized that she really did want to. She had fallen for Isaac. She had fallen hard.
When she imagined the kind of man she would fall in love with—and she’d had plenty of nights alone in her flat for such imaginings—it was always someone who would come into the shop; he would wander in looking for a vintage copy of H. E. Bates’s The Darling Buds of May or a vintage copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrated by Arthur Rackham for his niece. He would be bookish and would most likely wear a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. He probably worked for a publisher or a museum. She had never imagined that the man to steal her heart would be the boy who used to throw mud at her head. But it was done; she had made a conscious effort to build a life away from Hartmead, only to fall for a man slap-bang in the middle of it.
Her phone buzzed and she reached over to the bedside table and opened the message: You forgot something!
Another buzz. This time it was a photograph of her bra, still resting on top of Isaac’s bedside lampshade. Nory smiled in the dark and typed back:
I left it there on purpose, so that I have an excuse to come back.
You don’t need an excuse. I’m looking forward to being your date tomorrow.
Me too. I had a great time tonight.
Me too. Xxx
Thirty
The wedding was at one o’clock, which meant that the entire household had to be up and ready for action by 6:00 a.m.
Katie had padded down the stairs in sweatpants and bed socks, grabbed some food, and disappeared back up to her room. But there was no such luxury for Nory and Ameerah. Nory had woken at five to the sound of Pippa pounding on the door.