Come Back to Me

By Scarlett Rush

Imagine having the man of your dreams and then losing him. Minnie had him – a real-life hero. All the girls around wanted to prise him away, even the best friend who helped get her man in the first place. Despite his promises and proclamations of love, Minnie is sure she will lose him to those girls and their ruder imaginations unless she steps up her game. She resolves to give him what every man dreams of. Driving him towards the arms of another is a dangerous plan, especially for one who never felt in control of the relationship. Events take a dramatic turn and Minnie is left desperate for anything, any way that might reverse time and have him back with her again...

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Erotica
• Release date: Jul 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783338580

Book preview

1988.

Calling

Come back to me. Why ever did you go to her? What could possibly be the pull over everything that we had? You could be lying here still, basking in the aftermath of our lovemaking. I certainly was. I was gazing at your wonderful face, wondering if anyone could look more peaceful, thinking how unbelievably lucky I was to have you. I was always thinking that. I had to pinch myself sometimes. But you - you always had others beyond me to think about. It was always your second nature, calling you. That call could have been ignored but you just wouldn’t. So you left me, even though I begged you to stay this time, running off into the darkness with nothing for me except a smile and a shrug. And now look what you’ve done.

‘She said she thinks I’ve got a perfect backside!’

Those were the first words you ever spoke to me. That was years ago, back before you were on the boats. You still had those red cheeks though, even then. I’d always had you down as the biggest and the boldest but for all your swagger, now I was up close, I’d swear you had a face on like I’d caught you out, even though I had no claim on you at all. A few looks had passed between us, mostly from afar, but nothing else. I was two years younger and shouldn’t even have been on your radar. I guess you couldn’t help but notice all the girls. Three of them milling about you there were that day, so I don’t know which had made the claim about how well you rated on the Bumfort Scale. They were like happy bees around a honey pot, and you always visible, always towering over a foot above them all.

‘So, is your backside perfect?’ I remember I said.

‘It used to be,’ you dead-panned, ‘but I accidentally dropped it and now it’s got a great big crack right down the middle!’

I snorted and stuff almost came out of my nose, which wasn’t the best impression I could have made. You were grinning like the Cheshire Cat that you’d made this happen. I had to remind you of this incident a few years later, when I finally got you. I guess they all rolled into one with you, all those first meetings with girls. You claimed you were surprised you’d managed any kind of witty answer. I always emptied your head, apparently, the only girl to ever have this effect. Many was the time you wanted to come out with a slaying salvo of wit and charm, or so you claimed, but when it came to it you could only stumble and mumble at me and never get anything meaningful out. You were worried I would think you were simple. I have to say I never saw this reticence. I must have been too wrapped up in you to notice, ever in awe. I only ever saw the bluster and the good nature, in any room, in any company.

There always was an element of the contradictory about you. Gentle giant, some said, wouldn’t hurt a fly. But that night they were scrapping outside the Galleon and you stepped in to help break it up, Mad Merrin had turned on you, and the next thing, down he went. Twenty years his junior and you laid him out flat. Most folks would have thought they’d get their comeuppance down some dark alley for laying a finger on him but you didn’t back down. He even bought you a drink the following week, said he was out of line and deserved what you gave him! Your father had a reputation but that wasn’t what kept you safe. It was all you, so big and full of life itself that even when you hurt people, when you knocked them down and made them bleed, they still thanked you for it.

Jacqueline called you The Angel. I’m sure it was often those angelic looks that so many of the girls found too captivating, those blue eyes and the ever-present slight blush, as if the whole world was all slightly too racy for you.

‘Cheeks of perpetual innocence,’ your mam once said, ruffling your thick hair, but I doubt she knew the half of it. Maybe it was your size that had them swooning - the towering stature, the fact you were as wide as a house and built of beef. No tattoos either, unlike all the other lads who went to sea. Unblemished you were, smooth and toned and without an ounce of badness under the surface either, so everyone reckoned.

‘There’s The Angel,’ Jacqueline said that night, just a week or so after I’d spoken to you for the first time. You were in that same place, which might have explained why we were hanging around there also. You were leaning on the iron railings of the thick concrete harbour wall, watching the spray coming up over the breakwater. It was the first rough night of the autumn but you’d still had a couple of girls milling about you: moths around the warmth of your flame. A proper pied piper you were! We’d had to stay lurking in the shadows until the chill finally drove them off.

‘I’m glad I’m not out there,’ you said. Not many boats were going out that night. You told us you were thinking of joining your dad’s crew, becoming a proper fisherman. Of course, you’d been out on his boat countless times to learn the ropes but never as a fully paid-up member. A place aboard was to become available. You were working in the boatyard and it simply wasn’t adventurous enough for you.

‘Why not get a proper job?’ I suggested. ‘No prospective wife or girlfriend wants to have to be always scraping barnacles off your bottom, trying to keep it perfect!’

You grinned at me, holding my gaze. I think I came close to melting on the spot, which was going some in those temperatures!

‘Yeah, but the sea is in my blood,’ you said. ‘There’ll be no need for a saline drip if I’m ever in an accident!’

None of the other lads used phrases like that.

‘Who were them girls you were kissing?’ said Jacqueline, as blunt and as arch as always.

‘I weren’t doing nothing,’ you said, looking at me rather than her. ‘They were trying to kiss me, in case I decide to go to sea and that’s the last they ever hear of me.’

‘Then I think you should