‘Mind reader, are you?’ Art smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. He cupped her naked breast with his hand and marvelled at how nicely it fitted. Not too big, not too small.
‘You’re thinking that it’s time you went back to your bedroom and you’d be right because it’s late and I want to go to sleep.’
‘Is that the sound of you kicking me out of your bedroom?’ he murmured, moving in to nibble her ear and then licking the side of her neck so that she squirmed and giggled softly.
‘It’s the sound of a woman who needs her beauty sleep.’ She wriggled away from him so that she could head for the bathroom.
‘But what,’ Art heard himself ask, ‘does a red-blooded man do if he wakes in the early hours of the morning and needs his woman by his side?’
Rose stilled but when she answered her voice was still light and teasing. ‘He goes downstairs for a glass of milk?’
‘Wrong answer.’ Art heaved himself into a sitting position and pulled her towards him. ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but let’s spend the night together...and, by the way... I’d like it if you called me Art. Not Arthur...not Arturo. Art.’
ART GAZED AT the vast swathes of empty land around him. Open fields. The very same open fields that had confronted him on day one when he had arrived with a plan and a deadline.
Slight difference now. The plan and the deadline had both taken a battering. He’d slept with Rose over a week and a half ago and even as his head had urged him to turn his back and walk away, his body had argued against that course of action and had won.
They’d shared a bed every night since then. He couldn’t see her without wanting her. It was insane but whatever attraction kept pulling him towards her, it was bigger than all the reserves of willpower at his disposal.
And the land...
Art strolled to the very spot where the protesters had set up camp. There were some stragglers but most had left. He’d been busy arguing his corner whilst making sure not to stand on any soapboxes bellowing his opinions. He’d listened to everything that had been said and had quickly sussed that, however fervent they were about the abstract notion of the land being developed, when it came down to basics, the offer of those very same heartless developers doing some good for their community had won the day.
Financial assistance for the primary school; a fund towards the local library, which also served as a meeting place for most of the senior citizens; playing fields to be included on some of his land which, as it happened, suited Art very well indeed, bearing in mind his future plans for the site.
Art had advised them to contact the team of lawyers working for DC Logistics.
‘There’s always a solution when it comes to sorting problems,’ he had asserted, safe in the knowledge that they would find no hindrance to their requests. Not only was he happy to ease the situation but he was positively pleased to be able to do so because he had grown fond of all of them, had seen for himself, first-hand, how strongly they felt about the land.
In London, community spirit of that kind was noticeably absent and he’d been impressed by what he’d seen.
And, crucially, Rose had more or less conceded that it was the best solution because, like it or not, those tractors and cranes would move in sooner or later.
His job here was done and satisfactorily so.
He could be pleased with himself. He could start thinking about step two. He knew in his gut that there would be no obstacles in his way and step two had always been top of the agenda. Art might have been cynical when it came to the romantic notion of love, but familial love, discovered in the most unexpected of places, had settled in his heart and filled the space there.
He’d thought outside the box and it had paid off. Now, as he looked at his land, he realised that thinking outside the box and getting what he’d wanted had come at an unexpected cost.
Rose.
He abruptly turned away, headed for the battered Land Rover which couldn’t have been more different from his own fleet of super-charged, high-performance cars.
She’d temporarily loaned him her car.
‘I’ll be buried in case files for the next week or so.’ She had laughed, her arms wound around his neck, her eyes sparkling, her half-clad body pressed against his. ‘You’ll want to be out and about. Lord knows you’ve become some kind of mentor to half the protesters...with that promise of yours that the developers are going to meet their extravagant demands! Mind you, I’ll be pleased to have my kitchen table back.’
Art would have to come clean. There was no way around it. He couldn’t believe that he had been disingenuous enough, when thoughts had entered his head about sleeping with her, to believe that he could have a fling and walk away.
Two adults, he had argued to himself. Two consenting adults who fancied one another. What was the problem? All he had to do was make it clear to her from the very start that he wasn’t going to be hanging around and his conscience would be clear.
He’d approached all his relationships with the opposite sex like that. With honesty and no promises. If some of them had become distraught when he’d walked away because they’d been pointlessly looking for more than he had in him to give, then so be it. Not his fault. How could it have been when he’d done nothing but warned them off going down that road?
But the situation with Rose was different and that was something he had failed to factor in.
He’d conveniently whitewashed the whole business of why he had turned up, unannounced, on her doorstep into something that wasn’t really relevant—he wasn’t going to be sticking around so she would never actually discover his true identity. Therefore, why did it matter who he was?
Except it did.
And now he would have to pay the price for his not-so-innocent deception.
It was not quite six in the evening. He had spent the day partly in the library, where he had worked in pleasurable peace, and partly in a five-star hotel near Oxford, where a high-level meeting had been arranged with the CEO of a company he intended to buy.
He wondered whether his attack of conscience had been kick-started by that return to the reality of his high-powered city life. Sitting at that table, back in his comfort zone of work, business and making money...had it brought him back down to earth with a bump? Reminded him of the single tenet he had always lived by—work was the only thing upon which a person could rely?
Art didn’t know. He just knew that he owed Rose more than a disappearing act.
He made it back to her house within fifteen minutes, to find her still in her office alone, Phil having gone for the day.
Rose looked up and smiled.
He’d told her that he didn’t do commitment and he didn’t do domesticity and yet they’d cooked together and discussed everything under the sun from world politics
