‘You’re stupid in the heart,’ she muttered to herself, and turned her attention to the garden.
Yesterday she’d discovered the source of a new perfume in the garden and she wanted to pick a stem of the pale pink pendulous flowers and ask someone to identify them for her. Actually, she’d pick the top of the stem—the whole stem, like the leaves that sheltered them, being taller than she was.
She had just succeeded in her task and was sniffing the rich, sweet scent when she heard the strumming of a guitar, but it wasn’t until she reached the bottom of the steps she recognised the tune.
‘K-K-K-Katie swallowed a ha’penny, a penn’orth of fish, a ha’porth of chips the day before—’
‘The day before that,’ Kate joined in, ‘she swallowed the doormat, now she’s trying to swallow the key of the kitchen door!’
She beamed up at Hamish, who was slumped in the old settee on the back veranda, his guitar across his lap.
‘My grandad used to sing that to me. I always thought he’d made it up, but if you know it, too …’
Hamish saw the radiant smile fade from her face and read the cause of its disappearance with ease. Unexpected pain stabbed deep into his gut. Getting to know how this woman thought wasn’t all beer and skittles.
And the fact that she was trying to keep him at arm’s length wasn’t doing one thing to curb his body’s reaction every time he saw her. Rather the opposite, in fact.
‘Come here!’ he ordered, setting aside his guitar and standing up to enforce his order should it be necessary.
But Kate obeyed, coming wearily up the steps towards him, halting in front of him, summoning a shadow of her earlier smile and snapping a cheeky salute with a spray of flowers she’d been holding in her hand.
‘Oh, Kateling!’ he whispered softly, then he put his arm around her shoulders and led her to the settee.
It had been sat on so often by courting couples that it sagged conveniently in the middle, so any attempt to not sit close was met by defeat. This helped him tuck her small body close to his far larger one, the closest to a hug or cuddle Kate would allow.
‘Just because he wasn’t a blood relation, it doesn’t mean he didn’t love you with all of his heart.’
She turned and stared at him.
‘How do you do it?’ she demanded. ‘How do you know what I’m thinking?’
He had to smile.
‘Never play poker, kid!’ If he kept it light he could tighten his arm and give her half a hug. Half a hug was friendship, not involvement. ‘You’ve got the most expressive face I’ve ever seen.’
Kate sighed then, joy of joys, rested her head on his shoulder and gazed out over the placid waters of the cove.
‘I know that in my head—about Grandad and my parents loving me,’ she admitted sadly. ‘It’s in my heart I’m having trouble.’
Tell me about it! But Hamish kept his comment to himself. Having Kate this close was bliss, but one false move and she’d skitter away again, hiding behind the barricades of remembered pain.
‘In my heart I’ve got this alone thing happening. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t seem to get around it. Anyway, smell this.’
She thrust her frond of flowers under his nose.
‘Isn’t it beautiful? Do you know what it is? Do you know why Charles doesn’t like me?’
‘Charles doesn’t like you? You’re asking me to identify a flower for you—it’s ginger, by the way. I liked the scent so much myself I asked Jill about it. Then you switch to some cockamamie question about Charles not liking you. Has he said so? Did he roll right up to you and say, “Kate, I don’t like you”? What is going on in that head of yours?’
He tightened his hold—in friendship of course.
‘He frowns at me. Well, not at me when I’m looking at him, but you know how silently he gets around—someone should have found a way to make his wheels squeak by now. Anyway, sometimes I kind of sense his presence and I turn around and there he is, frowning at me.’
‘You’re imagining it,’ Hamish said stoutly, though in his head and heart he was remembering that he spent a lot of his own time frowning at this woman when she wasn’t aware of his presence. His frown was because he was pretty sure he loved her, and couldn’t work out how to get past her determination to avoid love at all cost.
Could Charles also be in love with her?
Hamish could well understand if he was, and the clenching in his gut suggested he didn’t like this idea one bit. Charles was far too old for her.
Not that old …
And Charles could certainly be charming …
‘I’ll talk to Charles,’ he said firmly, and Kate laughed.
‘And ask him to stop frowning at me? Oh, please!’ She turned and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You’re a really good friend, Hamish, and I appreciate the offer, but I’ll live with Charles’s frowns. I only mentioned it because it happened again when we left the room after we’d been talking to him about Jack.’
She was silent for a moment, moving away a little before the settee tipped her back towards him.
‘You don’t suppose he thinks—He couldn’t think I’ve got something going with Jack, could he? I mean, apart from me being far too old for Jack, he’s really only interested in Megan …’
She sounded confused enough to need comfort so Hamish drew her close again, and they sat like that for a while, watching the moon come up over the horizon, spreading a silver path across the water of the cove.
‘Moonlight and water—made for romance, isn’t it?’
The murmured words slid seditiously into Kate’s ear and her heartbeats upped their intensity, bringing heat to the innermost parts of her body.
Kissing Hamish was back!
‘We can’t have a romance, Hamish,’ she said, betraying the words by wriggling closer to him, because being close to Hamish was extremely comforting. ‘Leaving aside my hangups about relationships—which are huge—you’re going home in a couple of weeks. It would be stupid to start something we can’t finish.’
He kissed the top of her head then his lips moved down and pressed against the corner of her right eye. His tongue slid out to lick a tiny patch of skin—surely eye-skin shouldn’t be erogenous.
‘My leaving isn’t an issue. We could finish it in Scotland. Or not finish it at all.’
Even hushed, his deep voice sent shivers down her spine. It had to be the accent. Daniel’s voice had never made contact with her spine at all—with any of her bones, come to think of it.
‘Come home with me. Be my family. Make a family that is ours.’
His lips had reached the corner of her mouth. He couldn’t have any idea how tempting that suggestion had been—how much she longed to regain some concept of ‘home’ and ‘family’.
Damn, she should have been concentrating on the progress of his lips, not thinking about nebulous concepts of home and family. He’d taken advantage of her distraction and was kissing her!
Perhaps she hadn’t got an F for the cliff kiss …
‘Are you with me on this?’
He raised his head far enough to free his lips and ask the question, but the aftershocks of the kiss were such that she couldn’t answer. Bones—it was all to do with bones. His voice had affected her spine; now the kiss had made the rest of her bones turn to jelly.