‘You needn’t do that.’
‘You’re soaked,’ Becky said flatly. ‘Your clothes will smell if you leave them to dry without washing them first.’
‘In that case, I won’t refuse your charming offer,’ Theo said drily and Becky flushed.
Very conscious of his eyes on her, she preceded him up the stairs, pointedly ignoring the bucket gathering water on the ground from the leaking roof, and flung open the door to one of the spare bedrooms. Had she actually thought things through when she had fled back to the family home, she would have realised that the ‘cottage’ was a cottage in name only. In reality, it was reasonably large, with five bedrooms and outbuildings in the acres outside. It was far too big for her and she wondered, suddenly, whether her parents had felt sorry for her and offered to allow her to stay there through pity. They hadn’t known about Freddy and her broken heart but what must they have felt when she had dug her heels in and insisted on returning to the family home while Alice, already far flown from the nest, was busily making marriage plans so that the next phase of her life could begin?
Becky cringed.
Her parents would never, ever have denied her the cottage but they weren’t rich. They had bought somewhere tiny in France when her grandmother had died, and they had both continued working part-time, teaching in the local school.
Becky had always thought it a brilliant way of integrating into life in the French town, but what if they’d only done that because they needed the money?
While she stayed here, paying a peppercorn rent and watching the place gradually fall apart at the seams...
She was struck by her own selfishness and it was something that had never occurred to her until now.
She would phone, she decided. Feel out the ground. After all, whether she liked it or not, her lifestyle was going to change dramatically once she was out of a job.
Theo looked at her and wondered what was going through her mind. He hadn’t failed to notice the way she had neatly stepped past a bucket in the corridor which was quarter-full from the leaking roof.
It was startling enough that a woman of her age would choose to live out in the sticks, however rewarding her job might be, but it was even more startling that, having chosen to live out in the sticks, she continued to live in a house that was clearly on the verge of giving up the fight.
When he bought this cottage, he would be doing her a favour by forcing her out into the real world.
Where life happened.
Rather than her staying here...hiding away...which surely was what she was doing...?
Hiding from what? he wondered. He was a little amused at how involved he temporarily was in mentally providing an answer to that ridiculous question.
But if he had to get her onside, manoeuvre her into a position where she might see the sense of not standing in his way when it came to buying the cottage, then wouldn’t it help to get to know her a little?
Of course, there was no absolute necessity to get anyone onside. He could simply bypass her and head directly to the parents. Make them an offer they couldn’t refuse. But for once he wasn’t quite ruthless enough to go down that road. There was something strangely alluring underneath the guard-dog belligerence. And he was not forgetting that there were times when money didn’t open the door you wanted opening. If he bypassed her and leant on the parents, there was a real risk of them uniting with their daughter to shut him out permanently, whatever sums of money he chose to throw at them. Family loyalty could be a powerful wild card, and he should know... Wasn’t family loyalty the very thing that had brought him to this semi-derelict cottage?
She was switching on the ancient heating, opening the wardrobe so that she could show him where the clothes were kept, fetching a towel from the corridor, dumping it on the bed and then informing him that the bathroom was just down the corridor, but that he would have to make sure that the toilet wasn’t flushed before he turned on the shower or else he might end up with third-degree burns.
Theo walked slowly towards her and then stopped a few inches away.
When Becky breathed, she could breathe him in, masculinity mixed with the cold winter air, a heady, heady mix. Leaning against the doorframe, she blinked, suddenly unsteady on her feet.
He had amazing lashes, long, dark and thick. She wanted to ask him where he was from, because there was an exotic strain running through him that was quite...captivating.
He had shoved up the sleeves of his jumper and, even though she wasn’t actually looking, she was very much aware of his forearms, the fine, dark hair on them, the flex of muscle and sinew...
Her breathing was so sluggish that it crossed her mind...was it actually physically possible to forget how to breathe?
‘I don’t get why you live here.’ Theo was genuinely curious.
‘Wh-what do you mean?’ Becky stammered.
‘The house needs a lot of work doing to it. I could understand if your parents wanted you in situ while work was being done but...can I call you Becky?...there’s a bucket out in the corridor. And how long do you intend emptying it before you face the unpalatable fact that the roof probably needs replacing?’
Hard on the heels of the uncomfortable thoughts that had been preying on her mind, Theo’s remarks struck home with deadly accuracy.
‘I don’t see that the state of this house is any of your business!’ Bright patches of colour stained her cheeks. ‘You’re here for a night, one night, and only because I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I had sent you on your way in this weather. But that doesn’t give you the right to...to...’
‘Talk?’
‘You’re not talking, you’re—’
‘I’m probably saying things that have previously occurred to you, things you may have chosen to ignore.’ He shrugged, unwillingly intrigued by the way she was so patently uninterested in trying to impress him. ‘If you’d rather I didn’t, then that’s fine. I have some work to do when I get downstairs and then we can pretend to have an invigorating conversation about the weather.’
‘I’ll be downstairs.’ This for want of anything more coherent to say when she was so...angry...that he had had the nerve to shoot his mouth off! He was rude beyond words!
But he wasn’t wrong.
And this impertinent stranger had provided the impetus she needed to make that call to her parents. As soon as she was in the kitchen, with the door firmly shut, because the man was as stealthy as a panther and obviously didn’t wait for invitations to speak his mind. There was some beating around the bush but, yes, it would be rather lovely if the house was sold, not that they would ever dream of asking her to leave.
But...but...but...but.
Lots of buts, so that by the time Becky hung up fifteen minutes later she was in no doubt that not only was she heading for unemployment but the leaking roof over her head would not be hers for longer than it took for the local estate agent to come along and offer a valuation.
Mind still whirring busily away, she headed back up the stairs. She wished she could think more clearly and see a way forward but the path ahead was murky. What if she couldn’t get a job? It should be easy but, then again, she was in a highly specialised field. What if she did manage to find a posting but it was in an even more remote spot than this? Did she really want the years ahead to be spent in a practice in the wilds of Scotland? But weren’t the more desirable posts in London, Manchester or Birmingham going to be the first to be filled?
And underneath all those questions was the dissatisfaction that had swamped her after she had spoken to her sister.
Her life had been put into harsh perspective. The time she had spent here