The Last Woman He'd Ever Date

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 with 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?’

‘I’m a journalist.’ A rather grand title for someone working on the news desk of the local paper. ‘I’m interested in all the angles. Protecting the countryside has its place, too.’

‘For the privileged few.’

‘The estate has always been a local amenity.’

‘Not if you’re a fisherman,’ he reminded her. ‘I assume, since you’re covering local issues that you work for the local rag?’

‘The Observer, yes,’ she said, doing her best to ignore his sarcasm, keep a smile on her face. She wanted to know what he knew.

‘All that expensive education and that’s the best you could do?’

‘That’s an outrageous thing to say!’

Oops… There went her smile.

But it explained why, despite the fact that she’d been a skinny kid, totally beneath his notice, he had remembered her. Her pink and grey Dower House school uniform had stood out amongst the bright red Maybridge High sweatshirts like a lily on a dung heap. Or a sore thumb. Depending on your point of view.

The other children in the village had mocked her difference. She’d pretended not to care, but she’d envied them their sameness. Had wanted to be one of them, to belong to that close-knit group clustered around the bus stop every morning when she was driven past in the opposite direction.

‘You were headed for Oxbridge according to your mother. Some high-flying media job.’

‘Was I?’ she asked, as if she didn’t recall every moment of toe-curling embarrassment as her mother held forth in the village shop. She might have been oblivious, but Claire had known that they were both the object of derision. ‘Obviously I wasn’t as bright as she thought I was.’

‘And the real reason?’

She should be flattered that he didn’t believe her, but it only brought back the turmoil, the misery of a very bad time.

‘It must have been having a baby that did it.’ If he was back in the village he’d find out soon enough. ‘Miss Snooty Smartyhat brought down to size by her hormones. It was a big story at the time.’

‘I can imagine. Anyone I know? The father?’ he added, as if she didn’t know what he meant.

‘There aren’t many people left in the village who you’ll remember,’ she said, not wanting to go there. Even after all these years the crash of love’s young dream as it hurtled to earth still hurt… ‘As you pointed out, there aren’t any jobs on the estate for our generation.’ Few jobs for anyone. Sir Robert’s fortunes had been teetering on the brink for years. Cheap imports had ruined his business and with his factories closed, the estate—a money sink—had lost the income which kept it going.

The Hall was in desperate need of repair. Some of the outbuildings were on the point of falling down and many of the hedges and fences were no longer stock proof.

Cue Archie.

‘No one who’ll remember me is what I think you mean,’ he said.

‘You’re in luck, then.’

‘You think I’d be unwelcome?’

He appeared amused at the idea and flustered, she said, ‘No…I just meant…’

‘I know what you meant,’ he said, turning back to the delicate task of unpicking the threads of her suit from the thorns.

Ignoring the cold and damp that was seeping through her skirt, trying to forget just how much she disliked this part of her job, she tried again. This time, however, since he clearly wasn’t going to be coaxed into indiscretion, she came right out and asked him.

‘Can you tell me what’s happening to the estate?’ Maybe the subtle implication that he did not know himself would provoke an answer.

‘There’ll be an announcement about its future in the next day or two. I imagine your office will get a copy.’

‘It has been sold!’ That wasn’t just news, it was a headline! Brownie points, job security… ‘Who’s the new owner?’

‘Do you want a scoop for the Observer, Claire?’ The corner of his mouth quirked up in what might have been a smile. Her stomach immediately followed suit. She might be older and wiser, but he’d always had a magnetic pull. ‘Or merely gossip for the school gates?’

‘I’m a full-time working single mother,’ she said, doing her best to control the frantic jangle of hormones that hadn’t been disturbed in years. ‘I don’t have time to gossip at the school gates.’

‘Your baby’s father didn’t stick around, then?’

‘Well spotted. Come on, Hal,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s obvious that you know something.’

If he had been the chairman of the Planning Committee she’d have batted her eyelashes at him. As it was, she’d barely raised a flutter before she regretted it.

Hal North was not a man to flirt with unless you meant it.

Poised on the brink of adolescence, paralysed with shyness if he so much as glanced in her direction, she had not fully understood the danger a youth like Hal North represented.

As a woman, she didn’t have that excuse.

‘It’ll be public knowledge soon enough,’ she pressed, desperately hoping that he wouldn’t have noticed.

‘Then you won’t have long to wait will you?’

‘Okay, no name, but can you tell me what’s going to happen to the house?’ That’s all she’d need to grab tomorrow’s front page. ‘Is it going to be a hotel and conference centre?’

‘I thought you said it was going to be a building site. Or was it an industrial estate?’

‘You know how it is…’ She attempted a careless shrug, hiding her annoyance that he persisted in trading question for question. She was supposed to be the professional, but he was getting all the answers. ‘In the absence of truth the vacuum will be filled with lies, rumour and drivel.’

‘Is that right?’ He straightened, put away his knife. ‘Well, you’d know more about that than me.’

‘Oh, please. I work for a local newspaper. We might publish rumour, and a fair amount of drivel, but we’re too close to home to print lies.’

She made a move to get up, eager now to be on her way, but he forestalled her with a curt ‘wait.’

Assuming that he could see another problem, she obeyed, only to have him put his hands around her waist.

She should have protested, would have protested if the connection between her brain and her mouth had been functioning. All that emerged as he picked her bodily out of the ditch was a huff of air, followed by a disgusting squelch as her foot came out of the mud, leaving her shoe behind. Then she found herself with her nose pressed against the dark green heavyweight cloth of his coveralls and promptly forgot all about the bluebells.

Hal North had a scent of his own. Mostly fresh air, the sweet green of crushed grass and new dandelion leaves, but something else was coming through that fresh laundry smell. The scent of a man who’d been working. Warm skin, clean sweat—unexpectedly arousing—prickling in her nose.

He was insolent, provoking and deeply, deeply disturbing but, even as the urgent ‘no!’ morphed into an eager ‘yes…’ she told herself to get a grip. He had been bad news as a youth and she’d seen, heard nothing to believe that had changed.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said, doing her best to avoid meeting those dangerous eyes as she clung to his shoulders, struggling for balance and to get her tongue and teeth to line up to form the words. ‘I really have to be going.’

‘Going? Haven’t you forgotten something?’

‘My shoe?’ she suggested, hoping that he’d dig it out of the mud for her. He was, after all, dressed for the job. While the prospect of stepping back into it was not particularly appealing, she wasn’t about to mess up the high heels she carried in the messenger bag slung across her back.

‘I was referring to the fact that you cycled along a footpath, Claire. Breaking the by-laws without a second thought.’

‘You’re kidding.’ She laughed but the arch law-breaker of her youth didn’t join in. He was not kidding. He was… She didn’t know what he was. She only knew that he was looking down at her with an intensity that was making her pulse race. ‘No! No, you’re right,’ she said, quickly straightening her face. ‘It was very wrong of me. I won’t do it again.’

The hard cheekbones seemed somehow harder, the jaw even more take it or leave it, if that were possible.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You don’t?’ she asked, oblivious to the demands of the front page as her upper lip burned in the heat of eyes that were not hard. Not hard at all. Her tongue flicked over it, in an unconscious attempt to cool it. ‘What can I do to convince you?’

The words were out of Claire’s mouth, the harm done, before she could call them back and one corner of his mouth lifted in a ‘got you’ smile.

There was no point in saying that she hadn’t meant it the way it had sounded. He wouldn’t believe that, either. She wasn’t sure she believed it herself.

If it looked like an invitation, sounded like an invitation…

Her stomach clenched in a confused mix of fear and excitement as, for one heady, heart-stopping moment she thought he was going to take her up on it. Kiss her, sweep her up into his arms, fulfil every girlish dream she’d confided to her journal. Back in the days before she’d met Jared, when being swept into Hal’s arms and kissed was the limit of her imagination.

No! What was she thinking!

In a move that took him by surprise, she threw up her arm, stepped smartly back, out of the circle of his hands, determined to put a safe distance between them before her wandering wits made a complete fool of her. But the day wasn’t done with her.

The morning was warm and sunny but it had rained overnight and her foot, clad only in fine nylon—no doubt in shreds—didn’t stop where she’d put it but kept sliding backwards on the wet path. Totally off balance, arms flailing, she would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her round the waist in a grip that felt less like rescue than capture and her automatic thanks died in her throat.

‘You’ve cycled along that path every day this week,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he was right, ‘and I don’t think you’re going to stop without good reason.’

‘Archie is a great deterrent,’ she managed.

‘Not to those of us who know his weakness for apples. A weakness I’ve seen you take advantage of more than once this week. Being late appears to be something of a habit with you.’

He’d seen her? When? How long had he been back? More importantly why hadn’t she heard about it when she called in at the village shop? There might be few people left who would remember bad, dangerous, exciting Hal North, but the arrival of a good-looking man in the neighbourhood was always news.

‘Were you lying in wait for me today?’

‘I have better things to do with my time, believe me. I’m afraid this morning you just ran out of luck.’

‘And here was me thinking I’d run into you.’ He moved his head in a gesture that suggested it amounted to the same thing. ‘So? What are you going to do?’ she demanded, in an attempt to keep the upper hand. ‘Call the cops?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going to issue an on-the-spot penalty fine.’

She laughed, assuming that he was joking. He didn’t join in. Not joking…

‘Can you do that?’ she demanded and when he didn’t answer the penny finally dropped. A fine… ‘Oh, right. I get it.’

He hadn’t changed. His shoulders might be broader, he might be even more dangerously attractive than the boy who’d left the village all those years ago, but inside, where it mattered, he was still the youth who’d poached the Park game, torn up the park on his motorcycle, sprayed graffiti on Sir Robert’s factory walls. Allegedly. No one had ever caught him.

He was back now as gamekeeper, warden, whatever and he apparently considered this one of the perks of the job.

She shrugged carelessly in an attempt to hide her disappointment as she dug around in her bag, fished out her wallet.

‘Ten pounds,’ she said, flicking it open. ‘It’s all I have apart from small change. Take it or leave it.’

‘I’ll leave it.’ Her relief came a fraction too soon. ‘I’m looking for something a little more substantial by way of payment.’ What! ‘Something sufficiently memorable to ensure that the next time you’re tempted to ride along this path, you’ll think again.’

She opened her mouth to protest that parting with all the spare cash she had to see her through until the end of the month was memorable enough, thank you very much. All that emerged was another of those wordless huffs as he pulled her against him, expelling the air from her body as her hips collided with hard thighs.