CHAPTER THREE
‘IF YOU’RE calling to tell me that you won’t be coming over tonight for dinner, then don’t worry about it. Not a problem. I still have so much work to do, anyway! You wouldn’t believe it! Plus I’m going to take the opportunity to catch up with some of my frie…’
‘Jennifer, shut up.’
‘How dare you?’
‘You need to do exactly what I say. Get dressed in some warm clothes, come out of your cottage and head for the copse behind it. You know the one I mean.’
‘James, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.’
‘I’ve had a bit of an accident.’
‘You… what?’ Jennifer stood up, felt giddy and immediately sat back down. Every nerve in her body had gone into sudden, panicked overdrive. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There were some high winds here a couple of days ago. Just before you came. Some fallen branches in the copse behind the cottage and a tree that’s about to go and is dangerously close to one of the overhead cables.’
‘You tripped over a branch on your way here?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! How feeble do you think I am? After I left you earlier, I got back to the house, did some work and then thought that I might as well see if I could bring the tree down, get it clear of the overhead power lines.’
In a flashback springing from nowhere, she had a vivid memory of him as a young boy not yet sixteen, strapped halfway up one of the towering trees that bordered the house, chainsaw in one hand, reaching for a branch that had broken, while underneath his parents yelled for him to get down immediately. He had grown up in sprawling acres of deepest countryside and had always loved getting involved in the hard work of running the estate. He had had a reckless disregard for personal safety, had loved challenging himself. She had adored that about him.
‘I can’t believe you could have been so stupid!’ she yelled down the phone. ‘You’re not sixteen any more, James! Give me five minutes and don’t move.’
She spotted him between the swirling snow, just a dark shape lying prone, and the worst-case scenarios she had tussled with as she had flung on her jumper and scarf and coat and everything else smashed into her with the force of a ten-ton block of granite. What if he had suffered concussion? He would be able to sound coherent, make sense, only to die without warning. That had happened to someone, somewhere. She had read it in the news years ago. What if he had broken something? His spine? Fractured his leg or his arm? There was no way that a doctor would be able to get out here. Even a helicopter would have trouble in these weather conditions.
‘Don’t move!’ She had brought two tablecloths with her. ‘You can use these to cover yourself with and I’m going to get that table thing Dad uses for wallpapering. It can be rigged up like a stretcher.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Jen. I just need you to help me up. The snow’s so soft that it’s impossible. I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back.’
‘What if it’s more serious than that, James?’ she cried, kneeling and peering at him at close range. She shone her torch directly at his face and he winced away from the light.
‘Would you mind directing the beam somewhere else?’
She ignored him. ‘What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t move if you think you might have done something to your spine. It’s one of the first things you learn on a first-aid course.’
‘You’ve done a first-aid course?’
‘No, but I’m making an educated guess. Your colour looks good. That’s a brilliant sign. How many fingers am I holding up?’
‘What?’
‘My fingers. How many of them am I holding up? I need to make sure that you aren’t suffering from concussion…’
‘Three fingers and move the bloody torch, Jennifer. Let me sling my arm around your neck and we’re going to have to hobble to the cottage. I don’t think I can make it all the way back to the house.’
‘I’m not sure…’
‘Okay, here’s the deal. While you debate the shoulds and shouldn’ts, I’m going to pass out with hypothermia. I’ve pulled a muscle! I don’t need the blankets and a makeshift stretcher, although I’m very grateful for the suggestion. I just need a helping hand.’
‘Your voice sounds strong. Another good sign.’
‘Jennifer!’
‘Okay, but I’m still not sure…’
‘I can live with that.’
He slung his arm around her neck and she felt the heavy, muscled weight of him as he levered himself up, with her help. The snow was thick and their feet sank into its depth, making it very difficult to balance and walk. It was little wonder that he hadn’t been able to prise himself up. Even with her help, she could tell that he was in pain, unable to stand erect, his hand pressed to the base of his back.
They struggled back to the cottage. She had draped the tablecloths around him, even though he had done his best to resist and the torch cast a wavering light directly ahead, illuminating the snow and turning the spectral scenery into a winter wonderland.
‘I could try and get hold of an ambulance service…’ she suggested, out of breath because even though he was obviously doing his best to spare her his full weight, he was still six feet three inches of packed muscle.
‘I never knew you were such a worrier.’
‘What do you expect?’ she demanded hotly. ‘You were supposed to stroll over for dinner…’
‘Didn’t I tell you that it’s impossible to stroll in snow this deep?’
‘Stop trying to be funny! You were supposed to come to the cottage for dinner and the next time I hear from you, you’re calling to tell me that you decided to chop down a tree and you’re lying on the ground with a possible broken back!’
‘I’m sorry if I worried you…’
‘Yes,’ Jennifer muttered, still angry with him for having sent her into a panic, still deathly worried that he was putting on a brave face because that was just the sort of man he was, ‘well, you should be.’
‘Have you cooked something delicious?’
‘You shouldn’t talk. You should conserve your energy.’
‘Is that something else you picked up on the first-aid course you never went to?’
She felt her lips twitch and suppressed a desire to laugh. She got the feeling that he was doing his utmost to distract her from her worry, even though he would have been in a lot of discomfort and surely worried about himself. That simple generosity of spirit brought a lump of emotion to her throat and she stopped talking, for fear of bursting into tears.
Ahead of them the well-lit cottage beckoned like a port in a storm.
‘Here at last.’ She nudged open the door and deposited him on the sofa in the sitting room, where he collapsed with a groan.
He didn’t have a broken spine. Nor was anything fractured. That much she had figured out on the walk back. He had pulled a muscle. Painful but not terminal.
She stood back, arms folded, and looked at him with jaundiced eyes.
‘Now, admit it, James. It was very silly of you to think you could sort out that tree, wasn’t it?’
‘I managed to do what needed doing,’ he countered. ‘I fought the tree and the tree lost. The pulled muscle in my back is just collateral damage.’
Jennifer snorted in response. ‘You’ll have to get out of those clothes. They’re soaking wet. I’m going to bring down some of Dad’s. They won’t be a terrific fit, but you’ll have to work with it. Tomorrow I’ll fetch some from your house.’ She was resigned to the fact that they would now be stranded together, under the same roof.
James, eyes closed, grunted.
‘But first, I’ll go get you some painkillers. Dad keeps them in bulk supply for a rainy day. Or an emergency like this.’
‘I don’t do painkillers.’
‘Too bad.’
Her father was shorter than James and thinner. She had no idea how his clothes would stretch to accommodate James’s more muscular frame, but she chose the biggest of the tee
shirts, a jumper and a pair of jogging bottoms with an elasticated waist, which were a five-year-old legacy from her father’s days when he had decided to join the local gym, which he had tried once only to declare that gyms were for idiots who should be out and about.
‘Clothes,’ she announced, back in the sitting room, where the open fire kept the room beautifully warm. ‘And first, painkillers.’ She handed him two tablets with a glass of water and watched as he reluctantly swallowed them.
‘You make a very good matron.’ He handed her the glass of water and sighed as he began to defrost.
He grinned but she didn’t find it very amusing. He had been a complete fool. He had, as was his nature, been so supremely confident of his strength that it would never have occurred to him that sorting out a tree in driving snow might have been an impossible mission. He had worried her sick. And beyond both those things, she was stupidly annoyed to be compared to a matron. She privately and illogically rebelled against being the friend upon whom he could rely in a situation like this, the girl who wouldn’t baulk in a crisis and was used to the harsh easterly conditions, the tall, well-built girl who could tackle any physical situation with the best of them. She wanted to be seen as delicate and fragile and in need of manly protection, and then she was annoyed with herself for being pathetic. Old feelings that she thought she had left behind seemed to be waiting round every corner, eager to ambush the person she had become.
‘I’ll leave you to get into some fresh clothes,’ she said shortly. ‘And I’ll go and prepare us something to eat.’
She turned to walk away and he reached out to catch her hand and tug her to face him.
‘In case you think I’m not grateful for your help, I am,’ he said softly.
Jennifer didn’t say anything because he was absent-mindedly rubbing his thumb on the underside of her wrist, and for the first time since she had been flung into his company she had no resources with which to fight the stirrings of desire she had been trying so hard to subdue. She could barely breathe.
‘I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here.’
‘That’s all right,’ Jennifer croaked, then cleared her throat, while she wondered whether to snatch her hand out of his gently, delicately, caressing grasp.
‘I know you weren’t expecting to find me here when you arrived but I’m glad I was. I’ve missed you.’
She wanted to shout at him that he shouldn’t use words like that, which made her fevered irrational brain start thinking all sorts of inappropriate things.
‘Have you missed me or was I replaced by your hectic life and new-found independence?’
‘I… I don’t know what you expect me to say to that, James…’ But she wondered whether this was his way of reasserting the balance between them, putting it back to that place where he could be certain that he knew where she stood, a place where the power balance was restored.
‘Of course—’ she pulled her hand away from him and took a step back ‘—I thought about you now and again and hoped that you were doing well. I meant to email you lots more than I actually did and I’m sorry about that…’
He looked at her in unreadable silence, which she was the first to break.
‘I’ll leave you to change.’
‘I think it would probably be a good idea if I were to dry off a bit. It won’t take long, but it’ll be easier to get these clothes off if they aren’t damp.’
‘Makes sense.’ Her nerves were still all over the place and those fabulous midnight-blue eyes roving over her flushed face felt as intimate as his thumb had on her wrist.
‘You’ve just come from outside. Sit for a while and get dry before you think of cooking.’
‘Well… maybe just for a few minutes…’ She sat on the chair closest to the fire and nervously looked at him. She had thought he hadn’t changed at all in the past four years but he had. There was a tough maturity about him that hadn’t yet crystallised when she had last seen him. His rise in the world of business had been meteoric. She knew that because, just once, she had given in to temptation and devoured everything she could about him on the Internet. She had discovered that he no longer limited himself to the company he had inherited, he had used that as a springboard for taking over failing companies and had gained a reputation for turning them around in record time. And yet, he had continued to resist the lure of marriage. Why? Was he so consumed by work that women were just satellites hovering on the periphery? Or did he just still enjoy playing the field which, as an eligible, staggeringly rich, good-looking bachelor, would have been a really huge field?
She felt the urge to burst through her self-imposed barrier and ask him and stifled it. She remembered the last time she had misread a situation.
‘You’ve grown up,’ he said so softly that she had to strain forward to hear him. ‘You’ve lost that open, transparent way you used to have.’
‘People do grow up,’ she said abruptly.
‘Were you hurt by that guy? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself.’
For a few seconds, Jennifer didn’t follow where he was going and then she realised that he was talking about Patric.
‘He’s my best friend!’
‘Not sure that says anything.’ James slanted her a look that made her go red. ‘Were you in love with him? Did he break your heart? Because you seem a lot more cynical than you did four years ago. Sure, people change and grow up, but you’re much more guarded now than you were then.’
Jennifer was lost for words. His take on her was revealing. He might have known, years ago, that she had a crush on him, but he obviously had never suspected the depth of her feelings. She had not really suspected the depth of her own feelings! It was only as she began dating that she realised how affected she had been by James’s rejection, how deep her feelings for him ran. And returning here… all those feelings were making themselves felt once again.
The last thing she needed was him trying to get into her head!
‘I love Patric,’ she told him tightly. ‘And I don’t want to be psychoanalysed by you. I know you’re probably bored, lying there unable to do anything, but I can bring you your computer and you can work.’ The devil worked on idle hands and right now James was very idle.
‘My computer’s back at my house,’ he said irritably, ‘and I won’t have you braving the snow to get it. I’ve done enough work for the day, anyway. I can afford to take a little time off.’
‘Your mother would be pleased to hear that. She thinks you work too hard.’
‘I thought you never talked about me with my mother.’
Jennifer shook her head when he grinned at her and stood up. ‘I’m going to go and fix us something to eat. Get changed when you feel your clothes are dry enough.’
‘What’s on the menu?’
‘Whatever appears on the plate in front of you.’ She left to the sound of his rich chuckle and she sternly stifled the temptation to laugh as well.
Her head was full of him as she went about the business of turning a bottle of crushed tomatoes, some cream and some mushrooms into something halfway decent to have with some of the tagliatelle her father kept in abundant supply in the larder. James annoyed her and alarmed her the way no one else had ever been able to, but he also made her laugh when she didn’t want to and held her spellbound when she knew she shouldn’t be. So what did that say about the state of her defences? She had thought that by seeing him again, she would have finally discovered that his impact had been diminished. She had foolishly imagined that she would put her demons to rest. The very opposite had happened, and, although she hated the thought of that, she was practically humming under her breath as she prepared their meal.
When she thought about him lying on the sofa in the sitting room, a wonderful, excited and thoroughly forbidden heat began spreading through her and she couldn’t stop herself from liking it.
She took him his food on a tray and he waved her help aside as he struggled into a sitting position.
‘The painkillers are kicking in.’ He took a mouthful of food and then wondered where the wine was. Oh, and while she was about it, perhaps she could bring him some water as well.
Halfway through the meal, about which he was elaborately complimentary, he announced that he was now completely dry. He magnanimously informed her that there would be no need to wash his clothes, even though she hadn’t offered.
‘I have more than enough at home to get me through an enforced stay,’ he decided, and Jennifer frowned at him.
‘How long are you planning on staying?’ she asked, not bothering to hide the sarcasm, and then she looked at him narrowly when he shrugged and smiled.
‘How long is a piece of string?’
‘That’s no kind of answer, James.’
‘Well, weather wise, even if the snow stops in the next five minutes, which is highly unlikely, we won’t be leaving here for another couple of days. We both know that this is the last port of call for the snow ploughs. It’s too deep for either of us to drive through and, in my condition, I can’t do much about clearing it. That said, I don’t think it’s going to abate for at least another twenty-four hours, anyway. Longer if the weather forecast is to be believed.’
‘Well, you’re certainly the voice of doom,’ Jennifer said, removing his tray from him, putting it on top of hers and sitting back down because she was, frankly, exhausted, despite having had a very lazy day, all things considered.
‘I prefer to call it the voice of reality. Which brings me to point two. I can’t go back to my house. I’m going to need help getting back on my feet. I’m putting on a brave front, but I can barely move.’ She hadn’t exactly been the most welcoming of friends when she had discovered him in the cottage, but, hell, however hard she fought it, there was still something there between them. Friendship, attraction… he didn’t know. He just knew that the frisson between them did something for him. As did looking at her. As did hearing her laugh and seeing her smile and catching her slipping him sidelong looks when she didn’t think his attention was on her. He relished this enforced stay and, while his back was certainly not in a particularly good way, he silently thanked it for giving him the opportunity to get to the bottom of her.
The Girl He'd Overlooked Page 6