Forget concussion.
She was now in heart-attack territory. Dry mouth, loss of breath. Thud. Bang. Boom.
Mr Grumpy was not some irascible old bloke with a bee in his bonnet regarding the sanctity of footpaths—even if he was less than scrupulous about where he fished—and a legitimate grievance at the way she’d run him down.
He might be irritable, but he wasn’t old. Far from it.
He was mature.
In the way that men who’ve passed the smooth-skinned prettiness of their twenties and fulfilled the potential of their genes are mature.
Not that Hal North had ever been pretty.
He’d been a raw-boned youth with a wild streak that had both attracted and frightened her. As a child she’d yearned to be noticed by him, but would have run a mile if he’d as much as glanced in her direction. As a young teen, she’d had fantasies about him that would have given her mother nightmares if she’d even suspected her precious girl of having such thoughts about the village bad boy.
Not that her mother had anything to worry about where Hal North was concerned.
She was too young for anything but the muddled fantasies in her head, much too young for Hal to notice her existence.
There had been plenty of girls of his own age, girls with curves, girls who were attracted to the aura of risk he generated, the edge of darkness that had made her shiver a little—shiver a lot—with feelings she didn’t truly understand.
It had been like watching your favourite film star, or a rock god strutting his stuff on the television. You felt a kind of thrill, but you weren’t sure what it meant, what you were supposed to do with it.
Or maybe that was just her.
She’d been a swot, not one of the ‘cool’ group in school who had giggled over things she didn’t understand.
While they’d been practising being women, she’d been confined to experiencing it second-hand in the pages of nineteenth-century literature.
He’d bulked up since the day he’d been banished from the estate by Sir Robert Cranbrook after some particularly outrageous incident; what, she never discovered. Her mother had talked about it in hushed whispers to her father, but instantly switched to that bright, false change-the-subject smile if she came near enough to hear and she’d never had a secret-sharing relationship with any of the local girls.
Instead, she’d filled her diary with all kinds of fantasies about what might have happened, where he’d gone, about the day he’d return to find her all grown up—no longer the skinny ugly duckling but a fully fledged swan. Definitely fairy-tale material…
The years had passed, her diary had been abandoned in the face of increasing workloads from school and he’d been forgotten in the heat of a real-life romance.
Now confronted by him, as close as her girlish fantasy could ever have imagined, it came back in a rush and his power to attract, she discovered, had only grown over the years.
He was no longer a raw-boned skinny youth with shoulders he had yet to grow into, hands too big for his wrists. He still had hard cheekbones, though. A take-it-or-leave-it jaw, a nose that suggested he’d taken it once or twice himself. The only softness in his face, the sensuous curve of his lower lip.
It was his eyes, though, so dark in the shadow of overhanging trees, which overrode any shortfall in classic good looks. They had the kind of raw energy that made her blood tingle, her skin goose, had her fighting for breath in a way that had nothing to do with being winded by her fall.
She reminded herself that she was twenty-six. A responsible adult holding down a job, supporting her child. A grown woman who did not blush. At all.
‘I’m surprised you recognised me,’ she said, doing her best to sound calm, in control, despite the thudding heart, racing pulse, the mud smearing her cheek. The fact that her hand was jammed between his legs. Nowhere near in control enough to admit the intimacy of a name she had once whispered over and over in the dark of her room.
She snatched her hand away, keeping her ‘ouch’ to herself as she scraped her knuckles on the brake lever and told herself not to be so wet.
‘You haven’t changed much.’ His tone suggested that it wasn’t a subject for congratulation. ‘Still prim, all buttoned-up. And still riding your bike along this footpath. I’ll bet it was the only rule you ever broke.’
‘There’s nothing big about breaking rules,’ she said, stung into attack by his casual dismissal of her best suit. The suggestion that she still looked the same now as when she’d worn a blazer and a panama hat over hair braided in a neat plait. ‘Nothing big about hiding under the willows, tickling Sir Robert’s trout, either. Not the only rule you ever broke,’ she added.
‘Sharper tongued, though.’
That stung, too. The incident might have been painful but come on… She’d been chased by a donkey and every other man she knew would be at the very least struggling to hide a grin right now. Most would be laughing out loud.
‘As for the trout,’ he added, ‘Robert Cranbrook never did own them, only the right to stand on the bank with a rod and fly and attempt to catch them. He can’t even claim that now.’
‘Maybe not,’ she said, doing her best to ignore the sensory deluge, ‘but someone can.’ And sounded just as prim and buttoned-up as she apparently looked. ‘HMRC if the rumours about the state of Sir Robert’s finances are to be believed and the Revenue certainly won’t take kindly to you helping yourself.’
Buttoned-up and priggish.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, making a determined effort to lighten the mood, ‘I’ll look the other way, just this once, if you’ll promise to ignore my misdemeanour.’
‘Shall we get out of this ditch before you start plea bargaining?’ he suggested.
Plea bargaining? She’d been joking, for heaven’s sake! She wasn’t that buttoned-up. She wasn’t buttoned-up at all!
‘You don’t appear to have a concussion,’ he continued, ‘and unless you’re telling me you can’t feel your legs, or you’ve broken something, I’d rather leave the paramedics to cope with genuine emergencies.’
‘Good call.’ As an emergency it was genuine enough—although not in the medical sense—but if she was the subject of her own front-page story she’d never hear the last of it in the newsroom. ‘Hold on,’ she said, not that he appeared to need encouragement to do that. He hadn’t changed that much. ‘I’ll check.’
She did a quick round up of her limbs, flexing her fingers and toes. Her shoulder had taken the brunt of the fall and she knew that she would be feeling it any moment now, but it was probably no more than a bruise. The peddle had spun as her foot had slipped, whacking her shin. She’d scraped her knuckles on the brake lever and her left foot appeared to be up to the ankle in the cold muddy water at the bottom of the ditch but everything appeared to be in reasonable working order.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
‘Winded.’ She wouldn’t want him to think he was the cause of her breathing difficulties. ‘And there will be bruises, but I have sufficient feeling below the waist to know where your hand is.’
He didn’t seem to feel the need to apologise but then she had run into him at full tilt. She really didn’t want to think about where he’d be black and blue. Or where her own hand had been.
‘What about you?’ she asked, somewhat belatedly.
‘Can I feel my hand on your bum?’
The lines bracketing his mouth deepened a fraction and her heart rate which, after the initial shock of seeing him, had begun to settle back down, thudding along steadily with only an occasional rattle of the cymbals, took off on a dramatic drum roll.
CHAPTER TWO
‘ARE you in one piece?’ Claire asked, doing her best to ignore the timpani section having a field day and keep it serious.
If he could do that with an almost smile, she wasn’t going to risk the full nine yards.
‘I’ll survive.’
She sketched what she hoped was a careless shrug. ‘Close enough.’
And this time the smile, no more than a dare-you straightening of the lips, reached his eyes, setting her heart off on a flashy drum solo.
‘Shall we risk it, then?’ he prompted when she didn’t move.
‘Sorry.’ She wasn’t an impressionable teenager, she reminded herself. She was a grown woman, a mother… ‘I’m still a bit dazed.’ That, at least, was true. Although whether the fall had anything to do with it was a moot point. Forget laughing about this. Hal North was a lot safer when he was being a grouch.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s try this. You roll to your right and I’ll do my best to untangle us both.’
She gingerly eased herself onto her shoulder, then gave a little gasp at the unexpected intimacy of his cold fingers against the sensitive, nylon-clad flesh as he hooked his hand beneath her knee. It was a lifetime since she was that timid girl who’d watched him from a safe distance, nearly died when he’d looked at her, but he was still attracting and scaring her in equal quantities. Okay, maybe not quite equal…
‘Does that hurt?’ he asked.
‘No!’ She was too fierce, too adamant and his eyes narrowed. ‘Your hand was cold,’ she said lamely as he lifted her leg free of the frame.
‘That’s what happens when you tickle trout,’ he said, confirming her impression that he’d just stepped up out of the stream when she ran into him. It would certainly explain why she hadn’t seen him. And why he hadn’t had time taking avoiding action.
‘Are you still selling your catch to the landlord of The Feathers?’ she asked, doing her best to control the conversation.
‘Is he still in the market for poached game?’ he asked, not denying that he’d once supplied him through the back door. ‘He’d have to pay rather more for a freshly caught river trout these days.’
‘That’s inflation for you. I hope your rod is still in one piece.’
His eyebrow twitched, proving that he did, after all, possess a sense of humour. ‘Couldn’t you tell?’
‘Your fishing rod…’ Claire stopped, but it was too late to wish she’d ignored the innuendo.
‘It’s not mine,’ he said, taking pity on her. ‘I confiscated it from a lad fishing without a licence.’
‘Confiscated it?’
As he sat up, she caught sight of the Cranbrook crest on the pocket of his coveralls. He was working on the estate? Poacher turned gamekeeper? Why did that feel so wrong? He would be a good choice if the liquidators wanted to protect what assets remained. He knew every inch of the estate, every trick in the book…
‘Aren’t they terribly expensive?’ she asked. ‘Fishing rods.’
‘He’ll get it back when he pays his fine.’
‘A fine? That’s a bit harsh,’ she said, rather afraid she knew who might have been trying his luck. ‘He’s only doing what you did when you were his age.’
‘The difference being that I was bright enough not to get caught.’
‘I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.’
‘It beats the hell out of the alternative.’ She couldn’t argue with that. ‘I take it, from all this touching concern, that you know the boy?’
‘I imagine it was Gary Harker. His mother works in the estate office. She’s at her wit’s end. He left school last year and hasn’t had a sniff of a job. In the old days he’d have been taken on by the estate,’ she prompted. ‘Learned a skill.’
‘Working for the gentry for a pittance.’
‘Minimum wage these days. Not much, but a lot better than nothing. If the estate is hiring, maybe you could put a good word in for him?’
‘You don’t just want me to let him off, you want me to give him a job, too?’ he asked.
‘Maybe there’s some government-sponsored apprenticeship scheme?’ she suggested. ‘I could find out. Please, Hal, if I talk to him, will you give him a break?’
‘If I talk to him, will you give me one?’ he replied.
‘I’ll do better than that.’ She beamed, aches and pains momentarily forgotten. ‘I’ll bake you a cake. Lemon drizzle? Ginger? Farmhouse?’ she tempted and for a moment she seemed to hold his attention. For a moment she thought she had him.
‘Don’t bother,’ he said, breaking eye contact, turning back to her bike. ‘The front wheel’s bent out of shape.’
She swallowed down her disappointment. ‘Terrific. For want of an apple the bike was lost,’ she said, as he propped it against a tree. ‘Can it be straightened out?’
‘Is it worth it?’ he asked, reaching out a hand to help her up. ‘It must be fifty years old.’
‘Older,’ she replied, clasping his hand. ‘It belonged to Sir Robert’s nanny.’
His palm was cold, or maybe it was her own that was hot. Whatever it was, something happened to her breathing as their thumbs locked around each other and Hal braced himself to pull her up onto the path. A catch, a quickening, as if his power was flooding into her, his eyes heating her from the inside out.
Just how reliable was the finger test as a diagnosis of concussion, anyway?
‘I’ve got you,’ he said, apparently feeling nothing but impatience, but as he pulled, something caught at the soft wool of her jacket, holding her fast.
‘Wait!’ She’d already wrecked her bike and she wasn’t about to confound the situation by tearing lumps out of her one good suit. ‘I’m caught on something.’ She yelped as she reached back to free herself and her hand snagged on an old, dead bramble, thorns hard as nails. ‘Could my day get any worse?’ she asked, sucking at the line of tiny scarlet spots of blood oozing across the soft pad at the base of her thumb.
‘That depends on whether your tetanus shots are up to date.’
Was that, finally, a note of genuine concern? Or was it merely the hope she would need a jab—something to put the cherry on top of her day—that she heard in his voice?
‘That was a rhetorical question,’ she replied, tired of being on the defensive, ‘but thanks for your concern.’ And he could take that any way he chose.
Right now she’d gladly suffer a jab that would offer a vaccination against dangerous men. The kind that stood in your way on footpaths, made you say blush-making things when you hadn’t blushed in years. Made you feel thirteen again.
Made you feel…
‘Here. Use this,’ he said as she searched her pockets for a tissue. He dropped a freshly ironed handkerchief into her lap then, as he stepped down into the ditch to unhook her from the thorns, he spoiled this unexpected gallantry by saying, ‘You really should make an attempt to get up earlier.’
She turned to look at him. ‘Excuse me?’
He was closer than she realised and his chin, rough with an overnight growth of beard, brushed against her cheek. It intensified the tingle, sent her temperature up a degree. Deadly dangerous. She should move.
Closer…
‘It’s gone nine,’ he pointed out. ‘I assumed you were late for work?’
His hair was dark and thick. He’d worn it longer as a youth, curling over his neck, falling sexily into his eyes. These days it was cut with precision. Even the tumble into the ditch had done no more than feather a cowlick across his forehead. And if possible, the effect was even more devastating.
‘I am,’ she admitted, ‘but not because I overslept.’
His breath was warm against her temple and her skin seemed to tingle, as if drawn by his closeness.
She really should move. Put some distance between them.
She’d never been close enough to see the colour of his eyes before. They were very dark and she’d always imagined, in her head, they were the blue-grey of wet slate, but in this light they seemed to be green. Or was it simply the spring bright tunnel of leaves that lent them a greenish glow?
He raised an eyebrow as he opened a clasp knife. ‘You had something more interesting to keep you in bed?’
‘You could say that.’ In her vegetable bed, anyway, but if he chose to think there was a man interested in undoing her buttons she could live wi
th that. ‘I’m more concerned about my ten o’clock appointment at the Town Hall with the chairman of the Planning Committee.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘You’re not going to make it.’
‘No.’ There were worst things than crashing into a ditch and losing her job was one of them. ‘If you got a move on I could call him before I’m late and reschedule for later today.’
‘Have a care, Miss Thackeray,’ he warned, glancing up at her, ‘or I’ll leave you where you are.’
About to point out that all she had to do was undo her jacket and she could free herself, she thought better of it.
If Hal North was working for the estate he probably knew far more than the planning department about what was going on.
‘I was going to talk to him about the Cranbrook Park estate,’ she said, moving her hand away from her jacket button. ‘There’s a rumour going round that a property developer has bought it.’
The rumour of a sale was real enough. As for the rest, she was just fishing and most people couldn’t wait to tell you that you were wrong, tell you what they knew.
‘And why would that be of interest to you?’
Yes, well, Hal North hadn’t been like most boys and it seemed he wasn’t like most men, either.
‘The estate is my landlord,’ she said. ‘I have a vested interest in what happens to it.’
‘You have a lease.’
‘Well, yes…’ With barely three months left to run. ‘But I’ve known Sir Robert since I was four years old. I can’t expect a new owner to have the same concern for his tenants. He might not want to renew it and if he did, he’ll certainly raise the rent.’ Something else to worry about. It was vital she keep her job. ‘And then there are the rumours about a light industrial estate at my end of the village.’
‘Not in my backyard?’ he mocked.
‘Yours, too,’ she replied, going for broke. ‘I live in Primrose Cottage.’
‘What about the jobs that light industry would bring to the area?’ he replied, apparently unmoved by the threat to his childhood home. ‘Don’t you care about that angle? What about young Gary Harker?’
The Last Woman He'd Ever Date (Mills & Boon Modern Tempted) Page 2