‘You did that all on your own?’
She tried not to let his surprise chafe at her. Some days it still shocked the dickens out of her too.
His face tightened and he glanced around the kitchen. ‘I guess it does leave you the rest of the week to work on this place.’
Oh, he was just like everyone else! He thought her a helpless piece of fluff without a backbone, without a brain and probably without any moral integrity either. You’re useless.
She pushed her shoulders back. ‘I guess,’ she said, icing-sugar-sweet, ‘that all I need to do is find me a big strong man with muscles and know-how...and preferably with a pot of gold in the bank...to wrap around my little finger and...’ She trailed off with another shrug—an expansive one this time. She traded in a whole vocabulary of shrugs.
A glint lit his eye. ‘And then you’ll never have to bake another cupcake again?’
‘Ah, but you forget. I like baking cupcakes.’
‘And getting up at three a.m.?’
She ignored that.
He frowned. ‘Is that why you wanted to see me?’
It took a moment to work out what he meant. When she did, she laughed. ‘I guess you have the muscles, but do you have the know-how?’ She didn’t ask him about the pot of gold. That would be cruel. ‘Because I’m afraid I don’t.’ She bit back a sigh. No self-pity. ‘But no, that’s not why I asked you to drop by.’
His face hardened. ‘So why did I receive the summons? If you knew I was at Tash’s, why couldn’t you have dropped by there?’
She heard what he didn’t say. Why do you think you’re better than me? The thing was, she didn’t. He wouldn’t believe that, though. She moistened her lips. ‘I didn’t think I’d be welcome there. I don’t believe Tash thinks well of me.’
He scowled. ‘What on earth—?’
‘A while back I went into the Royal Oak.’ It was the hotel where Tash worked. Nell had been lonely and had wanted to connect with people she’d never been allowed to connect with before. For heaven’s sake, they all lived in the same neighbourhood. They should know each other. She was careful to keep the hurt out of her voice. She’d had a lot of practice at that too.
There you go again, feeling sorry for yourself.
She lifted her chin. ‘I ordered a beer. Tash poured me a lemon squash and made it clear it’d be best for all concerned if I drank it and left.’
Rick stared at her, but his face had lost its frozen closeness. ‘And you took that to mean she didn’t like you?’
She had no facility for making friends and the recent downturn in her circumstances had only served to highlight that. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘Princess, I—’
‘I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.’ She’d never been a princess, regardless of what Rick thought. ‘I much prefer Nell. And there’s absolutely no reason at all why Tash should like me.’ Given the way her parents had ensured that Nell hadn’t associated with the local children, it was no wonder they’d taken against her. Or that those attitudes had travelled with them into adulthood.
He looked as if he wanted to argue so she continued—crisp, impersonal, untouchable. ‘Do you recall the gardener who worked here for many years?’
He leant back, crossed a leg so his ankle rested on his knee. Despite the casual demeanour, she could see him turning something over in his mind. ‘He was the one who chased me away that day?’
That day. She didn’t know how that day could still be so vivid in her mind. ‘Come and play.’ She’d reached out a hand through the eight-foot-high wrought iron fence and Rick had clasped it briefly before John had chased him off. John had told her that Rick wasn’t the kind of little boy she should be playing with. But she’d found an answering loneliness in the ten-year-old Rick’s eyes. It had given her the courage to speak to him in the first place. Funnily enough, even though Rick had only visited twice more, she’d never felt quite so alone again.
That day John had given her her very own garden bed. That had helped too.
But Rick remembered that day as well? Her heart started to pound though she couldn’t have explained why. ‘Yes, John was the one who chased you away.’
‘John Cox. I remember seeing him around the place. He drank at the Crown and Anchor, if memory serves me. Why? What about him?’
‘Did you know him well?’
‘I’m not sure I ever spoke to the man.’
‘Right.’ She frowned. Then this just didn’t make any sense.
‘Why?’ The word barked out of him. ‘What has he been saying?’
‘Nothing.’ She swallowed. ‘He died eight months ago. Lung cancer.’
Rick didn’t say anything and, while he hadn’t moved, she sensed that his every muscle was tense and poised.
‘John and I were...well, friends of a kind, I guess. I liked to garden and he taught me how to grow things and how to keep them healthy.’
‘Cooking and gardening? Are your talents endless, Princess?’
She should’ve become immune to mockery by now, but she hadn’t. She and Rick might’ve shared a moment of kinship fifteen years ago, but they didn’t have anything in common now. That much was obvious. And she’d long given up begging for friends.
She gave a shrug that was designed to rub him up the wrong way, in the same way his ‘Princess’ was designed to needle her. A superior shrug that said I’m better than you. Her mother had been proficient at those.
Rick’s lip curled.
She tossed her hair back over her shoulder. ‘John kept to himself. He didn’t have many friends so I was one of the few people who visited him during his final weeks.’
Rick opened his mouth. She readied herself for something cutting, but he closed it again instead. She let out a breath. Despite what Rick might think of her, she’d cried when John had died. He’d been kind to her and had taken the time to show her how to do things. He’d answered her endless questions. And he’d praised her efforts. The fingers she’d been tapping on her now cold coffee cup stopped.
‘Nell?’
She dragged herself back from those last days in John’s hospice room. ‘If the two of you never spoke, then what I’m about to tell you is rather odd, but...’
‘But?’
She met his gaze. ‘John charged me with a final favour.’
‘What kind of favour?’
‘He wanted me to deliver a letter.’
Dark brown eyes stared back at her,
