cycled along that path every day this week,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he was right, ‘and I don’t think you’re going to stop without good reason.’
‘Archie is a great deterrent,’ she managed.
‘Not to those of us who know his weakness for apples. A weakness I’ve seen you take advantage of more than once this week. Being late appears to be something of a habit with you.’
He’d seen her? When? How long had he been back? More importantly why hadn’t she heard about it when she called in at the village shop? There might be few people left who would remember bad, dangerous, exciting Hal North, but the arrival of a good-looking man in the neighbourhood was always news.
‘Were you lying in wait for me today?’
‘I have better things to do with my time, believe me. I’m afraid this morning you just ran out of luck.’
‘And here was me thinking I’d run into you.’ He moved his head in a gesture that suggested it amounted to the same thing. ‘So? What are you going to do?’ she demanded, in an attempt to keep the upper hand. ‘Call the cops?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going to issue an on-the-spot penalty fine.’
She laughed, assuming that he was joking. He didn’t join in. Not joking…
‘Can you do that?’ she demanded and when he didn’t answer the penny finally dropped. A fine… ‘Oh, right. I get it.’
He hadn’t changed. His shoulders might be broader, he might be even more dangerously attractive than the boy who’d left the village all those years ago, but inside, where it mattered, he was still the youth who’d poached the Park game, torn up the park on his motorcycle, sprayed graffiti on Sir Robert’s factory walls. Allegedly. No one had ever caught him.
He was back now as gamekeeper, warden, whatever and he apparently considered this one of the perks of the job.
She shrugged carelessly in an attempt to hide her disappointment as she dug around in her bag, fished out her wallet.
‘Ten pounds,’ she said, flicking it open. ‘It’s all I have apart from small change. Take it or leave it.’
‘I’ll leave it.’ Her relief came a fraction too soon. ‘I’m looking for something a little more substantial by way of payment.’ What! ‘Something sufficiently memorable to ensure that the next time you’re tempted to ride along this path, you’ll think again.’
She opened her mouth to protest that parting with all the spare cash she had to see her through until the end of the month was memorable enough, thank you very much. All that emerged was another of those wordless huffs as he pulled her against him, expelling the air from her body as her hips collided with hard thighs.
For a moment she hung there, balanced on her toes.
For a moment he looked down at her.
‘What would make you think again, Claire?’
Had she thought there was anything soft about those eyes? She was still wondering how she could have got that so wrong when his mouth came down on hers with an abrupt, inescapable insistence.
It was outrageous, shocking, disgraceful. And everything she had ever imagined it would be.
CLAIRE Thackeray abandoned her bike, her shoe and, as her hair descended untidily about her shoulders, a scatter of hair pins.
Hal knew that he would have to go after her, but it hadn’t taken her stunned expression, or her stiff back as she limped comically away from him on one shoe to warn him that laughing would be a mistake.
It was as clear as day that nothing he did or said would be welcome right now, although whether her anger was directed at him or herself was probably as much a mystery to her as it was to him.
The only thing he knew with certainty was that she would never again ride her bike along this path. Never toss an apple—the toll Archie charged for letting her pass unmolested on her bike—over the hedge.
‘Job done, then,’ he muttered as, furious with himself, furious with her, he stepped down into the ditch to recover the shoe she’d left embedded in the mud. He tossed it into the basket on the front of her bike, grabbed the fishing rod he’d confiscated from Gary Harker and followed her.
It was the first time he’d lost control in years and he’d done it not just once, but twice. First when he’d kissed her, and then again as her unexpected meltdown had made him forget that his intention had been to punish her. Punish her for her insulting offer of a bribe. Her pitiful attempt at seducing what he knew out of him. Most of all, to punish her for being a Thackeray.
He’d forgotten everything in the softness of her lips unexpectedly yielding beneath his, the silk of her tongue, the heat ripping through him as she’d clung to him in a way that belied all that buttoned-up restraint.
Which of them came to their senses first he could not have said. He only knew that when he took a step back she was looking at him as if she’d run into a brick wall instead of a flesh-and-blood man.
Any other woman who’d kissed him like that would have been looking at him with soft, smoky eyes, her cheeks flushed, her mouth smiling with anticipation, but Claire Thackeray had the look of a rabbit caught in headlights and, beneath the smear of mud, her cheek had been shockingly white.
Her mouth was swollen but there was no smile and she hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t given him a chance to say… What?
I’m sorry?
To the daughter of Peter Thackeray? The girl who’d been too good to mix with the village kids. The woman who, even now, down on her luck and living in the worst house on the estate, was still playing the patronising lady bountiful, just as her mother had. Handing out charity jobs to the deserving poor. Sending the undeserving to the devil…
That wasn’t how it was meant to be.
But she hadn’t waited for an apology.
After that first stricken look, she’d turned around and walked away from him without a word, without a backward glance as if he was still the village trash her father—taking his cue from Sir Robert—had thought him. As if she was still the Cranbrook estate’s little princess.
The battered wheel ground against the mudguard and stuck, refusing to move another inch. Cursing the wretched thing, he propped it up out of sight behind a tree, then grabbing her shoe he strode after her.
‘Claire! Wait, damn it!’
* * *
Claire wanted to die.
No, that was ridiculous. She wasn’t an idiot kid with a crush on the local bad boy. She was a responsible, sensible grown woman. Who wanted to die.
How dare he!
Easy… Hal North had always done just what he wanted, looked
