‘You were saying about Liz,’ he said, dragging the conversation back on track, and she nodded.
‘She was a tutor at college—I got to know her quite well during my course, and we became friends. She was fed up with lecturing, though, and since her girls were growing up she felt she could take on something else, with commitment in the holidays.’
‘Hence the tearoom?’
Annie nodded. ‘She suggested we got together and started a little business, and we talked about it, and then the lease on that one came up. It was ideal, so handy for her, and I wasn’t very far away. It had always been a little café, but it had a dreadful reputation and it was in dire need of sorting out. We ripped out the kitchen, rearranged and refitted it and were going to open in the autumn.’
‘Not the best time, surely?’
‘Well, not really, but with all the work to do on it we wouldn’t have been ready for the summer, and I was already committed to going to France for September and October—I’d got a job cooking for the harvest season on a vineyard in the Rhône valley, to get some experience of French country cooking—not the fancy, twiddly stuff I’d done at college but real, proper food. And we thought the winter would give us time to find our feet.’
‘And did it?’
‘We never got the chance to find out. We decided Liz should open it when school started, working on the principle that business would take a while to pick up and it wouldn’t be too busy until I got back, and that way Liz could have the last summer holiday with her children. We didn’t realise it was going to be her last summer ever.’
She broke off, not saying any more, and he waited a while before prompting her.
‘What happened?’ he said softly, and she lifted a shoulder in the way he remembered so well and carried on, her voice quiet and slightly expressionless.
‘She had a brain tumour. She died that February. She’d already opened Miller’s, of course, while I was away, and I ended up running it and looking after her and the girls, but it wasn’t easy, not when I was pregnant as well.’
His heart hitched against his ribs. Now he was getting somewhere. ‘Pregnant?’ he said carefully. ‘That wasn’t on the agenda, was it?’
Her laugh was gentle but self-deprecating. ‘Not exactly. France was—a disaster. I fell in love with one of the estate managers, a guy called Etienne Duprés—stupid, stupid thing to do, but I was young and impressionable and he was gorgeous—good-looking, virile, sweep-you-off-your-feet type. He certainly swept me off mine.’
‘So Roger wasn’t Stephen’s father?’
She shook her head. ‘No—good heavens, no. He was married to Liz—devoted to her.’
‘Sorry. I just assumed Stephen had come along later, after you were married,’ he lied, and wondered why he didn’t choke on it.
‘No. He was Etienne’s child.’
And stupidly, hearing her actually say the words meant an enormous amount. Even though he knew—had concrete proof, in fact—that Stephen was his child, to hear her acknowledge it gave him a curious sense of satisfaction.
‘So why didn’t you marry this Etienne guy?’ he prompted, and held his breath. What would she say? What did she know? He wasn’t sure. All he’d been able to find out was that she’d returned to England and had a child. His child. So he held his breath and watched her carefully. Even so, he almost missed the flicker of pain in her eyes.
‘He died. He and another man who worked with him. They were beaten up. Their bodies were found a few miles away in the town. I never did know why—I don’t suppose there was a reason, but the French authorities stonewalled me when I tried to find out more. They must have known something was going on, I suppose. It was on the news the other day, the vineyard—something to do with human trafficking. I don’t know if you saw it.’
He shrugged, wondering what she’d say, how she’d felt about seeing it. He knew how he’d felt—sick, for the most part.
‘Rings a bell. What about it?’ he said casually.
‘Claude Gaultier—he was the owner—was running some kind of slave labour and prostitution racket. He was a gang-master, I think is the term. I suspect Etienne and his friend must have got themselves involved somehow.’
Clever girl. ‘Wrong place, wrong time?’ he murmured, watching her carefully still, and she nodded.
‘Maybe. It might have been nothing to do with it, of course; I could just be letting my imagination run away with me. Anyway, I never got a chance to see his body. They said it had been taken away by his family. So that was it. For a while I thought I’d die, too, but you don’t, do you? You just go on, day by day, on autopilot. I came back, found that Liz was terminally ill and got on with it.’
‘And then you married Roger,’ he said, and waited.
She hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes. He was a wonderful man—a brilliant father, even though he was ill. I never thought I’d get over Etienne, but he helped me to see that there was more than one kind of love.’
‘You miss him.’
It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway, turning the knife a little further. ‘Roger?’ she said, and smiled tenderly. ‘Yes, I miss him. Every day.’ And then she added unexpectedly, ‘Sometimes I’m so lonely, and I wonder if this is all there is now, all there’s going to be—’
She broke off, colouring. ‘I can’t believe I’m telling you this,’ she muttered, turning back to her chopping board. She attacked the vegetables, slicing and chopping them viciously and scraping them into a big pot. Then, throwing in a slosh of olive oil, she turned on the heat and started to stir them, all without saying another word.
He waited her out, nursing his tea and watching her while he dealt with the fact that she still missed this man who’d taken what should have been his place in her life, and after a few minutes she crumbled a stock cube into the mix, poured water over the top and came and sat down.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t normally dish out personal information like that,’ she said at last, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes, and with a quiet sigh he reached out a finger and tilted up her chin, forcing her to face him.
‘It’s OK,’ he murmured. ‘You’ve been through hell in the last few years. You needed to let off steam, and it’s going nowhere. I don’t gossip.’
She coloured again, nodded and found a little smile. ‘Thanks.’
‘Any time. How old are you, Annie? Late twenties, early thirties?’
The smile faltered. ‘Thirty.’
‘And you’re alone,’ he murmured, hearing his voice turn husky. ‘That’s such a travesty. You should have a lover, Annie—someone to share the nights with.’
The colour returned in force, but she met his eyes defiantly. ‘So who do you share your nights with, Michael? I’ve never heard Ruth talk about a Mrs Harding.’
He gave a huff of laughter. Oh, he shared his nights, all right—with the woman opposite him, in his dreams. But there was no way she was knowing that, not yet. ‘Touché. You’ve got me there. But I’m different. I’m used to it. It’s my choice.’
She studied him thoughtfully. ‘Is it? Or are you just as lonely as anybody else?’
He held her eyes with effort. ‘I don’t see it as loneliness,’ he lied. ‘I prefer the word solitude. It helps me write.’ But she just arched a brow and went back to her soup while the tension hummed between them like a bow-string.
He forced himself to relax, to take a nice, steady breath, to drink his tea.
‘Thought any more about the alterations?’ he said at last, and she paused in her stirring and tasting and looked at him over her shoulder, spoon poised over the pot.
‘Not really. I just wish I knew what your motives were.’
No way, he thought. He was going to hell for this and all the other lies he was telling her just now, but the
re was no help for it. ‘No motives,’ he said evenly. ‘I just want to keep my tenants happy, and now seems a good time to make changes, with you the only one it affects.’
She gave him a doubtful look, sloshed something into the soup and stirred, tasted again and put the lid on.
‘I could do with more storage.’
‘OK.’
‘And the garden, if I could see a way. And the alcove you were talking about.’
‘Or you could move the whole thing next door into the antique shop, fit its store room out as a kitchen and have loads of room, and a door to the garden.’
She blinked and sat down opposite him as if her strings had been cut.
‘Move it next door?’
He shrugged. ‘Whatever. It’s possible at the moment to do anything. That’s all I’m saying. Think out of the box.’
Her smile was wry. ‘Michael, I can’t afford to think out of the box.’
‘I could go in with you.’
‘What—take turns to make soup and cakes and load the dishwasher? I don’t think so.’
‘I could be a silent partner.’
‘I don’t need someone else sharing the profits. I don’t make enough as it is.’
‘You might make more with more room.’
‘It would lose its intimacy. I think that would be a mistake. And anyway, I’m running at full stretch as it is. I only get help for a few hours on some days. I can’t afford to expand.’
‘You should charge more. You’re too cheap. You could add fifty per cent—’
‘And lose all my regulars? I don’t think so.’
He conceded the point, prodding the issue around a little further just for the sake of hearing her voice. He didn’t care what she did about the business. He hoped, rashly, that it would all be academic in a few weeks anyway, if his plan worked out.
She stood up again, tested the soup, poured it into a liquidiser, tested it again, stirred in something that looked suspiciously like cream and set the bowl down on the table between them.
‘So what is it?’
She shrugged. ‘Winter vegetable medley?’ she suggested with a grin, and he chuckled.
‘Winging it?’
‘Absolutely. Just wanted to try a few new flavours. It’s a sweet potato base—that’s where the colour comes from. I tell you what, if it’s OK I’ll let you name it.’
‘You’ll have to try harder than that to get the garden,’ he growled softly, and she laughed.
He held out his bowl to her, struggling to regain control of his emotions. Her laugh had haunted him, a lighthearted ripple of sound that he hadn’t heard for years, and it went straight to his heart.
He put the bowl down, watched her as she ladled some into her own bowl and then looked at him expectantly.
‘Well, go on then—taste it,’ she prompted, but he shook his head.
‘After you,’ he said, his voice a little tight and gruff, but it was a miracle he could talk at all. He certainly couldn’t eat. The soup had to wait a moment until he’d shifted the lump in his throat.
* * *
It seemed so odd having a man in her kitchen again. No, scratch that. It seemed odd having a man like this in her kitchen. At all. Ever.
Roger had never made her feel like this, not even remotely. He’d never threatened her physical space, never crowded her, never made her aware of every hair on her head and every inch of her body.
Not that Michael was doing anything to make her nervous. He didn’t have to. He just had to sit there and breathe, and it was enough.
Crazy. She’d only ever felt like this once before, and she’d been twenty-one and innocent. Now she was thirty—and only marginally less innocent, she conceded. Still, she dealt with flirts every day in her work, and never had a problem.
Michael hardly flirted, though. He just talked to her, watched her working, focused on her with that intensity that was so darned unnerving. And he seemed to have an extraordinary capacity to get her to spill her guts.
She couldn’t believe what she’d told him. Too much information, she thought. Crazy woman. You’ll frighten him away.
And suddenly, she realised that that mattered, much, much more than it should have done.
‘Is it OK?’ she asked, to fill the deafening silence, and he nodded.
‘Excellent.’
He’d seemed reluctant to start eating, but once he had, his spoon dipped rhythmically into the soup and she refilled his bowl twice before he put the spoon down with careful deliberation and shot her a wry grin.
‘That was delicious. Thank you.’
‘Name?’
He chuckled, making shivers run over her skin. ‘You’ll have to give me time. How about Annie’s Winter Warmer?’ he suggested after a moment, his head cocked on one side and his eyes fixed on her face.
She shrugged. ‘Could do. Mmm. Yeah, maybe—all I have to do is remember what I put in it.’
No mean achievement considering she hadn’t been able to concentrate!
‘Quiche?’ she suggested, wondering if he’d be able to fit anything else in, but he nodded.
‘Please. I’m starving.’
‘Still?’
He laughed softly, rippling her senses. ‘I’ve been working hard. There’s a lot of me.’
‘I noticed,’ she said, but she didn’t explain which bit of his remark she was referring to, and thankfully he had the sense not to ask.
Instead he looked down at the table, lining up his bowl and mug and knife with careful precision, and she grabbed the chance to move without him watching her and stood up, clearing the table and bringing out the last few slices of quiche.
‘There are two sorts. If I put it all out, you can choose.’
‘You’re not having any?’ he asked, but she shook her head.
‘I’m full. I had a scone earlier. I need to make some things for tomorrow, but you carry on, please.’
And if she didn’t have to sit opposite him she might have some chance of slowing her heartbeat down before it went off the scale…
* * *
So what had she noticed?
The fact that he’d been working hard, or the fact that there was a lot of him?
Ego made him plonk for the latter, and he’d had to duck his head to hide the smile of satisfaction.
Always possible, of course, that she was simply talking about the fact that he’d been making a hideous racket overhead for most of the past two days.
In fact, that was the most likely. It had been hard to miss.
His smile faded, and with a quiet sigh he put his ego back in the box and set about demolishing the quiche.
She was busy on the other side of the kitchen, working with swift efficiency born of long years of practice, and he watched her in silence as he ate.
She was still beautiful, her body perhaps a little thinner but softly rounded where it mattered. She could do with putting a little weight on, but if he was guilty of forgetting to eat, he was certain she was, too. Either that or she was often too busy to stop.
There was a clatter at the door, and it swung open, only the coats on the back stopping it from banging against the wall.
‘Hi, Mum—oh. Hello. Who are you?’
He felt his palms break out, his heart pick up, and he pushed away his plate and stood up slowly.
‘I’m Michael—and you must be Stephen. It’s good to meet you—I’ve heard a lot about you.’
And extending his arm, he waited, his breath jammed in his throat, until Stephen reached out and, for the first time in his eight and a bit years, he placed his hand trustingly in his father’s.
Emotion locked his throat solid. Dear God, he thought. He’s
the spitting image of me at that age. He’s got my eyes. She’ll see it—notice it instantly when we’re side by side.
But she didn’t.
She wiped her hands and turned, hugged her son, caught his coat before it slid off the table to the floor and hung it on the back of the door.
‘So how was chess club?’ she asked him, and he sighed, his face glum.
‘Useless. I can’t play. Dad was going to teach me some moves, but—’
He shrugged expressively, and Michael’s heart contracted. Poor little tyke. Obviously Annie wasn’t the only one to miss Roger. There was more to being a father than biology. The acknowledgement was curiously painful.
‘Never mind,’ she was saying, squeezing his shoulder comfortingly. ‘Perhaps we can get a book from the library?’
‘I could teach you,’ he found himself saying in a strangled voice. He cleared his throat. ‘If your mother doesn’t mind?’
He looked into her eyes, saw the relief in them and felt the tension ease.
‘Could you? Do you have time? You’re so busy—’
‘Not too busy to do that.’ Never too busy for my son.
‘Well, that would be wonderful. Thank you. We’ll have to arrange a time.’
‘We could do it now!’ Stephen said, brightening, but she shook her head.
‘No. You’ve got school tomorrow and it’s already eight. You need to have a bath and get to bed. Have you had enough to eat?’
He nodded, and she kissed him and sent him upstairs to run his bath.
Michael tucked his chair under the table, feeling for his car keys in the pocket of his jeans, suddenly needing air. ‘I should be off—leave you to get on,’ he said, and he wasn’t sure but there might have been a flicker of disappoint
ment on her face.
Or maybe he was clutching at straws.
‘Have you had enough to eat? There’s more, if you’re still hungry—’
‘Absolutely not,’ he said, summoning a smile. Any more food would have choked him, but that was nothing to do with the food and everything to do with her and his son and the emotion jamming his throat. ‘Thank you, that was lovely, but I really ought to be going.’
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