Is Stephan really the man Jessica has been looking for?
BY ALISON CARTER
THAT looks good.” Jessica leaned sideways so she could get a better look at a dish being carried by the waiter. “I think I should have ordered that. Did you see the chips?”
“We can order chips, too, Jess.” Stephan laughed.
“No, it’s OK. It’s six quid anyway, just for chips.”
She shook her head, frustrated at her stupidity.
He was rich – so much richer than her that he chose restaurants according to national newspaper reviews, not because they had a free salad bar.
“Sorry,” she said, but he smiled.
Stephan was like that – laid back, patient, awesome.
“It’s lovely weather for December,” he remarked. “We should go out to the island.”
They’d met in the Welsh seaside hotel where Jessica worked seasonally.
Her cousin Polly was its manager and booked Jessica for Christmas, the Easter holidays, a long period in the summer and during October half term.
The rest of the time it was too quiet to warrant paying Jessica a wage.
In between, Jessica got what work she could back home in Birmingham.
Stephan had been a customer, buying dinner for some kind of land management people he was hiring, and one of them had said something inappropriate to her.
It was late in the evening and the man was drunk, but Stephan was not.
Immediately he asked the man, politely, to come with him to the foyer.
Jessica never learned what was said, but the man was never seen again.
It meant a lot to Jessica, and she got talking to Stephan and liked him a lot.
He was handsome, but not in the way she thought she liked – skinny and serious. He was more “country gent”, with cheekbones touched by the sun.
She thought he might have fallen in love with her, but he’d never said so.
Jessica wasn’t great at relationships. Every time she stayed with someone she ended up feeling restless. She’d notice some bloke who seemed more interesting.
“The words ‘grass’ and ‘greener’ come to mind,” Polly had said to her once, years ago.
They crossed to the uninhabited island five hundred yards off the coast.
There was a tiny ferry, but it was too late in the day, so Stephan used his own boat.
His father had died a few years ago and, at less than thirty, Stephan managed all the businesses his family had developed.
“Oh my,” he said when they’d moored and walked up the slope to where they could look at the mainland, laid out in all its glory.
“You
