by Liz Fielding
It was not to be. The front door was flung open before she’d crossed the pavement to her aged van.
She turned slowly. It didn’t help. The low, distinctive sound of his voice had already tugged at something deep within her and as she saw his lean figure framed in the doorway her heart lost its timing. But at least she’d taken the very necessary deep breath before turning around, which meant she could look him in the eye and, going for cool surprise, say, ‘I’m sorry?’
And her voice hardly shook at all.
‘It’s Friday.’
‘The day that follows Thursday,’ she agreed. ‘Every week.’
‘It’s one of your mornings in the shop,’ he said, pointedly. ‘But you weren’t there earlier.’
‘I’m still not there,’ she said, surprised that he’d remember the mornings she worked. Or notice if she wasn’t there. He’d come in a few times while she’d been working, but she’d been serving in the post office and he hadn’t so much as glanced in her direction, let alone stopped to buy a stamp. ‘I’ve had to cut back my hours,’ she said. ‘Did you want to talk to me? You could have called at the cottage.’
Or spoken to her when she’d seen him in The Feathers on quiz night, buying Jim Bates the drink he owed him. She’d been so surprised that she’d missed a question and had to be brought back to attention by Amy and Dorothy, neither of whom had noticed him. She’d applied herself to the quiz and when she’d looked again, he’d gone.
Or any afternoon while she was working. But he’d been noticeable only by his absence. She’d hoped he was busy clearing out the past, preparing for the future. Nothing that Dorothy had said, however, suggested that that was the case. And there hadn’t been a pile of sacks to be picked up on the days the garbage truck made its collection.
‘Business picking up?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it is. Thanks in the main to you. Look, I’m sorry, I can’t stop and talk now, I’m on the way to the bank.’ She made a vague gesture in the direction of the van and said, ‘As you can see, if I’m going to make the right impression on potential clients, I need a transport upgrade.’ She didn’t add that she was relying on his contract to help swing a business loan. ‘Why don’t you have a look at those?’ she said, nodding at the pile of glossy brochures at his feet. ‘There are all shapes and sizes of garden buildings to choose from. If you need any help deciding I’ll go through them with you this afternoon.’
‘Wait,’ he said, as she turned to open the van door. ‘I’m going into town. We can talk on the way. We’ll take my car.’
‘Oh, but—’
‘I insist,’ he said, reaching for a jacket hanging over the newel post and pulling the door shut behind him.
‘Really, this isn’t…’ She jumped as he placed his hand at her back to direct her firmly towards his garage—once a stable block, it now housed mechanical horsepower instead of the real thing. Even through the light wool jacket, silk shirt and teddy, it seemed to burn her skin.
‘My bag. My business plan…’ she protested.
He paused, just long enough to retrieve them and hand them to her. She looked back at the van as if to safety. ‘You didn’t lock it. The keys are still in the ignition.’
‘If you’re lucky someone will steal it,’ he replied, opening the door of his low, sleek sports car, easing her into the passenger seat without ever losing contact. ‘But I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
‘No! I love that old crate,’ she declared as the soft leather upholstery hugged her in ergonomic comfort. Dominic Ravenscar looked pretty sceptical. ‘All right, love might be a bit strong—’ especially on cold mornings when it refused to start without resort to brute force ‘—but I do need it. The bank is going to be hard enough to convince as it is, without telling them I need two new vans. New second-hand, that is. And it looks worse than it really is. It passed its road-worthy test only last month.’
‘Two?’
He had a way of hacking through her words, no matter how many of them she threw at him, and picking out the important one.
‘Wayne, one of the village lads, is going to do the contract mowing for me until the end of October. The routine stuff.’
‘Is he reliable?’
‘He did some gardening when he was on community service last year—’
‘Community service? Oh, terrific. What did he do?’
‘Nothing bad.’ She’d done worse… ‘If it works out I’ll see if I can get him interested in taking a course, getting some qualifications.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’
‘It’ll keep him off the streets. Get him out of his mother’s hair for a few weeks.’
‘You like to live dangerously, don’t you?’
‘Wayne isn’t dangerous. He isn’t even bad.’ He just needed someone to give him a chance.
Dominic walked around the car, climbed in beside her and fitted the key into the ignition without saying a word. She looked at him and then rather wished she hadn’t.
This was dangerous. And she wasn’t talking about the sports car. She’d been doing her level best not to think about Dominic Ravenscar. The tingling.
Confined with him in the soft luxury of his car brought it all rushing back and, like anything kept under pressure, it seemed to have grown in power. Suddenly all she could think about was him. The way his mouth had felt against hers: that moment she’d turned and seen him wrapped in nothing but a towel: the way his skin had felt beneath her fingers as she’d reached out and touched his hand.
Suffocating with a raw desire that had no place in this relationship, she looked away before he could read it in her face. ‘Honestly,’ she said, forcing herself to concentrate on reality. ‘He’s a good kid. He just needs a break. Like the rest of us.’
He fastened the seat belt, started the car, pulled out into the street. Then said, ‘The way the Hallams gave you yours?’
She stilled. What had he heard? Who had he been talking to? Too late to turn down his lift now… ‘I didn’t take you for a gossip, Mr Ravenscar.’
‘I’m not. But people will talk.’
She frowned. ‘Dorothy?’
‘I have to thank you for sending her to me,’ he said, neither confirming nor denying that she was the source of whatever gossip he’d heard. Not that it mattered. There was nothing secret about her history. The whole village knew what had happened. Most of it, anyway. At least Dorothy would be kind. ‘She’s rather wonderful—’
‘You’re very lucky to get her. She only works when she wants to these days.’ When the job appealed to her.
‘—although she does have a curious addiction to pot-pourri,’ he added.
Oh…chickweed! He’d noticed. Could he possibly have guessed that the bergamot-scented pot-pourri was the result of all that lateral thinking?
‘For moths, I expect,’ she cut in quickly. ‘To get rid of them, not because they like it.’ Then, because she was just digging a hole with her mouth, ‘I hope you haven’t offended her by throwing it away.’
‘No, I try to restrict myself to offending one woman at a time. She’s really done a terrific job getting the house looking and smelling the way it—’ he faltered momentarily ‘—the way it should.’
‘She’s a terrific woman,’ Kay agreed. ‘She just has to walk into a room with a duster and it instantly surrenders.’ Then, ‘You, I hear, aren’t having the same success.’ He glanced at her. It was a guess. He might, after all, have taken his rubbish to be recycled. Sara’s clothes to a charity shop. She didn’t think so. ‘The house is clean,’ she persisted, ‘but the cupboards remain untouched?’ Then, ‘People will talk.’
‘Not Dorothy. She’s the soul of discretion. No matter how much I pressed her on the subject of Polly’s father, all she’d talk about was the pub quiz championship. And how she and her team were going to win it again this year.’
She looked at him then, couldn’t help herself. But he was concentrating on the road and somehow she managed a shrug. ‘OK, so I was guessing.’
‘And of course you were right, but what do you do with the clothes worn by someone you loved? Bundle them up in a plastic sack and give them to whoever knocks on the door collecting for a jumble sale? To be picked over, dropped on the floor, trodden on in the scrum…’ He dropped a gear, pulled out and overtook a truck. ‘Come on. That’s got to be easy for a quiz queen who wiped the floor with the opposition the other night.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She felt dreadful. She would keep forcing him to confront the issue but what did she know about what he was feeling? ‘I’ve never had to deal with anything like that. It must be difficult.’
‘Difficult. That’s a good word.’
And it occurred to her that she offered him an opening and instead of instantly changing the subject, he’d taken it. For a moment she held her breath, waited…
‘Which bank are you going to?’
She curbed her disappointment. He’d taken the first step. She could be patient, she told herself, before telling him where she was going, guiding him through the new one-way system until he pulled up at the front entrance. Before she had even got her seat belt unclipped and gathered her belongings, he had opened the passenger door and was offering her a hand.
She was torn. She already knew exactly how disturbing it was to touch him. On the other hand, it needed practice to get out of a seat that was almost at pavement level, especially wearing high heels; something she lacked. But then she’d been busy doing other things with her life.
While she dithered he took her hand, and with one easy movement he deposited her on the pavement with her dignity intact. He clearly knew exactly what he was doing and it occurred to her that he hadn’t always been a grieving widower. That he hadn’t been a husband for any length of time—
‘Where shall I meet you?’ he asked.
He hadn’t let go of her hand.
She swallowed. This was not good preparation for a discussion about a business loan. She needed to be calm, focused. OK, so she was focused—but not on the right thing. She even considered telling him not to wait. That she’d get the bus back so that she could clear her mind…
She thought better of it. This wasn’t about her. It was about him. Maybe he’d talk some more.
And anyway, if he wouldn’t let her drive herself in her old van, he wasn’t going to stand for any nonsense about a bus.
‘There’s a café in the craft centre round the corner,’ she suggested.
‘I know it. Will an hour be enough?’
‘Good grief, I hope so. I don’t know enough to keep the small-business loans adviser occupied for more than ten minutes.’
‘Well, let’s hope he—’
‘She.’
‘—she knows enough to keep you occupied for longer than that or you’re both in trouble. Take your time. I’ll wait.’ And before he released her hand, he bent and kissed her cheek. It was like a shot of electricity fizzing through her. His chin grazed her skin. The scent of him was a heady blend of leather and tweed and citrus, sending out the kind of signals that her body recognised and responded to with a speed that left her breathless, pinning her to the pavement. He didn’t notice anything odd, however, didn’t feel what she was feeling because he stepped back without lingering and said, somewhat brusquely, ‘Good luck, Miss Lovell.’
Her own mouth did its best to form the reply, ‘Thank you, Mr Ravenscar.’ No sound emerged.
Dominic watched her mount the steps of the bank. She looked different with her hair sleeked up, wearing restrained make-up and the kind of simple black suit that women kept for this kind of occasion. A don’t-mess-with-me suit. The kind that made them look as if they were in control of their world and if you didn’t watch out might just take over yours.
And as if that hadn’t been enough, she was wearing high, high heels.
Sexy as hell.
His only argument was with her hair. He preferred it mussed…the way she usually wore it. When his lips had brushed the softness of her cheek, her scent—fresh, flowery with an underlying sensuality that hadn’t come out of a bottle—had grabbed at him, twisting his gut, and he’d been tempted to pull the pins and see it fall.
Not that she needed make-up. Or scent.
If he was honest with himself, he thought she looked pretty damn sexy wearing nothing on her skin but sun block, clothes that looked as if they were charity-shop cast-offs and smelling of nothing but fresh air and sunshine. Which was one of the reasons he’d been staying pretty much out of the way since the summer-house incident. At least while she was in the garden.
He hadn’t been able to stay out of the village shop on the mornings he knew she’d be working, though. Not that he’d admitted, even to himself, the reason for crossing the green to buy milk or bread he didn’t actually need since Dorothy had taken charge of stocking his fridge.
And somehow he’d found himself in the pub after Dorothy had been telling him about the quiz night. Just to buy Jim Bates that pint he owed him.
He’d very nearly gone to the school Autumn Fayre, too. But he’d been waylaid by the head teacher and found himself promising a donation to the school fund just to escape.
Then today, when he’d gone to post some letters and she hadn’t been behind the post-office counter, or even serving in the shop, he’d been forced to stop fooling himself. Admit that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Maybe that was why he was finding it so difficult to deal with Sara’s things.
He was paralysed with guilt.
Not that guilt had stopped him from opening the door when those brochures started dropping onto the mat. When he’d seen what they were, he’d known it couldn’t be anyone else, but he’d opened it anyway, expecting to see her in her usual scruffy combination of hard-worn trousers, topped by one of the giveaway T-shirts advertising some new line of biscuits or coffee or baked beans that she favoured—she was obviously a favourite with the salesmen who visited the shop—and her hair tied back with one of her daughter’s ribbons. Appealing enough, but when he saw her dressed to take on the world, he’d been knocked sideways. Said the first stupid thing that came into his head. That he’d been coming into town.
He just couldn’t bear to let her drive away from him.
Then, somehow, he’d found himself talking about Sara when all he wanted to do was talk about her…
A traffic warden patrolling the street bent down and looked in at him. ‘I wouldn’t stay here, sir, unless you want to be clamped.’
Kay flung the folder she was carrying onto the table and herself into a chair opposite Dominic before he had time to get to his feet. ‘Well, that was a morning that could have been used more productively double digging my vegetable garden.’
‘Coffee? Tea?’ he enquired, without comment, turning to summon the waitress with a glance. Why was it only men that could do that?
She looked at Dominic. At his eyes, no longer slate hard, but like silver velvet, at the thick, overlong hair he’d raked back with his fingers, his lean and hungry take-me-home-and-feed-me features. And told herself not to be so stupid.
‘Make that coffee with hazelnut syrup and whipped cream,’ she said. ‘And I’ll have a double portion of Death by Chocolate…’ Oh, slug bait! Of all the chocolate cake in all the world she had to choose that one. ‘Why don’t you shoot me now?’ she invited. ‘Put me and my big mouth out of our misery.’
‘I think I’d be happier if you just had a double portion of whipped cream with the chocolate cake. It’ll take longer to kill you, but you’ll enjoy it more.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Don’t be. And please don’t start getting tactful, or thinking twice before you choose your comfort food. I couldn’t stand it.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ Then he grinned. ‘Do you really want a double portion?’
She glanced at him. Found herself laughing in spite of the hideous hour she’d spent closeted with a woman who not only didn’t possess a sense of humour, but also clearly thought one would be
a dangerous liability in business.
‘You’re just scared I’ll be sick in your lovely new car.’
‘Forget the car. I don’t want your arteries on my conscience.’
‘It’s OK. I didn’t mean it. If I ate that the buttons would burst on this skirt. And it’s not mine. Black coffee will do just fine.’ He looked unconvinced. ‘Honestly.’
He nodded to the waitress and then said, ‘It didn’t go well, I take it?’
‘You have a talent for understatement. I even went to the trouble of borrowing this suit from Amy.’ She looked down at it. ‘It’s one that she wears to board meetings. But was that—’ she stopped, made herself think twice before she said the words that were hovering on the tip of her tongue ‘—small-business advisor impressed?’
‘I’m impressed,’ he said.
‘Really?’ She thought that might just make up for the rest of the morning. ‘Well, that’s very kind of you, but Ms Harding clearly didn’t know her Armani from…from…’
‘Her aspidistra?’
‘Hey, I’m the one who makes the bad jokes around here.’
‘Sorry. I thought I’d help you out. Since you’re trying to give it up.’ He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender as she glared at him. ‘So, tell me. What happened?’
‘She wasn’t in the slightest bit impressed with my business plan, which I’ll have you know I’d slaved over.’
‘Can I see it?’
She indicated the folder she’d dropped on the table. ‘Forget my skills, my training, the fact that I’m suddenly getting enquiries for more work than I can handle without some help. All she seemed to be interested in was my “collateral”. I very quickly got the message that, since I don’t own my own home, and I haven’t got any tangible assets for them to grab should my “expectations prove over-ambitious”—’ she made little quote marks with her fingers ‘—they won’t be exactly panting to lend me money.’