were as jumpy as a cat this morning, so it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. I promise to keep my hands to myself if you do.’
‘If I do? What do you mean?’ she squeaked.
He gave a wry little laugh. ‘You think you’re the only one who gets treated like a sex object? Believe me, it makes a refreshing change to meet someone who isn’t all over me like a rash after fifteen seconds!’
Well, and who could blame them? Clare thought to herself, recognising the slight bitterness behind the apparently arrogant remark. If she wasn’t so busy saying no all the time she might well be tempted herself! She smiled at him. ‘You’ve got a deal. You cook, I’ll talk, and we can both clear up afterwards. How’s that?’
‘Great. Here we are. Hop in.’
He opened the door of a sleek red beastie, and she was instantly glad she hadn’t worn a mini-skirt.
‘Wow!’
He grinned self-consciously as he settled himself beside her behind the wheel. ‘It’s my brother’s. I have a battered old Volvo estate for dragging all the boat stuff around, but he’s in Germany for four months on business and suggested I borrow it to bolster the image!’
She laughed. ‘It works! What is it?’
‘A Porsche. Do you want the hood down?’
‘Why not? It won’t do my image any harm either!’
They laughed together, and with the touch of a button the hood folded down behind them and the June evening flooded in.
‘Let’s go, then!’
With a subtle roar, the engine leapt into life and they coasted smoothly out of the car park. Clare settled back into the soft leather seat and sighed contentedly.
When they were on the open road he unleashed the power a little and soon the wind was whipping her hair round her face and bringing the colour to her cheeks. She laughed in delight. ‘Michael, this is fabulous!’
‘Good, isn’t it? Lucky devil. I wonder if he’ll sell it to me?’
He threw her a cheeky grin, and then turned his attention back to the road. After a little while they turned off the main road and headed along a winding lane, leading eventually to another lane and thence a rutted track.
‘Where are we going?’ Clare asked, suddenly conscious of their isolation.
He pointed. ‘Over there—that little pink cottage.’
‘Goodness, it is in the wilds of nowhere!’ Clare said as they pulled up outside the cottage. It was tiny, the thatch low down on the walls arching like eyebrows over the little upstairs windows. The warm pink of the faded terracotta walls blended with the soft apricot of a climbing rose that tumbled in profusion over the front door, and more roses clustered under the little latticed windows.
‘Don’t tell me—it’s called Rose Cottage!’
He chuckled. ‘How did you guess? Come on in. Welcome to my humble abode.’
He doffed an imaginary cap and flung open the door with a flourish.
Inside it was just as charming, heavily beamed as she might have expected from a Suffolk cottage, with fascinating little nooks and crannies, and the furniture was mostly old pine. There was a Suffolk brick floor in the kitchen, and the steep staircase was tucked in under the eaves.
‘Oh, Michael, it’s lovely!’
He grinned. Thank you. You’re my first visitor—let me show you round.’
She followed him, enchanted, as he climbed the steep stairs.
‘Mind your head,’ he said as he led her on to the little landing. ‘It wasn’t built for people as tall as us, I don’t think.’ He waved his arm. ‘Bathroom here, and a bedroom at each end—neither of them exactly furnished to excess at the moment, but I’ll get there. I only took possession of it last Thursday—I should have had it early in the week but I got caught in a storm off the Scillies.’
‘The Scillies? The islands, you mean?’
He nodded. ‘Yes—I took Henrietta out there for a few days’ R and R, and it backfired on me a bit.’
Heavens, she thought, here we are, standing in the middle of his bedroom and he’s telling me all about his problems with Henrietta, whoever she is!
‘I’ll take you to see her some time—she’s very pretty, and I can handle her on my own easily unless the wind’s very fierce. She’s a bit of a handful then. You’ll like her—do you get seasick?’
It dawned on Clare that Henrietta must be his boat, and she almost laughed out loud—till she realised that the feeling she had experienced had probably been jealousy. She wasn’t sure, she’d never felt it before, and couldn’t imagine for the life of her why she was feeling it now, but life was full of little surprises …
‘No, I don’t get seasick—or I didn’t. I haven’t sailed since I was about thirteen, but I used to go out a lot with my brother before that.’
‘Snap! We had a Mirror, then a Fireball. Henrietta was my grandfather’s boat—I spent a lot of time on her with him when I were a lad, as they say.’
Their laughing eyes met, and Clare was suddenly terribly conscious of the high iron and brass bedstead behind them.
‘Why don’t you go on down and find yourself a drink? There’s white wine in the fridge, or red if you prefer, open on the side, and all sorts of soft drinks—I just want to get out of this suit and relax a bit.’
‘Fine,’ she said, a trifle breathlessly, and turned for the stairs as he stripped off his tie and kicked off his shoes. She heard them land with a thud as she ran down the stairs, and then he was humming, and she could hear drawers opening and shutting above her head as she rummaged in the kitchen for the fridge. She was still looking for it when he ran lightly down the stairs in his bare feet, clad only in a pair of old jeans that clung lovingly to every contour of his body. He was tugging on a T-shirt over his head, and his chest gleamed golden brown under the soft scatter of blond curls.
Her fingers itched to touch him, and she rammed her hands into her pockets to control them.
‘Where’s the fridge?’ she asked, her voice sounding strained to her ears.
‘Here—sorry!’ He opened a cupboard like all the others, hand-built in dark oak to match the beams, and she saw a built-in fridge tucked in behind the door.
‘How clever!’
‘It’s been well done—it belonged to an interior designer who’s gone to Scotland to escape the rat race.’
‘Rat race—here?’
He laughed. ‘Over-populated, she said. I gather their nearest neighbour up there is ten miles away. Red, white or something soft?’
‘White with something in it?’
‘Good
