by Rose Amberly
Evans set a faster pace than usual as they circled towards the private drive. George wanted to turn back and see if Millie was standing at one of the upstairs windows, but too soon the cart reached the main gates. They turned right over the arched stone bridge towards the village road, and the trees hid the house from view.
He had the strong impression Millie had something to tell him. Or ask him.
Fields rolled past as the horse clip-clopped along the road. Farmers were out dealing with the damage from the storm. Fallen discovery apples covered the ground in the orchard, they’d destined for cider. Or cooking.
There would be apple pie at the house tonight.
He could call Millie from London, even from Brussels. Would that be good enough? No. Something needed to be discussed face to face.
He watched two women fill wooden crates with the apples, rich yellow flushed with red.
“Evans?” George’d been struggling with himself from the moment he’d left the house. Now, he settled the dispute.
“Ay?” Evans looked over his shoulder.
“Can you turn the horse round and take me back? I’ll have to delay another day.”
* * *
Later that night
George lay in bed, listening to the antique clock in the gallery. Cuckoo, cuckoo, and then: Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
He kicked the covers off him and jumped out of bed. Two o’clock in the morning, everyone else should have been long asleep by now; where was Millie? He thought he’d made it very clear—as clear as it could be made with other people around—she was never alone. He hadn’t noticed before because he’d been trying to avoid her, but she seemed popular with absolutely everyone. If she wasn’t busy with his father, somebody in the house wanted her opinion on something, Mrs B needed help, Joanie wanted her to taste something, Liam had a question.
Finally, George had gone into the kitchen, pretending he wanted another slice of apple pie, and found Millie with the women finishing off their dinner. So he’d said, louder than was strictly necessary, that he was going to his room and would stay there reading for the rest of the night. He’d made sure to catch and hold Millie’s eye as he spoke. He couldn’t have been clearer without actually miming what was on his mind.
Fine. If Millie didn’t come to him, he would go to her.
Although, on reflection, best not to be caught coming back in the morning wearing little more than a happy expression. He pulled on his robe and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. The click of the latch sounded loud in the dark.
He walked the length of the corridor, his feet padding softly, but in the near silence, everything seemed loud: the barely perceptible creak of the wood under his feet, the ticking of the clock. Of both clocks, because the large pendulum downstairs groaned through its swing from side to side. The sound of snoring from his father’s room stopped him just outside the door. He had no idea his father snored, but then he’d never seen his father sleep, not for twenty years. It wasn’t very loud, but the sound travelled through the bedroom door.
George stood in the corridor, a few doors away from Millie’s room, fingering the box of condoms in his pocket. His feet wanted to continue to her. And not only his feet, all of him. He’d never wanted a woman so much in his life.
He turned back towards his own room.
He’d thought of nothing but making love to her all day and half the night. But not here, not where they might be overheard. Millie deserved better, and his first night with her should be more than a furtive shag in his father’s house.
He glanced at his wrist watch. The Habring Doppel didn’t glow in the dark like a cheap toy, but the faint starlight from the window picked out the pale platinum markings. Good, three hours to sleep. He knew Millie’s routine—she always went out at five for an early-morning walk. Today, he thought as he closed his bedroom door, shrugged out of his robe and climbed between his sheets, today Millie would not walk alone.
SEVENTEEN
The Marina, 6am.
“Are you sure we can’t be seen from the house?” Millie shaded her eyes against the early-morning sun climbing slowly over the wooded hill in the distance.
They were walking on the wide stone wall by the marina at the bottom of the garden.
George pulled her to his side again, his arm around her shoulders. “Can you see the house from here? Because if you can’t see them, how can they see us?”
“If someone were to stand on the roof.” She could just see the cast stone balustrade on the edge of the parapet.
“At six in the morning?” He was highly amused by her worries. “Millie you’re a twenty-eight-year-old woman, you’ve already been married for ten years and nearly divorced, and it’s the twenty-first century. I think it’s all right if you have a sex life.”
“Yes, but until we’re dating officially, this just looks like…” She didn’t know how to explain.
In reality, she was also not entirely at ease with the tentative nature of this relationship. Why couldn’t they date officially?
“Looks like what?” he asked, placing a soft kiss on her cheekbone.
She decided to change the subject. “And I’m not twenty-eight. I’ll be twenty-nine in a month.”
George stopped walking to look at her. A slow smile widened across his handsome face. “What would you like for your birthday?”
The respect of being acknowledged, of not being a secret girlfriend. She kept the thought to herself, but she underestimated him.
George turned her around to face him. The sea, clear blue, sparkled in the morning sunlight behind him. “Millie, what’s wrong?” His eyes searched her face.
She didn’t want to answer; there was no way she could explain what she really felt without sounding whiny.
“Millie?” He stroked a finger down her cheek and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I’m not sure how to say it.”
“Say it whichever way. I’ll do my best to understand.”
“I sometimes feel—no, not sometimes, just the last day—I feel as if I’m having an affair, like I’m a secret mistress.”
The beautiful grey eyes sparkled silver. George pulled her into a fierce hug. “Oh, Millie Summers, you are going to be the death of me.” He laughed softly into her hair. “It is I who’s having the affair. Your divorce hasn’t come through yet.”
“Are you serious?”
“I don’t want to be the kind of man who takes a married woman from her husband. I’m not my father.”
Millie extracted herself from his arms. “You’re hardly taking me from him, and my divorce is done, bar the shouting.”
“Then I’d prefer to wait for ‘the shouting.’ When do you get your decree absolute?”
“Any day now.” She thought for a second. “Tenth of August, I think.”
George resumed walking, his hand warm on her shoulder, his thumb rubbing her collarbone under her sleeveless blouse. “So if it’s just a couple of weeks, I’d sooner wait. And after that, we’re free to date openly.”
“It’s a bit rich coming from you. Two days ago you had, er... other entanglements?”
“But I’m now untangled.”
“Yeah.” That other unknown woman was now nursing a broken heart. Millie could imagine all too clearly how losing George would break her own heart. “I’m sorry about that,” she said again, with feeling.
“Millie, you never stop surprising me. Why are you sorry?”
“You’re not the only one with scruples. I don’t like to break up someone else’s relationship.”
“You didn’t break us up. I did. I ...” A seagull flew up from the marina and landed on the wall in front of their feet. They stopped, waiting for it to fly away. “I have issues with women.”
She laughed. “Is this supposed
to reassure me?”
He was staring at the seagull. “What I mean is, I have issues with needy women. I’m tired of always being the answer to someone else’s needs.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when Millie started laughing again. She slipped out from under his arm and ran a few steps ahead, startling the seagull into flight. Then she sat down on the wall, still laughing.
“I’m sorry,” she said between giggles. “This is so sad.”
“I can tell; your whole body is shaking with giggles of grief.”
“Sorry, nervous laughter.” She wiped her eyes.
He went over and joined her, sitting on the edge, both their feet hanging a little above the water. “I’m glad my dating troubles amuse you.”
“It’s just that you throw sunflower seeds at the ground and wonder why big yellow plants come up in May.” She leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “If you will insist on offering help, on rescuing ladies all the time, how on earth are you going to attract self-sufficient women?”
“I don’t insist on helping.” He didn’t. Did he?
Millie tilted her head. “Think of the first day we met. You were rushing to catch a flight, but you spent half an hour ordering me tea and parking my car. The second time we met, you advised me not to sleep in the sun and carried me off a rock.”
“You’d have preferred me to let you fall face down, I suppose?”
“The time after that, you offered me legal assistance. You wanted not only to take Henry to the cleaners but to kill him. And when I was late in Blue Sage Bay, you dropped everything and came looking for me.”
He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand in a eureka gesture. “I had no idea I behaved so badly. What an arsehole? You should leave me immediately.”
It produced the desired effect. She reached up and kissed him again, another of her quick kisses. But this time, before she could stop, he grabbed her and held her closer.
The woman had the most kissable lips in the world. He parted them with the tip of his tongue and tasted her mouth. That’s why he’d stayed another day. That’s why he’d cancelled two flights and kept his office waiting. Because she tasted of sunlight, and morning and spring and summer and, he deepened the kiss—she tasted of love and happiness.
She pulled away with a nervous glance behind her towards the house.
“Why are you so worried about being seen with me?” he joked, but a part of his mind was stuck on the thought. Love and happiness? Did he really just use the L word? What was happening to him?
“No, it’s not you.” Millie’s voice brought him back from the uneasy thought. “It’s just—what will they think?”
“Who?” he asked, glad to change the subject.
“Mrs B, Joanie, everyone.”
“Everyone in the house isn’t going to be so rude as to question you or me about something we have not chosen to tell them. It’s our business.”
“I couldn’t bear it. Please, George. I couldn’t work with your father knowing he thought me some floozy who slept with her boss’s son behind his back. And no”—she touched her fingers to his lips to stop the words he was about to speak—“before you say anything else, please, accept that it is how I feel even if you don’t understand it.”
Actually, he did understand it. He understood it very well, and it was his fault. He was confusing her with his delaying excuses about waiting for her divorce. True, he never wanted to be another Du Montfort who slept with other men’s wives, but this was hardly the case here. And it wasn’t the real reason he didn’t want to make a public statement.
What he wanted to do—and he’d lain in bed thinking about it half the night—was take Millie with him to London. Not something to jump into lightly before silencing his doubts. Not doubts about Millie; he trusted her completely. It was himself he doubted.
Was he acting on impulse? Getting carried away? He’d already broken many of his carefully constructed rules. Too many. What if he was wrong, acting under the influence of lust and infatuation? What happened when he woke up and discovered he didn’t love her after all? Book her a ticket back to the island so she could pick up her old job again? Go back to taking orders from his father as if nothing had changed?
What he needed was a couple of weeks away from this incredible, beautiful woman who made him see life through her eyes. He needed time and distance to think, to be sure he knew his own mind.
He never made promises unless he knew he would keep them. So, for now, no promises, no public announcements.
“George?” His name in her mouth sounded like a kiss. “You’re quiet. Have I upset you?
* * *
She didn’t mean to upset him, but if she hadn’t broken the kiss, God only knew what they’d be doing now.
“You could never upset me. I was just…” His gaze lingered on her lips in a way that was very dangerous. Then he looked away at the distant horizon where the sea met the sky. “I was just thinking about what you said. That I rescue women too much.”
“Don’t get me wrong. It’s very nice, but maybe by being so helpful, so responsible, you are…”
“A bastard?” He nudged her foot lightly with his.
“It’s false advertising. You attract the wrong customers.” She nudged his foot back. The tide had dropped lower in the time they’d sat here, and the calm, blue water lapped at the wall nearly two meters below their feet.
“So if I become an unhelpful selfish git, I can meet the perfect woman?”
Millie’s liked the words perfect woman, and she liked sitting so close next to him, their bodies touching from knee to shoulder. “What do you consider a perfect woman?”
This time, his foot pushed hers much harder. She looked at his face and found him grinning.
“Don’t fish.” His eyebrows rose meaningfully.
“I’m not—”
“Millie, I grew up on my grandfather’s boat. I know fishing when I see it.”
“Don’t I deserve a compliment?”
“Compliments that’re asked for are worthless. You’ll have to wait for one that is offered freely.” He pushed himself up on the wall and offered her his hand to help her up.
It wasn’t a compliment she was after. She wanted a declaration, a commitment. Of course it was early for them, but he was leaving this afternoon, and he was leaving her with no answers. He must know what she wanted to hear, she could see it in his eyes; he just wasn’t saying it.
“I’m going to walk up to the house. Will you give me a ten-minute head start? I’d rather we didn’t walk in together.”
“It’s all right. I’ll go to my office. I need to phone London and see about rebooking all my appointments.”
She didn’t ask him how long he would be away, she absolutely refused to sound needy. He said a free compliment was the only kind worth having. By the same token, a free commitment. She would not push him for a return date. Let him tell her when he chose to.
Instead she asked, “What time are you catching the ferry?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
Tomorrow? “Not today?”
“I want more time with you. See, I’m following your advice, being selfish.” He took her hand and kissed her fingertips. “Can you have dinner with me in the village tonight?”
“You mean something like a date?”
“If you would do me the honour?”
“Didn’t you say we weren’t doing that yet?”
“It’s dinner. I don’t plan to throw you on the table and ravish you in front of the other diners.” Then he turned her hand over to kiss her palm, and her resolve melted under his warm lips; tremors ran up and down her body.
“Is this why you’re staying an extra night?”
“Hmm,” he said, his lips pressed into her skin for a second. “I wanted a repeat of our dinner a month ago,
to make up for interrogating you.”
“So you’ll behave better?”
“If you’ll let me, I’ll do my best to behave worse.” The slow circling thumb on the inside of her wrist didn’t leave much room for thinking. “This time, when your shawl slips and reveals your cleavage, I’m going to look and not feel guilty. I’ll feel lucky and grateful and in awe. And”—he moved half a step, no more, but she could smell his warm skin—“when we walk back, in the dark, under the stars, I’m going to carry you, and you won’t refuse and—”
“I’ll see you at seven.” Millie snatched her hand back and ran up the lawn towards the house. She wouldn’t melt in front of him. Not even if the heat in his voice, his seductive voice, promised everything she’d dreamed and wished for and convinced herself she’d never have.
He hadn’t said the words, but he would. Soon. She knew it because the look in his eyes said it all. George was hers. He really was hers.
Millie burst through the side door and into the kitchen to find coffee brewing and Joanie taking a tray of croissants out of the oven.
Life sometimes was just too wonderful.
* * *
Six days later. La Canette, ferry terminal
You are insane.
It had been the happiest time of his life.
Stark staring mad.
It was a week—less, six days that felt like six months in heaven.
Every morning you packed to go, and every afternoon you cancelled for yet another day.
He was going now, wasn’t he? They were at the ferry terminal, Millie quietly sitting next to him on the bench.
Can’t you stop touching her?
“Are you worried about your work?” she asked softly.
“No.”
No? It’s Sunday night. The most important negotiation starts at nine tomorrow morning, and you have not prepared. Have you lost your mind?