Читать книгу Weddings Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 11

‘WILLOW—’

‘No,’ she said quickly, holding up her hand. ‘Forget I asked. Please.’ There were some questions that shouldn’t be asked.

For a moment she thought he was going to tell her anyway. Then, with a shrug, he let it go. ‘What colour is the kitchen going to be?’

‘White,’ she snapped, irritated by the ease with which he changed the subject. Just because a question shouldn’t be asked, didn’t mean she didn’t really want to know!

‘Red paint for the shelves, then? Or yellow? Or is that a bit obvious?’

‘Purple, green, sky-blue, pink with orange dots. They’re your shelves, you decide.’

He tutted, tormentingly. ‘There’s no need to get in a snit just because your blood-sugar level is low. Sure I can’t tempt you to some breakfast before I measure up?’

‘Quite sure.’

Her stomach grumbled pitifully as the smell of eggs frying reached her, but she stayed where she was, covering the wall and herself with blue silk emulsion.

She’d almost finished one side of the room before Mike interrupted her again. ‘Okay, you’ve made your point. Now take a break, have some coffee.’ She straightened, eased her back and took the cup from him. ‘Chocolate biscuit?’

‘You know all my weaknesses.’

‘Intimately,’ he agreed as she took a biscuit from the packet he offered.

Her gaze collided with his. ‘Memo to brain,’ she murmured. ‘Engage thought processes before opening mouth.’

‘Don’t do that. Never do that. Always say what’s in your heart…’ Then he, too, seemed to think twice and the words faltered, stopped. ‘I’m going now. You’ll be all right here on your own?’

‘For heaven’s sake—’ she began irritably. Then she shrugged. ‘Anyone would think I wasn’t fit to be allowed out unaccompanied.’

Mike grinned and the dangerous moment passed. ‘I refuse to comment on the grounds that I might incriminate myself. See you later.’

‘Mike!’ He turned back. ‘You’d better take a key. I’m going to drive down into the village and see if I can get a few things from the 8 ’til Late. Shampoo and stuff. They might even have some towels.’ For a moment Willow stood there, thinking about the pile of fluffy white towels that a great aunt had sent them for a wedding present. They were at her flat, along with all the rest of their presents, waiting for the new house to be ready so that they could move in. They’d all have to be returned with some attempt at an explanation. A job she couldn’t ask anyone else to do for her. ‘There’s a spare in the kitchen drawer.’ Then she said, ‘Do you need anything?’

‘I refer to the answer I gave earlier,’ he said. By the time she’d mentally backtracked through their conversation and settled on his refusal to answer on the grounds of self-incrimination, his four-by-four was disappearing in the direction of the main road.

Hinton Marlowe boasted a small general store and Willow browsed along the shelves of the shop, searching out the essentials she’d forgotten. Most of them, in fact, except a toothbrush and toothpaste, which were part of her handbag kit. Body wash and shampoo, definitely. Hand cream, absolutely. Rubber gloves seemed like a good idea. Could you paint in rubber gloves? She turned to a man stocking the shelves.

‘I don’t suppose you sell towels, do you?’

He looked up, then straightened, smiled. ‘I think there are some tea towels over there by the washingup liquid,’ he said in a brown-velvet voice. As she followed him across the shop it was impossible to ignore the way his jeans clung to his backside. ‘Will they do?’ She’d bet he was on the shopping list of every woman in a thirty-mile radius of the village.

She realised he was waiting for an answer. ‘Oh.’ The tea towels were small, but thick. Better than nothing. ‘Yes, thanks.’ She browsed for a while, filling her basket with a supply of basic foods to keep them going for a few days, then crossed to the counter. The shelf stocker followed her to take her money.

‘Have you just moved into the village?’ he asked as he rang up her purchases.

She found her wallet and looked up. ‘No. What makes you think that?’

‘You’re decorating.’

It wasn’t a question. She looked down at her T-shirt, but she’d changed it before she came out. ‘It’s your hair,’ he said. ‘It’s spattered with blue paint.’ He grinned with the easy confidence of a man who knows he doesn’t have to try too hard. ‘It looks good on you though.’

‘Thanks—I think,’ she said, trying not to remember that Mike had said much the same thing when he’d wiped the stuff off her cheek with his thumb. She really needed not to think about the way he touched her, the way it made her feel cherished, loved.

‘So? Will Aunt Lucy be having the pleasure of your custom?’ She must have looked blank because he said, ‘Use it or lose it. The village store is the centre of the community and Aunt Lucy runs this one.’

‘Oh, right. Yes. Or rather, no.’

The grin deepened. ‘Are you always this decisive?’

Oh, please! Flirting, she could do without. ‘I don’t live here, I’m helping out at the Trust cottages at Marlowe Park. Decorating.’

‘I heard they were looking for volunteers. Maybe I’ll come along and give you a hand.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you had a lot of time,’ she said, not wanting to sound discouraging—they needed the help—but definitely not wanting to sound as if she was panting for his company.

‘With the shop you mean? I’m just helping Aunt Lucy out for a couple of days, carrying boxes, filling shelves during the day.’ A slight pause invited her to ask what he did with his evenings. She ignored it. ‘The lad who usually does it is on holiday. Would a part-timer be welcome at the cottages?’

‘Many hands make light work,’ she assured him. ‘Give Emily Wootton a ring if you want to volunteer,’ she advised, distancing herself from whatever decision he made. ‘I’ve got her number here somewhere.’ She found her notebook and wrote Emily’s number on a discarded till receipt.

‘Thanks…’ His eyebrows invited her to fill in the gap with her name.

‘Willow,’ she said. ‘Willow Blake.’

‘Thanks, Willow.’ He offered her his hand. ‘Jacob Hallam.’

‘Jacob,’ she acknowledged, taking his hand for the briefest moment. Then she paid for her shopping and beat a hasty retreat before he suggested closing the shop and adjourning to the pub to discuss his painting technique.

She returned to the holiday cottages by turns dawdling, scarcely able to bear the thought of seeing Mike again, to see him but not to be able to reach out, touch him, hold him, be part of him. And then foot down, unable to wait another moment…

As she swung around into the parking space behind the cottages, heart hammering, there was only Emily’s battered van to keep her car company. She felt like a balloon with the air let out. Flat and joyless.

Emily looked up as Willow joined her upstairs where she was making a start on one of the bedrooms. ‘I understand you’ve got company.’ She dipped her brush into the paint and carried on. ‘Mike phoned me this morning.’

‘Oh?’

‘Are you okay with him being here? I’ll tell him to get lost if you’d like me to.’

‘No, I can handle it.’

‘That’s a relief. He’s offered to make some shelves and we can certainly do with them.’

‘I hope he knows what he’s doing.’ The idea of Mike with a saw in his hands, making shelves, was an entirely new concept, but she’d be lying if she said the prospect of seeing him stripped to the waist and working up a sweat wasn’t thoroughly appealing. ‘I might have got a new recruit. Jacob Hallam. He’s helping out in the village shop. I gave him your number.’

‘Oh, right.’ Emily grinned broadly. ‘Now I see my mistake. I shouldn’t have asked for volunteers to help out of the goodness of their hearts, I should have put a big picture of you in the paper and said, come and have some fun with Willow Blake. I’d have been fighting them off.’ Then, perhaps remembering that her number one volunteer shouldn’t have been available as an attraction for lustful men with a talent for decorating, she rapidly changed the subject. ‘I brought some sandwiches. They’re in the fridge, if you’re hungry.’

Willow forced a sandwich down before setting to work, constantly on the listen for Mike. Then, when he finally did turn up, she just kept going, refusing to rush out so that he’d see just how much she’d missed him. And he didn’t come rushing in to see her, either. She heard him talking to Emily and, later, the sound of an electric handsaw being applied to wood.

She tried to ignore it, but after a while—only because she had to stand up and move anyway—she glanced out of the window, watched him for a little while, measuring, marking, cutting.

He did it with the same ease and familiarity with which he approached an auditor’s report. Not happier exactly, but relaxed, in his element with his corn-silk hair powdered with fine sawdust, sawdust streaked across his finely muscled torso. She wanted to put out her hand to see how it felt beneath her fingers.

He could still do it to her, would still be able to do it when she was ninety. That odd breathless catch at her throat, the stirring of the fine hairs at her nape, an atavistic yearning for one man, her man, linked her with all women, back through to the distant ages.

But they had more than that. Their relationship had matured, deepened beyond the driving physical urge to mate, procreate, that brought men and women together.

She longed to cherish Mike, to care for him, grow old with him, wherever life might take them. So how, with all that, could they have been so careless with what they’d been given?

She watched him for a long time but he didn’t once look her way.

Maybe that was why she didn’t react when, a while later, she heard him come into the day room. She was down on the floor, working close to the skirting board. Getting up was going to be painful and she wasn’t doing it until she’d finished.

He didn’t speak and she jumped as he put his hands on her shoulders, then gradually relaxed as he began to knead at the ache between her shoulder blades with his thumbs. It was blissful. He seemed to know exactly where her muscles were screaming for relief and it felt so good that she didn’t want him to stop. Ever.

Then, as his hands moved across her shoulders, feathering over the sensitive nerve endings that he knew reduced her to jelly, it felt a whole lot better.

Not fair. Not fair.

‘Where have you been all day?’ Willow demanded, pulling away while she still could. ‘It doesn’t take this long to buy a couple of planks of wood.’

‘You missed me?’

‘Like I missed you at the altar,’ she retorted.

‘Yeah. Right.’ He sat back on his heels. ‘You know, this isn’t an endurance test, Willow,’ he said softly. ‘Leave it now. Come and have something to eat.’

‘I’ll eat when I’m good and ready.’

He didn’t argue with her, but stood up. ‘Better make it soon. You’re getting cranky.’ She glared at him and he held up his hands, palms out, as if to fend off her wrath. ‘Okay, okay, it was just a suggestion.’

She watched him walk away. She stood up, balanced the paintbrush across the tin and peeled off the rubber gloves. She wasn’t having him saying she was cranky. Why would she be cranky? She had reclaimed her life, got exactly what she wanted.

She followed him into the kitchen, picked up the kettle and began to fill it. ‘Where’s Emily?’

‘She had to go. She said to tell you goodbye and that she’ll try and get over tomorrow afternoon.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you fancy a bar meal at the pub tonight?’

‘Looking like this?’

Mike refrained from telling her that he’d never seen her looking more desirable. She’d almost certainly hit him with the kettle if he did and he’d probably deserve it.

‘Honestly, hon, I’m sure once people have seen the blue-speckled look they’ll all want it—’ He stepped back sharply as she splashed cold water at him, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘It’s the pub or sandwiches again. You choose. But I warn you, cooking utensils seem to be limited to a frying pan.’ And besides, he didn’t think staying in was such a great idea. What would they do? Uh-huh. Belay that thought. He’d given himself a good talking to about sharing showers, about hands-on muscle-relaxing therapy. ‘It’s a warm evening,’ he added quickly, before his good intentions took a hike. ‘We can sit outside.’

‘You certainly know how to give a girl a good time.’

‘I was the one who suggested St Lucia, remember? You were the one who thought this would be more fun.’ He crossed to the sink, standing behind her, his hands hovering an inch from her shoulders, desperate for her warmth. There was no excuse here. No pretence that he was simply easing her shoulders. Besides, he’d blown that one when his fingers got ambitious. ‘You don’t have to punish yourself, sweetheart,’ he said gently. ‘You haven’t done anything bad.’

She looked back and up at him. ‘I don’t suppose you could get that in writing from my mother, could you?’

‘She wasn’t the only one who got it wrong, you know.’

‘I know. I should have been tougher about the bridesmaids.’ She plugged in the kettle. ‘And the cake. No one needs a cake that big. What do you suppose will happen to it?’

He hadn’t been thinking about the wedding arrangements. He’d been thinking about his father and that wretched house. But that was his nightmare, not hers. Well, maybe they’d agreed on the hideousness of the taps… ‘I’m sure the caterers will find a good home for it.’

‘But it had our names and the date inscribed in icing…’ She stopped. ‘I’m just being silly, aren’t I? They’ll have them scraped off and something else in their place in ten minutes flat.’ Willow took a deep breath. ‘That’s good. I hate waste—’ She turned and he was still there and she laid her cheek against his chest and his arms went around her, holding her. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a cuddle. Friends did that, didn’t they? Cuddled you when you were down?

He kept telling himself it didn’t mean anything. It was just reaction. She was upset. But he loved her, wanted her. If he could be transported back to the church…

Talk about fooling himself. She hadn’t come to the church. He could have waited for her until he turned to dust and she would never have turned up. She didn’t want him when he was Michael Armstrong, heir apparent to Armstrong Publications, a thriving company in a vibrant city. Why would she want him as Mike Armstrong, head of nothing more important than a little workshop that might have a customer-waiting list two years’ long, but would never turn out more than one or two pieces of furniture a month?

He didn’t try to hold her as she pulled away, rubbing the back of her hand across her cheek in an attempt to wipe away the tears. ‘I’ll make that tea.’ She sniffed. Mike tore a couple of sheets of kitchen paper from a roll on the draining board and lifting her chin, blotted her cheeks dry. ‘It’s the smell of the paint,’ she said. ‘It’s making my eyes run.’

He didn’t contradict her. ‘You need some fresh air, I expect. We could walk across the fields to the village.’

‘Give me a couple of hours to scrape off the paint.’ Willow sniffed again, then made herself turn away from the broad wall of his chest, the temptation of easy comfort. Forced herself to remember that they weren’t lovers any more. He was right, they should go out. It would be a lot easier to remember that they were just good friends if they were in the company of other people, instead of cooped up alone with nothing more exciting than a game of I-spy to distract them. She pushed her hair back from her face. ‘I must look like some wild woad-daubed Ancient Briton.’

‘You do,’ he agreed seriously. ‘An Ancient Briton who could do with some lessons in body art.’ And she giggled, as she knew she was meant to. Never had anything been so hard. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes.’

Half a dozen towels had appeared in the bathroom. Big, comforting, dark red towels. Emily must have realised she’d need some, Willow thought gratefully, picking one up, holding it to her face. It smelled…it smelled of wood. It smelled just the way Mike had the day he’d brought home that beautiful little table: not of polished wood, but as if he’d been handling raw, newly sawn timber.

It had been the last evening they’d spent together before the wedding and she’d been brittle with nerves, desperate to pour out her doubts, tell him what was in her heart. She hadn’t, certain that it was simply a case of the ‘pre-wedding nerves’ that every woman famously went through before taking the biggest step of her life.

It would be all right. If she just hung on, it would be all right. Then their hands had brushed as he’d reached for her suitcase packed with her honeymoon clothes so that it would be waiting, with his, at the hotel for them.

Mike had been distracted too and when he’d said he had to go, had things to do, it had almost been a relief. Then his fingers had touched hers and it had been like lighting the blue touch paper. Instant conflagration, urgent, desperate.

And afterwards, her skin had been suffused with the scent of new-cut wood.

She held the towel for a moment, breathing it in, feeling weak with longing for him to hold her again, love her with that same end-of-the-world passion that had taken them somewhere else, a place where ambition, career, the vast, unstoppable momentum of the wedding did not exist. When he’d held her, whispering hot words of love, nothing could touch them.

She dropped the towel as if it scorched her. Emily hadn’t brought it. The towels belonged to Mike but they hadn’t come from his flat in Melchester. The towels there were blue.

So what? It wasn’t her business any more. Except, standing beneath the hot blast of the shower, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it. He’d had a home of some kind in Maybridge. It would seem that he still did have one. Had he shared it with someone and that was the reason he’d never talked about it, shrugging off the past as if it didn’t matter?

Well, she had news for him. It mattered.

Angrily, she ignored the big, plush towels and used the little tea towels she’d bought, to dry herself, and spent rather more time than she’d intended on making up her face, flicking her hair into place. Then, instead of the nearly clean T-shirt she’d used to dry herself with the night before, and had worn for her shopping trip to the village, she dug out a slate-blue silky knit top that had come out of the drawer with her underwear.

She’d thrown it into her bag, too desperate to get away to bother with sorting silk from cotton. She was glad now because, even when she didn’t care what she looked like, a girl needed to have something that she looked good in.

Mike, his hair still damp from the shower, his forearms tanned and sinewy and strong, had never looked more relaxed, more at ease with himself. More desirable. But Willow kept her distance as they crossed the yard to the stile and she clambered over before he could give her hand.

‘How far is it across the fields?’ she asked.

‘About a mile. Just about right to work up an appetite.’

‘You speak for yourself, I’ve been working all day. I’ve already got an appetite.’ Well, she couldn’t have him thinking she was pining for him. With luck he’d put her crankiness down to hunger. Again.

She felt him glance at her, knew without looking that a crease would have formed in the wide space between his grey eyes. She knew everything about him. How he looked, how he smiled, how he’d respond when she touched his hand, his shoulder, his face.

But that was superficial stuff. What about inside his head? She realised she knew nothing about what had been going on in there. She had a legitimate reason for running out on her wedding. What demons, what memories, had sent him running from the church?

And what had brought him racing after her?

She kept her gaze fixed firmly on the path ahead of them, moving ahead as the path narrowed, picking up her pace so that they didn’t have to struggle for words to fill the silence.

Mike let her go, keeping his distance so as not to crowd her. She was confused. Hell, he was confused. He knew in his head that they had done the right thing. But his heart—his big-mouthed heart that didn’t know when it was well off—had got him into this mess and now it just refused to let go. He couldn’t, wouldn’t let her go.

He caught up with her as she reached the kissing gate that led into the lane. ‘Hey, what’s your hurry? This was supposed to be a stroll, not an endurance test.’

She stepped into the gate, turned and pushed the swinging part towards him, blocking his way.

‘Why are you here, Mike?’ she demanded.

‘Well, I thought we were going to get something to eat.’ She said nothing. ‘Maybe if you’d let me through the gate—’ She took her hands off the top rail and turned swiftly away. ‘Willow!’ She didn’t acknowledge him as he drew level with her. ‘I don’t know,’ he declared. Not true. He knew. He knew that he couldn’t marry her, live the life he’d offered her. But he couldn’t live without her, either. Still she ignored him and he swung round in front of her, forcing her to stop. ‘All right, all right. I didn’t think you should be on your own right now.’ That, at least, had the merit of honesty. She shouldn’t be on her own.

‘I’m going to have to get used to it.’ She walked around him. ‘And I’m not sure that you’re the person to help me with that. In fact I think it would be a whole lot easier if you left.’

‘You want me to go now? Tonight?’ She scuffed the ground, kicking at the dust with her shoes as she kept moving, not answering him and suddenly, having provoked a confrontation, she was the one backing off. ‘I really should finish the shelves now I’ve started them,’ he said.

‘How long will that take?’

He tried not to let his relief show.

‘I can’t put them up until the kitchen’s been painted,’ he said casually, as if it didn’t matter. ‘And Emily asked me if I could build some storage boxes under the big window in the day room. To double up as extra seating.’ Okay, so he’d suggested it, not Emily, but he didn’t think he’d mention that right now! As they reached the pub, Mike steered her towards a table away from the road. ‘Of course if you want me to go, I’m sure she’ll understand.’

‘I wish I did.’

So did he. Wished he had an answer. But he couldn’t be the man she wanted him to be. He’d tried. Waste of time. He should have been concentrating on making her want the man he was. Well, he had a week to do that. ‘What can I get you?’

She slid onto the bench, folded her arms on the table and propped her chin on them. ‘A gin and tonic. And anything involving mega quantities of calories to eat.’ She pulled a face, attempted a smile. ‘I’m talking serious cholesterol, here, so you’d better make it a double portion of French fries.’

He waited a minute, sure she would change her mind about that. When she didn’t, he said, ‘Do you want some salad with that?’

‘No thanks. I’m eating for comfort. I want to feel my arteries hardening.’

‘You should have said. We could have stayed at the cottages and I’d have made a stack of bacon sandwiches with brown sauce and we could have finished off the chocolate biscuits for pudding.’

‘I thought about it,’ she said, with every appearance of sincerity. ‘Then I thought about what we’d do with the rest of the evening.’ She looked up at him, her eyes luminous in the gathering dusk and this time the confrontation had taken on a different edge, something deeper, something more dangerous as she challenged him to admit that the transition from till-death-us-do-part lovers to friends wasn’t going to happen overnight. It wasn’t going to happen at all if he could help it. ‘Tell me, Mike, what do “just good friends” do when conversation is limited to the impersonal, and they haven’t got as much as a pack of cards to pass the time?’

For a moment his breath seemed to freeze in his body so that he had to force himself to release it, force his mouth into a casual smile. ‘I have to admit, you’ve got me there,’ he said as he finally regained control of his thought processes and found the right words. The sensible words. ‘Are you sure you’re happy to eat out here?’

‘We don’t have a choice. Your jeans have got paint on them.’

‘It’s old paint.’ She didn’t move and he shrugged. ‘Okay, I won’t be long.’

Willow sat back, watching the comings and goings as cars pulled into the car park, people walking by with their dogs, looking for something to distract her from the pain of what she’d done to herself. What Mike was doing to her. How could he be so casual? So laid back?

A motor cyclist streaked passed, all black leather and crash helmet, exuding danger and excitement as his huge machine leaned into the mini-roundabout where the picturesque thatched village pump stood at what had once been the gossip centre of life in Hinton Marlowe. As she watched, he completed the circle and came back, coming to halt in front of the pub, putting his foot down while he tugged at the strap, then removed the helmet.

Oh, heck.

‘Willow. I thought it was you. Enjoying the flesh pots of HM after a hard day with the paintbrush?’

‘Jacob.’ She managed a smile. ‘Finished for the day?’

‘Just about. The shop’s been shut for hours, but I’ve been doing the accounts.’

‘Is that what you do when you’re not shifting boxes and tending the till? Account?’

‘Something like that.’ He smiled and she tried harder to look as if she was pleased to see him. Clearly she’d succeeded, because he pulled the bike up onto its rest and walked across to join her. ‘Are you on your own? Can I get you a drink?’

‘Thanks, but it’s being taken care of.’

Mike appeared in the doorway with a couple of glasses. ‘The food won’t be long,’ he said, glancing at the newcomer and then at Willow, waiting for an introduction.

‘Mike, this is Jacob Hallam. His aunt runs the village store. He’s an accountant, too.’

‘Give it up,’ Mike advised. ‘Get a life.’

Willow stared at him. Then, gathering herself, she said, ‘Jacob, Mike is…’

‘Mike is getting in the drinks,’ he said, cutting off her attempt at anything more elaborate by way of introduction. She let it go. Maybe he wasn’t too keen on broadcasting his whereabouts, either. ‘Can I get you something? If you’re stopping?’ He wasn’t encouraging.

‘Oh, well, a lager, thanks. It’s thirsty work, cooking the books.’ Mike apparently felt no compulsion to smile.

‘We’re eating, Jacob. Will you join us?’ Willow offered quickly. Mike might not welcome company but she could certainly do with a buffer, an outsider to sop up the growing tension between them. It had been easy to ignore when they’d been working in separate parts of the cottages, but it was now beginning to stretch to twanging point. She moved up, inviting him to join her on the bench.

‘Just the lager, thanks. Aunt Lucy will have something waiting for me and she’ll fret if I don’t eat it.’

As he sat down beside Willow, Mike bit back the urge to tell this leather-clad intruder that it was his place. It wasn’t. He’d forfeited any right to the place beside Willow when he’d walked out of church. So, instead of punching the man’s lights out, he went and fetched him a lager.

If Jacob could have read his mind, though, he might have got straight back on his motorbike and driven off without drinking it.