by Kim Lawrence
‘I’m fine,’ she said before Theo could say anything.
Should she know why Theo was here? She considered the question with the same strange detached calm that she had been feeling ever since they had rung early that morning to break the news that her gran had passed away peacefully in her sleep.
‘I’m sorry. Was I meant to—?’ Her voice trailed away as though she had forgotten what to say.
Theo put his hands on her shoulders gently and turned her around. She walked ahead of him into the house.
The musty damp smell hit him immediately. ‘Where’s the kitchen?’
Beth looked at him vaguely and pointed to the far end of the hallway.
She sat and watched him move around the kitchen, filling the kettle, opening and closing cupboards and drawers. On one level she knew he ought not to be here but she couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to tell him to go away.
Theo dropped into a squatting position by the chair she sat in.
‘Drink it,’ he said, closing her fingers around the mug.
Beth shook her head but he was insistent. She grimaced as she swallowed.
‘I don’t take sugar.’
‘Today you do; it’s for shock.’
He waited until she had drained the cup and then pulled out one of the other chairs and sat down.
‘Your grandmother is gone?’
Gone sounded so permanent and it was. Beth could almost hear the sound as the ice around her heart cracked. Like frozen extremities when the circulation returned, the pain was take-your-breath-away burningly intense.
She would never see her gran again.
She bit her lip hard and nodded. Theo’s dark eyes held compassion and sadness as though he knew what she was feeling.
Maybe he did—maybe he had lost someone he cared for too. A memory surfaced. He had lost a brother.
‘They took Gran her cup of tea this morning and she didn’t wake up.’ She tried to put the cup down but her hands were shaking so hard she kept missing the table.
‘I’m very sorry, Beth,’ Theo said quietly. Her sadness was so profound he could feel it like a physical presence.
He knew that later she would resent him for seeing her this way—vulnerable—because this was not the face that Beth liked to present to the world, but he was nevertheless glad he was here for her.
She should not be alone right now—no one should at such a time—but, while he wanted to help, he didn’t have the faintest idea how. Anything he could say seemed hopelessly inadequate.
‘Let me.’ He took the cup from her and set it on the table.
She reached out, her cold fingers closing over his hand as she said, ‘I was thinking,’ she began eagerly. ‘It can’t be right. Yesterday, they said she was fine; the doctor said she was fine. Do you think it might be a mistake?’
Theo shook his head slowly. He had to quash the hope in her eyes but he did it as gently as he could, which actually was not very gentle, the situation was by its very nature brutal.
‘They didn’t make a mistake, Beth, you know this.’
A small sound escaped her pale lips and the first tear slipped down her cheek. He reached out and dabbed it with the pad of his thumb.
Beth nodded as the tear was joined by another and another. ‘She just went to sleep, they said,’ she told him thickly. ‘There was no pain.’
‘That’s good.’
Her head fell forward and Theo watched her narrow shoulders heaving as her slender frame was racked by silent sobs.
He watched for a few moments, struggling with a massive sense of helplessness. Then, with a rough word of comfort, he placed a hand at the back of her head and pulled it into his chest.
Beth gave a sob into his shirt.
The lost sound made Theo stiffen. He felt like a man who had seen a blow coming but had ducked too late. He looked down at the glossy head pressed against his heart, wincing every time she released another heartbreaking sob. She held onto him, her arms wrapped around his middle like someone who had been treading water too long and needed someone else to take the weight.
Theo stroked her hair back in long sweeping motions and said soothing things. It didn’t seem to matter that they were in his own tongue and eventually the outburst of raw emotion reduced.
Her sobs became intermittent hiccoughs.
He felt the moment her control returned.
She lifted her face, cast a slightly embarrassed look up at him and pulled away, wiping her face with the heels of her hands. ‘I have things I should be doing.’ The list of arrangements seemed dauntingly endless. ‘And I’m sure you do too.’
‘Not especially.’
She reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘I really appreciate the thought, but I’m fine.’ Theo’s lean features clenched as he looked at the small hand covering his own.
‘You are…’ He stopped abruptly.
Puzzled by the odd intensity of his manner, Beth angled a questioning look up at his face.
He seemed about to say something but then the doorbell rang. The sound seemed to jolt him from some sort of reverie; he swore and pulled his hand from under hers.
‘I’ll get it.’
He returned a moment later with Muriel, the wife of the local vicar, a nice woman with a permanently harassed air but a kind heart.
Gran had been fond of her and Beth was genuinely pleased to see her.
‘I heard. I am so sorry,’ she said, enfolding Beth in a warm hug. ‘I’ll put on the kettle. Will your friend be staying?’ she asked, looking curiously at Theo who, in his designer suit, did look very out of place in the kitchen, which had seen better days.
Out of place in her life.
Beth cut in quickly before Theo could respond. ‘No, he was just leaving.’
Her eyes fell from his. Her life was too complicated right now; she did not want to make it even more problematical by seeing stuff that wasn’t there.
Theo, she now realized, had been raised with a strong sense of duty and this was essentially a duty visit—no more, no less.
Theo left, promising to be back later. Beth took his comment to be one of those things people said when they were being polite; she definitely did not imagine he meant it literally.
It was with some surprise that she opened the door later that day to find him standing on the doorstep.
‘I thought you might be hungry.’
Beth, who hadn’t eaten all day, said, ‘Not really.’
Theo gave her one of his sardonic looks and walked past her into the house.
‘Come in, why don’t you?’ Beth shouted after him.
Actually, the place did seem less big and empty with him in it.
‘You cooked this?’ Beth stared in amazement at the cartons of food he was laying out on the table.
‘I would like to take the credit but no, not me—Louis. He does not normally make home deliveries but I think he likes you. So sit, eat.’
‘What about you?’
‘I have eaten,’ he said, dragging out a chair.
Beth directed a doubtful stare at him. ‘Just what are you doing here, Theo?’
‘Bringing food?’ he suggested, gesturing to the table.
Beth still looked unconvinced.
‘On this occasion I have no underlying sinister motive, though, naturally, if I did have I would not tell you.’
‘Well, it is very…nice of you.’
The food was delicious and, as she ate, Beth realised that she had been ravenous. She paused, fork midway to her mouth, and looked at Theo. ‘Are you going to watch every mouthful I eat because I have to tell you it’s bad for my digestion.’ And this food was nothing like the occasional Friday night Chinese she brought home.
He picked up a fork. ‘In that case I might join you,’ he said, diving in.
They ate in companionable silence, broken only when he revealed casually that Muriel would be staying the night.
Beth gave him a narrow-eyed stare but couldn’t work herself up to real a
nger. She was actually relieved not to be spending the night alone in the big empty house with so many reminders. ‘Whose idea was that?’
His eyes widened in unconvincing innocence. ‘She insisted.’
‘How did you come to be speaking to her in the first place?’
‘I gave her my number. I often give attractive women my number. Sometimes they even call me.’
Beth fought a smile. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you are a control freak?’
‘Up until this moment, no.’
‘Now,’ he said when they had finished, ‘you go and rest; you look ready to fall down.’
Chapter Twelve
BETH argued but he ignored her protests that she wasn’t tired. Eventually she humoured him and went to her bedroom, conscious, as she climbed the creaky stairs, of the doorbell ringing. She had reached the first landing when she heard voices, one deep, one loud.
Presumably it was her babysitter—crazy idea, but when he got something into his head the man was about as flexible as a steel bar. Aggravating, but she had to admit that steel bar characteristics did have their uses, especially during moments of crisis. And, if you had to choose a person to be around when your world fell apart at the seams, she could see why Theo might be many people’s first choice.
It went against the grain to humour him but he had been kind of fantastic and she didn’t have the strength to fight his ludicrous conviction she could not be left alone, but once he was gone she had every intention of re-establishing her independence.
As she lay on her bed Beth had no expectation of sleeping. The next thing she knew, it was five hours later. She checked the bedside clock with her watch, unable to believe it was that late. She remembered lying down and then nothing—a blissful mind-numbing blank.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up groggily. The cold water she splashed on her face made her feel slightly more human; it washed away the drowsiness but also the last remnants of her make-up, revealing the dark, bruised-looking shadows under her eyes and scary pallor of her skin.
With a grimace of distaste, she looked down at her creased and crumpled clothes; she had slid under the quilt fully clothed earlier and it showed.
Fighting the lethargy that made everything seem an effort, she undressed and stepped into the shower. Unable to work up any enthusiasm to select fresh clothes, she pulled on an old towelling robe over her bra and pants and slid her feet into a pair of fluffy slippers.
Beth’s nostrils twitched. The smell of fresh coffee permeating the draughty old house suggested that the vicar’s wife had indeed arrived.
Despite her earlier misgivings about being in the house on her own, partly due, she suspected, to sleep deprivation, all she actually wanted was to be left alone. On the way downstairs she rehearsed the speech in her head, the one that was going to convince Muriel Baxter that, no matter what Theo had told her, she really didn’t need a babysitter.
She walked into the kitchen wearing an expression that she hoped would demonstrate that she was not about to fall apart.
The expression peeled away when she found not the vicar’s middle-aged wife but Theo, sitting at the scrubbed kitchen table with work spread out in front of him.
‘What are you still doing here?’
Then, conscious that her accusing tone was not really appropriate when she was talking to someone who had been far more generous with his time than common courtesy demanded, she added awkwardly, ‘I thought you’d be at work.’
‘I had meetings—they were cancelled.’ He saw no need to explain that he had done the cancelling because she might misread the gesture.
And it had not been any major inconvenience. His actions had not been compelled by pity or compassion; they had been of a purely practical nature. He could not give his full attention to the items under discussion when he was distracted by the thought of Beth waking in this big empty house alone.
Obviously, he was not responsible for her but to walk away right now would be, to his way of thinking, just as unacceptable as walking away from the scene of an accident.
‘Muriel…?’
Theo watched as she looked around the big room—Victoria had still been on the throne when it had its last refurb—as though the vicar’s wife might be hiding in a dresser cupboard.
‘She had an emergency at home.’ The woman had been apologetic after she’d received the phone message and her explanation garbled. Frowning, he recalled the gist of their conversation. ‘I believe one of her children fell off, or possibly into something.’
‘That would be George,’ Beth said, tightening the belt on her robe. ‘He is sort of a legend, an accident-prone ten-year-old,’ she added when he looked blank. ‘I hope he’s all right,’ she added worriedly.
Theo closed the laptop that lay open on the big scrubbed table and slid his phone back into his pocket. ‘I did not get the impression it was anything life-threatening or even serious and, should you require it, Muriel asked me to tell you that her sister-in-law will come and sleep the night here if you wish.’
It was churlish, she knew, to feel irritated when everyone had the best possible intentions but she was getting tired of being treated as though she was helpless. ‘That’s very kind, but I’d actually prefer to be alone and I’m sure everyone—’ her glance flickered significantly to his belongings on the table ‘—has things to get on with.’
‘People are concerned.’
Beth’s jaw tightened. Couldn’t he see this was his opportunity to leave, any obligation he might have felt fully discharged?
Circumstances had conspired to throw them together and she doubted he was any happier about it than she was, which made his continued presence even more inexplicable.
What was holding him here?
Not a desire for her company, Beth was sure. He’d toned down the antagonism, presumably in deference to her bereavement, but, if anything, the uneasiness she had always felt in his presence had actually intensified.
‘And I’m grateful.’ Her lashes swept downwards. She would have preferred to owe the debt of gratitude to anyone but him. ‘But, as you can see, I’m fine.’
Beth regretted inviting his searching scrutiny, but she withstood it as best she could, even though her reaction to his dark clinical stare had a less than clinical effect on her stomach muscles.
She did not look fine. Composed, yes, but fine, no, he decided, studying the fine lines of strain around her soft mouth and the pain in her eyes.
Despite the fact she was clearly capable, he still felt a strong reluctance to leave her in this place with so many memories. ‘This house is…’
Reading the criticism in his encompassing gesture and frown, Beth lifted her chin to a defensive angle and jumped in angrily before he could complete his sentence.
‘My home—and I have been living here alone for some time.’
The mental image of her, arriving home to this vast, empty, half-derelict shell, made Theo feel inexplicably angry. ‘Insanity.’
Beth looked at him and saw all the people who’d been offering her very sound financial advice, people who understood figures but who didn’t have a heart.
Hands clenched at her sides, her contemptuous gaze came to rest on his face, even in her anger registering the aesthetic harmony in his sternly delineated features—the slashing cheekbones, the aquiline moulding of his nose, his dark bold stare and the innate sensuality of his lips.
‘I suppose you’d sell this place to a developer who would divide it up into sympathetic conversions and sell off the garden for them to cram in—what would you say—twenty units and garages in the vegetable plot?’ Her shaking voice rose to an angry shrill shout.
‘Is that an option?’ It sounded to him like a good one. Even in this market, the house values in this upmarket and very desirable location were still on the rise.
‘Over my dead body!’
His brows lifted at her vehemence. ‘Living in damp conditions like this, it is not an impossible ou
tcome.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t be so dramatic!’ she snapped, making a point of ignoring the chair he pulled out and stalking instead to the other side of the room.
The accusation, from someone who had just thrown her rattle out of the pram and indulged in a hissy fit for no reason he could fathom, struck him as amusing. It was incredible, Theo mused as he watched her, how eloquent a back could be; he found the anger and antagonism Beth’s stiff shoulders and slender rigid back screamed infinitely preferable to the weary defeat her body language had projected earlier in the day.
If yelling at him made her feel better, Theo had no objections. His skin was pretty thick.
He nudged the rotting skirting board with the toe of his shoe. ‘You know you have dry rot here.’ And, though it was the only place he’d seen physical evidence, Theo was pretty sure that this sad, neglected building had every sort of rot known to man. Without this money pit, Beth could buy herself a small place and have money left in the bank as security. ‘Financially, the most profitable course would be to demolish and—’
Beth swung back, fists clenched and eyes blazing. ‘Now why am I not surprised to hear you say that?’ She pressed a finger to her chin as she posed the question before loosing a scornful laugh and adding, ‘Fortunately, we are listed.’
Apparently, at some point during this conversation he had become public enemy number one. He was fairly philosophical about the role that had been thrust upon him. ‘Doesn’t historical listing mean that you are legally obliged to maintain the fabric of the building?’
The comment he had considered innocuous had a red rag to a bull effect on Beth, who compressed her lips and regarded him with the warmth normally reserved for something that had crawled out from under a stone.
Theo was right, which obviously made her even more angry with him. Did he think she wanted to see the home she loved fall down from neglect? Did he have a clue how much the last quarter’s electricity bill was?
She looked at him standing there, so smug, so secure and confident, not to mention gorgeous in his hand-made shoes. A hundred angry retorts flickered through her mind.