this man, so it had to be there now for a reason…
‘There is more than just a mild curiosity on my part,’ he conceded grudgingly. ‘You see—’
‘Cat, what on earth is keeping you this long?’ Kate called impatiently as she could be heard walking down the hallway. ‘Really, Toby, it’s been a hard day, and—’ Kate was as surprised to see Caleb Reynolds sitting in the room with Cat as Cat had been earlier when she’d opened the door to him. ‘Mr Reynolds…?’ she greeted in a puzzled voice.
‘Miss Brady,’ he returned formally, having stood up at her entrance. ‘Although your friend and I have decided to dispense with formality and stick to first names,’ he added, once again with that charming smile.
If one were in the mood to be charmed—which Cat certainly wasn’t! Besides, that smile didn’t quite reach the hardness of those icy grey eyes…
‘Really?’ Kate gave Cat a sideways glance, obviously as confused as Cat had been by his presence here.
Although Cat was no longer as confused as she had been initially. If he thought she had forgotten his ‘secret’, he was mistaken!
‘Did you enjoy your bath, Kate?’ he enquired solicitously, his gaze mocking now.
Cat could easily guess the reason for his mockery, on two counts. Firstly, the pieces of grass that were both on the back of Kate’s top and entangled in her hair clearly showed she hadn’t been anywhere near the bath in the last few minutes. And, secondly, Kate’s blankly uncomprehending expression said she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about!
Cat had originally used the excuse of Kate being in the bath because she hadn’t wanted Caleb to suggest joining them in the garden. But Kate’s slightly dishevelled, obviously post-garden appearance simply made a liar out of her.
‘My mistake, I’m afraid,’ Cat put in sweetly, her expression deliberately bland. ‘I thought you had gone to have a bath, but obviously you haven’t finished in the garden yet,’ she said pointedly.
Kate gave her a frowning look before turning to Caleb. ‘Gardens take up such a lot of one’s time, don’t they?’ she said conversationally, her words neither confirming nor belying Cat’s statement. ‘As you’re going to find out while you’re at Rose Cottage. Unless you have someone coming in to take care of it for you?’
Cat knew that Jane’s mother always did the cleaning at the cottage, and with Adam taken care of as well five mornings a week she couldn’t help wondering what Caleb was going to find to do with his time if he passed the gardening on to someone else too. Besides coming here when he felt like it and making a nuisance of himself, that was! One male dropping in unannounced was bad enough; two was intolerable!
‘Actually, no,’ Caleb answered Kate lightly. ‘It was the fact that the cottage had such a large garden that appealed to me. We live in an apartment in London, and the doctors seemed to think that a complete change of scenery might be of benefit to Adam.’
‘So he’s going to do the gardening?’ Cat put in, with only a light veil over her sarcasm.
It was a veil that didn’t fool Caleb for a moment, and he looked at her consideringly for several seconds. ‘You don’t like me very much, do you, Cat?’ he finally murmured thoughtfully.
Like him—she didn’t even know him! But the habit he had of speaking his mind was a little unnerving, yes. Kept between the two of them, it wasn’t a problem, but with Kate present—Kate who now looked very uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken—it was a completely different matter.
‘Kate’s the diplomat in this partnership, Caleb,’ Cat returned ruefully. ‘I have better success dealing with children.’
‘As opposed to men?’ he returned softly.
‘As opposed to anyone!’ Cat snapped back, eyes flashing deeply green.
Give me a break, Kate, her expression silently pleaded with her friend; this man gave as good as he got—if not better!
‘You were about to explain your interest in seeing around this house?’ she prompted their visitor, deliberately not looking at Kate now as she heard her friend’s indrawn breath, but hoping that her friend now understood her own defensive attitude towards this man.
Caleb looked perfectly relaxed, seemingly unaware of the underlying tension in the room. ‘It’s quite simple, really,’ he replied. ‘I’m interested in this house because my great-great-grandfather was its architect.’
The two women couldn’t have felt—or looked!—more stunned if he had told them his ancestor had been Jack the Ripper!
Cat didn’t know what explanation she had been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been the one Caleb Reynolds had just given. And poor Kate seemed to be having trouble keeping up with the conversation at all.
‘Clive Reynolds,’ he explained as their shocked silence continued. ‘The house was actually named after him. His name is carved into the stonework on the front of the house,’ he added as he still received no response from either of the two women.
Clive Reynolds… He was right, it was. But time and familiarity had dulled for them the awareness of that name and a date, 1850, etched into the stone directly above the front door. Clive Reynolds. This man’s great-great-grandfather…
The surname was obviously the same, and yet…
‘What a coincidence.’ Once again Cat’s barely veiled scepticism could be heard, and the sudden hardness of his grey eyes said Caleb Reynolds was well aware of it!
‘Not at all,’ he bit out crisply. ‘I’m in the area because I have some research to do at the museum in York, but I chose this village for my stay deliberately once I realised about the house. I’m curious to know whether or not my ancestor built any other houses in the area.’
‘Doubtful,’ Cat couldn’t resist snapping. ‘It’s hardly the sort of area that could have supported two such grand houses,’ she elaborated as he looked at her icily.
‘I’m a historian, Cat,’ Caleb Reynolds told her evenly, deliberately seeming to keep all emotion from his voice. Although his eyes were a different matter: hard, glacial, narrowed to icy slits as he looked steadily at Cat. ‘But I specialise in architecture. Perhaps only naturally with an architect as an ancestor,’ he added almost confrontationally.
Cat didn’t see what was ‘natural’ about it at all; her own father trained and bred horses, but she had always been—to her father’s dismay—terrified of them. They were beautiful and powerful to look at and admire from a distance, but completely unpredictable in close proximity, she had found. Exactly like Caleb Reynolds…
She brought her thoughts up short. Really! Caleb Reynolds might be powerful and attractive, but he certainly wasn’t beautiful! What on earth was she thinking of? Or maybe she just wasn’t thinking at all… And, around this man, that could be dangerous!
He certainly didn’t look like any historian she had ever seen, on television or in the newspapers, most of them old and fusty-looking, as if they belonged in the past with their textbooks!
‘In the circumstances, I quite understand your interest in this house.’ Kate had recovered enough to be able
