by Liz Fielding
She swallowed, stunned at how much that had hurt. But then it was meant to. She knew all the moves.
‘You prefer coffee?’ She didn’t make the mistake of offering to make him some, but said, ‘I’ll remember that for next time. In the meantime, if you need anything you know where to find me.’ And without waiting for him to respond, to tell her to get lost, stay away, she walked back out into the garden.
Back to the witch hazel she’d been rescuing when he’d kissed her.
Her head told her to keep going, but she refused to leave a job half done and she knelt down to finish her rescue mission. Only when she attempted to unravel the tightly coiled stem of the bindweed did she discover that her hands were shaking so much that she was forced to tuck them beneath her arms to hold them still.
Dom picked up the toast and, tight-lipped, he tossed it in the bin. Then he picked up his bags and carried them upstairs to the bedroom he’d shared for one sweet, perfect year with Sara.
Last night the only scent he’d been aware of was the lingering ghost of her perfume clinging to her clothes.
He dropped his suitcase and strained to find it again, to cling to that last lingering essence of the woman he loved.
But it evaded him. Today, the only smell was that of a house locked up and unlived-in for too long. And he opened a window.
CHAPTER THREE
“Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins
DOM LINGERED at the window to breathe in the fresh, green scent of the garden, of newly turned earth, and looked beyond the walls to where the picture-perfect village was laid out before him.
Nothing had changed.
Not the carefully mown section of the village green where cricket was played every weekend in the summer before the teams retired to the pub to continue their rivalries on the dart board. Not the rougher grassland of the common, where willows dipped over the stream-fed pond that teemed with tadpoles in the spring, moorhens nested and a donkey was, even now, cropping grass on the end of a long tether.
It could even be the same donkey.
It was exactly the right place to bring up a family, Sara had said, utterly charmed from the moment they’d set eyes on the place. It was so safe.
But nothing was that perfect and every Eden had its serpent. Hidden, insidious dangers. He looked down into the wreck of the garden. It had taken everything from him. To look at its beauty had been an agony and he’d run from it. But Sara had loved it and to see it like this, neglected, overgrown, was somehow worse.
A movement on the green caught his attention and he looked away, grateful for the distraction. At least he was until he realised that it was Kay Lovell heading for the village-shop-cum-post-office-cum-everything, to fetch a pint of milk, or the Sunday newspaper.
The warmth of her smile reached his window as she stopped to speak to someone, exchange the time of day. No prizes for guessing the subject of their conversation. The news that the house was on the market would be the hot subject of gossip this morning. By tomorrow, he had no doubt, everyone in the village would know that he was back, courtesy of his blackberry-raiding neighbour. Back home and losing his mind.
He watched her continue on her errand, long-limbed and lithe, striding across the green, and wondered again how he could ever have mistaken her for Sara. They were not in the least bit alike.
It had been just a trick of the imagination, tiredness perhaps, that had fooled him. Or maybe just that she was there, in Sara’s place, doing the things that she would have been doing…
He wrenched his gaze away from her and looked back at the garden. From above, he could clearly see the peach tree freed from its bramble prison, the fresh, clear patch of earth around the shrub where she’d been weeding, and, furious with himself—with her—he clattered down the stairs, raced down the garden, sliding the bolt into place on the gate before turning and leaning with his back to it, eyes closed, while he regained his breath. He didn’t want her, or any more sightseers, invading the privacy of the garden. It wasn’t fit to be seen. And with a roar of anguish he grabbed the agent’s For Sale sign and wrenched the post out of the ground.
Kay dropped her newspaper on the dresser. With a rare morning to herself, she’d planned a lazy hour with her feet up with the colour supplement and the gardening pages, but now she was home she was all of a twitch and there was no way she could sit still.
Never mind. She’d work off her nervous energy doing something practical. She had pastry to make, harvest pies to fill and freeze, and there was no time like the present.
Forget Dominic Ravenscar, she told herself as she washed her hands and got out the scales. Forget the way he’d kissed her. It wasn’t her he’d been kissing, she reminded herself as she shovelled flour from the bin onto the scales with hands that weren’t altogether steady.
He’d thought she was his wife. A ghost, for pity’s sake.
And she’d been tempted to play amateur psychologist? She should be grateful that he’d made it absolutely clear that he never wanted to set eyes on her again.
She took a deep, steadying breath, then dumped another scoop into the scales.
What the devil did she think she could do in ten minutes with a cup of tea and a slice of toast, anyway? She wasn’t Amy Hallam with her gift for seeing through to the heart of the matter. For making you see it too.
She stared blankly at the pile of flour and tried to recall what she was doing.
Pastry.
She was making pastry.
Right.
‘He couldn’t have made it plainer that he didn’t want me anywhere near him or his garden,’ she said. Asleep on top of the boiler, Mog wasn’t taking any notice, but talking to the cat had to be better than talking to herself. Marginally.
‘He didn’t actually tell me what I could do with my “tea and sympathy”,’ she continued, despite the lack of feline encouragement. ‘Not in so many words. But then why would he bother, when his actions spoke for him? Loud and clear.’
The cat opened one eye, sighed and closed it again.
‘OK, so you had to be there.’
And what exactly was she complaining about, anyway? So he’d poured away the tea she’d made him. That was rude by anyone’s standards, but, to be fair, he hadn’t asked her to make it. Hadn’t asked for her concern, either. She’d foisted herself on him and he’d made no bones about unfoisting her in double-quick time.
She should be relieved. She’d got momentarily carried away with noble aspirations that were not in the least bit appreciated. She was the one who was out of line. Luckily, he had made it easy to walk away with a clear conscience.
‘I should be relieved,’ she said. She was relieved.
‘It isn’t as if I don’t have anything better to do.’ She fetched the butter and lard from the fridge and began to chop it up into small pieces with rather more vigour than was actually called for. ‘I’m a single mother with a child to raise. A cat to support. I don’t need any more complications in my life.’
Chop, chop, chop.
Not that Polly was anything other than a joy. But still. Parenthood, even with a complete set of parents, required absolute concentration. Alone it was…
Chop, chop. The snap of the heavy blade against the board happily cut short this train of thought.
One kiss and suddenly she felt lonely? When did she have time to get lonely?
‘I’m a single mother with a child to raise and a business that’s going nowhere,’ she informed the cat briskly.
Chop.
The cat yawned.
‘And let’s not forget the part-time job in the village shop. That’s more than enough work for one woman. I don’t need Dominic Ravenscar and his problems complicating my life any further.’
Chop, chop, chop, chop.
‘As for his garden—’
But Mog, realising that she wasn’t going to get any more peace, stood up, stretched, then jumped down and walked out of the kitchen,
her tail aquiver with disgust.
‘Oh, great. The least you could do is lend a sympathetic ear in return for all the meaty chunks you stuff down. No more top-of-the-milk treats for you, you ungrateful creature.’
All she got in reply was a disdainful flick of the tail as Mog headed towards a patch of catnip growing near the path.
‘And I’ll dig that up, too,’ she warned.
The cat, recognising an empty threat when she heard it, nuzzled the plant, a blissful expression on her face.
‘I’ll dig it up and plant something useful. Onions. Garlic, even,’ she threatened. ‘Then you’ll be sorry.’
Which was another thing. Any time and energy she had to spare were needed for her own garden. You couldn’t make prize-winning strawberry jam unless you put in the time at the strawberry beds.
And even if she wanted the chance to clear up the Linden Lodge garden—OK, she did want it, rather desperately—she didn’t have time to take on the role of Dominic Ravenscar’s personal agony aunt. Always supposing he wanted her to. Which he plainly didn’t.
That was time-consuming. Amy had spent hours just being there for her. Days. Weeks. Even now all she had to do was pick up the telephone…
Not that she had to. Polly’s godmother usually found an excuse to drop in most days. Sometimes, it felt as if she was being checked up on… She backed away from that ungrateful thought even as it surfaced, dealing with the remainder of the shortening in double-quick time.
It wasn’t just that she was busy. She was a single mother living in a gossipy village and, having worked hard to gain the respect of the community, she was going to take good care to keep it.
A broken-hearted widower popping in day and night for tea and sympathy—no matter how innocent his needs, how noble her motives—would soon set the tongues wagging in the post-office queue.
Which was quite enough of Dominic Ravenscar.
She picked up the sieve and realised she hadn’t got out the mixing bowl.
Normally the most organised person on earth, she was all at sixes and sevens, her hard-won calm shattered by a kiss that had, for a moment, brought every long-suppressed womanly feeling bubbling to the surface.
She took another deep breath. ‘Forget it,’ she said. To herself this time, since the cat’s listening skills were clearly limited to the sound of a tin being opened. But then, that was how it was. Just her and Polly. And she wasn’t about to burden her daughter with her loneliness. Or disturb the even tenor of their lives by getting involved with a man. ‘Forget him.’
Easier said than done, and she only just managed to field the heavy bowl as it slipped through her buttery fingers.
Dominic wanted to roar his anger, his pain, to the heavens, but what would be the point? Who would be listening?
Instead, he flung down the For Sale board and walked back to where Kay Lovell had been working. She must have stayed to finish the job, he realised, looking at the delicate shrub, freed from its prison of bindweed, standing in its own clear patch of earth.
Definitely not listening.
But although her barrow and tools were gone, she’d left something behind. By accident or intention?
He bent to pick up her pocket knife from where it had fallen in the crushed grass, immediately quashing the suspicion. Why on earth would she want an excuse to return?
He’d been ill-mannered—
No, that was too kind.
He’d been damned rude—not unusual; it was a well-rehearsed method for ridding himself of anyone who attempted to get close—when it didn’t take half a brain to see that an apology would have been wiser. More than damned rude. He’d as good as accused her of stealing valuable plants when what she’d actually been doing was rescuing one of Sara’s precious shrubs from the stranglehold of neglect.
Slander was the least of it, though. Considering he’d just kissed her with an intimacy that had left him shaking to his soul, he was probably fortunate that he wasn’t looking at a charge of assault. The small matter of her trespass wouldn’t save him.
The truth of the matter was that he’d made a total fool of himself, yet she hadn’t reacted with horror, hadn’t betrayed the slightest sign of embarrassment or annoyance, even when he’d shouted at her as if it had somehow been her fault that she wasn’t Sara. Instead she’d shown concern, made him tea and toast, offered him a jar of her home-made marmalade, for heaven’s sake. Exactly the kind of thoughtful, caring neighbour they’d anticipated finding in the perfect English village.
The kind of person who helped themselves to blackberries growing wild in your garden, but then did a little gardening to leave it looking better than she’d found it. As if she were fifty, rather than somewhere in her mid-twenties.
Of course, if she’d been a middle-aged do-gooder he wouldn’t have kissed her. Nor would she have responded with such melting warmth. That had been rather more than neighbourly. As was the vital, urgent way his body had reacted to the taste of her mouth, the softness of her lips as they’d parted beneath the onslaught of his need, his yearning to take her, there in the long, soft grass.
He could almost believe that she would have been a willing surrogate, surrendering to his clamouring need. And his body, so long dormant, only half alive, quickened at the thought.
Kay set the bowl carefully on the table, washed her hands and, after a couple of deep breaths, continued with the task she’d set herself, refusing to succumb to a fit of girlish trembles over a kiss.
Double-checking the weight. Putting a jug of water in the fridge to chill. Shaking out her fingers to relax them. If she was knotted up with tension the pastry would be like lead. She’d already forgotten the salt. As she reached for it, her elbow caught the edge of the scales. It would have been wiser to let it fall; that way the mess would have been confined to the table.
Her wild grab to save it made things ten times worse as it flew into the air and the flour exploded in a white, choking cloud.
‘Oh…dandelions!’ she yelled, flapping her hand around in an attempt to clear the air, but only making things worse, and she stumbled outside into the garden, coughing and spluttering, her eyes watering.
She wiped them on her apron. Blinked. Then forgot to breathe at all as she saw Dominic Ravenscar standing at her gate. Tall, dark and, from the way her heart rate accelerated, extremely dangerous to her peace of mind, despite the fact that he was now safely clad in a pair of faded jeans and a polo shirt.
As if she hadn’t already discovered the danger. Why else was she trembling?
For a moment neither of them spoke.
‘I wanted to—’
‘I had a bit of—’
They both stopped.
Kay swallowed, said, ‘I had a bit of an accident with some flour.’
‘I would never have guessed.’
He wasn’t just plain rude, then. He did sarcasm, too. Great.
‘Clown face, huh?’ she said, lifting her forearm to her cheek in an attempt to brush the worst of the flour away, but probably only making things worse. ‘Is this a social call or did you change your mind about the strawberry jam?’ she asked, rather more sharply than she’d intended.
So much for her empathy skills.
‘No, thank you. I do, however, owe you an apology.’
Kay bit back the urge to fill the silence with an assurance that it was OK. Forget it. He’d had a shock and she understood.
He’d been rude. Damn rude. So she held her peace and waited.
‘And I thought you might be looking for this,’ he said, taking her gardening knife from his pocket and holding it up so that she could see it.
She felt her cheeks flame up—just to complete the clown image—as she hoped against hope that it wasn’t her precious knife but another one, exactly like it. And how likely was that? But she slapped at the pocket in her cargo trousers where she always kept it, anyway. One thing had to go right today.
It was empty.
Of course.
As a moth
er she’d learned to curb the language she’d learned in the terrible months when she was alone, replacing the forbidden words with the names of the more irritatingly pernicious weeds in times of extreme provocation or stress. There were plenty of them to choose from. But for once she was left speechless.
Dropping her precious knife looked so much like some deliberate ploy, an excuse to pay a return visit. He could take his pick of reasons for that.
Frustrated single mother looking for an advance on his early-morning kiss.
Meddling busybody eager to get stuck into someone else’s problems.
Desperate jobbing gardener hoping for work.
He’d certainly never believe it was unintentional. In his shoes, she wouldn’t believe it either.
“Chickweed” didn’t cover this one. Neither did “dandelions”. This was a fully blown “ground elder” moment because of the three she suspected that he was most likely to believe that she was some desperate female looking for a repeat performance of this morning. In view of her enthusiastic response.
She only hoped that he wasn’t right. That subconsciously she hadn’t—
‘May I?’ he enquired, rescuing her from the nightmare scenario of her own thoughts, as he indicated the gate. He didn’t wait for an invitation, but opened it, walked up the path towards her and came to a halt a few feet away.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘What for?’ Oh, dumb question!
‘This morning.’
Her hot cheeks, which had begun to cool, flamed again.
‘I shouldn’t have suggested you were stealing plants,’ he said.
Oh. Right. That was bad. She cleared her throat. Then, before she could manage an answer, she had to clear it again. ‘I can understand why you’d be suspicious. Not too many people break into gardens to do the weeding.’
For a moment he stared at her, then he said, ‘No, I don’t suppose they do.’
Well, that fell flat. He was supposed to laugh. At least smile. Considering she’d been so gracious.
‘I apologise for tipping away the tea, too. It was…’
Since being gracious hadn’t made much of an impression and he appeared to be at something of a loss for an appropriate word, she supplied the one she thought fitted the situation best. ‘Petty?’