worry about it. I’ll just need you to sign the deed of transfer some time, so that we can give it back to my father.’
‘He’ll be so upset. He really loved that house.’
‘Yes.’ Then he said, ‘It was a bit big, don’t you think?’
‘I guess he hoped we’d grow into it.’
That provoked a somewhat bleak smile. ‘We could have had a good time trying.’
She reached across, covered his hand with hers. Then she couldn’t think of anything to say that could possibly help so she got up again and went into the pub.
Walking home was a slower process than the rather breathless pace she’d set when they’d started out. It was deep twilight and Willow had no intention of racing on ahead, even if Mike had let her. But as she wove her way through the kissing gate, he caught her hand.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait for me.’ And she waited.
She wasn’t walking along that path, in front or behind him, on her own. There were too many unidentified noises, squeaks and scrapes and scurryings in the hedgerow. Maybe that was why she left her hand in his. Why she gripped it so hard, when away across the field where the ground rose to a small copse she heard a long, agonised cry that goosed her skin.
‘What on earth was that?’
‘A rabbit. The weasel eats tonight.’
Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, that’s…’
‘The food chain in action,’ he said gently as she turned to him, buried her face in his T-shirt. Rabbits, beetles, one excuse was as good as another.
Mike held her. It would be so easy to keep holding her, kiss her, forget the nightmare of the last few days. He sensed instinctively that, whether she acknowledged it or not, she wanted that too. They were close to the cottages. One kiss would be all that it took and then they’d be running for it, ripping off their clothes as they tumbled through the door. But then what?
Beneath his hand, her pulse was racing, but no more than his own. Just to hold her, breathe in the scent of her hair, tightened the hot coil of desire, the need to have her in his arms, to possess her. She was clinging to him as if to a lifeline and some reckless part of him was urging him to go for it, self-destruct.
She’d never forgive him. He’d never forgive himself. He fought the temptation. This time he promised himself, he’d get it right. This time it would be different.
This time? Who did he think he was kidding? There wasn’t going to be any ‘this time’.
Except that somehow he had to make it happen.
The how of it was beyond him right now. So he just held her, waiting for her heart rate to return to normal, waiting for her to regain her composure.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pulling back a little self-consciously when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to take the opportunity she’d given him any further. ‘In my world rabbits are cute, cuddly things on birthday cards, not some sharp-toothed creature’s dinner…’ She wiped a single tear from beneath her eye that had nothing to do with the rabbit. ‘Lord, how pathetic am I?’
‘Not pathetic. Empathetic.’ And he rewarded himself with a comforting kiss to her forehead before he put his arm around her shoulders and walked her home. He unlocked the door, turned on the light. ‘You go ahead,’ he said, as she turned to see why he hadn’t followed her. ‘I’ll just look around, make sure all the outbuildings are secure.’
She lingered in the doorway, back-lit by the kitchen light, her face in darkness. ‘Mike…’ Her voice was as full of uncertainty and need as his own heart. They had been lovers until yesterday. What had changed, after all? Take it back a couple of months to the moment before he’d proposed… And suddenly he saw the point she’d tried to make about the job not mattering. There was only one problem with that: he didn’t want to go back to a point where it didn’t matter.
His proposal might have been provoked by her unwillingness to move in with him, but the feelings he’d had that night were as strong as ever. He wanted to wake with her beside him every morning for the rest of his life. Nothing else would do.
‘I’ll see you in the morning, Willow.’
He knew she’d wanted him. Willow covered her cheeks with her hands. She’d thrown herself at him like a dehydrated duck diving into a muddy puddle. And he’d rejected her.
All that made her embarrassment bearable was her certainty that he hadn’t found it easy to walk away. Why else would he have decided to stay outside, checking up on the outbuildings, putting himself beyond temptation?
This wasn’t about a lack of desire, a lack of need for each other. That was as strong as it ever had been. It was about more fundamental problems that they hadn’t ever addressed.
She turned on her phone in case he’d sent a message. Nothing. She keyed in ‘Help!’
Then erased it.
Maybridge. That was where she’d find the answers to the questions that had kept her awake all night long. Willow stood back to get a better view of the wall she’d spent the morning retouching, but it wasn’t the paint job that occupied her. It was Maybridge.
‘You’ve done a good job.’ She turned as Mike joined her. ‘Coffee?’
‘Mmm, thanks.’ She took the mug and quickly looked back at the wall. His bare, sweat-slicked torso was far too exciting for ten o’clock on a Monday morning. Far too exciting for a relationship that had run its course and was going nowhere. ‘It’s a bit bare, don’t you think?’ Then she blushed, but Mike didn’t appear to notice her confusion as he stood back and contemplated her work.
‘It could do with something to break up all that blue,’ he said after a moment. ‘A few clouds, maybe.’ There was something about the way he said it that made her look back at him.
‘Into every life a little rain must fall?’
‘It seems to work that way, although I think the kids who come here will have probably experienced a deluge rather than a shower. Maybe they’d prefer a big smiley sun.’
‘If we had both,’ she pointed out, ‘we could have a rainbow.’
‘For hope?’
‘We all need cartloads of that.’ But what, exactly, was she hoping for? ‘A bright green hill with some daisies would be good, too,’ she said quickly, before the eager little brain cells, positively panting with hope, urged her to fling herself at him, tell him that she’d made a mistake, and didn’t care about her career, only about him. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one who’d decided at the last moment that plighting their troth wasn’t such a great idea.
‘Just to be sure we keep our feet on the ground?’ he enquired, with the slightest hint of irony.
‘I think we’re probably the most grounded people in a hundred-mile radius.’ Why else would she be having such a civilised conversation with a man who’d jilted her? Who she’d jilted? ‘Maybe
