Книга - Summer At Willow Tree Farm: The Perfect Romantic Escape

Summer At Willow Tree Farm: The Perfect Romantic Escape
Heidi Rice


‘A sizzling summer read! – Sarah MorganIs home always where the heart is?When Ellie spent a summer with her mum on a Wiltshire commune in the 90s it was a bigger disaster than Leo DiCaprio’s trip aboard the Titanic – so fleeing to America seemed a perfect plan.But now, with her marriage falling apart, running back to her mum seems like the only option for her and her son Josh.She wasn’t expecting Art, the boy she once had a crush on to still be working at Willow Tree Farm…And still be as hot and bothersome as he was when they were teenagers.Ellie came to Willow Tree Farm for a fresh start. But is she ready to risk sailing her life – and her heart – into another iceberg?







Author HEIDI RICE’s first love was watching movies so, not surprisingly, her first proper job was as a film journalist. But after spending years sneaking off to read romantic fiction when she was being paid to watch movies she decided to try writing a novel of her own.

After several false starts, her first book, Bedded by a Bad Boy, was published by Harlequin Mills & Boon in 2007. Ten years and twenty-six published novels, novellas and short stories later, she has nabbed three RITA nominations, become a USA Today bestseller and sold over two million copies of her books worldwide. Summer at Willow Tree Farm is her second full-length women’s fiction novel.

As you can probably tell, she loves her job, because it involves sitting down at her computer each day and getting swept up in a world of high emotions, sensual excitement, funny flawed women, sexy tortured men and intriguing locations where laundry doesn’t matter. She lives in London with her husband and two sons, and lots of other gorgeous men who are entirely in her imagination (unlike the laundry, unfortunately).


Summer at Willow Tree Farm

Heidi Rice







To my Mum, who is magnificent




Contents


Cover (#u51367d70-172e-5aba-beac-e3c8f9170358)

About the Author (#u768c35f1-d30a-50ee-8fab-41cba2fd720b)

Title Page (#ue60f25b8-ca30-5434-9fa5-ffa476c196f6)

Dedication (#u4f47ee96-a88a-5deb-b230-1fda10bbe72e)

PART ONE: EVERYTHING CHANGES

THEN (#ulink_76e8d442-f6f9-597c-9ee6-c4b1dc0ab7cd)

NOW: CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b735d056-c1c1-5355-b83d-eddcec9b0d3f)

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_020511e3-7144-500a-b6c9-ff38c7a53574)

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_306b66ef-4d7f-5820-90f3-c6fd363f3617)

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_a429456c-922d-5962-90fd-e04ff7cab702)

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_e8dcc430-4064-5340-ad9e-5d1e000a2c45)

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_4db60127-de1d-54ee-967d-f8cb96ad41ae)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_7684d7ab-1535-5cea-a3ee-684a36cc569e)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_39c47d7c-b693-5280-9a36-f7fd7cba6b0d)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

PART TWO: RELIGHT MY FIRE

THEN (#litres_trial_promo)

NOW: CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

PART THREE: NEVER FORGET

THEN (#litres_trial_promo)

NOW: CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

PART FOUR: BACK FOR GOOD

THEN (#litres_trial_promo)

NOW: CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)



PART ONE: EVERYTHING CHANGES (#ulink_6a5fc848-1dfc-522e-91ad-56a1af712d91)




THEN (#ulink_a2d72841-9275-50c1-8a96-8c58d867b4d1)


Eloise Charlotte Preston’s Diary: Do NOT read or you will die.

17 June 1998

My life is actually officially over. And my mum has gone stark raving bonkers. She woke me up while it was still dark yesterday – and it was Sunday, it wasn’t even a school day.

She said we were going somewhere really cool and all sorts of other mad stuff about starting a new life. I just listened to my Discman because she was acting weird. But the way she was going on, I thought we were moving somewhere cool, like New York or Disneyworld. And then where did we finally end up… After hours and hours of driving… Wait for it… FLIPPING WILTSHIRE! And not just Wiltshire, but a commune. That’s right, a commune. Obviously someone forgot to tell the people here communes went out of fashion a million years ago when hippies went extinct.

Mum said I’m missing school for the rest of the term, which could have been good. But it’s not. I miss my friends. It’s PE tomorrow and I even miss that! And I won’t get to go to Laura Gilchrist’s end of year party.

And all this horrible stuff is happening because she’s divorcing Dad. But I don’t get why we have to leave London and come here? Why can’t Dad leave instead? That’s what happened when Jess’s parents got divorced – she ended up with two cool places to live, her mum’s house and her dad’s new flat in Chelsea. And I’ve ended up living in a field.

I keep telling Mum I hate it here, but she just keeps smiling.

Mum’s friend Pam is here and she’s all smiley too – like me having my whole life ruined is a good thing.

I hate them both. There’s not even a TV so I’ve already missed one episode of Sex and the City – which I’ll probably never see ever again now. Or Friends. Or Beverly Hills 90210 (although that’s not so bad now that Luke Perry’s hardly even in it). And, even worse, forget about a computer or the internet, this place doesn’t even have a phone. So I can’t even ring Jess. She’ll probably think I’ve been kidnapped. I had to write her a letter. How tragic is that?

The woman that runs this place is called Laura and she’s a total psychopath. But her son Art is THE WORST. He’s only a year older than me, but he’s really scary. He’s sort of good-looking, if you fancied Jack in Titanic you’d probably fancy him too. He’s got a tattoo on his arm– which I thought was a little bit cool (it’s a big red rose with thorns) until I got a closer look at it today, and realised the petals are actually drops of blood. Yuk! And anyway, no one has a tattoo who isn’t a criminal or a biker. All the other kids here, who are miles younger than me and him, follow him around like a pack of wild dogs and treat him like he’s God. Which he is so not.

I bet he’s never smiled in his entire life. His jeans are ripped, but not in a good way, and covered in stains like he’s never cleaned them ever. And he doesn’t seem to go to school, so we were the only kids here today. He totally ignored me when I said hello. Then when I told him the room my mum’s given me here is nowhere near as pretty as my room at home (just to make conversation, like a normal person), he made a mean comment about me being like Princess Di. As if that was a bad thing. When EVERYONE loves Princess Di, especially now she’s dead.

He called me Princess Drama at supper, so now all the other kids have started calling me it too. They all hate me (AND Princess Di probably) but I don’t care because I hate them back.

I told Mum what Art said about me (and Princess Di) and she just smiled AGAIN and told me I shouldn’t judge people too harshly before I get to know them properly.

Like I want to get to know Art properly! As if!! Honestly, Mum acts like it’s my fault Art’s so mean to me. Why is she on his side? When she should be on mine?

I want to go home. I wish I was dead. I might have to kill myself if we stay here. I think I’ll start a hunger strike tomorrow and see what Mum does.

If you’re reading this, Mum, I’m not kidding!




NOW (#ulink_b79c39e9-298f-5aa2-a5a0-ace1d16f6493)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b79c39e9-298f-5aa2-a5a0-ace1d16f6493)


‘Mom, this pie has Jell-O in it. It tastes weird.’

Eloise Granger eased her foot off the accelerator, to see her son’s face screwed up in comical disgust over the remains of his Melton Mowbray pork pie.

The gamey taste and meat jelly was obviously too much of an acquired taste for an American twelve-year-old brought up on meat that had been processed to within an inch of its life. Even for one who had never been a fussy eater she thought, taking in the dimpled skin where Josh’s tummy peeped above the waistband of his ‘husky boy’ shorts.

‘Have some popcorn chips instead then.’

‘I ate all the popcorn chips already,’ Josh whined, his usually sweet nature finally beaten into submission by jet lag and boredom after seven hours in a plane and a total of fifteen hours on the road since they’d left Orchard Habor in Upstate New York yesterday.

‘Once we get to Grandma’s, I’m sure they’ll have supper ready.’ Whether it would be edible though was another matter.

If Josh was struggling with the concept of pork pies, what were the chances he would wolf down kale stew or tofu casserole or whatever other vegan weirdness the commune had on the menu tonight?

‘Are we almost there?’ he said.

‘Very nearly.’ The rental car hugged a curve, the high-sided banks on either side of the road topped with wild grass and nettles. The stretch of road was familiar, even if it had seemed never-ending too, when she was fourteen and arriving here for the first time with her mum nineteen summers ago. ‘Twenty minutes tops.’

At which point I will get to time-travel back to the worst summer of my life.

So I can top it. And possibly myself in the process.

Why did I ever think running away from Dan and our disaster of a marriage to a place I haven’t been in nineteen years would be a good idea?

The simple answer was, desperation had set in a week ago when Dan had levelled her with his I’ve-just-been-caught-with-my-dick-in-someone-else’s-cookie-jar-again look and told her his latest mistress was accidentally pregnant. And it had all gone downhill from there – because Ellie hadn’t been angry, or upset, or even remotely surprised. She’d just been numb. Numb enough to think that taking her mum up on the invitation she’d been extending to her and Josh for the past four years, ever since Ellie had received that first tentative, white-flag-waving Christmas email from Dee, was a good way of escaping the shit storm that had wrecked her life and her business in Orchard Harbor in less than seven days. Because announcing you were divorcing the town’s Golden Boy was the opposite of good publicity for a woman who made her living as a wedding and events planner. Who knew?

Unfortunately, she hadn’t stopped feeling numb until she and Josh had boarded the plane at JFK… And she’d actually had a moment to contemplate the new shit storm she was flying into.

‘You said that ten minutes ago.’ Josh’s whine drilled through Ellie’s frontal lobe. But she resisted the urge to snap at her son.

He hadn’t complained when she had wrenched him away from everything and everyone he knew, without giving him a proper explanation, and dragged him across an ocean, not to mention two hundred miles of the M3 and the A303 in a tiny Ford Fiesta because that was the only hire car they had left. And he always got cranky when he was hungry. Right now he was probably ravenous, because she’d had to make do with the limited options at the small service station near Stockbridge. Hence the Melton Mowbray debacle.

And, anyway, even a cranky Josh was a welcome distraction from the flood of memories that had kept her awake during the red-eye flight to Heathrow.

What had she been thinking? That swapping one shit storm for another would somehow cancel them out?

‘I said that less than a minute ago,’ she corrected. ‘But you’re right, that means it’s probably only nineteen minutes now.’

Why was it that when you knew something bad was headed your way, it always took that much longer to arrive? Was it just life’s equivalent of slow-motion replays on America’s Funniest Home Videos? Because she could remember another sunny June day nineteen years ago, when her mum had driven her to Wiltshire, their whole lives packed into the back of the family Range Rover. She had drowned out her mum’s fake cheerfulness by listening to Take That’s break-up album on a loop, and it had taken for ever to get there then, too.

‘I’m bored.’ Josh interrupted her maudlin thoughts.

‘Why don’t you play on your DS?’

‘It’s out of charge.’

‘Why don’t you listen to your iPod then?’

‘I’m bored with the songs on it. I’ve listened to them over and over.’ She knew how that felt. After that summer, Robbie and his pals had been dead to her for ever.

‘Then have a nap. You must be tired.’ Because I’m exhausted.

Although she doubted she’d sleep any time soon. All the nervous energy careering round her system made her feel as if she were mainlining coke.

‘Naps are for babies,’ Josh moaned.

‘You’re my baby, aren’t you?’

‘Mom!’ She could almost hear Josh rolling his eyes. ‘Don’t say that in front of the new kids, OK. They’ll think I’m weird.’

The smile died as she heard the anxious tone, generated by a year of being the ‘weird kid’ at Charles Hamilton Middle School in Orchard Harbor.

‘They won’t think you’re weird, honey.’

Because I won’t let them.

She didn’t doubt that if the kids at the commune these days were anything like the ones that had been there when she’d arrived at fourteen for that one fateful summer, she’d have a job keeping Josh’s self-esteem intact.

But she was ready for the challenge. This summer she had no job to go to, or marriage to pretend to care about, giving her ample time to concentrate on the two things she did care about: her son, and creating a new grand plan to give him the settled, secure, idyllic family life he deserved.

‘Will they think I’m fat?’ Josh asked.

Ellie’s head hurt. ‘No they won’t, because you’re not. Your weight is perfectly healthy.’ Or healthy enough not to risk giving Josh a complex about it with weight charts and unnecessary diets. That’s what the nutritionist had said at any rate, at a cost of two hundred dollars an hour. And, at that price, he must have been right.

‘Mom, there’s a sign. Is that it?’

Josh’s shout jogged Ellie’s hands on the steering wheel. She braked in front of the sign, which was no longer a childish drawing of a rainbow on a piece of splintered plywood, but a swirl of hammered bronze. The sign appeared sophisticated, but it announced the entrance to a rutted track that looked like even more of an exhaust-pipe graveyard than it had nineteen years ago.

Sunlight gleamed on the metal swirls which read: ‘Willow Tree Organic Farm and Cooperative-Housing Project’.

Underneath was another smaller sign listing – shock of shocks – an email address.

So they’d finally managed to dynamite themselves out of the 1960s then. Was it too much to hope the hippies who ran the place even had Wi-Fi? Perhaps they’d also realised that calling it The Rainbow Commune had conjured up images of stray dogs and filthy children in badly tie-dyed clothing? Unfortunately, the state of the track suggested the name change was nothing more than a cynical rebranding exercise.

A housing co-op is probably just a commune in disguise.

Josh bounced in his seat. ‘Let’s go, Mom.’

He sounded so keen and enthusiastic. How could she tell him this was likely to be a disaster?

Whatever reception she got, Josh was a sweet, sunny, wonderful boy, and anyone who tried to hurt him would have his big bad mother to answer to. Plus, they didn’t have to stay, there was still the Madagascar option, which she had considered a week ago, before settling on Wiltshire.

Ellie crunched the car’s gear shift into first, determined to be positive, no matter what. ‘I’m sure Granny can’t wait to meet you.’

The car bounced down the track, the nerves in Ellie’s stomach bouncing with it like a team of obese gymnasts wearing hobnail boots, as she clung to the one bright spot she’d managed to eke out of her dark thoughts during her night flight.

At least Art Dalton, the scourge of her existence that long ago summer, wouldn’t still be here. Her mother had never mentioned him or his psychotic cow of a mother Laura, or even her lover Pam, in the emails they’d exchanged in recent years. And Art would be pushing thirty-five. He must have buggered off and got himself a life by now – or at the very least, got himself arrested.

*

‘Arthur, they’re nearly here.’ Dee Preston burst round the side of the farmhouse in a swirl of gypsy skirts and jangling bangles brandishing her mobile phone as if it held the Eighth Wonder of the Universe. ‘I got a text from Ellie that she sent from the service station outside Tisbury.’

She grasped Art’s arm. His chopping arm. And the axe thunked into the stubborn trunk he’d been trying to shift all day inches from his boot.

‘Jesus, Dee, calm down.’

Her round, flushed face beamed at him and his heart shrank in his chest. He knew how much Dee had invested in this visit. If Ellie Preston was the same high-maintenance drama queen now that she’d been at fourteen, though, he didn’t hold out much hope of Dee getting the Kodak moment she was hoping for with the daughter who hadn’t bothered to come visit her once in nearly twenty years.

‘I almost took off my big toe,’ he added.

‘Stop being such a killjoy.’ Dee shoved the phone at him, only stopping short of inserting it into one of his nostrils by a few millimetres. ‘Read the text and see for yourself. She sent it twenty minutes ago, she should be here any minute.’

Art plucked the phone from her fingers, before he ended up with a nosebleed, and checked the text. He managed to decipher the words “Josh” and “Love Ellie” from the jumble of letters. Without his thirteen-year-old daughter Toto on hand to read it for him properly or the spare time available to decipher each individual word himself and then compile them into a comprehensible sentence, he had to wing it.

‘If she sent it twenty minutes ago, I guess you’re right.’ He handed back the phone. ‘She should be here soon, unless she’s got lost.’ And, given his present run of shitty luck, that was highly unlikely.

‘You have to come,’ Dee said, grasping his arm. ‘We should welcome them properly, like a community.’

‘You’ve spent the last week redecorating their rooms and the whole weekend baking, isn’t that enough?’ But even as the grumpy words left his mouth, he was being dragged round the side of the house to the front yard, to join the other families who lived on the farm and had already been assembled.

The twin tides of pride and panic assailed him, as they always did at the endless get-togethers Dee was always organising to build a sense of community.

Toto was corralling Rob and Annie Jackson’s twin toddlers. Ducks and geese from the nearby millpond roamed over the for once not too muddy yard, and everyone stood around in small groups. The sunshine glinted off Maddy Grady’s spectacles as she flirted with her boyfriend Jacob Riley. The only two unmarried members of the Project apart from him and Dee, they’d started dating a few weeks after Jacob had come to volunteer for a weekend and then never left. Art shuddered at the memory of the rhythmic thumping coming from Jacob’s room the night before and keeping him awake. Even after close to a year, the shine still hadn’t worn off their sex life, that was for sure.

‘Please smile, Arthur. I don’t want you to scare Ellie when she arrives, like you did the first time.’

‘What do you mean?’ Did Dee know? About the cruel things he’d said to Ellie the night before she’d left that summer? Did she know Ellie wasn’t the only one who’d behaved like a selfish little shit? Guilt coalesced in the pit of his stomach.

‘You ignored her.’ Was that all?

‘Did I?’ Relief coursed through him. Even though that was not the way he remembered Ellie’s original arrival at all. Truth was he’d been fascinated by Dee’s daughter that day. She’d stepped out of her mother’s car, flicked back her Rachel from Friends hair, the pastel silk blouse emphasising the buds of her breasts, and the superior scowl on her face making her look like a fairy queen who’d just swallowed a cockroach.

He’d stared, dazzled by how pretty and pristine she was. And she’d pursed her lips into a brittle smile, wrinkled her nose and looked right through him.

Dee glanced his way, before returning her attention to the road. ‘To a fourteen-year-old girl, when a good-looking boy doesn’t notice you, that’s tantamount to a knife through the heart.’ Dee craned her neck, eager to see round the corner of the barn, her knotted hands a testament to her nerves as she waited for her prodigal daughter’s return. ‘Especially one as vulnerable as Ellie was.’

Vulnerable? Was Dee kidding? Beneath the petite figure and the baby-doll face, Ellie Preston had been about as vulnerable as Maggie Thatcher.

‘She didn’t want me to notice her,’ he muttered in his defence. Because she’d done nothing but give him grief when he had.

Dee’s gaze flicked away from the road, her pale blue eyes beseeching. ‘I know you two never did get along. But please, will you try and be nice, or at least not hostile towards her. It would mean so much to me.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not fifteen any more,’ he said, trying to keep his voice devoid of tension. ‘And neither is Ellie. I’m sure we can act like grown-ups if we put our minds to it.’

And stayed the hell out of each other’s way – which was precisely why he hadn’t planned on being part of the welcoming committee.

‘Ellie runs a very successful event-planning business in America, you know,’ Dee said, her voice thick with pride. ‘She might have some ideas that could help with our financial troubles.’

‘We’re not in financial trouble,’ he said, determined to take away the worry lines forming on her forehead.

‘I know it’s nothing you can’t fix,’ she said, reassuring him instead. ‘But maybe Ellie could help you run the place, take some of the burden off your shoulders, while she’s here.’

‘It’s no burden,’ he murmured, thinking of the cramped office he’d escaped from for the afternoon, furnished with a dying Hewlett Packard of indeterminate vintage and floor-to-ceiling shelves bulging with folders full of spreadsheets and order forms and invoices, which he had inherited from Dee’s dead partner Pam four years ago – and still hadn’t got to the bottom of.

While he’d have been more than happy to hand the lot of it over to someone else and run like hell, no way could he hand the mess over to Dee’s daughter. As a teenager she’d hated this place with every fibre of her being.

While he might not have the right skills to manage the farm, he wasn’t going to let it be bludgeoned to death by a woman who would happily tap dance on its grave.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll figure out something useful for her to do while she’s here,’ he said wearily, hoping like hell Ellie wasn’t planning to stay for the whole summer.

Maybe Princess Drama could shovel the manure into biodegradable bags? Or collect eggs from Martha, their prime layer, who had a homicidal personality disorder that would rival Caligula? Or better yet, help Jacob set the rat traps in the back barn? If he remembered correctly from the summer he’d spent with Ellie, she had a pathological phobia of mice. And the rats in that barn were big enough to give the farm’s fifteen-pound ginger tom post-traumatic stress disorder.

The vice around Art’s ribs loosened as he imagined the many ways he could persuade Ellie Preston to bugger off back to her very successful event-planning business in America long before the summer was over.

‘I know you will.’ Dee placed her sun-spotted hand on Art’s forearm. ‘You always know what to do. You’re such a credit to us all.’ She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze, the gesture full of maternal affection. The way she’d begun doing nineteen years ago. The day her daughter Ellie had climbed into her father’s Mercedes and driven away.

He caught the comforting scent of vanilla essence and lavender while Dee nattered about all the exciting things she was going to do with the grandson she’d never met. And his spirits sank.

Bollocks. He wasn’t going to be able to torture Ellie into leaving without upsetting Dee. The headache at his temple hammered at the base of his skull.

Perhaps he’d be able to set Martha the psycho hen on Ellie, but locking her in the barn with the mutant killer rats was probably a non-starter.

‘That’s them.’ Dee’s remark cut into his thoughts.

He lifted his head as a red Ford Fiesta bounded into the yard, then stopped. A boy popped out. About Toto’s height. His short caramel-brown hair stuck up in a tuft at the crown. He wore high-top sneakers, a grey and blue New York Mets T-shirt, a baseball cap backwards and baggy cargo shorts that slouched on his hips but did nothing to hide his pronounced belly.

‘Hey, I’m Josh,’ he said in a broad US accent. He shuffled his hand in a half-hearted wave that was both eager and shy.

Dee rushed over to gather him close in a hug. ‘Josh, it’s so wonderful to meet you. I’m your Granny Dee.’

The boy smiled, his expression both curious and uncomplicated. And Art spotted the railroad-track braces on his teeth.

Ellie’s kid couldn’t have looked and sounded more like an all-American stereotype if he’d tried. He reminded Art of one of the characters from Recess, the cartoon Toto had devoured like kiddie crack a few years ago.

Ellie stepped out of the other side of the car and Art’s breathing stopped as he absorbed the short, sharp shock of recognition.

In a pair of faded Levi’s rolled up at the hem and a snug lacy vest top that emphasised her small frame, her wild strawberry blonde hair tied up in a haphazard knot to reveal dangly earrings, she looked summery and sexy and casual, and nothing like the pristine, polished, too perfect girl he remembered. But then Dee placed a hand on her daughter’s arm, and Ellie’s spine stiffened as if someone had shoved a rod up her arse.

Dee began introducing everyone, while the younger kids swarmed round Ellie’s son, who seemed astonished by the attention. Toto, like him though, held back.

Then it struck him, as he watched Toto watch the boy, that as the oldest kid here, a card-carrying tomboy and as good as a surrogate grandchild to Dee, his daughter might feel as uncomfortable about the new arrivals as he did. Maybe he should have spoken to Toto about Ellie and her son coming to visit? Was this one of those situations that required the sort of ‘parent–child’ conversation the two of them generally avoided? How was he supposed to know that?

But then Toto stopped watching and marched up to the boy, said something to him and grabbed his hand. The boy’s doughy face lit up as he nodded and allowed himself to be dragged off. Toto in the lead as always, like the Pied Piper.

Nope, we’re good.

Thank Christ. This situation was enough of a head-wreck already.

Give or take the odd drive-Dad-mad moment, Toto was a brilliant kid. Smart, independent, straightforward and unafraid. And, like him, she wasn’t the share-and-discuss type.

So yeah, it was all good. No feelings talk required.

Ellie’s body remained rigid as she chatted to her mother, while Mike Peveney and Rob Jackson – who had both bought into the Project with their young families a couple of years ago – set about unpacking her car. A few minutes later, they had disgorged enough bags from the two-door compact to spend six months on safari in Kenya rather than a few weeks in Wiltshire.

Digging his fists into the pockets of his work overalls, Art strolled towards the dwindling welcoming party, prepared to follow through on his promise to Dee.

There was no reason why Ellie and he couldn’t be civil to each other. She might not even remember him. Much.

But then his gaze snagged on her strappy top and the way the thin cotton stretched tight across her breasts. The firm nubs of her nipples stood out against the fabric.

He heard a cough, and lifted his gaze. A pair of grass-green eyes glared at him. The flush burned the back of his neck, at the thought that he’d just been caught checking her out before he’d even said hello. But then the intriguing tilt at the edges of her eyes went squinty and he noticed the bluish hollows of fatigue underneath.

She looked exhausted.

Her lips pursed and the puddle of pity dried up. The tight smile was as unconvincing as the one nineteen years ago.

‘Hello, Arthur,’ she said, using the name he hated except when Dee used it. ‘You’re still here then.’

It wasn’t a question, more like a declaration of war.




CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e4d341b4-d01b-5b78-a004-6cd6860714ca)


Bollocks on toast.

Art Dalton was still here. And still hot. And most definitely still an arsehole, if the insolent way he’d been inspecting her boobs was anything to go by.

‘Yup,’ he said, in the gruff tone that had always unnerved her when they were teenagers. As if there were a million things he could say, but wasn’t going to.

The nervous tension that had been sitting in her gut during the flight over and the drive here, snaked up Ellie’s torso to wrap around her ribs like an anaconda.

Stop freaking out, you ninny. He’ll think it’s on account of him.

She took two calming breaths, drowning out her mother’s information about sleeping arrangements, and took a moment to glance around the yard. Studiously ignoring the man in front of her.

The pungent smell of wet earth and manure hadn’t changed, but everything else had. The place didn’t look like the site of a recent zombie apocalypse any more. There were no rusting vans and trucks propped up on breeze blocks, no broken furniture lying about. Just a carefully segmented vegetable garden, laid out in rows with a section under glass. There were geese and ducks poking around, but no pack of wild dogs or wild children, just two well-dressed toddlers and a skinny little boy about Josh’s age who had taken him off somewhere.

She would check on her son in a minute, after three hours in a car he could do with a run about, but she was reserving judgement on the motives of that skinny boy.

The barn behind the two-storey stone farmhouse had a new roof, the corrugated iron gleaming silver in the sunlight. Even the mud looked industrious. And all three of the men she’d been introduced to had seemed young and ordinary, instead of old and weird. Not a nose ring or multicoloured Mohican in sight.

The anaconda released its stranglehold on her ribs. The place didn’t feel as hostile any more.

‘Exactly how long are you planning to stay?’

Art’s dry enquiry interrupted her mum’s running commentary on how pleased she was to meet Josh.

Not hostile – except for Prince Not Charming.

‘Because that’s a ton of stuff,’ he added, the rasp suggesting how much of an effort it was for him to put a whole sentence together.

In worn boots and oil-stained overalls, Art Dalton looked as intimidating as ever – the strong, silent, stroppy type. His tall, whipcord-lean build had a solid strength, accentuated by the workman’s biceps that moulded the rolled-up sleeves of his overalls. The old tattoo caught her eye, the once blood-red lines having faded to a dusky pink against sun-browned skin. She dragged her gaze away, before she got fixated. His dark messy hair matched black brows, permanently lowered over his prominent aquiline nose. Sensual lips twisted in a cynical attempt at a smile. At fifteen he’d been the ultimate rebel without a cause, the original Lord of the Flies – both terrifying and exciting.

Not a good combination for a fourteen-year-old girl in the grip of rioting hormones, who missed her friends terribly and had about as much common sense as Daffy Duck. Luckily, she’d kicked Daffy to the kerb nineteen years ago – give or take the odd ill-advised marriage – after Art had rejected her the first time. So it really didn’t matter now that he looked like the walking embodiment of ‘a bit of rough’. Or exuded the earthy eroticism of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

‘Stop interrogating her, Arthur.’ Dee threaded her arm through Ellie’s and led her towards the farmhouse, and away from Art and his surly questions.

‘How long are you planning to stay?’ Dee asked, as they approached the farmhouse.

Lavender bushes, sunflowers and fire-red foxgloves spilled out of the flowerbeds by the door, giving off a heady perfume. A wisteria vine, clinging to the stonework, wound its way around the peaked portico.

‘Because you and Josh are welcome to stay for as long as you want,’ her mother added.

From the forbidding scowl on his face, she wasn’t convinced Art Dalton agreed.

‘I don’t know. We haven’t made any concrete plans yet.’ The only concrete plan so far had involved escaping from Orchard Harbor before news of Chelsea Hamilton’s pregnancy hit the local gossip grapevine – and turned her and Josh’s lives into a soap opera worthy of Argentinian daytime TV.

Ellie would have been able to cope with all the ‘well-meant advice’ and faux sympathy once the news was out, because she’d been doing that for years, but she wasn’t sure Josh could, without eating his own weight in Oreos. The truth was she hadn’t even had the guts to tell him yet that Dan and her were separating.

‘Then I hope you’ll consider staying for a while,’ Dee said, the generosity of the gesture making Ellie feel even more uncomfortable.

Her mother had been suggesting she and Josh visit for a while now, not long after that first tentative email with the subject line ‘Merry Christmas, Ellie’ had appeared in her inbox four years ago. But, prior to that, they’d lost contact for over a decade – separated by the huge chasm that had developed once Ellie had chosen to leave the commune after that one fateful summer and go back to live with her dad. And her mother had opted to stay put with her new girlfriend.

‘But there’s no need to make a decision yet,’ Dee added quickly, obviously picking up on Ellie’s reluctance, as she walked ahead past a rack of coats and jackets positioned over a crate full of scuffed sneakers and wellington boots. ‘All you and Josh need to do today is settle in, and relax after your long journey.’

The long journey had been a picnic compared to the week that had preceded it, but Ellie allowed herself to be led.

‘I’ll be serving dinner in a couple of hours,’ Dee said. ‘But I could get you something to snack on first if you’re hungry.’

Her mum’s voice drifted over Ellie. ‘I’m fine.’

She refrained from suggesting she skip dinner and crash now as her mother opened the door to the communal kitchen. It would be an ordeal attending the communal supper tonight. She didn’t find eating with people she didn’t know particularly relaxing, but it was the penance she would have to pay for being deranged enough to accept her mum’s invitation in the first place. And at least the people who lived here now didn’t have inappropriate piercings or judgemental scowls on their faces – every one except Art.

Then again, she hadn’t seen Art’s mother yet, or her mother’s girlfriend Pam. Reunions she was not looking forward to almost as much as the one with Art.

She raised her head to ask about them both, and gasped.

She recognised the sturdy butler sink and the scarred butcher’s block table – around which numerous discussions about whether Tony Blair was really a Tory plant had been conducted in her youth – but nothing else looked familiar. The boxes of pamphlets and home-made placards she remembered stacked in every available corner, the wolf-like dog that snarled whenever she ventured into the room and the teetering towers of dirty dishes in the sink were all gone.

The commune’s hub had been transformed from revolution central into the set from a country cooking show.

An industrial dishwasher stood in one corner next to the cast-iron splendour of a traditional Aga cooker. The flagstone flooring had been scrubbed clean. The door to the pantry – which had once housed an antique printing press – now stood open to reveal shelves groaning under jars of home-made preserves, while a collection of potted herbs stood in aromatic abundance on the windowsill over the sink.

The delicious smell of garlic and melted cheese drew Ellie’s gaze to the home-baked lasagne and tray of roasted vegetables resting on the Aga’s hot plate.

Ellie blinked, expecting Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to pop out of the pantry at any moment and start demonstrating how to make sloe-gin ice cream.

‘What happened?’ Had she slipped into an alternative reality?

‘What happened to what?’ Her mother turned from the cooker, where she’d been taking another tray of vegetables out of the oven.

The light from the window illuminated the streaks of grey in her mother’s dark blonde hair. In the shaft of sunlight, Ellie noticed for the first time the speckle of sun blemishes on her mum’s skin and the slight thickening around the waistband of her gypsy skirt. But otherwise, Dee Preston, unlike her kitchen, had hardly changed. With her sky-blue eyes, the thick tangle of hair tied up in a topknot, the collection of bangles on her wrist jingling as she basted the vegetables, she looked a good fifteen years younger than her fifty-nine years.

‘To the kitchen? To the whole place?’ Ellie felt a bit ridiculous when her mother sent her a quizzical look, as if she couldn’t imagine what Ellie was getting at. ‘It doesn’t look anything like I remember it.’

‘Oh, well, yes.’ Dee glanced around, attempting to locate the differences. ‘I suppose it is a bit less cluttered these days.’

‘Mum, it was a shit-hole,’ Ellie said. ‘There was that feral dog that lurked in the corner like the three-headed hellhound from Harry Potter.’

‘Fluffy?’

‘That dog was called Fluffy?’ Clearly someone back then had a sense of humour she’d been unaware of.

Her mum smiled. ‘No, the three-headed dog in Harry Potter’s called Fluffy. Laura’s Irish wolfhound was called Scargill, I think.’

That figured, because Art’s mum had been in the forefront of all the revolutionary bollocks Ellie remembered from the bad old days.

‘He died years ago,’ Dee supplied helpfully. ‘He’s buried in the back pasture.’

‘But it wasn’t just the dog,’ Ellie continued, silently hoping the Hound of the Baskervilles had died in agony, because it was the least the cantankerous old beast deserved. ‘No one ever washed up or cooked anything remotely edible, except you. The whole place stank of unwashed bodies and stale marijuana and it was a hotbed of born-again hippie anarchy.’ She swept her hand to encompass the scene before her now, which could have illustrated a feature article in Country Living. ‘Not home-grown herbs and home-made preserves and home baking. The place looks as if it’s been given a makeover by the Shabby Chic Fairy. Seriously, what happened?’

Because she wanted to know.

‘Well, Laura left us a few months after you did. And most of the activist element left not long after that, too.’

Laura Dalton had left? Nineteen years ago? So why was her son Art still hanging about? Ellie stopped herself from asking though, because she wasn’t interested in what had been going on with Art.

‘Where did Laura go?’ she asked, deciding that was a safe question.

‘She ran off with the local Lib-Dem member of the county council. His name was Rupert something.’

‘You are joking?’ This was beginning to sound like a Little Britain sketch. And not in a good way.

‘We were all a bit surprised to be honest, given that Laura had insisted even New Labour were traitors to the cause.’ Dee’s smile became rueful.

‘I thought Laura was a lesbian?’ She’d never managed to get to the bottom of how Art had been created, because no one had ever spoken about his father. But given how demonstrative Laura had always been with Delshad, her partner at the commune, Ellie had begun to suspect Art might have originated from a petri dish in a sperm bank.

‘So did Laura, I suppose.’ Dee tucked a stray tendril behind her ear and picked up a dishcloth to wipe the already pristine table. ‘But apparently she wasn’t. Or not where Rupert was concerned. She left a note for Art, explaining why she’d left, but he never told me what it said.’

Had his mum just left him behind then? With a note? He’d only been fifteen.

The spurt of sympathy though was blasted into submission by a disturbing memory flash of Art at fifteen. His lean wiry nut-brown body lying in the long grass by the millpond, the bloody ink on his left bicep rippling as he held his…

Heat blossomed in her stomach and crawled over her scalp, the same way it had all those years ago, when she’d watched him unobserved from her vantage point in the derelict mill house and realised what he was doing.

She cut off the memory. But the heat refused to subside as she had another memory flash, closer to home, of the same ink peeking out from the rolled-up sleeve of Art’s overalls a few minutes ago.

Note to self: jet lag, a failed marriage and a year with only the occasional duty shag can seriously mess with your mental health. Enough to delude you into fixating on an arsehole like Art Dalton and his tacky tattoo.

She needed to crash, and soon.

‘So Laura never came back?’ she said. ‘Delshad must have been devastated.’

Any sympathy for Art on the other hand would be misguided. She couldn’t imagine him being devastated. His mum had probably run off with Rupert the Lib-Dem – and jettisoned her political beliefs and her sexual identity in the process – to get shot of him. After all, he’d been more wild and feral at fifteen than that bloody dog.

‘Actually she did come back in a manner of speaking,’ Dee said, throwing the dishcloth into the sink.

‘Oh?’

‘A young man called Jack Harborough turned up five years ago with her ashes in a Tupperware container. He said he’d been living with her in a squat in Tottenham. He had photos of the two of them together. Apparently she died of lung cancer. She did look terribly thin in the photos. Like someone from a concentration camp. Awful,’ Dee said mildly. ‘That’s what roll-ups can do to you.’

Ellie was still trying to get her head around the thought of Laura coming back in a Tupperware container. The thought of the stunningly beautiful radical socialist looking like a Belsen victim simply wouldn’t compute.

And she thought her life had become a soap opera.

‘Where’s Pam?’ Ellie heard herself say, deciding she would have to kick the elephant in the room eventually. And getting sidetracked with Laura’s story had given her a headache. And some memory flashes she really didn’t need to go with the foggy feeling of exhaustion.

Dee’s smile didn’t falter, but the warmth in her eyes died. ‘She’s dead, darling. She died four years ago.’

‘I didn’t know. I’m… I’m sorry, Mum.’ The words felt inadequate. And somewhat hypocritical, given the emotion arriving on the heels of the revelation was a massive surge of relief. ‘Why didn’t you tell me in any of your emails?’

Was Pam’s death the reason why Dee had decided to get in touch again out of the blue? Surely it had to be.

Ellie’s spine stiffened a bit more. Get over it.

It was churlish to feel cheated that her mother’s grief had been the only thing prompting her to build bridges that had been broken for so long. Why should her mother’s motivations matter? After all, she and her mother weren’t close, would never be close – and Ellie’s reasons for being here were equally as self-serving as her mother’s reasons were for wanting her here.

‘I didn’t want to bother you with it,’ Dee said easily enough. ‘After all, you and Pam didn’t care for each other.’ The words were said without any censure, but Ellie’s chest tightened.

Pam had tried to get on with her. It was she who had refused point blank to get on with Pam.

She headed round the table, and laid a palm on her mother’s arm. ‘Yes, but you cared about Pam.’ While Ellie might once have managed to convince herself her mother’s affair with another woman was nothing more than a juvenile mid-life crisis, it was hard to escape the fact the two of them had lived together for fifteen years. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

Her mother’s skin felt soft and cool. And the gesture felt awkward, and insincere. Especially when Dee said: ‘Thank you, Ellie. You know, it was Pam who begged me to contact you, to re-establish a relationship with you before she died,’ she added, confirming Ellie’s suspicions. ‘And I’m glad I did. It’s wonderful to finally have you here.’ Dee’s hopeful expression did nothing to ease Ellie’s guilt or her discomfort. Exactly what was her mother expecting from this visit? ‘And I’m so looking forward to getting to know Josh.’ Dee patted her fingers. ‘He seems like a lovely boy. So open and so very American.’

The mention of Josh gave Ellie a jolt. In the shock of seeing Art and the new improved farm and hearing about Laura’s Lib-Dem love shock and Pam’s untimely death, she’d completely forgotten about her son.

‘I’m sure he will. But who was that boy he went off with?’ she asked, her protective-mother instinct charging to the fore.

Actually, it was a bit surprising Josh hadn’t returned already. He wasn’t usually confident with strangers. Especially strange kids. And the boy who had led him off had reminded Ellie of the wild kids who had roamed the commune before. Skinny with a smudge of something on his chin, his short dark hair sticking up, wearing torn jeans and a grubby T-shirt, his eyes too big for his freckled face, the boy had looked decidedly feral.

‘Toto, you mean?’ Her mother smiled as if enjoying a private joke.

‘Yes, Toto, that was it. He said he was taking Josh to their clubhouse. Is it safe?’ She should have asked this before. Josh wasn’t the most agile of children. And she didn’t want him to feel awkward. Or worse, end up in some hideous initiation ceremony. Like she had. ‘Isn’t Toto a dog’s name?’ Why would anyone give their child a name like that?

‘Toto’s short for Antonia.’

‘That boy’s a girl?’ The obese gymnasts relaxed. Surely a tomboy would be less feral than an actual boy.

‘Yes, she’s Art’s daughter.’

The obese gymnasts began doing backflips in Ellie’s stomach.

Less feral, my arse.




CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_3203a1b0-1101-5e3a-bc71-bd34623b9f89)


‘Dad, Dad, Dad, you’ve gotta come quick.’

‘Damn it!’ Art wheeled back the axe to stop himself from nearly hacking off his foot a second time in one afternoon. ‘Toto, what is wrong with you? Don’t run up and shout at me when I’m chopping.’

But Toto already had her hand buried in his overalls to drag him who knew where. ‘You’ve got to come. Josh is stuck up a tree and he’s going to die if you don’t rescue him.’

He placed the axe by the tree stump and gripped his daughter’s shoulders to stop them shaking, from either exertion or terror, it was hard to tell.

‘Calm down. Who’s Josh and what tree is he stuck up?’ They’d deal with the dying bit in a minute.

‘Josh is the new kid.’ Toto gasped between breaths. ‘Dee’s grandson.’

Crap. Just what he needed, Ellie’s kid breaking his neck after they’d been here exactly half an hour. She was just the type to sue them into the ground for child endangerment.

‘What tree’s he stuck up?’

Toto tried to drag him towards the woods. ‘The Clubhouse tree.’

‘Can’t he just climb down again?’ he said. ‘There’s a ladder. I built the thing myself.’

‘No, it’s the ladder he’s stuck on.’

‘How can he be stuck on the ladder?’ Had the thing broken? The cost of the lawsuit spiralled up.

‘I don’t know,’ Toto wailed. ‘He just did. And now he can’t get down and he’s afraid and he could fall. And he’s way way up, right near the top. If he falls, it’s gonna hurt.’

She yanked his overalls. Grasping her wrist, he lifted her fingers off. ‘Stop tugging me. I’ll go sort it out.’

Toto tried to shoot off ahead of him, but he grabbed her arm.

‘Dad! Don’t hold me. I need to run back; he’ll be scared without me.’

‘I’ll go. You need to go tell his mum what’s going on.’ He’d be more than happy never to have Ellie know about this, but just in case her son did end up injuring himself, it was the only responsible thing to do. ‘And show her where the tree is.’

Toto nodded. ‘Oh, OK.’ But, as she tried to dart off towards the farmhouse, he yanked her to a halt again.

‘But do me a favour.’

‘Yes, Dad?’ She waited for his instructions, total and utter trust radiating from her.

And he got light-headed.

He knew Toto’s complete faith in him was unlikely to last much longer, but it was still a heady feeling for a man who had spent the first twenty-one years of his life convinced he could never do anything right. He’d strived for the last thirteen years never to abuse Toto’s trust, but he was going to have to blur the lines a bit today, to ward off a punitive lawsuit.

‘Take your time getting Josh’s mum to the Clubhouse,’ he said. ‘I want to have Josh down before she gets there.’

‘OK, Dad.’ Toto nodded, her acceptance of the instruction unquestioning as she sped off to find Ellie.

He jogged off towards the forest, hoping like hell the boy hadn’t already fallen off the tree and broken his bloody neck.

It took him less than five minutes to get to the Clubhouse. A simple A-frame design he’d built two summers ago in a hundred-year-old horse chestnut near the edge of the coppice woods with Toto’s help – or rather hindrance. He hadn’t given much thought at the time to the access. Toto could climb like a monkey and would probably have been able to get up the damn tree without the aid of the boards he’d nailed into the trunk. And as the thing had been built precisely so she’d have a refuge from the younger kids when she needed it, the ladder, such as it was, had been an afterthought.

He regretted that decision big time when he spotted Ellie’s son stapled to the trunk – a good twenty-five feet off the ground.

How had he got up that high before he froze?

And how was he going to get the kid down? Although the boy wasn’t exactly light for his age – he looked about twice as wide as Toto – Art would probably still have been able to sling him over his shoulder. But no way would those boards take the weight of both of them, assuming of course the kid would let him carry him. From the death grip he had on the board, Art figured he was going to have a hell of a time even getting the boy to let go.

Which left only one solution. He would have to talk him down.

Wonderful. Because he was so good at conversation.

‘Hey!’ he shouted up and then winced, as the boy nodded, butting his forehead into the trunk with a hollow smack. ‘It’s Josh’ isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sir?

Was that an American thing? He’d never been called ‘sir’ in his life. Not even by the bank manager.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the boy continued and Art winced again at the plaintive, terrified whimper. ‘I got stuck and now I can’t get down.’ More tremors wracked the kid’s body and Art lifted his arm, suddenly worried he might shake himself right off the tree.

‘You don’t have to be sorry, Josh. Happens to the best of us.’

He climbed the rungs, ignoring the give in each one and hoping he didn’t end up breaking his own bloody neck.

‘I won’t do it again, sir. I promise,’ the boy said, sounding more miserable than Toto when she had to do maths homework.

‘Let’s not worry about next time yet.’ He reached the boy. ‘I’m right here beneath you, Josh.’ He stared at the rungs above the boy’s feet, partially hidden by his legs and torso. One of the rungs was a little longer than the others, and if Art eased himself up carefully, he could hold on to it and effectively cradle the kid. Maybe that would help with his fear? Knowing that he’d be caught if he did let go.

‘You should get my mom,’ the boy said. ‘She’ll know what to do. And she wouldn’t want me bothering you.’

‘I’m here now, so I might as well help.’ And the last thing he wanted was Josh’s mother finding her son in this state. Forget about bothering him, she’d probably murder him. ‘I’m going to put my arms around you, Josh. And hold on to the rung under your belly, OK? So I can catch you if you fall.’

The boy nodded, headbutting the trunk again.

Art grasped the rung and hauled himself up, until his chest was resting securely against the boy’s back. The child’s whole body trembled as if he were in a high wind.

The kid was absolutely terrified.

Then Art heard the whimpers. Craning his neck, he could see the side of the boy’s face. The silent tears leaked out and dripped down to disappear into the roll of fat where he had pressed his chin into his neck.

‘Don’t cry, Josh. You’re OK, I’ve got you.’ Balancing carefully, he lifted one hand to pat the boy’s back, and felt the vibrations, and the heat of the boy’s body through the thin cotton.

‘Please don’t tell Toto,’ the boy said.

‘Don’t tell Toto what?’

‘That I cried. I don’t want her to think I’m lame as well as fat.’

The boy wasn’t exactly thin, but hearing him call himself fat in that sadly accepting voice had a shaft of anger shooting through Art.

‘She won’t think that,’ he said, because he knew his daughter. She didn’t judge people by their appearances. ‘But if we get down before she gets back, she won’t even know.’

‘How will I get down?’

Good question. There wasn’t a lot of room to manoeuvre. ‘Do you think you could move down a step, while I stay in place?’

He heard the sound of swallowing. The shaking was still pretty pronounced. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Good boy,’ Art said. He didn’t usually bother with positive reinforcement with Toto. But with this kid, he had the feeling it was required.

After what felt like ten hours, but was probably only ten seconds, they’d negotiated one rung down.

He lavished the boy with more praise, the relief loosening his tongue more than usual. The stillness of the summer air seemed eerie as Art waited to hear the boy’s mother crashing through the undergrowth ready to issue an injunction. But as they spent an eternity inching their way down the ladder, one tortuous rung at a time, until Art could finally step onto the ground – the sound never came.

Good girl, Toto. She must be escorting Ellie to the Clubhouse via Plymouth.

‘You can let go now, Josh.’ Relief surged through him as he grabbed the boy round the waist and lifted him the rest of the way down. ‘Well done.’

The boy huffed, and then to Art’s astonishment wrapped his arms tight around Art’s midriff and buried his head against his sternum.

‘Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.’ The words were muffled against Art’s overalls. ‘You saved my life.’

Containing his surprise – Toto had never been a big hugger – Art cupped the boy’s shoulders to ease him back. ‘No thanks necessary. You saved yourself.’

The boy loosened his hold to gaze up at Art. He had a dusty green smear across his cheek and red indentation marks on his forehead. Truth be told, he looked a mess, but then he smiled. His eyes were hazel, with flecks of green in them, and his round face was impossibly young and open, but, in that moment, Art could see the resemblance to his mother — which was weird, because Art was fairly sure he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d seen Ellie smile her real smile — as opposed to her tight smile, or her sarcastic smile, or her you-are-such-anarsehole smile.

But that rare real smile had been exactly like her son’s. It had made her eyes shine, as if someone had lit a furnace behind them.

‘I didn’t think I could, but I did, sir.’

‘Yes, you did.’ Art patted the boy on the shoulder, relieved when Josh let go of him. ‘But you don’t have to call me “sir”. It makes me feel a hundred years old.’

The furnace behind the boy’s eyes flared and he giggled. The childish chuckle made Art feel for a moment as if he were lit from within too.

And that’s when he heard the sound of someone charging through the forest, from the opposite direction to the farmhouse. That would be Ellie and Toto, back from Plymouth.

‘Josh, Josh, are you OK?’

Ellie catapulted from the wooded path that led down to the millpond. Her hair flew out behind her where it had escaped its knot. Even Toto, who was fast as a whippet, was struggling to keep up with mother bear come to rescue her cub.

Josh stepped back out of his arms as Ellie rushed past him to grab her son’s shoulders. ‘Thank God you’re safe.’ She stroked his cheek and then touched the abrasions on his forehead. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘It’s OK, Mom. It doesn’t hurt.’

A blush had suffused Josh’s cheeks.

Ellie was totally overreacting, and she was embarrassing the boy. Her son was twelve, not two. Art figured it was none of his business, though, as she crushed Josh to her bosom, running her hand over his hair. She peered at the treehouse, then fired a glare at Art that could laser stone.

‘What was he doing up there? He’s afraid of heights.’ Her glare travelled back to the treehouse. ‘And that thing’s a bloody death trap.’ Then the glare hit Toto. ‘What were you trying to do, kill him? Or just humiliate him?’

Toto shook her head, her eyes popping wide, but remained mute. Art figured she had to be in shock, because his daughter was usually incredibly hard to shut up.

‘Mom, I wanted to go up there,’ Josh offered in Toto’s defence. ‘It’s a clubhouse and it’s cool.’

Maybe the boy was scared of heights, but he only seemed embarrassed by his mother in full Valkyrie mode. Art gave the boy points for bravery, because the woman looked ready to commit murder.

The killer glare shot back to him. ‘Why does it not surprise me that your daughter is as much of a sadist as you used to be?’

Crap, she’d just made it his business.

*

‘Chill out, Ellie.’

‘Chill out?’ Ellie hissed, the obese gymnasts ready to explode out of her ears.

This man and his vicious little minion had nearly killed her son. Not to mention taken her on a trek across most of Wiltshire when she was so exhausted she was ready to faceplant for a week.

She’d chill Art Dalton right into the freezer cabinet if he wasn’t careful.

‘I will not chill out. And the name’s not Ellie, it’s Eloise to you.’

His brows wrinkled. Fine, maybe it sounded a bit pompous. She didn’t care.

‘OK, Eloise.’ He rolled the name off his tongue as if it were the punchline to a particularly unfunny joke. ‘There’s no need to flip out.’ He swung a hand towards Josh, who had wriggled out of her arms and was standing beside Art’s evil minion. The two children edged closer to Art, as if he were the sane dependable adult in this scenario.

‘The boy’s safely on terra firma.’ Art’s patient tone made her want to kick him exceptionally hard, somewhere extremely soft. ‘He made the decision to go up there and he got himself down without too much help from me. Toto came to get you as soon as she knew there was a problem. So whatever you’re accusing her of, you’re wrong.’

‘She came to get me and then took me on a guided tour of Wiltshire to bring me to a tree that I know is only five minutes from the farmyard.’

She was getting light-headed again, her lungs aching from the effort to hold back the tortured breaths of her outrage.

They’d done to Josh exactly what Art had done to her all those years ago, Art and the other commune kids. A couple of days after she’d arrived they’d told her she needed to be initiated in their stupid club. And somehow, because she was fascinated by the rough boy, and a bit afraid of him too, she’d agreed to try. And had ended up with the brand new Kookai blouse her dad had bought her for her birthday covered in fresh manure and them all laughing at her.

‘I don’t want my son near your daughter,’ she said. ‘I don’t want her suggesting he climb up trees, or swim in the millpond or tramp through fields of young bullocks to get a mythical stone that doesn’t exist. Do you understand?’

‘But, Mom, I want to join Toto’s club,’ Josh wailed, as if she’d just ruined his life. She ignored him, her gaze focused on Art Dalton’s face, and the rigid line of his jaw. Good, at least he didn’t look patiently amused any more.

‘Toto, why don’t you take Josh back to the farmhouse?’ Art addressed his daughter. ‘Dee can clean him up. It’ll be suppertime soon.’

‘OK, Dad’; ‘Yes, sir,’ said Art’s daughter and her son in unison.

‘Excuse me,’ Ellie began, her breath coming in jagged gasps now. ‘Who gave you permission to tell my son what to…’

Before she could finish the sentence, the children had dashed off together through the woods, back in the direction of the farmhouse. The direction she should have come from if Art’s child hadn’t taken her on a five-mile hike while her heart was exploding at the thought of Josh tumbling to his death.

Her temper hit boiling point, the white noise in her ears loud enough to sound like the woods were being dive-bombed by the Red Arrows.

‘How dare you tell my son what to do. He’s my responsibility not yours. I decide who he–’

‘If Dee has her way, he’s going to be here the whole summer.’ Art’s gaze locked on hers, all signs of amusement gone. ‘Toto’s a good kid and she likes him and they’re about the same age. It won’t do them any harm to hang out together. He’ll be sure to get lots of exercise.’

‘I’m not asking you. And don’t worry, we’re not staying the whole summer. I doubt I’ll stay more than one night after this. And if you’re talking about his weight with that comment about exercise, you can piss off. It’s perfectly healthy.’

‘Did I say it wasn’t?’

‘You implied it.’ Other parents always assumed they knew best. That if your child was carrying a little extra weight and theirs wasn’t that they knew how to fix it. They knew nothing of Josh’s body image issues. His anxieties. The way he could comfort eat his way through a whole quart of rocky road ice cream in two minutes after coming home from school. ‘And, believe me, being forced to climb a tree when he’s afraid of heights is not going to magically make him lose two stone.’

‘No one forced him to climb the tree. And he survived.’

‘How do you know that? You don’t know anything about him, you only just met him.’

‘I know he’s a little boy. And little boys need the chance to cut loose now and again. Not get wrapped in cotton wool by their mothers.’

She sputtered. She actually sputtered. The Red Arrows circling her head now. How dare he tell her how to raise her child, when he’d clearly spent no time at all raising his own. ‘Oh really, well maybe that explains why your daughter thinks she’s a little boy too.’

‘At least my daughter doesn’t think she’s fat.’

‘He’s not fat.’ She wanted to hit him. She squeezed her fingers into a fist, to resist the urge to lash out. ‘He has a traumatic relationship with food.’

‘Uh-huh? All I’ve seen so far is his traumatic relationship with you.’

‘You son of a bitch.’ The Red Arrows hit the sound barrier, the sonic boom going off inside her head as she swung her bunched fist towards his face.

He dodged back, and she hit thin air, flinging herself off balance and tumbling to earth. She body-slammed the ground, her reflexes too dulled by fatigue and incandescent rage to react fast enough to break her fall. Air gushed out, and pain ricocheted through her ribs, tears stinging her eyes.

She heard a curse, as strong hands gripped her waist and hauled her back onto her feet.

‘You all right?’ His gruff voice reverberated in her head, the low-grade headache now hammering her skull in time with the throbbing pain in what she suspected might be a dislocated shoulder.

‘Piss off,’ she said, but the expletive lacked heat. She hurt everywhere, her pride most of all.

The nausea galloped up her throat as blunt fingers pushed the hair off her brow. ‘You look knackered.’

Of course she did, she’d just hit the deck with enough force to puncture a lung.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said, her humiliation complete.

‘Put your head down.’

His palm cupped the back of her head and suddenly she was staring at the ground between her feet, studying the decaying leaves and a small beetle burrowing into a mound of twigs and wild grass.

‘Breath through your nose, it’ll go away in a minute.’

She wanted to tell him where he could stick his first aid advice. But she couldn’t speak round the lump of anguish, so she watched the beetle.

‘When did you last eat?’ he asked.

She tried to focus on his voice, which seemed a million miles away. ‘Yesterday morning, before we left home.’

‘Then you’re not likely to be sick,’ he said.

The dizziness and nausea began to subside. He released her head, and drew her upright with the hand he had clamped on her upper arm. The feel of his fingers, rough and cool pressing into her biceps, sent sensation zipping through her system.

Which should have been mortifying, but somehow wasn’t, because the pain had drifted away, to be replaced by a floating feeling. The warm numbness spread through her body.

‘Can you walk?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ she said, but as she took a step, it was as if she were walking on the moon, about to bounce off into the cosmos.

‘Shit, here we go.’ She heard the husky words still a million miles away, but now from underwater.

Then she wasn’t vertical any more, she was horizontal and focusing on the scar that nicked his chin and made a white sickle shape in the dark stubble.

Her focus faded as she blinked. Once. Twice. The pleasant numbness enveloped her, her limbs going loose and languid, as she sank into a hot bubble bath that smelled of motor oil and laundry detergent and something else – the musty earthy scent of man.




CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_549ffbe4-7235-5ad3-8dcd-ce9943516505)


Consciousness beckoned through the magical twinkle of stars and the comforting scent of lavender. Ellie’s eyelids fluttered open and she found herself cocooned on an iron-framed double bed, the cluster of fairy lights draped over the mantelpiece opposite dotting a hand-sewn coverlet with sparkles of light.

A dark figure appeared from a door to her right, holding a towel, and looking muscular and intimidating in oil-stained overalls. The magical twinkles surrounded him like dancing fairies until he stepped into the light.

Art.

The dull ache in her ribs throbbed as the events before she’d blacked out came back. Her stomach cramped. And she scooted across the bed, ready to heave over the side. ‘I need a bucket.’

And after that please leave me alone to die in peace.

The polished wooden boards creaked. And the mattress dipped as Art sat on the bed.

‘Here.’ He slapped a cold wet cloth on her nape, then lifted her wrist to position her hand over it and hold it in place. ‘You don’t need a bucket. You’re not going to puke.’

She rolled over and propped herself up to glare at him – somewhat miffed the nausea had passed. ‘How would you know?’

‘Because you haven’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours.’

She tried to hold on to her indignation, but she didn’t have the strength. Had he carried her all the way up here? And where was here?

The room looked vaguely familiar, but her brain was still too fuzzy to figure out why. ‘Where am I?’

‘Your old bedroom. Dee redecorated it when she got the email saying you were coming over.’

The room was exquisite. No wonder she hadn’t recognised it.

The space was fresh and clean, decorated with bold colours and inspired prints. A couple of huge overstuffed armchairs in one corner sat next to a sturdy wooden dresser, its vibrant yellow paint making a statement against the white walls even in the dappled glow of the fairy lights. New curtains in retro gingham were draped stylishly over long sash windows that looked out into the reddening sky as dusk fell over the woods. The Victorian grandeur of the room looked inviting now instead of forbidding. Under the scent of lavender, Ellie detected the turpentine aroma of new paint.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured.

‘She put a lot of hours in fixing it up.’

The pang of guilt hit under her left ventricle, not dull this time, but sharp as a blade. What was she supposed to do with the knowledge that Dee had decided to welcome her back with home-made curtains and newly painted walls and fairy lights, like a treasured, long-lost child?

‘I wish she hadn’t gone to this much trouble,’ she said, knowing the effort her mother had put into redecorating the room would force her to reconsider her plans to leave tomorrow.

Art shrugged. ‘She wanted to do it.’ Standing up, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his overalls. ‘How are the ribs?’

‘I’ll survive.’ She placed a hand on her side. Her embarrassment at the way she’d swung at him and missed more painful right now than the bruises.

She noticed the sunburned column of his throat. Her gaze darted away, the glimpse of chest revealed by the open neck of his overalls making her aware of how much more body hair he had now than he’d had at fifteen. Not something she needed to be noticing.

‘Did you carry me all the way up here?’ she asked, the thought of those muscular arms holding her aloft not good for her equilibrium.

He nodded.

‘Thanks,’ she said, grudgingly. ‘But you didn’t have to do that.’

‘You’re not heavy. And Dee would have had my hide if I’d left you out there all night.’

The lack of sentiment was strangely comforting. At least she knew exactly where she was with Art.

But, as he put his hand on the doorknob, she felt compelled to add, ‘Thanks for getting Josh down from the treehouse. I’ll apologise to your daughter next time I see her. I shouldn’t have shouted at her.’

She’d been exhausted, and the child had definitely taken them well out of their way to get to the Clubhouse, but still she regretted the outburst – remembering the reputation she’d had at the commune once before.

Princess Drama.

How she’d loathed that nickname and all it implied – that she was a high-maintenance drama queen who was far too prissy and privileged to be included in Art’s gang.

‘Toto took you that way because I asked her to,’ he said at last.

‘What?’ she said, her shock doing nothing to cauterise the stab of hurt. ‘Why would you ask her to do that?’

‘What did Toto tell you when she came to get you?’ he asked, instead of answering her question.

‘That Josh was up a tree and he was about to fall off and break his neck,’ she replied.

He swore softly.

‘I can’t believe you would tell her to take me miles out of our way when you knew my son was in danger and that I would be worried about his safety,’ she said, finally finding her voice. ‘I know we’re not friends.’ She was ranting, but at least it disguised the tremor in her voice. ‘But I–’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he interrupted her. ‘I only asked her to take her time so I could have Josh down before you got there. I underestimated Toto’s flare for the dramatic though, and I’m sorry about that.’

‘But…’ The simple apology cut her rant off at the knees.

‘If it’s any consolation, your son was never in danger,’ he said. ‘He’s a brave kid, who handled himself just fine.’

‘A brave fat kid you mean,’ she said, unable to let go of her resentment completely. And unsettled at the realisation that Art’s compliment meant something. Why should she care what he thought of her son?

‘I never said he was fat. I said he thinks he’s fat.’ His head dipped to one side, the patient perusal sending heat into her face. ‘There’s a difference.’

The husky tone wrong-footed her, because it made the frank assessment sound like a compliment, too. Almost.

‘No need to apologise to Toto,’ he added. ‘Your freak out might teach her to dial down on the drama.’

His gaze skimmed back over her, and her misguided belly dissolved into a warm fuzzy puddle of need. Annoyingly.

Clearly being starved of male attention – because she’d had little enough from Dan in recent years – had the potential to make her delusional.

Then her belly added insult to insanity by rumbling loudly enough to be heard in Dorset.

Art’s lips kicked up on one side. The tiny suggestion of a smile on his hard, taciturn face made her lungs seize – which only served to remind her she had several bruised ribs.

She hauled in a painful breath as he left the room and captured a lungful of his scent – soap, sweat and motor oil. The warm fuzzy delusion in the pit of her empty stomach returned.

She dragged herself out of the bed and headed to the door Art had come out of, to find a newly painted en suite bathroom, complete with light blue enamelled tiling and a pile of brand-new extra-fluffy towels.

Staring at her smudged face in the mirror above the sink, she splashed cold water on her cheeks.

Step away from the edge, Princess Drama. One almost compliment and an overdue apology does not make Art Dalton less of a dick.

Hearing the click of the bedroom door, she switched off the tap and returned to the bedroom with a towel in her hands.

‘Ellie, should you be out of bed?’ Her mother placed a dinner tray laden with food, a pitcher of lemonade and a small vase with a bunch of wild flowers on the dresser.

Ellie’s stomach growled again, the sight of the wild flowers making her want to weep.

What are you doing, Mum? We missed the chance for our big mother–daughter moment nineteen years ago?

‘I’m fine,’ she said.

Dee simply smiled. ‘OK, but you should eat.’ She took the plate of food off the tray. The delicious aroma of roasted garlic had Ellie’s stomach protesting even more. ‘And then get some rest.’

Ellie dumped the towel on the bed. ‘That looks delicious, but I need to go check on Josh first.’ And make sure Art’s daughter wasn’t busy encouraging her son into any other near-death experiences.

‘Josh is fine.’ Dee placed cutlery beside Ellie’s plate and a folded napkin. ‘He’s downstairs having supper — fielding lots of questions from Toto about his favourite TV shows. I can make sure he gets showered and into bed, if you want? I’ve done up the room next to mine for him,’ she continued, pouring a glass of the lemonade.

The tentative request made Ellie feel like a toad. ‘OK. I’m sure he’s loving all the attention.’ Even if she wasn’t.

‘That’s all settled then.’ Her mother smiled at the modest concession as if Ellie had just announced Rod Stewart was coming by to serenade her. ‘Now sit down and eat. Have a shower if you want.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’ Ellie took a gulp of lemonade to ease the new blockage in her throat.

‘Josh said he’s finished school for the summer, does that mean you can stay?’

Ellie still wasn’t convinced that was a great idea, but thinking of all the effort Dee had put into redecorating their bedrooms, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say no, outright.

‘I haven’t booked the return flights yet, so why don’t we see how it goes.’ She was in no hurry to return to New York, but having an exit strategy made sense.

‘That sounds like a plan,’ Dee said, seeming happy with the concession. ‘Leave the tray outside when you’re finished and I’ll pick it up later. I have to run our stall at the Artisan Market in Salisbury tomorrow, so if I’m not here when you wake up just help yourself to breakfast. Maddy and Jacob will be about if you need anything. And Art, obviously.’

Obviously.

‘But what about everyone else, don’t they live on the commune too?’ Ellie said.

‘They live in their own homes, which are dotted around the seventy acres we have here. Strictly speaking, we stopped being a commune a long time ago. We became a co-housing project about five years back.’

‘What’s the difference?’ Ellie asked. Was this the first rebranding project she’d ever encountered that actually meant something had changed for the better?

‘Each family or individual leases a plot of land from us to build their home on. But instead of paying for the leases they help out on the farm – and we all share the surplus. Rob runs the dairy herd, Mike manages the produce side of things and Art contributes his skills, too.’

What skills would those be? How to look hot in overalls?

‘Who’s “we”?’ Forget about Art and his overalls.

‘Pam left the farm to me in her will,’ Dee said. ‘But I gave a half-share to Art, when he agreed to manage things. I’m not good with paperwork.’

And Art was? Hadn’t Laura always boasted her son was too cool for school?

And now Art owned half the farm. This probably wasn’t good. Especially if… ‘Does Art have his own place too?’ she asked, hopefully.

‘No, his room is two doors down.’

Fantastic! The one person she least wanted to be bumping into in the dead of night lived down the hall.

‘He works full time on the farm,’ Dee continued. ‘And so do Mike and Rob, but everyone else has a day job, mostly in Gratesbury, or further afield. Annie and Tess, Rob and Mike’s wives, were both in Gratesbury today, which is why you didn’t meet them earlier.’

So there was no one staying in the farmhouse to run interference between her and Art except Dee and the children and the canoodling couple she’d met earlier. Super fantastic.

‘But isn’t the whole purpose of the exercise to escape the real world?’ Ellie said.

‘Not any more.’ Dee looked pensive. ‘Nowadays we run it like a proper business. The original plan was to have everyone who lived here working here, but it was never viable, so we had to compromise.’ Her mother headed to the door. ‘By the way, Josh asked if he could come to Salisbury with me and Toto tomorrow to help on the stall if he wakes up in time. Would that be OK?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, then had a thought. ‘Could I come and help out on the stall too?’ It would be a way of paying her mother back for all her hard work in getting the rooms ready.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ Dee said. ‘You’re a guest here.’

‘I know, but I’d like to.’ Having her mother pamper her to within an inch of her life already felt awkward. And keeping busy was also a great way of avoiding the stuff she didn’t want to think about, like Dan and the divorce and her failed business… Not to mention Art Dalton and his unsettling effect on her.

‘Then, I’d love to have you there,’ her mother said. ‘If you’re sure?’

Ellie nodded. ‘Absolutely sure.’

After her mother had left the room, Ellie sat at the dresser to tuck into the plate of roasted vegetables and feta and aubergine lasagne. The salty cheese melted on her tongue.

Despite her face-plant in the woods, and the awkwardness with her mother, and Art, the nightmare she’d been fretting about on the journey here hadn’t completely materialised. Because Willow Tree Organic Farm and Co-Operative Housing Project was the polar opposite of the Rainbow Commune – give or take the odd death-trap treehouse.

She tore off a chunk of the home-made seedy bread roll beside her plate, and slathered on a layer of what looked like home-churned butter. She took a large bite and chewed, savouring the creamy taste, while trying not to savour the memory of Art’s tattooed biceps rounding out the sleeve of his oil-stained overalls and that enticing shadow of chest hair.

So what if Art had unsettled her. And she’d made a bit of a tit of herself by collapsing in the woods.

It was just an inevitable by-product of all the stress she’d been bingeing on for weeks.

Once she’d had a couple of days to get her bearings, and establish a comfortable distance with her mother, she’d be totally immune to Art again, and his half-arsed compliments and his sexy scent.

Whatever happened, Princess Drama would not be popping out to take another bow.




CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_aadcc4ad-c580-5e06-944f-83d959a8a445)


The following morning, Dee drifted towards consciousness, her body floating in that tempting half-space between sleep and waking when she couldn’t feel all the aches and niggling pains of being a woman approaching sixty. She held on tight to her dream state, feeling Pammy’s arms around her midriff, snuggled up against her back, the way they’d woken every morning for years in the big tester bed Art had made for them. She clung on to Pammy’s scent, the seductive combination of lemon verbena and tea tree oil. But then consciousness crowded in on her, and the small dresser beside the bed came into focus.

Pammy’s keys, her purse and the hairbands she took out just before going to bed each evening were still gone, replaced by the novel Dee had been reading the night before to take her mind off all the thoughts that kept circling in her brain about Ellie’s return.

The scent of lemon verbena disappeared, overwhelmed by the scent of the lavender laundry detergent she’d used on the sheets the day before. And the echo of Pammy’s off-key whistle – as she showered and got ready to head down to the office and start filing and ordering and doing all those mysterious tasks that Dee had never bothered to know about – faded into silence.

Pammy, I need you here, so much.

Grief hit Dee like a punch to the stomach as she let the miserable memories in: the endless, tedious waits in uncomfortable hospital chairs; Pammy’s once vibrant red hair falling out in clumps as she brushed it one morning; and those miserable final days of standing over her partner’s bed in Magnolia Ward and willing the woman she no longer recognised to die, so she could be without pain.

Dee rolled over, the clutching pain accompanied by the dull ache in the middle of her back caused by a day spent cooking to welcome Ellie home.

Except this wasn’t Ellie’s home, and whatever Dee had been hoping for – that Ellie’s decision to come visit meant she was eager to try to build a new relationship – seemed even further out of reach now than it had been four years ago when Pam had found an email address for Ellie’s event-planning business and suggested contacting her in America.

Ellie and she didn’t know each other. And four years of Christmas cards and polite emails and handmade gifts, and a fevered attempt to bribe her way into her daughter’s affections with fresh paint and newly made gingham curtains wasn’t going to change that. Or absolve Dee of her selfishness that summer, when she’d chosen her lover over her daughter.

She couldn’t regret that choice, because she had loved Pam so much. But ever since she’d lost Pam, she’d imagined winning Ellie back. And now she could see exactly how selfish that was too. Especially now she suspected the reasons Ellie had come to visit had nothing to do with her.

Why had her daughter been so exhausted when she’d arrived? She looked as if she hadn’t slept properly in weeks. And why hadn’t she mentioned her husband, Josh’s father? Why hadn’t he come with them?

Oh, Pammy, what if we were wrong about this? What if Ellie’s never ready to forgive me? What if I’m not even ready to forgive myself?

Dee breathed, waiting for the sting behind her eyelids to subside, before pulling back the bedclothes and padding to the bathroom. After getting dressed, she went to wake Ellie, but her gentle tap received no answer.

Feeling like an intruder, she pushed open the door, and saw her daughter curled in the bed, so sound asleep she reminded Dee of the little girl she’d once known, and had invested so much in.

Dee’s heart expanded, with yearning and emptiness, but then she closed the door behind her. She had to make sure she didn’t do that again – expect her daughter to fill the gaps in her own life. If Ellie was only here because she was running away from something then Dee could provide a safe haven. No questions asked. After all, Dee knew exactly what it was like to be so desperately unhappy that running away seemed like the only option.

*

Ellie woke up with a start, to discover that she’d overslept. It was nearly noon.

Was her mother still here? Or had she left for Salisbury already? Ellie showered, feeling better rested than she had in weeks. Months even. She’d help herself to breakfast and then head into Salisbury. She had a vague idea where the main square was, hopefully the market would be there.

She could smell the yeasty aroma of freshly baked bread as she headed down the stairs, but jerked to a stop as she entered the farmhouse kitchen.

Heat swept through her system, making her feel like a voyeur, but she could not detach her gaze from the sight in front of her.

Wow, hotness alert.

The young couple she had met the day before were bent over the sink in an embrace that, even though they were both fully clothed, looked pretty close to requiring birth control.

The guy’s hands were kneading the girl’s backside, while her leg was hooked round his hip and her hands were fisted in his hair as if she were about to launch herself up his torso. Their lips were achieving the sort of suction that would impress a vacuum cleaner convention.

Apparently the country air around here wasn’t only good for rest and relaxation. So the activist element may have left the farm, but the free-love element hadn’t? What if Josh had walked in on them? Her son would have had a sex-ed lesson almost as graphic as the one she’d had nineteen years ago, when she’d spied on Art by the millpond.

Ellie cleared her throat, loudly.

The girl squealed, and the couple sprung apart as if Ellie had just lobbed a grenade into the room.

‘Hi, um, I’m Ellie, Dee’s daughter.’ She stumbled over the new introductions.

I can’t even remember their names and I may well have just prevented them creating their firstborn.

‘We met yesterday,’ she added.

‘This is so embarrassing.’ The girl palmed her face. ‘I’m Maddy. This is Jacob.’ She jogged her thumb towards her boyfriend, who was looking more sheepish than embarrassed. ‘And contrary to appearances we’re not into exhibitionism. We thought you’d left with your mum.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that.’ The guy finally spoke, the dimple forming in his cheek suggesting he wasn’t that sorry. ‘Maddy’s insatiable, she can’t keep her hands off me.’

Maddy elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Shut up, Jay. You’re only making it worse.’ The girl rolled her eyes. ‘I’m really sorry. Jay thinks he’s being funny.’

‘Hey?’ Jacob said, placing his hands on her hips to draw her back against him. ‘Who kissed who first?’

‘Stop it.’ Maddy slapped his hands away. ‘You douche canoe.’

‘Douche… What? Now?’

Ellie covered her mouth, but the laugh popped out anyway – at the silly insult and Jacob’s comical reaction. Maddy chuckled too.

‘Why is that funny and I’m not?’ Jacob wanted to know.

‘Will you do us a favour?’ Maddy said, when they had stopped laughing.

‘Sure,’ Ellie said, liking the couple, who were actually cute, in a pornographic sort of way, and feeling about a million years old.

When had she become such a prude?

If Josh had interrupted them, he would have been absolutely fine after he’d got over the shock.

And the only reason Josh would have found it shocking was because she doubted he’d ever caught Dan and her kissing. The thought made her feel a bit sad. But at least he had never caught them arguing either, that was the main thing. Somewhere in the last ten years, she’d stopped wanting to kiss Dan, or do much of anything else with him, but they had both made sure to protect their son from the fallout of that loss of love. Unfortunately, they’d done such a good job, Ellie was finding it next to impossible to broach the subject of the divorce with her son.

If Josh would be shocked at finding two healthy young adults kissing, he would be even more shocked by that news, and somehow explaining the situation felt like having to rob him of the last of his childhood. He’d weathered so much in recent years, thanks to the bullies at middle school, and she wanted to be able to give him a summer without stress. If things worked out in Wiltshire, why not keep him away from that truth until they returned to New York? Because she knew for sure Dan, the king of avoidance, wasn’t going to raise the subject in the weekly Skype chats they’d arranged.

‘Don’t mention you caught us to Art,’ Maddy said, interrupting Ellie’s thoughts. ‘I’m sure he already thinks I’m a nymphomaniac.’

‘Better than being a douche canoe,’ Jacob pointed out.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t say a word to Art.’ Not a hard promise to keep seeing as she intended to speak to Art as seldom as possible. ‘But I wouldn’t worry,’ she added. ‘Art’s not the shockable type.’ Or he certainly hadn’t been at fifteen. Ellie could still remember all the girls who had hung around the farm that summer trying to get his attention – and the long list of ones who had succeeded.

‘You know Art?’ Maddy’s eyes lit with interest.

‘We met when we were teenagers. I spent a summer here in the nineties,’ Ellie replied.

‘How intriguing,’ Maddy said. ‘Was he as scary then as he is now?’

Ellie coughed out a laugh, enjoying the girl’s directness – and her accurate opinion of Art. ‘Actually yes.’

‘Art’s not scary,’ Jacob said. ‘He’s a cool guy.’

‘Didn’t say he wasn’t cool,’ Maddy replied. ‘But he is intimidating. He does the whole strong silent moody thing better than Christian Bale’s Batman. Even without the aid of a black rubber onesie.’

Ellie laughed again, pleased to discover she wasn’t the only one who found Art intimidating – while trying not to imagine him in black rubber.

‘Time to haul arse, Miss Nosey Pants.’ Jacob took Maddy’s hand. ‘We’re supposed to be helping Rob bring the heifers down from the hill pasture.’

‘Nice talking to you, Ellie,’ Maddy said as Jacob dragged her towards the door. ‘We’ll keep our PDAs on the down low from now on. I promise.’

Ellie doubted that when she heard a loud slap followed by Maddy’s giggle of protest before the front door slammed.

Locating a jar of granola in the pantry, Ellie ladled out a generous helping of the toasted nuts and seeds then topped it off with some yoghurt and a selection of the freshly picked berries she found in punnets in the fridge.

Five minutes later, she was rinsing her bowl in the sink, when the crash of the door slamming open made her jump.

Batman himself charged into the kitchen holding his hand aloft, blood dripping down his forearm and splattering Dee’s sand-blasted stone.

‘Move,’ he said as he nudged her aside at the sink.

‘What happened to your hand?’ Ellie asked, as he thrust his hand under the tap.

‘I was sharpening one of the rotary blades and I nicked myself.’

Cold water gushed out, and ran red into the sink.

‘That’s more than a nick.’ Ellie leant over his shoulder – the deep ten-centimetre gash bisected his palm and sliced under his thumb. So much for Art’s useful skills, the guy couldn’t even sharpen a rotary blade without sawing off a hand.

He shot Ellie a caustic look over his shoulder, then shifted to block her view. ‘Get me a tea towel. It’ll be fine once it’s wrapped up.’

‘You’re going to need more than a tea towel,’ she said, as she checked the drawers, finally finding a pile of clean towels and fishing out a fistful. She lifted one from the top of the pile – ominously decorated with pictures of Druid worship at Stonehenge – and handed it to him, the metallic smell of fresh blood making her head swim.

Art wound the towel round his hand, tying the makeshift bandage off with his teeth. The blood started to seep through the fabric.

‘You are not serious?’ Ellie stepped into his path as he went to leave. ‘You need to get that stitched to stop the bleeding.’

‘It’s fine,’ he said through gritted teeth, the mutinous scowl reminding her of Josh when he’d been a fractious toddler. Josh, though, had never been this stubborn, or this stupid.

‘Plus it could get infected,’ she added. ‘And then you’ll lose it.’

‘Get a grip, Princess Drama.’ The old insult might have had more impact if she couldn’t see the greasy pallor beneath his scowl.

‘No I won’t, Captain Dickhead,’ she replied.

What was the guy trying to prove? That he could saw off his hand and keep on going? This was beyond ridiculous.

‘I’m not kidding,’ she continued. ‘You need to go to A and E.’

His face paled even more.

Whipping another tea towel off the pile, she took his hand and bound it more tightly in a vain attempt to stem the blood flow. His breath gushed out against her forehead. She tied two more towels together to create a makeshift sling.

‘Keep it elevated,’ she said, as she knotted the towels at his nape. ‘Until we get to Gratesbury.’

If she remembered correctly, there was a minor injuries unit there. Hopefully it was still there or they’d have to carry on to Salisbury, which was at least an hour away.

‘I’m not going to a hospital,’ he said.

‘Yes, you are, because I refuse to let you bleed out all over my mum’s kitchen.’ Taking his elbow, she led him towards the door. ‘Getting the stains out of these flagstones would be a total bitch.’

He shrugged out of her hold. ‘If I’ve got to go, I’ll drive myself.’

‘With one hand? I don’t think so.’ She grabbed his elbow again and tugged him towards the door, her temper riding roughshod over the ego slap.

So Art would rather lose a hand then spend twenty minutes in a confined space with her.

‘Wait there.’ She left him standing in the hallway, as she took the stairs two at a time to get her car keys. ‘And stop being a douche canoe.’

‘What the hell’s a douche canoe?’ he shouted after her.

‘A guy with way too much testosterone and not nearly enough common sense,’ she shouted back, taking a wild guess.




CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_59cf0ea6-a348-58be-8ac7-1a49fb833ace)


‘For Christ’s sake, slow down. I’m not going to bleed to death in the next ten seconds.’

Ellie slanted a look at her passenger. He clung on to the handle above the car door, sweat glistening on his forehead, the blood having soaked through the towels she’d wrapped round his other hand in scarlet blotches.

‘I don’t care if you bleed to death,’ she replied, trying to remain calm – he was a big guy, hopefully he had a few pints to spare. ‘What I do care about is you bleeding all over my rental car.’ She eased her foot off the accelerator to take the next hairpin bend in the A30. ‘I’ve got to drop it off in Salisbury in a couple of days and I don’t want to pay a fine, or have to spend hours cleaning it.’

‘If you were worried about your stupid hire car why did you insist on driving me to A and E?’

‘Because I stupidly care if you lose your stupid hand.’

‘I’m not going to lose my hand.’

‘Not on my watch you won’t.’ She braked at the roundabout on the outskirts of Gratesbury and heard him curse. She wrestled the unfamiliar stick shift into first gear. ‘Did you seriously think you were going to carry on playing dodgeball with a rotary blade with half a hand?’

She jammed her foot on the accelerator when she spotted a gap ahead of an articulated lorry.

‘Jesus!’ He slapped his uninjured hand down on the dash. ‘Who taught you to drive?’

‘Stop changing the subject.’ She took the second exit signposted Gratesbury.

She had checked on her mobile before they set off that the minor injuries unit was still there and open at weekends in the market town. Art’s breath caught as she zipped past a tractor with at least an inch to spare on the road that took them past the town’s church and secondary school.

‘What subject would you rather talk about?’ he said drily. ‘How much longer we have to live with you at the wheel?’

They headed up the town’s main street, which was furnished with a collection of charity shops, pound shops and chintzy tourist-friendly tearooms. The narrow pavements that headed up a steep hill were mostly deserted. Apparently Sunday opening hours still hadn’t made it to Gratesbury.

‘Now who’s being Princess Drama?’ she said, taking the side street at the top of the hill past the Somerfield supermarket.

They drove past a collection of old detached stone houses, their high garden walls lovingly decorated with trailing lobelia.

She’d once moaned incessantly about the lack of any fashion options for women under sixty in Gratesbury or the chances of getting a soy vanilla Frappuccino because they didn’t even have a Seattle Coffee Company café, which were all the rage in London, when her mother had brought her here during that summer. But in retrospect, weekend trips to the town had been a quaint and pleasant way to spend the afternoon – and the Women’s Institute market had done a phenomenal lemon drizzle cake.

The road narrowed ahead and seemed to be coming to a dead end. ‘Where is this place?’ she asked, wondering why she hadn’t spotted the sign.

Art stilled beside her. A brief glance confirmed his face had gone deathly white. Sweat dripped down his temple to furrow through the stubble on his jaw. It was a sunny day, and pleasantly warm, but not that warm.

She wondered how many more pints he could afford to lose, because the metallic smell had begun to permeate the whole car.

‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been to it before.’

He closed his eyes and pressed his head into the headrest, the tight grimace signalling how much pain he must be in.

She almost felt bad about the Princess Drama crack. The man was nothing if not stoic.

She slowed the car, and finally spotted a blue sign emblazoned with the NHS insignia. ‘At last, found it.’

He shifted beside her as she drove into an almost empty car park. The one-story utilitarian building had a glass front and an ambulance bay with a paramedics van parked in it.

‘I hope it’s actually open,’ she said.

Still no comment.

‘Do you want to wait here while I investigate?’ she asked, concerned he might be about to pass out for real.

‘Sure.’

The bloody towel covering his injured hand had started to seep onto his T-shirt.

She got out of the car and sprinted across the lot, propelled by panic.

Art Dalton might be a pain in the arse, but she really would prefer it if he didn’t die in her rental car. Not only would that be a difficult one to explain to the car hire company, but she had a sneaking feeling her mum would be devastated.

*

‘Art, wake up, it’s open and the receptionist says the doctor can see you straight away.’

‘I wasn’t asleep.’ Art dragged his eyes open, because some bugger had attached ten-ton weighs to his lids. Ellie’s intent green gaze roamed over his face.

He must really look like shit for her to actually be anxious about him, although maybe her anxiety was more to do with the threat to her upholstery than the threat to his health.

He certainly felt like shit. His hand was throbbing as if someone had tried to hack it off with a chainsaw – not completely untrue. But worse was the sick sensation in his belly, and the anxiety that had his chest in a death grip as he stared at the plate glass panel twenty feet away.

He hated hospitals. Really hated them.

He’d been trying to convince himself all the way here, this wasn’t strictly speaking a hospital, more like a glorified GP’s surgery. And it looked deserted. He wouldn’t walk in and be accosted with the sound of hurrying feet slapping against linoleum, the smell of blood and urine and bleach, or the beep of monitors, phones ringing, hushed conversations or shouted demands, or worse, the groans and mumbles of other people’s pain – everything that had haunted him in nightmares for years.

Even so, he’d rather risk losing his hand than have to walk through those sliding glass doors in the next few minutes…

Worst of all was the knowledge that if he hadn’t been thinking about Ellie, while he was supposed to be concentrating on sharpening the blade to start the cut-out on his latest commission, he wouldn’t have got into this fix in the first place.

‘Haul arse, Art, let’s get this over with.’ Ellie sounded exasperated and anxious.

‘Give me a moment,’ he said.

He needed to hide the fact he was not only terrified of going inside that building, but also terrified of losing it in front of her.

‘What for? Do you want to wait until you need a blood transfusion or something?’ The high note of panic gave lie to the snark.

And spurred him into action.

‘Fine, let’s do this thing.’ He tried to sound sure.

He gave his head a quick shake, to clear the fog enveloping him, and grabbed a hold of the car door while ignoring the rabbiting heartbeat punching his ribs. And the nausea sitting like a roaring lion under his sternum.

Do not puke.

He placed his feet on the tarmac, levered himself out of the car and staggered, his balance shot.

Ellie caught him round the waist. ‘Don’t you dare fall on top of me, Dalton.’ Banding a supporting arm around his back, she propped his good arm over her shoulder. ‘If you go, I’m going to go with you, because you’re too much of a big lummox for me to catch. And I’m telling you now, I will be severely pissed off if that happens.’ The snippy motormouth monologue was weirdly comforting.

‘I’m OK.’ He tried to take some of his weight off her, even though his equilibrium was iffy at best, the scent of her – summer flowers and sultry spice – as disturbing as the prospect of flattening her in an NHS car park.

‘Shut up, and lean on me,’ she said, holding him upright.

He gave up objecting – he didn’t have the strength to walk and argue at the same time.

The shaking hit his knees as the glass doors slid open, the electric hiss bringing with it the sucker punch of memory.

‘Don’t make a fuss, Arty. Everything will be OK. As long as you don’t tell, baby.’

His mummy’s voice whispered in his ear while the scary man with a white mask over his face kept prodding at his tummy, making the screaming agony a thousand times worse.

‘Art, you’re not really going to pass out are you? I can go and get a wheelchair?’ Ellie’s frantic questions beckoned him back to the present.

He breathed, ignoring the lion now roaring in his ears. And realised he’d yet to cross the threshold.

‘I’m fine, Princess Drama.’ But he didn’t feel fine, he felt terrible.

She didn’t comment, so he knew he must look terrible too.

He forced his feet to carry him through the door and back into purgatory, grateful for the feel of her flush against his side, her fingers digging into his hip. He clung on to her, reminding himself every step of the way that the throbbing pain was coming from his hand now and not his stomach. And wasn’t anywhere near as diabolical as it had been when he was a boy.

*

‘Ouch, nasty.’ The female doctor snapped on a pair of surgical gloves then unwrapped the layers of blood-soaked tea towels and dropped them in a surgical waste disposal unit. ‘How did you do this, Mr Dalton?’

‘Rotary blade slipped,’ Art supplied, in his usual talkative fashion from his perch on the gurney. The room was sunny and smelled of orange blossoms, not bleach or blood like most hospitals. Ellie was surprised Art hadn’t kicked up a fuss when she’d followed him into the treatment room. But then, from the pasty face, she wasn’t sure he would notice if she started tap-dancing naked in front of him.

‘At least it’s a reasonably clean incision.’ The physician, who was called Susan Grant according to the nametag pinned to her white coat, wiped away the sluggish seep of blood with a succession of antiseptic wipes. ‘And you don’t appear to have severed any tendons. But it’s deep, so it’s going to need quite a few stitches.’

Ellie cringed as the woman, who had a pleasantly upbeat and efficient manner, began to probe at the cut.

If Art could feel it, he wasn’t letting on, his eyelids sinking to half-mast, as if he were struggling to remain awake.

He looked dreadful, but not as dreadful as he’d looked when they’d been entering the building. The electrical hum of the doors had triggered and, for a split second, he’d looked completely terrified, the whites of his eyes showing. She’d said something to him, worried he was about to keel over and take her down with him, and she’d had the strangest feeling she’d called him back from somewhere far away.

What was that about?

Because Art definitely wasn’t the swooning type, even after managing to hack off half a hand. Something else had been going on, something other than his injury, because he looked as if he’d rather do anything in that moment than take a single step into the medical centre.

‘When was your last tetanus shot?’ the doctor asked.

Art shook his head, his eyelids drooping.

The doctor turned to Ellie. ‘Do you know if he’s had any recent boosters? I think he may be a bit shocky.’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’ This would probably be a good time to say she was just the taxi service. But after the episode as they entered the centre, she wasn’t going anywhere.

‘All right.’ The doctor turned back to Art. ‘I think we’ll err on the side of caution and give you one just in case. I’m going to call the nurse so she can help me stitch you up.’ She applied a dressing to the wound as she spoke, the thick wadding absorbing the worst of the blood, which seemed to have finally stopped flowing so copiously. ‘In the meantime, Ms…?’

‘Preston,’ Ellie said, then realised she’d given her maiden name.

‘Ms Preston. Could you help him get his T-shirt off.’ She lifted a gown off a neat stack in the corner of the room. ‘And get him into one of these.’

Ellie took the gown, before the doctor disappeared out of the door.

She stared at the neat blue and red geometric pattern on the starched cotton then back at Art. She was going to have to undress him?

Suck it up. You’ve seen a lot more of him than just his chest.

So what if the memory of seeing his chest hair peeking out of his overalls had made her react like a nun yesterday evening.

‘Art?’ She nudged his shoulder. His lids snapped open, but his eyes were blank for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure where he was.

‘We’ve got to get your T-shirt off.’ She held the gown aloft. ‘And put this on.’

‘I can do it,’ he said, or rather croaked, still channelling he who shall never need any help.

He yanked up the hem of his T-shirt with his good hand. Then swore as the wad of cotton got stuck. With his sore hand dangling in space, his face covered by the blood-soaked shirt and some phenomenal abdominal muscles trembling with the effort he was making to try to yank the garment the rest of the way off, he looked stuck fast.

‘Ready for some help yet?’ Ellie quipped.

The reply was an annoyed grunt.

‘I’m going to take that as a yes.’ After dumping the gown on the bed, Ellie circled his wrist with gentle fingers, and eased his injured hand through the armhole, ignoring the sight of the dark hair fanning out across the defined slabs of his pectoral muscles.

There was not an ounce of extra belly fat on the man, the black elastic of his boxer briefs peeking over the low-slung waistband of his jeans. The black hair around his nipples tapered into a thin line to bisect the ridges of his six-pack.

The hot flush struck somewhere around her backbone and raced up her spine as she dragged the T-shirt over his head.

He groaned, cradling his hand as he positioned it in his lap. She spotted the ridged white scar that had shocked her all those summers ago. She’d only seen it from a distance then.

She could see it more clearly now, illuminated by the treatment room’s harsh fluorescent light. It still looked nasty, but for the first time she noticed the tiny white dots that travelled up either side of the line trailing out of his groin all the way to the bottom of his ribcage.

When had the injury happened? Was this where his fear of hospitals came from? Because it looked like he had once had at least fifty stitches in a wound that must surely have been life-threatening.

She dragged her gaze away not wanting to get caught staring, but Art seemed unconcerned, or uninterested, busy trying to unfold the gown and put it on with one hand.

‘Here, let me.’ She took the gown and held it for him to thread his arms through. For once he didn’t protest, or insist he could do it himself.

She edged it up over his shoulders, standing on tiptoe – because even hunched over, his shoulders were impressive. Clearly spending hours on end rotary-blading things and doing whatever else was needed to keep a seventy-acre farm going was better for the male physique than pumping iron in a gym.

‘What?’

Her gaze snapped to his. And she realised she’d been caught staring.

What a shame those impressive shoulders came with his not-nearly-as-impressive personality.

‘Nothing.’ She sat on the moulded plastic chair in the corner of the room, grateful his distracting chest was now covered in the blue and red geometric cotton of the gown. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like shit.’ He adjusted his hand on his lap. ‘I’m guessing I look pretty terrific in this outfit too?’

‘Not at all, the red triangles blend with the bloodstains beautifully.’

He gave a gruff cough, which might almost have been mistaken for a laugh.

A small amount of colour had returned to his face. Whatever had spooked him seemed to be passing. While he could hardly be described as comfortable, he didn’t look as if he wanted to bolt for the door.

‘You don’t have to hang around,’ he said. ‘I can make my own way back when I’m done.’

‘Uh-huh, were you planning to jog back to the farm then?’

He coughed again, coming even closer to a laugh. ‘Did anyone ever tell you, your bedside manner is rubbish?’

‘Good thing I never considered becoming a nurse then, isn’t it?’ she said and was rewarded with an actual honest to goodness chuckle this time, albeit rough enough to sound as if someone had been sandpapering his larynx.

‘You’re not wrong.’

The door opened and Dr Grant walked into the room, followed by an older woman dressed in bright blue nurse’s scrubs and wheeling a metal trolley laden with what Ellie assumed must be the supplies needed to stitch Art’s hand.

‘OK, Mr Dalton, Tina is going to give you a tetanus shot and something to numb your hand and then I’ll get to work,’ Dr Grant said.

Art straightened on the bed, making the gown slip off one shoulder.

Apparently, the entertainment portion of the afternoon was now officially over. Sympathy whispered through Ellie. However annoying he was, and however many times he’d been stitched up before, this was liable to be unpleasant. And from the tension on his face, he knew exactly how unpleasant.

Watching Art get tortured wouldn’t have bothered her nineteen years ago after the way things had ended between them. But as the doctor and her assistant injected him, cleaned and irrigated the nasty gash and finally proceeded to stitch him – while Art remained stoic and silent and uncomplaining throughout the whole ordeal – Ellie had to admit that seeing him in pain now actually did bother her, a little bit.

*

‘You are not driving. Are you bonkers?’ Ellie marched ahead of Art across the car park and ignored his beyond stupid suggestion.

‘Why not? I’m fine now. And I’m a safer driver than you are.’

‘You’re not fine.’ She clicked the locks with the key fob and flung open the door. Settling in the driver’s seat, she waited for Art to climb in on the other side. The mulish expression on his face didn’t bother her as much as the white bandage on his hand which covered thirty-two stitches. She knew this because she had counted every single one.

As he wrestled with the seat belt with his right hand, she remembered that he was left-handed. She turned on the ignition and left him to struggle with the seat belt on his own.

‘I can drive one-handed,’ he said. ‘And even one-handed, I’ve got a better chance of getting us back alive than you have.’

‘Hardly. You’ve been shot full of enough painkillers to fell an ox, plus driving will only open up the wound.’ She crunched the gears, shifted into reverse, and wheeled into a three-point turn. Art gripped the dash like an old woman. She ignored the not-so-subtle hint. ‘And even though that would totally serve you right,’ she added, ‘the good Dr Grant’s just wasted twenty minutes stitching you up.’ Twenty minutes that had felt like twenty years. ‘And I’m not going to let you undo all her hard work just because you’re an idiot.’

A dark brow hitched up his forehead. ‘Since when did you become my keeper?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be resigning the position as soon as is humanly possible.’ With that in mind she accelerated down the country lane that led to the town’s main street. ‘And anyway, this is my car, so you don’t get a say.’

He didn’t reply, finally having conceded defeat. Feeling magnanimous in victory, she eased her foot off the accelerator as they headed over the speed bumps on the outskirts of town, and took her time getting onto the roundabout, waiting for a space big enough not to require the need to play chicken with any articulated lorries.

They’d been driving along the A30 for a good ten minutes, before he finally spoke again. ‘Thanks for helping me out. The cut was worse than I thought.’

The admission sounded weary and grudging.

‘Just a tad,’ she said, unable to resist a smile at his frown.

They drove on, the road passing the newbuilds on the outskirts of Gratesbury to wind through a landscape of fields banked by high hedges.

His eyelids kept drifting to half-mast and then popping open again. She remembered Josh doing the same thing as a toddler, when he was exhausted but didn’t want to go to bed. The thought made her think of Art as a boy, and the terror on his face when they’d walk into the unit.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you have a phobia of hospitals?’

His eyelids jerked open. He stared at her, the slow blink making her aware of exactly how long his lashes were.

He had the most amazing eyes, the tawny hazelnut brown embedded with flecks of gold. The bloodshot quality added to the glittery sheen of the low-grade temperature the good Dr Grant had told her to keep an eye on – because, at some point during today’s drama, she had become Art’s keeper.

‘I haven’t got a phobia. I just don’t like them much,’ he said, but his gaze flicked away as he said it and she knew he was lying.

How about that? She could still tell if Art Dalton was or was not speaking the truth. The way she had all those years ago.

It was a heady feeling, like discovering a superpower she thought she’d lost.

She drove down the track that led to the farm, recalling their exchange in the treatment room before Dr Grant had returned to give Art his thirty-two stitches.

OK, maybe she wasn’t totally immune to Art’s non-charms. But there would be no more flirting, with or without abs. Handling the fallout from one disastrous relationship was more than enough incentive to keep her libido on lockdown for the next decade, let alone the rest of the summer.




CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_0955cd91-da8f-599f-a96e-02431308e16f)


Driving into the farmyard, with Art dozing in the passenger seat, Ellie spotted a woman busy loading a muddy four-by-four while a young girl danced around beside her.

Art jerked awake as Ellie braked. As he hauled himself out of the car, the woman rushed towards them, the little girl bouncing behind her.

‘Art, what the hell happened to your hand?’ The woman’s eyebrows drew together. Tall and slim, with her long mahogany-coloured hair tied back in a ponytail, she looked elegant even in an ensemble of faded jeans, a baggy T-shirt and wellington boots.

‘Just had a disagreement with the rotary blade.’ Art lifted his bandaged hand as if to prove it was still attached. ‘It’s sorted.’

‘Give or take thirty-two stitches,’ Ellie added.

Art shot her his stop-being-a-drama-queen look.

‘Thirty-two stitches! In one hand?’ The woman crossed her arms over her chest, her concern escalating. ‘That sounds like some disagreement.’

‘Mummy, has Art lost his fingers?’ The girl clung to her mother’s leg, her eyes widening with a combination of fear and fascination. A puff of wild red hair surrounded a face covered in freckles, making her look like Little Orphan Annie after she’d been electrocuted.

‘No, sweetie, they’re still there,’ the woman murmured patting the child’s head. ‘Just about,’ she added under her breath.

Art crouched down and wiggled his fingers inside the bandage. ‘See, Melody, it’s all good.’ Straightening, he swept a sharp look over Ellie and Melody’s mother. ‘Stop scaring the children, ladies.’ He lifted the bag of medication out of Ellie’s hand. ‘I’ve got work to do.’ He rubbed the girl’s hair. ‘Bye, Melly,’ he said, then headed across the yard and disappeared behind the farmhouse.

What work did he think he was going to be doing on a farm with an injured hand? Ellie wondered, but stopped herself from shouting after him. Time to relinquish her responsibilities as Art’s keeper.

‘There goes the most stubborn guy on the planet,’ remarked the woman standing beside her.

‘You have no idea,’ Ellie murmured, the stomach muscles that had been knotted tight ever since Art had raced into the kitchen dripping blood finally starting to relax. ‘I had to practically kidnap him to get him to the doctor’s.’

‘Why does that not surprise me,’ the woman said, before unfolding her arms and offering Ellie her hand. ‘Hi, Tess Peveney, I’m Mike’s wife. You’re Dee’s daughter?’

Ellie nodded, returning the firm handshake.

Mike had to be the red-headed guy she’d met the day before. Melody had obviously inherited her father’s mercurial hair.

‘Ellie Preston,’ she introduced herself, her maiden name coming out more naturally this time. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’

‘You too. Sorry I missed the welcoming party yesterday. I was busy suffering the tortures of hell in Gratesbury. Otherwise known as helping out at a birthday party for sixteen four-year-old girls.’ She tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and shuddered. ‘If I hear “Let It Go” or see another pink balloon, Barbie cupcake or sparkly deely bopper again in this lifetime I may have to be sectioned.’

Ellie laughed. ‘That sounds almost as traumatic as having to drag a bleeding man to Gratesbury’s minor injury unit.’

Tess grinned. ‘Nope, it’s much worse. I think I may actually have post-traumatic Frozen disorder.’

‘I like Frozen, Mummy,’ Melody piped up, hopping from one leg to the other. ‘Anna and Elsa are the best.’

‘I know how much you love Frozen, baby.’ Tess rolled her eyes for Ellie’s benefit, before addressing her daughter. ‘Run into the farmhouse and have a pee before we head for Salisbury.’

‘Do I have to?’ Melody begged, wiggling furiously.

Swinging her daughter around, Tess gave her a pat on the bottom. ‘Yes, because you need to…’ Taking a deep breath she launched into the Frozen anthem… ‘Let it go…Let it go.’

Her daughter ran off, struggling to complete the song’s chorus around her delighted giggles.

‘Are you going anywhere near the market in Salisbury?’ Ellie asked, once they had both stopped laughing. ‘I was supposed to be helping out my mum today on the stall.’

‘Actually, that’s exactly where we’re headed. Melly and I just finished baking the stall’s supply of strawberry shortbread and sourdough loaves. Or rather I baked and Melly ate as many strawberries as she could cram into her mouth.’ She swung round to indicate the trays she’d been loading into the car when Ellie and Art had arrived. ‘Why don’t you tag along?’

‘That would be terrific,’ Ellie said, pleased to get the chance to escape her unnecessary concerns about Art. Spending the rest of the afternoon in the company of women seemed like the perfect antidote to the morning’s drama.

*

Situated in the historic centre of Salisbury, the city’s main square had served the population since medieval times as a thriving community market. Presided over on one side by the majestic Georgian columns of the Guildhall, which now housed the city council, and hemmed by the patchwork of shopfronts ranging in style from half-timbered Tudor to redbrick Victorian, eight hundred years of the city’s history was here. As Ellie muscled her way from the car park behind the square through the crowds of shoppers buying everything from home-made soap to burritos, it was clear the Artisan Market was still a thriving place of commerce in the present day.

Indian spices blended with the scent of freshly roasted coffee and patchouli oil. The standard-issue green gazebos vied for space with gleaming metal food trucks and striped awnings, while the jubilant Caribbean riff of a steel band floated over the shouts of the traders and the general hubbub of people enjoying a sunny June afternoon getting lots of retail therapy. A pair of elderly ladies in floral prints inspected a stall laden with hand-sewn cushions next to a gang of teenagers with tattoos and nose rings clustered around another stall peddling multicoloured cupcakes.

‘How long has this market been in operation?’ Ellie shouted to Tess as they made their way through the labyrinth, laden down with a tray each of the strawberry shortbread Tess had baked. The few times she’d been to Salisbury in her teens all Ellie could remember was a market full of jumble sale knock-offs that she’d looked down her nose at as a London teenager with vast fashion sophistication.

Tess glanced back, Melody clinging to the hem of her T-shirt so as not to get lost in the crowd. ‘The Artisan Market? Quite a while. It’s a brilliant venue for us. It attracts a great foodie crowd. But, unfortunately, it’s only on one Sunday a month. Dee also runs a stall at the farmers’ market here every Wednesday and the general markets, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, when she’s not manning stalls at other farmers’ markets around the county.’

‘That must require a huge amount of work, doing all that baking?’ Ellie said, readjusting the tray. Her arms were already aching and they had two trays of bread still to transport.

‘We don’t just sell baked goods,’ Tess said. ‘Dee does amazing jams and preserves too. And Annie is a whizz with pastry – she’s on a mission to single-handedly reintroduce the wonder of quiche to the south-west of England – and Annie’s husband Rob makes some very nice elderflower fizz when he has the time,’ Tess replied. ‘But yeah, time is a problem because most of us are stuck doing day jobs. So Dee is the one who has to bear the brunt of the work.’ Tess shouldered her tray and sidestepped a queue of people lining up to buy themselves a dosa wrap from a Bombay street food stall. ‘Most of the speciality markets don’t run after Christmas,’ Tess continued. ‘So there is some chance to stock up and catch up on our sleep. But as most of our merchandise is freshly prepared, not much. And, to be honest, the time spent travelling to venues and setting up, and then clearing out, is also pretty prohibitive.’

Ellie spotted her mother’s stall ahead of them. The queue was even longer than at the dosa wrap one, with her mother in the centre of it all busy chatting with one of her customers while Josh and Toto packed their order into folding cake boxes.

Seeing them approaching, Dee raised a hand to greet them both.

Tess ducked round the crowd. She stacked her own tray and lifted Ellie’s out of tired arms, then began adding the cakes to the dwindling supplies on display.

‘Mom, me and Toto have been working all morning.’ Josh tugged Ellie’s arm to get her attention. ‘And Granny Dee says she’s going to pay us.’ He did a jaw-breaking yawn as Dee looped an arm around his shoulders.

‘He’s been terrific,’ Dee said. ‘A natural salesman just like Toto.’

Josh grinned up at his grandmother, basking in her praise, and Ellie felt the burst of warmth in her chest. However many mistakes she’d made in the last few months, however much she’d let Josh down, the hare-brained decision to bring him to Wiltshire might turn out better than expected in some regards.

However stilted her own relationship with Dee, Josh seemed more relaxed than she’d seen him in months.

Not so Toto though. The wave of regret was swift and fairly painful for Ellie as the girl’s gaze darted away from her.

Art had told her not to apologise to Toto, but then he was, and had always been, a hard arse. Having watched Josh struggle for over a year to find acceptance with any of the judgemental little body fascists at the expensive private school he attended in Orchard Harbor, Ellie knew she owed Art’s daughter an apology.

But that would have to wait, until after she’d given Dee news of the morning’s events at A and E. She drew Dee to one side while Josh and Toto helped Tess deal with the queue of customers.

‘Mum, I need to tell you something,’ she said.

‘I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t wake you,’ Dee said. ‘But you looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘I don’t mind.’ Ellie smiled, strangely touched. When was the last time anyone had put her needs first? ‘Actually, as it turns out, it was a fortuitous thing I was at the farm, because Art had an accident and I had to take him to Gratesbury to get his hand stitched up.’

The colour leached out of Dee’s face. ‘Is he OK?’

‘Yes, as long as he doesn’t try playing dodgeball with a rotary blade again.’

Ellie gave her mother’s hands a reassuring squeeze when her colour failed to return. ‘He’s woozy from all the medication and not too happy with me. And I’m afraid your kitchen looks like the set of a slasher movie, but otherwise he’s fine.’

‘He let you take him to the hospital?’ Dee asked.

So Dee knew about Art’s hospital phobia? Ellie wondered if her mother knew where it came from. And anything about that gruesome scar on his stomach?

‘I insisted,’ she said.

Dee squeezed Ellie’s hands back then let them go. ‘I’m sure that’s an understatement.’ She gave a breathless laugh. ‘But thank you. And thank goodness you were there.’ She tucked her hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture.

Ellie wanted to question her mother further about Art’s phobia, when Toto’s panicked voice interrupted them.

‘Is my dad OK?’ The cake box in her hands had been scrunched into a ball. ‘Is he going to die?’

‘No, of course he isn’t.’ Dee captured the girl’s slender shoulders and folded her into a hard hug. ‘He cut his hand, but Ellie looked after him and it’s all fixed now.’ Dee sent Ellie a look of gratitude over Toto’s head.

Toto nodded mutely while concentrating on the mangled cardboard in her hands: ‘Thank you for looking out for my dad,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m sorry I made you mad yesterday.’

‘You don’t need to be sorry,’ Ellie said. ‘I was tired and cranky yesterday. I hope you can forgive me?’

‘OK,’ the girl whispered, but the wary expression remained. ‘Can I go home and make sure Dad’s alive? Please?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Dee said, but Ellie could see the concern cross her mother’s face. There were still two trays of bread to unload from the car, plus there were several hours to go yet before the market closed and the queue was only getting longer.

Ellie touched her mother’s arm. ‘Mum, you go ahead and take Toto and Josh back to the farmhouse.’ From the way Josh was yawning, she suspected the jet lag was about to slam into him. ‘I can assist Tess on the stall.’

It took quite a lot of effort to persuade Dee, but Ellie eventually managed to corral her mother and all three of the children to the car park – Melody having decided that hanging out with Josh and Toto would be much more fun than manning a market stall for the rest of the afternoon. After seeing them off, two questions nagged at her as she began the trek back to the stall with a tray of sourdough loaves.

Where had Art’s hospital phobia come from?

And where was Toto’s mother?




CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_8c465023-5a49-5f5f-870f-e4821e7ce395)


Two days later, Ellie sat in the kitchen and chewed at a ragged thumbnail after a morning spent picking strawberries with Josh for Dee’s latest batch of shortbread.

Nicole at Nails R Us on the corner of Main and Fifth in Orchard Harbor would have a fit if she could see the state of Ellie’s manicure.

‘Why don’t I show you how to use the bread maker this afternoon?’ her mother said, as she slid a plate of fennel and endive salad in front of her with a bowl of freshly baked bread rolls. ‘We’ve got a batch to make for tomorrow’s market in Swindon and it’s a lot less hard on the hands.’

Ellie breathed in the yeasty aroma and picked up her fork. ‘I’d certainly be quite happy never to see another strawberry again in this lifetime.’

But, as she tucked into her lunch, she recalled the hushed conversations and hidden looks directed at her during her visits to Nicole, as she pretended she didn’t know her husband had flirted with most of the women there and probably slept with a few of them too. Chipped polish and fruit stains suddenly seemed a small price to pay not to have to do the walk of shame each week at the local beauty parlour.

And running herself ragged with Tess on Sunday afternoon on the farm’s market stall had been an even better distraction than picking strawberries until her manicure died. Chatting to customers, wrapping what felt like a million cakes and loaves in paper until her fingers ached, and ringing the mounting sales up on the stall’s antique till had been so much more exhilarating than all the small talk she’d had to endure with her fair-weather friends in Orchard Harbor.

As she and Tess had packed up the empty trays, swept the debris, folded away the farm’s tables and gazebo and loaded everything into Tess’s car, the sense of achievement and camaraderie had been immense – so much more rewarding than attempting to ingratiate herself with women who she suspected had viewed her with pity or contempt.

‘Rob’s wife Annie does a mean manicure.’ Dee put a plate in front of Josh and took his DS out of his hands to replace it with a fork. ‘You, Tess, Maddy and Annie should arrange a girls’ night in soon so you can get your nails fixed.’

‘I’d love that,’ Ellie said as she split open a roll and slathered it with butter. She’d met Annie yesterday, and had warmed to her instantly. A petite woman with the will of a Trojan and a broad Northern accent, Annie Jackson had been busy corralling her twin toddlers, Jamie and Freddie, while she dropped off some of her husband’s home-made elderflower fizz for the weekend’s stall. Of course, the two of them had been forced to sample some of it with a slice of Dee’s banana nut bread. By the time they’d moved on to coffee, they’d discussed everything from the current state of US politics to the pee hazards involved when changing the nappies of baby boys. Ellie had conceded that Josh’s aim was nowhere near as hazardous as Annie’s two boys.

‘I’ll suggest it to Annie, then, so you guys can all get together soon,’ said her mother.

‘Won’t you be joining us?’ Ellie asked, surprised that the thought didn’t feel as uncomfortable as it probably would have three days ago, when she’d arrived.

Her mother picked up her fork. ‘I’m afraid manicures are totally wasted on me.’ The wistful tone told Ellie that there was more to the refusal, but she didn’t push. Maybe her mother was just being diplomatic, and wanted to let Ellie get to know the other co-op women on her own terms.

As Ellie finished her lunch, she watched Josh plough through his salad. While he’d never been a fussy eater, he wasn’t a particularly adventurous one either, but the last three days of exercise and fresh air had turned that around. As soon as Toto got home from school, the two of them headed off on another adventure and stayed out until supper.

In an attempt not to freak out when he returned each evening either covered in mud or with some unexplained raw spot on his elbow or chin, Ellie had kept busy, helping her mother with the cooking and KP duties. Dee had given her endless assurances that Toto knew how to stay safe on the farm, but even so Ellie had set some ground rules – such as no climbing on the combine harvester, or playing handsy with Art’s rotary blade.

And here was her reward. Not only had Josh spent very little time on his DS in the last few days, she suspected he’d never eaten so many fresh vegetables in his life. He was a little boy. A boisterous little boy, who had been overcautious for too long.

His nutritionist back home would be ecstatic.

‘When will Toto be back from school?’ Josh asked, around a mouthful of bread roll.

‘Not till four,’ Ellie replied. She’d learnt the bus schedule off by heart, because Josh asked the same question every lunchtime.

‘But that’s hours away and I’m bored,’ he said. ‘Toto says she’s got weeks and weeks of school left and I won’t have anything to do all day when she’s gone.’

‘You liked helping with the strawberries, didn’t you?’ Ellie asked. Why hadn’t she considered how bored Josh was likely to be with Toto at school most of the day?

‘But we’ve finished that,’ Josh said. ‘And it’s not as good as building a hideout with Toto.’

‘Maybe you could go and hang out with Melody until Toto gets back?’ Ellie said. Her mother looked after Tess’s daughter each morning while Tess was at work in Gratesbury, and Ellie knew Josh had helped to entertain her the day before.

‘Melody’s OK, but she’s only four,’ Josh said, exasperated. ‘And she’s a girl. All she wants to do is play with her doll. And sing dumb songs, really loud.’

Ellie didn’t think it would help to point out Toto was a girl too.

‘I tell you what, Josh,’ Dee cut in. ‘Why don’t I ring up the head teacher at Toto’s school this afternoon? Maybe you could go for a visit tomorrow? Would you like that?’

Josh chewed his lip – a sure sign of the nervousness and trepidation that had dogged his time in Charles Hamilton Middle School. Ellie was about to intervene, and explain to her mother that school was a problematic environment for Josh, when her son surprised her.

‘I could go to Toto’s school with her?’ He actually sounded curious.

‘I can’t promise anything,’ Dee said. ‘But if you’d like to go in with Toto for the day tomorrow, and try it out, I could certainly ask her head teacher. Marjorie’s a friend of mine and a lovely lady and I’m sure if I explained everything there might be a way to make it work. They have exchange visits with children from France all the time. I don’t see why this should be any different.’

‘Yes!’ Josh punched the air and bounced out of his seat. ‘Just wait till I tell Toto. I’m going to go get my stuff ready.’ He shot out of the room and Ellie heard him racing up the stairs.

‘Do you really think the head teacher will go for the idea?’ she asked her mother. ‘I don’t want to get his hopes up.’ Especially as she’d never seen Josh this enthusiastic about the thought of attending school.

‘Toto’s school is a new school, so they have places to fill at the moment. And Marjorie is the local organiser for the Women’s Institute – if there’s a way to make it happen, she’ll find it.’

‘I’m sure she will but what if…’

‘We’ll find something else for Josh to do,’ her mother interrupted gently. ‘There’s a million and one chores round here. Maybe he could help Art out in the workshop?’

‘And risk getting his hand chopped off? I don’t think so.’

Plus, she couldn’t see Art going for that idea. Art had taken his trademark sullenness to a whole new level in the last few days, skulking at the opposite end of the table during supper time as he picked at his food with his uninjured hand, his beard growth starting to make him look like a particularly disreputable pirate. Only last night, he’d chastised Toto for giggling too much at one of Jacob’s jokes. Toto had taken the harsh comment in her stride, obviously used to her father’s moods, but Josh had looked terrified. Her son tended to get anxious around men at the best of times, probably because he’d spent so much of his childhood trying and failing to attract Dan’s attention. And Art, with his no-frills parenting, was a great deal more intimidating than Dan.

‘It may surprise you to know that Art is actually great with kids,’ Dee said. ‘And he’s never usually clumsy. I still can’t imagine how he cut himself so badly.’

Ellie was reserving judgement on Art’s way with children. Toto and Melody might adore him, and Josh was clearly in awe of him, plus she could remember how he’d managed to hypnotise the other children at the commune when they’d been teenagers together, but that did not mean she was going to expose a child as sensitive as Josh to Art’s moods.

And she didn’t trust Dee’s opinion on Art, because it was fairly obvious she was a founder member of the Art Dalton Appreciation Society.

Ellie carried their used dishes to the sink and rinsed them off. ‘Here’s hoping the school visit pans out, so we never have to consider the nuclear option.’

‘I’ll go ring Marjorie now and see what she says,’ her mother announced as she placed the rest of the dishes in the sink. ‘Could you do me a favour while I’m handling that?’

‘Sure,’ Ellie said, placing a rinsed plate on the draining board.

‘Would you take some salad and bread into Art in the study?’ Dee opened a drawer and rummaged around. ‘And check up on him while you’re at it. I’m worried that hand may have got infected, he’s been so grumpy the last couple of days.’

Ellie dried her hands. ‘Isn’t that his natural state?’

What exactly did her mother mean by ‘check up on him’? She’d already done her shift as Art’s keeper.

‘I’m worried about him.’ Dee pulled a thin pencil-sized leather case from the drawer then held it towards Ellie.

‘What’s that?’ Ellie stared at the case as if it contained an unexploded nuclear warhead.

Please don’t let this be what I think it is.

‘A thermometer,’ Dee replied, shattering Ellie’s hopes. ‘All you need to do is take his temperature. It won’t take you a minute and it will put my mind at rest.’

Yeah, but it’s liable to make my mind explode.

‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable taking his temperature.’ Like, at all.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I hardly know the guy.’ And what I do know is only going to make this situation more supremely uncomfortable.

‘Don’t be silly.’ Dee lifted Ellie’s hand and slapped the thermometer into her palm. ‘Just get him to hold it under his tongue for two minutes. He’s more likely to do it for you than me.’

‘Why on earth would you think that?’ Ellie asked. Was her mother delusional?

‘Because he let you drive him to the hospital,’ Dee said, as if that made any sense at all. ‘And he hates hospitals.’

So saying, Dee rushed off, leaving Ellie holding the nuclear warhead.

Shoving the thermometer into her back pocket, she trooped down the hallway towards the office at the back of the house and rapped on the door.

‘Go away. I’m busy.’

Apparently, Mr Grumpy had gone from cranky to super cranky since yesterday evening.

With the nuclear warhead branding her bottom through her jeans, Ellie opened the door, certain that no superpower on earth was liable to stop this situation blowing up in her face.

She braced herself as she stepped into the cramped room. Art sat crouched over some papers, his hair swept back in untidy rows as if he’d spent the day running agitated fingers through it. An ancient desktop computer hummed in the corner like a demented bumble bee. The once white bandage was now an unhealthy shade of grey where his hand rested on the table.

‘Hi.’

He swung round, looking surprised for a moment. And then pissed off.

Quelle surprise.

‘What do you want?’

She whipped the thermometer out of her back pocket like Harry Potter preparing to do the Expelliarmus Spell.

If only.

‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ she said. Time to go on the offensive. There was no point being a wimp around Art, because he would stomp all over her. So he was having his temperature taken now even if she had to shove her wand right up his bum.

He eyeballed the thermometer. ‘What’s the bad news?’

‘The bad news is I’m here on a mission from my mother to take your temperature.’

‘So, what’s the good news?’

‘You’re going to hate this even more than I do.’

*

I do not believe it!

Art stared at the thermometer – and wanted to punch a wall. Unfortunately, he couldn’t, because one hand was throbbing like a rotten tooth and damaging the other one would leave him helpless.

Damn Dee for siccing her daughter on him. And damn Ellie for looking like she was enjoying this. ‘I don’t have a temperature.’

‘Tell that to my mum, she’s worried about you.’

‘Go back and tell her yourself.’

She stepped into the room and closed the door, making the space feel even more claustrophobic than usual. He could smell her, that fresh spicy scent that had enveloped him while he’d dozed off in the car on the way back from the clinic.

‘Unfortunately for both of us –’ she propped her bottom on the desk ‘– that’s not going to wash when you haven’t eaten a full meal in days.’

‘I’m not hungry.’ Like he was going to tell her the real reason he wasn’t eating. She’d probably crack a rib laughing.

She shook her head. ‘Nope, that won’t work either. Unless you’ve suddenly become a closet anorexic. And I’m afraid if you have that’s only going to make Dee worry more.’

‘She’s not my keeper and neither are you.’

‘Yes, I believe you said that already.’

‘So why aren’t you listening?’

She opened the leather case and dropped the glass tube into her palm. ‘What exactly is so terrifying about having your temperature taken?’

‘I don’t have a temperature.’ He grabbed her other hand and slapped it onto his forehead, to prove the point.

The feel of her palm, cool and soft, pressed to his skin didn’t help with the tugging sensation deep in his abdomen. He dropped her hand.

‘Satisfied?’ He cleared his throat, because the word had come out on a husky rumble.

Ellie pressed her palm into her jeans, and scrubbed it down her thigh.

‘I am. Dee won’t be.’ She wielded the thermometer like a lightsaber. ‘Unless I hand her conclusive proof, she’ll only harass you herself. So stop being a pain in the arse and stick this under your tongue for two minutes.’

He was debating whether to do it, just to get this over with and her and her subtle sexy scent the hell out of his office, when his stomach growled like a marauding mountain lion that hadn’t been properly fed for two days – probably because it hadn’t.

Ellie glanced pointedly at his belly. ‘Not hungry, huh?’

‘Bloody hell.’ He grabbed the thermometer – with the wrong hand.

Lightning lanced through his palm and shot up his arm. He swore viciously, jerking his hand back and cradling it against his midriff as the burning pain kicked up several thousand degrees.

‘Did that hurt?’

‘Of course it hurt, I’ve got about a hundred stitches in it. Now go away.’ He rocked, waiting for the lancing pain to subside, not caring that he was being an arsehole. He hadn’t asked her to come in here and harass him. His head felt like someone was trying to hook out his eyeballs with a coat hanger, his stomach was so empty it was practically inside out and now his hand was about to drop off altogether. The only thing that could make his misery any more complete was having Ellie Preston leaning over him with a worried look on her face.

Bingo.

‘I’ve got work to do,’ he added, the pain finally dulling to just about manageable.

Work that gave him a headache at the best of times. And which had transported him into a whole new level of purgatory since Sunday.

‘Dr Grant gave you some heavy duty painkillers, why aren’t you using them?’

Because they made him feel woozy and gave him nightmares. He’d woken up the first night sweating and swearing and thrashing about like a madman in the grip of a dream that had felt far too real. He hadn’t taken the painkillers since.

‘Bugger off.’

‘No.’ She pushed away from the desk and lifted his wrist.

He flinched. ‘Don’t.’

‘I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to take the bandage off.’

‘What for?’

‘Because look at it.’ She cradled his hand, holding it up. ‘It’s filthy.’

She had a point. He’d done his best but it had been next to impossible to wash and dress himself one-handed, let alone eat and write and attend to all the other chores he had piling up around him. Keeping the bandage dry and clean, as the doctor had recommended, had been the least of his worries.

‘You try keeping a bandage clean in a farmyard,’ he said, but the truth was, the fight had drained out of him.

He flinched as she peeled off the surgical tape around his wrist.





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