‘I am making sure you do as I say. Sit down and I’ll make the sandwich for you. Tell me what you want in it and point me in the direction of the bread.’
‘I…’
‘You look exhausted. You’ve obviously been through one helluva long day. Now do as I say.’
‘Or else what?’ Sara flung at him. Their eyes clashed and she was mortified to find that she couldn’t seem to stop looking at him. Up close, she could smell the fresh, clean scent of him, mingled with the erotic tang of sheer masculinity. It filled her nostrils until she felt as if she was going to faint. Instead, she blinked and clung on rapaciously to her pride. She didn’t need this. She didn’t need some man, a perfect stranger, to waltz into her house and try and give her orders, even if those orders were issued for her own benefit. She had had to fend for herself from a young age and she had carried on having to do it right the way through pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood.
‘Oh, all right,’ she snapped, just to get him to move away from her.
‘Good.’ James pushed himself up but continued to look down at her. ‘Now, where’s the bread?’ he repeated.
‘Bread bin on the dresser.’ The dresser had been Freddie’s. Sara herself had not possessed any such thing when she had lived in London. The kitchen in her flat had been all chrome, granite and smooth cherry wood. An old pine dresser would have been ludicrously inappropriate, but she had since discovered that it was an extremely useful item of furniture. She had kept Freddie’s mismatched crockery in place, stashing her own out of sight, and there was a growing pile of Simon’s things on the surface, stray colours, bits of Lego, various action-hero dolls in strangely contorted positions.
‘This bread’s mouldy,’ James said, holding up the plastic bag.
He looked so ridiculous that she had to stifle a smile that crept up from somewhere and threatened to chisel away at her defences.
‘Do you know how to make a sandwich?’ she asked curiously. ‘Have you ever made a sandwich in your life before?’ He just didn’t look the sandwich-making type.
‘I happen to be a very good cook, actually. You haven’t eaten any of this today, have you? Is there another loaf somewhere? No? Then I’ll just have to make do, and before you start protesting, my original order to sit down still applies.’ He tossed the bread in the bin and did a swift inventory of the modest kitchen, noting the uneasy mingling of her own things amongst Freddie’s.
‘You really don’t have to,’ Sara said automatically, but lord, it felt good to take the weight off her feet and have someone else do something for her for a change. She rubbed her hand across her eyes and stretched out her long legs.
‘Tell me about London,’ James said, pulling out a chopping board and then gathering what vegetables he could muster from the basket by the dresser. Everything, he noticed with interest, was as Freddie had left it. Either she had possessed surprisingly little herself or else could not be bothered to install her own things. Which said what? he wondered. ‘What did you do there?’
‘Where did you learn to cook?’
James glanced over to her. She had rested her head back against the chair and her eyes were closed, as if she was simply too weary to keep them open, and for the first time since he’d arrived he felt a pang of guilt at having foisted his company onto her at nine in the evening. Then he reminded himself that she would have had to eat anyway, and she had actually done quite well from him considering he was here cooking up a pasta dish for her, not an activity he was known to do for any woman.
‘At the hands of my mother during the school holidays,’ James informed her, allowing her change of topic to ride. For the moment. ‘She’s Italian and prides herself on her culinary skills. As soon as I could hold a sharp knife, I was given things to chop.’ His eyes flitted over to find that she was staring at him, and for no logical reason, because he was vastly accustomed to being on the receiving end of women’s stares, he felt himself stiffen in response. ‘And as soon as I was tall enough, I was taught how to use the Aga.’
‘Your mother was a chef?’
‘My mother was a model from Naples who met my father in London. Much to her agency’s disgust, he charmed her into marrying him after a shockingly brief whirlwind romance and removed her to the back of nowhere, where she flourished. She relished breezing into the lives of all the locals, who had never met a real Italian before and had certainly never had one live in their midst. She held huge parties in winter and taught the wives how to cook homemade pasta. After a couple of years they were eating out of her hand.’
Sara listened to the smile in his voice and felt her heart contract. Whatever else she thought of him as a man, and cooking her a meal would do nothing to alter her opinions, he loved his mother deeply and that counted for a lot.
‘Hence,’ he told her, ‘my cooking skills.’
‘And I always thought that it was the other way around,’ Sara said, ‘the woman stuck at home cooking the food while the man just did whatever he damn well pleased.’
‘Has that been your experience?’ James asked casually, sliding his eyes over to her and taking in the way her body language altered and her face became watchful and closed.
The thought of drawing out whatever story she had to tell, finding out what the hell made her tick, coursed through his veins in a sudden, exhilarating rush. It was a sensation so alien to him that he belatedly reminded himself of the Rectory, which was, after all, the prize to be won.
‘I never asked you whether you were married,’ Sara said, surprised to find that she had automatically assumed that he wasn’t when she should have assumed just the opposite. ‘Would your wife be happy about your cooking food for me?’ she continued slowly, trying to picture the sort of woman he would be married to. Beautiful, blonde and brainless, presumably. She had learnt over the years the better-looking and more powerful the man, the less they wanted a wife who could compete with them. Not restful enough.
‘You insult me,’ James said coldly. ‘If I were married, I wouldn’t be here. I would be with my woman.’
The way he said that, the casual male acceptance of possessing a woman the way he might possess a piece of furniture, should have had every liberated bone in her body rushing to form a picket line, but instead she felt a searing heat rip through her.
‘Cooking for her?’ Sara asked lightly, to stop herself from analysing her reaction which didn’t make sense.
‘Not necessarily,’ he said with lazy amusement. ‘I might find other things to do in a kitchen that don’t necessarily involve food.’
Sara’s stomach curled warmly at the blatant image he had casually tossed at her. ‘Well,’ she tried to gather her scattered wits and speak in a normal voice, ‘at any rate, whatever you’re cooking smells very good.’
‘And it will taste even better,’ he assured her, spooning pasta onto a plate and pouring sauce over it straight from the saucepan. It was a rich sauce which he had concocted using a handful of ingredients which hadn’t appeared to be dead or in the process of dying, like the three tomatoes he had uncovered next to the onions.
He placed the plate in front of her. ‘Now eat.’
‘You like giving orders, don’t you?’ But her mouth was watering and she dived into the food with enthusiasm, not realising how hungry she had been until she saw the bottom of the plate.
‘I prefer to see them as instructions.’
‘And do you give instructions to all the locals?’ she asked, scraping some of the fabulous tomato sauce onto her spoon and relishing it.
‘To the locals? Why would I do that?’
‘Because you live here?’
‘I have a house here and my mother lives here.’
Sara looked at him over the rim of her spoon. ‘And where do you live?’
‘In London.’
‘Ah. That makes sense.’
The shutters were back up, he saw. She carefully closed her fork and spoon and took her plate to the sink, offering him the unrevealing view of her
back as she washed the crockery and placed it on the draining board next to her.
‘And why does that make sense?’
She turned around and perched against the sink, supporting herself with her hands on either side of her, her fingers curled over the edge of the counter.
‘I thought you were a little too urbane for around here,’ she said. ‘A little too sophisticated.’
‘Should I take that as a compliment?’
‘You can take it any way you want to, although it wasn’t meant as one.’
‘I presume you have something against urbane, sophisticated men?’ James stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Has that got anything to do with Simon’s father, by any chance?’
The silence stretched tautly between them until Sara forced herself to smile with tight politeness at him. After all, he had cooked her a meal.
‘Thank you so much for cooking for me. It was delicious.’
‘Most sincerely spoken.’ James walked slowly towards her and the closer he got, the tenser she became, until he was standing inches away from her. Then he reached out and caged her in with his hands, leaning towards her so that their faces were only inches apart. ‘But you haven’t answered my question.’
‘And I don’t need to!’ she flared angrily. ‘My life is none of your business. I’m a very private person and I intend to stay that way.’
‘Then, lady, you came to the wrong place. Because I, for one, intend to get right down to the bottom of you.’
He stood back and walked towards the kitchen door. ‘We’ll meet again.’ And he meant every word of it. Without even realising it, she challenged him, and he had never been able to resist a challenge.
CHAPTER THREE
THERE was no need to drive to the nearest sizeable town for her shopping, even though she was sorely tempted to do just that, if only so that she could savour the anonymity which she now found that she perversely craved.
Nestled cosily against the vast backdrop of mountains was the local village. Sara, with one eye on the map next to her and the other on the twisty road, rounded a bend straight into suburbia.
From his car seat in the back, Simon was peering through the window in apparent fascination at the scenery. So fascinated, in fact, that his mouth was parted to accommodate a thumb he had forgotten to suck.
And yes, she had to admit that the scenery was spectacular. From the Rectory to the small town, there were times when the winding road almost seemed to be an insolent intrusion into Mother Nature. Every so often, a sudden bend in the road would offer a tantalising glimpse of flat, glassy water in the distance. She had no idea whether this was an estuary or a loch but, whatever it was, Simon had been enthralled. She, slightly less so. The more magnificent the landscape, the more she longed for the concrete jungle in which she had spent all of her twenty-six years. Noise pollution, air pollution and having to make do with window-boxes in place of a garden had never seemed more enticing.
‘Houses!’
‘At last,’ Sara muttered. They had passed a few big old houses on the journey but these were real houses with real roads that did real things, like branch out in various directions. ‘I was beginning to think that we had been transported into the Twilight Zone.’
‘What’s the Twilight Zone?’
‘Should we just drive straight through here until we get to a proper town,’ Sara mused aloud, ‘or face it?’
‘I’m thirsty.’
‘Then I guess we’ll face it.’
The local village turned out to be bigger than she had expected. Not quite the cluster of basic shops, leaning shoulder-to-shoulder against one another so that the owners could while away their time gossiping outside. The flat white fronts and grey stone facdes of the houses, which sprang out from the main street, eventually gave way to small shops offering everything from fly-fishing equipment to guided tours. Further along Sara came to the central square, dominated by a statue of whose identity she had no idea, although his warrior-like bearing didn’t suggest the local poet. Cars were neatly parked in slots in front of the monument and spreading around the square was a further assortment of shops, bigger and less picturesque than their counterparts further down the road.
She pulled into a parking space, manoeuvering her small black car until it was resting snugly between a four-wheel-drive on one side and weathered pick-up truck on the other.
‘Right,’ she said, fetching Simon out of the car and looking around her with some interest. ‘We can get lost here.’
‘Why would we want to get lost?’ he asked in a bewildered voice, and she squeezed his hand gently.
‘It’s just a saying. Now, where first? Supermarket? Quaint craft shop with hand-knitted jumpers? Pharmacy to check out the medicines for you just in case you get another chest infection. Or maybe just an ice cream before we start doing anything at all?’
This wasn’t going to be as bad as she had feared, Sara thought as they headed for the nearest tea shop. She wouldn’t quite be able to lose herself here, but at least she wouldn’t be singled out as the intruder who had gone to live at the Rectory. Perhaps, she told herself, she could see this as a sort of short holiday. Stay until the middle of August, perhaps, admit the mistake she had made and then head back down south with her tail between her legs. They wouldn’t have to return to London. They could live somewhere just outside, somewhere as peaceful as this place without being quite as scarily remote.
She was so busy turning her thoughts over in her head that she failed to notice the significant hush that greeted her breezy entrance into the shop.
She focused and then saw what she had missed when she had first entered, with Simon jabbering away about what flavour ice cream he wanted while she frowningly chewed over thoughts of flight in her head.
All heads were turned in their direction. A table of six elderly women seemed particularly interested. Even the ruddy-cheeked, fresh-faced girl behind the counter had stopped what she had been doing to stare.
Sara ventured a weak smile, her eyes skittering away from the gang of six sitting by the window with their cups of tea and little delicate plates of scones and cream.
‘A table?’ she asked in a lame voice. ‘For two?’ She could hardly believe that she was the same assertive woman who had once been a powerful career woman.
‘You must be the new girl at the Rectory!’ The booming voice stopped her in her tracks and forced her to look across at the six women. ‘We’ve all been dying to meet you! Have we not, ladies?’
‘Come, my dear, and let us have a proper look at you and your delightful little boy!’
Sara helplessly looked at the girl behind the old-fashioned wooden counter, who shot her a sympathetic smile.
‘I…I…’ she stammered, making her way to the table.
‘Naturally we were curious about this relative of Freddie’s. The old rogue never breathed a word about having a niece. Did he, ladies?’
‘You poor thing. Could you not get away from that big old place a little sooner? Heaven knows, you must have been up to your elbows in it! And you with a wee lad as well to look after.’
‘Would that be why we haven’t spied you in town before?’
‘I…I…’ Sara repeated weakly.
‘And what’s your name, child? I bet you’ve come here for an ice cream. This place makes the best ice creams in Scotland!’
‘And you should know, Angela. You eat far too many of them for your own good.’
‘Now, dear, why don’t you pull up a chair and we can all have a cosy little chat.’
‘I…well…’ Sara licked her lips nervously, while Simon hesitantly accepted a teacake from one of the ladies and began chatting in his low, childish voice to her.
‘You might be able to help us! We’re trying to sort out the summer fête at the manor. Some fresh input might be just what is needed, would you not agree, ladies? And no, Valerie, we are not going to be accommodating your daughter’s suggestion about a disco. For a start, Maria w
ould go mad!’
‘Well, well, well…’ a familiar velvety voice drawled from behind her and Sara felt as though fingers had lightly slithered up her spine, making her pulses race. ‘I see you’ve been caught by the local witches.’ There was a wicked grin in his voice when he said that, and Sara didn’t need to turn around to imagine the expression on his face. One of utter charm. She could see it in the way the six ladies tittered. ‘Be warned, you may not escape this place in one piece.’
‘Now, now, young man!’
‘Where’s your mother, James? She said she would be here by eleven. I’m very much afraid she’s missed the first pot of tea.’
‘Trouble with one of the gardeners. His daughter’s been admitted into hospital, it would seem.’
‘That would be young Emma. Baby’s on its way, poor thing.’
One of the gardeners? Sara wondered whether she had heard wrong. She had gleaned that the man lived in a big house and was doubtless wealthy or else how could he have a place in London as well, but how big was his house if he needed more than one gardener to control the lawn?
Suddenly she didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to feel his breath against her averted face, because he was standing so close to her that she could. Nor did she want to find herself wondering about him. She already knew enough.
‘I… If you don’t mind, I have a thousand things to do before I go home, and…and…’
‘You’ve frightened her,’ he said on a low laugh, and Sara had the impression that in some peculiar way he was toying with her.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she snapped, whipping around to look at him. Her blazing eyes made little impact. He continued to smile in amusement and had not even been surprised into stepping back. She felt engulfed by his physical presence and hurriedly spun back round so that she was looking at the women, although she knew that her cheeks were burning.
‘I really don’t mean to be rude, but…but Simon, my son, is just getting over a chest infection and I wanted to try and make it to the pharmacy to buy a few things for him.’
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