clung to the branch.
‘You’ll have to unhook me. Don’t let it go!’ she warned as she lowered it towards him. She was considerably higher now and she had to lean down a long way so that he could detach the little creature with the minimum of damage to her skin.
It was a mistake.
While she’d been focused on the kitten everything had been all right, but that last desperate lunge had sent everything spinning and, before she could utter so much as a fudge balls, she lost her balance and slithered off the branch.
Adam, standing directly beneath her, had no time to avoid a direct hit. They both went down in a heap, the fall driving the breath from her body, which was probably a good thing since there was no item in her handmade confectionery range that came even close to matching her mortification. But then embarrassment was her default reaction whenever she was within a hundred feet of the man.
‘You don’t change, Mouse,’ he said as she struggled to catch her breath.
Not much chance of that while she was lying on top of him, his breath warm against her cheek, his heart pounding beneath her hand, his arm, flung out in an attempt to catch her—or, more likely, defend himself—tight around her. The stuff of her most private dreams, if she discounted the fact that it had been raining all week and they were sprawled in the muddy puddle she had taken such pains to avoid.
‘You always did act first, think later,’ he said. ‘Rushing to the aid of some poor creature in distress and getting wet, muddy or both for your pains.’
‘While you,’ she gasped, ‘always turned up too late to do anything but stand on the sidelines, laughing at me,’ she replied furiously. It was untrue and unfair, but all she wanted right at that moment was to vanish into thin air.
‘You have to admit you were always great entertainment value.’
‘If you like clowns,’ she muttered, remembering all too vividly the occasion when she’d scrambled onto the school roof in a thunderstorm to rescue a bird trapped in the guttering and in danger of drowning, concern driving her chubby arms and legs as she’d shinned up the down pipe.
Up had never been a problem.
He’d stood below her then, the water flattening his thick dark hair, rain pouring down his face, grinning even as he’d taken the bird from her. But then, realising that she was too terrified to move, he’d taken off his glasses and climbed up to rescue her.
Not that she’d thanked him.
She’d been too busy yelling at him for letting the bird go before she could wrap it up and take it home to join the rest of her rescue family.
It was only when she was back on terra firma that her breathing had gone to pot and he’d delivered her to the school nurse, convinced she was having an asthma attack. And she had been too mortified—and breathless—to deny it.
He was right. Nothing had changed. She might be less than a month away from her thirtieth birthday, a woman of substance, respected for her charity work, running her own business, but inside she was still the overweight and socially inept teen being noticed by a boy she had the most painful crush on. Brilliant but geeky with the family from hell. Another outsider.
Well, he wasn’t an outsider any more. He’d used his brains to good effect and was now the most successful man not just in Maybridge, but just about anywhere and had exchanged the hideous flat in the concrete acres of a sink estate where he’d been brought up for the luxury of a loft on the quays.
She quickly disentangled herself, clambered to her feet. He followed with far more grace.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘No bones broken?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, ignoring the pain in her elbow where it had hit the ground. ‘You?’ she asked out of politeness.
She could see for herself that he was absolutely fine. More than fine. The glasses had disappeared years ago, along with the bad hair, bad clothes. He’d never be muscular, but he’d filled out as he’d matured, his shoulders had broadened and these days were clad in the finest bespoke tailoring.
He wasn’t just fine, but gorgeous. Mouthwateringly scrumptious, in fact. The chocolate nut fudge of maleness. And these days he had all the female attention he could handle if the gossip magazines were anything to judge by.
‘At least you managed to hang onto the kitten,’ she added, belatedly clutching the protective cloak of superiority about her.
The one thing she knew would make him keep his distance.
‘I take no credit. The kitten is hanging onto me.’
‘What?’ She saw the blood seeping from the needle wounds in his hand and everything else flew out of the window. ‘Oh, good grief, you’re bleeding.’
‘It’s a hazard I expect whenever I’m within striking distance of you. Although on this occasion you haven’t escaped unscathed, either,’ he said.
She physically jumped as he took her own hand in his, turning it over so that she could see the tiny pinpricks of blood mingling with the mud. And undoing all her efforts to regain control of her breathing. He looked up.
‘Where’s your bag?’ he asked. ‘Have you got your inhaler?’
Thankfully, it had never occurred to him that his presence was the major cause of her problems with breathing.
‘I’m fine,’ she snapped.
For heaven’s sake, she was nearly thirty. She should be so over the cringing embarrassment that nearly crippled her whenever Adam Wavell was in the same room.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk you home.’
‘There’s no need,’ she protested.
‘There’s every need. And this time, instead of getting punished for my good deed, I’m going to claim my reward.’
‘Reward?’ Her mouth dried. In fairy tales that would be a kiss…‘Superheroes never hang around for a reward,’ she said scornfully as she wrapped the struggling kitten in her jacket.
‘You’re the superhero, Danger Mouse,’ he reminded her, a teasing glint in his eyes that brought back the precious time when they’d been friends. ‘I’m no more than the trusty sidekick who turns up in the nick of time to get you out of a jam.’
‘Just once in a while you could try turning up in time to prevent me from getting into one,’ she snapped.
‘Now where would be the fun in that?’ he asked, and it took all her self-control to keep her face from breaking out into a foolish smile.
‘Do you really think I want to be on the front page of the Maybridge Observer with my knickers on show?’ she enquired sharply. Then, as the teasing sparkle went out of his eyes, ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll survive the indignity.’
‘Having seen your indignity for myself, I can assure you that tomorrow’s paper will be a sell-out,’ he replied. She was still struggling with a response to that when he added, ‘And if they can tear their eyes away from
