by Liz Fielding
Amy had tried to warn her that the situation was explosive; if she hadn’t gone quite so far as to declare that it would all end in tears, her restrained silence had been a master class in eloquence.
But had she been listening? No. Well, yes…but all she’d heard was the doubt in Amy’s voice. Or had it been fear that she’d get hurt? Or, worse, that Polly might suffer from any emotional backlash? She had every right…
She’d just have to be more careful in future. No touching. Not even thinking about touching. Definitely no tingling.
She’d just get on with the job, work at getting her fledgling business off the ground and into the air. And she’d be herself. A good neighbour. Maybe that would be enough.
Kay’s confused train of thought was distracted by a basket tucked under the bench in her back porch. She put Sara Ravenscar’s notebooks on the bench and pulled it out.
There was an envelope tucked into the handle, but she didn’t need a note to tell her who had left it. It was one of the expensive gift baskets from the “Amaryllis Jones” aromatherapy range, produced by Amy’s company and sold in the chain of shops she controlled. Although she always went to London on a Monday, she’d still found the time to call and make her peace…
She withdrew the card and read, “Kay, darling, you might find these useful. With love, Amy.”
Useful?
Opening the basket, she saw that it wasn’t an off-the-shelf package with pampering creams and soaps, but a rather more workmanlike range of essential oils. She picked one of them out of the basket. Bergamot. Like all the citrus oils, it was uplifting, alleviated depression. She knew that much. There was camomile, too. And rose absolute, one of Amy’s favourites. She used it to relieve emotional distress. Had used it on her…
Useful.
‘Oh, I see,’ she said. Clever Amy. Kind Amy. This wasn’t a simple peace offering, but a purely practical gift. A reminder that if she wanted to help Dominic, she should be thinking laterally.
How she was going to use it to help him was another matter entirely. She didn’t think that anything as direct as offering him a massage would be well received. Not that she’d ever given anyone a massage, but she could just imagine stroking her hands gently over his back, down his spine…
She realised the tingling was getting out of hand and forced herself to stop. No tingling!
She’d need to be subtler in her approach.
It needed some thought, she decided, looking to see what else the basket contained.
Lavender. Was there anything that lavender wasn’t good for? And marjoram. She frowned. Amy had given her a book on oils once, in an attempt to redirect her interest from the horticultural course she was determined on, hoping to draw her into the business, but she’d stubbornly resisted the easy option. Even then, she’d known she needed to find her own way.
But she’d read the book and there was something about marjoram that jangled in her memory. Something about the ancient Egyptians. She gathered everything up and went indoors to look it up.
Yes, that was it.
The ancient Egyptians had used it as a palliative for grief.
There was a tang of autumn in the air. Wood smoke. The mournful scent of Michaelmas daisies. There had been an early touch of frost when he’d woken that morning. It was gone at the first touch of sun, but it was a warning that the year was beginning the slow wind down to winter.
Dominic didn’t have a problem with that. Winter didn’t bother him. It was spring, the over-the-top rush of blossom with its promise of new life that shrivelled his heart.
As he crossed the lawn to the summer house to take a better look, he could see that Kay Lovell was right. From a distance, or if you weren’t looking too hard—afraid of what you might see—the decay looked merely picturesque. Up close the picture was a great deal more depressing. Unchecked, the climber had pushed its way through the tiniest chinks in the timber of the summer house, forcing it apart, and once the rain had got in nothing could save it, or the upholstered bamboo chairs and sofa still inside, which on closer inspection he saw were covered in green mould.
If he’d been here, he might have stopped it—he tested the base with his foot and there was an ominous creak—but it was too late now. He stepped back, glancing up. But nothing moved except a small bird that erupted from the tangled climber. Even so, the sooner it was demolished the better. He had no doubt that Kay knew someone who could do the job for him. And probably someone else to provide a skip to bear away the remains as well. At this rate, he’d have employed half the village by the time the garden was restored.
He turned as he heard the gate open, glanced at his watch. It was too early for her to be starting work and it occurred to him that a simple bolt was not exactly the most sensible security arrangement—not when he had to leave it drawn for most of the day.
But it wasn’t an intruder this time. He heard the soft murmur of Kay’s voice, but when, with a lift of the heart that set it pounding just a little faster, he walked around the summer house he saw that she was not alone.
‘Miss Lovell. Again,’ he said. She appeared somewhat flustered at his appearance, he thought. As disturbed as he was by hers. Thankfully, he was the one who didn’t blush. ‘You certainly live up to your new company name.’
She drew her brows together in puzzlement. ‘Daisy Roots?’
‘Just so. No matter how hard you try to get rid of them, they just keep coming back.’ Of course, he had just signed a contract with her, so he wasn’t trying that hard…
She looked at her wrist, then, belatedly remembering that her watch was out of action, lifted her shoulders in the smallest of shrugs. ‘I’m a little early, that’s all. It wasn’t my intention to disturb you—’
‘No?’ Then she was failing miserably. She’d disturbed him the evening he returned home and she’d been doing it ever since in one way or another.
‘—but some things just won’t wait.’
She gave him an unexpectedly cool glance, which was easier to deal with than her blushes. But not much.
‘Actually, I thought you’d be too busy to notice I was here,’ she said. ‘Doing whatever it is you’re doing.’
And the wretched woman cocked a brow at him, as if to suggest it wasn’t much.
‘I’ve made a start.’ He had half a sack of shredded paper, magazines so yellow with age and so out of date that they wouldn’t be welcome even in a dentist’s waiting room. But it didn’t take much to distract him. He was making a lifetime career out of avoiding what had to be done. ‘Now I’ve stopped for lunch,’ he lied. ‘And a little fresh air.’
‘It is a little musty in there,’ she agreed, ‘but Dorothy will be here just after three. Be nice to her and she’ll have the house smelling sweet again in no time.’
He refused to commit himself to being “nice”, but instead looked down at the large shallow basket she was carrying. ‘What have you got there?’ He was something of a master at changing the subject, too.
‘Herbs. These are lemon thyme,’ she said, indicating a dozen or so small pots. ‘And this,’ she said, breaking off a stem from a much larger plant, ‘is marjoram.’ She rubbed the leaves and held it up for him to smell. The clean, sharp scent was surprisingly pungent, but it was her hand that held his attention. Her neat nails. The scratch where the bramble had caught her. It wasn’t a pampered hand, but she’d laid it over his in a gesture of comfort that he could still feel.
Except that what he’d felt hadn’t been comfort. Then or now.
He’d fooled himself into believing he was employing her simply because she was the right person for the job. Promised her that if she took it, she’d be quite safe from his unwanted attentions. What would she do if he took it now, pulled her close and kissed her again?
‘It’s rather strong,’ he said, discouragingly.
‘Don’t worry—’ she handed him the crushed leaves, smiling absently when he took them from her ‘—I’m not going to charge you for them. I grew a loa
d of them from cuttings for the summer fête. Too many. These come under the heading of a neighbourly gesture.’
He wasn’t going there again. ‘I haven’t got a herb garden.’ Then, ‘Have I?’
‘According to the plan, there’s one buried somewhere under the weeds. Or maybe Sara didn’t get that far?’
He shook his head, realised he had no idea. ‘The garden was her territory. I had a business to run.’
She waited, but when he didn’t elaborate she said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve got other plans for these. I thought we might plant the lemon thyme between the paving stones on the terrace. When I’ve cleared the weeds. It smells wonderful when you brush against it as you walk by.’
He thought she might repeat the gesture so that he could smell them for himself, but she didn’t.
‘Isn’t there a lot to do before you start thinking about planting anything?’ he said.
‘It’s never too early to start thinking about it. And when the work is hard—and this will be hard—it’s good to have something to look forward to.’ Then, ‘Do you know Jim Bates?’ she said, placing the basket on the veranda of the summer house and turning to introduce her companion. And it occurred to him that he was not the only one skilful at changing the subject.
It gave him the uneasy feeling that she was up to something.
But what?
He offered the man his hand. ‘I recognise the face,’ he said, telling himself that he was imagining things. Not for the first time where Kay Lovell was concerned. ‘Thank you for helping out, Jim. Are you going to make a start on the grass today?’
‘Kay said it needed doing and I thought I’d best get it cut while the weather holds,’ he said, and removed the sacking from the long, heavy blade.
Dom looked up at a cloudless sky. ‘Is there some danger of rain?’
‘Jim keeps a piece of seaweed by the back door,’ Kay explained. ‘It never fails.’
‘That’s right.’ He made a couple of test passes with the scythe. ‘And when I was listening to the long-range forecast on the radio last night the young lady said there was a weather front moving in from the west.’ And with that, he headed off to the far end of the garden.
‘Miss Lovell,’ he said, turning back to face her, attempting to reclaim control. That was a mistake.
Looking at her.
It hadn’t been just his body that had reacted when she’d touched him—thankfully she’d been looking up at his face so hadn’t noticed just how eagerly it had reacted—but something deep inside him seemed to light up, too.
‘Miss Lovell,’ he repeated, as if by hanging on to some semblance of formality he could keep a lid on the havoc she was wreaking to a libido jarred disturbingly into life. It was the kiss, that was all. And that had been a mistake, he reminded himself. The result of an illusion… ‘I was wondering if, amongst your many local contacts, you know anyone who would be interested in demolishing this for me?’
She glanced up at the summer house and then back at him.
‘Of either sex,’ he added, when she didn’t immediately answer. And was repaid with a smile for his trouble. It lit up her eyes. Yes, they were grey, but now he could see they had flecks of amber, or maybe gold, in them that were picked up by the sun.
She didn’t immediately answer him, but walked around the structure, taking her time about it, regarding it thoughtfully. Putting her foot to it and giving it a shove, as he had done earlier, and getting much the same result. When she had completed the circumnavigation, she finally said, ‘No, I’m inclined to believe that on this occasion masculine muscle is all that’s needed.’
‘You mean that it’s a job only a man can do?’ he pressed, enjoying her unexpected capitulation in the face of a little rotting timber.
Her smile suggested that wasn’t exactly what she meant, but she didn’t argue. On the contrary. ‘Absolutely. And I know just the man. Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.”
William Shakespeare
‘MISS LOVELL…Kay…’ But before he could stop her, tell her that he hadn’t meant now, this minute, she was halfway down the garden and out of sight behind the dense evergreen hedge that screened the kitchen garden from the house.
He assumed she was going to fetch some muscle-bound village youth with time on his hands and a talent for destruction that needed a suitable outlet, but when she returned almost immediately with another crop of cobwebs decorating her hair, a smear of dust on her cheek and carrying a heavy, long-handled sledgehammer, he knew he wasn’t that lucky.
‘Here you go,’ she said, dropping the head on the ground at his feet, angling the handle in his direction so that he had no option but to take it from her. To say he wished he’d stayed inside was an understatement. Didn’t she understand that to order the destruction of something full of sweet memories was hard enough? She couldn’t expect him to do it himself.
She waited.
Clearly she could.
Forget staying inside…he was beginning to wish he’d never come home.
In the world’s inhospitable places—in a worn-out truck pounding across the Sahara with nothing to bother him but the heat, the flies, the sand scouring his face, or hacking through some mosquito-infested swamp, wringing wet with humidity and sweat—there had been nothing but discomfort to remind him that he was alive. No one to force him to confront the fact, acknowledge that life went on.
His life, anyway, despite all efforts to put himself in harm’s way.
But Kay Lovell seemed hell bent not just on reminding him, but forcing him to get on with it. None of that tentative “time to move on” stuff with her. The sledgehammer seemed entirely appropriate.
‘You are really pushing your luck,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
She regarded him solemnly. ‘I know that’s a very expensive shirt you’re wearing,’ she said. ‘I’d advise changing into something with a little less style and a little more substance before you get started. Something I’d better do myself,’ she said, glancing at her wrist as if to check the time. ‘I really must do something about my watch.’ She turned as if to walk away, but then looked back. ‘Would you mind moving that basket out of harm’s way before you start? It’s old but I’m fond of it. The terrace gets full sun; the plants will like it there until I can—’
‘We have a contract, Miss Lovell. Under your terms of engagement, everything in the garden is your responsibility. You brought them here. You look after them. It is, after all, what I’m paying you for.’
She flinched at that but he was too angry to care. He tossed the handle to the grass, angry with her for being right, angry with himself for getting into such a situation.
‘Just…just get on with it,’ he said.
That was tense. Kay held onto the railing for a moment, more shaken than she could have believed possible by that encounter.
It was always going to be difficult. She had never been good at acting, but the business with the marjoram had been carefully thought out and she’d rehearsed the moves in her own kitchen until she could break off a few leaves, bruise them before holding them up for him to smell as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Which it was.
Of course her hand hadn’t shaken when she was trying it out on the cat. But then Mog’s eyes hadn’t been narrowed suspiciously at her. Unlike Dominic’s, who certainly suspected she was up to something but, for the life of him, couldn’t imagine what.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the scent of marjoram would cling to his fingers, stay with him for a while. She’d achieved her objective. She just hoped the ancient Egyptians knew what they were talking about.
After that, though, she’d been playing it by ear.
She looked down at the hammer, then picked it up and laid it carefully on the summer-house veranda out of Jim’s way.
&nb
sp; Knocking down the summer house, a place that would be full of memories, would be tough. It would, she realised, be difficult for him even to ask someone else to do it.
Well, there was no rush.
Getting angry was a good sign. It had certainly knocked that contained, expressionless look out of his eyes. Dark they might be—slate-dark grey—but they’d sparked with fire for a moment there.
Meantime they had, as he’d just rather pointedly reminded her, a contract. It was time to stop trying to put the world to rights and start earning a living.
Dominic banged the French windows closed, shutting himself off from the garden, leaning back against them, as if to block any chance of her following him the way she had before. He stayed there while the pulse hammering in his throat quietened, his breathing returned to something like normal. Then he dragged his hands over his face, as if to rid himself of Kay Lovell.
A mistake. He was instantly assailed by the scent of the plant she’d offered him and which he’d stupidly taken. Sharp, fresh…
Damn it, he needed to stay away from Kay Lovell. She made him angry. Anger wasn’t good. The only way to survive was to clamp down on that kind of uncontrolled, emotional reaction… He heard a noise behind him and turned despite himself.
She was just outside on the terrace on a small step-ladder, cutting back the roses that had run wild there. Working from the house outwards.
As she reached up, her T-shirt rose up to reveal a strip of golden skin that gleamed like silk in the sun, begging to be touched.
He turned abruptly away. She made him angry, but worse, much worse, she stirred up feelings that he’d buried so deep he’d forgotten what they could do to a man.
‘Why aren’t you in the shop this morning?’
It had been nearly two weeks since the incident over the summer house, and since he hadn’t made any attempt to do anything about it—in fact he was pretty much avoiding her all together—Kay had decided to give him a reminder that he couldn’t just ignore the problem and hope it would go away. Which was why she was pushing a pile of brochures she’d accumulated through the Linden Lodge letterbox, hoping to provoke some kind of reaction. Hoping he’d join her in the garden and go through the designs she’d marked as possible replacements.