What a mess.
She reached for her mobile, switched it on. The message-waiting icon still flashed urgently. Her mother, as she’d anticipated, every hour on the hour, demanding that she ring. Her father, just asking that she let them know she was safe. She should have done that hours ago. Crysse, almost incoherent in her inability to comprehend what she’d done.
Willow hadn’t thought it possible to feel any worse. Which showed how much she knew. She tried to return Crysse’s call, but the phone just rang and rang. Even the answering machine refused to listen to her excuses.
Her father, though, answered on the first ring, as if he’d been sitting by the phone, waiting to snatch it off the hook. He didn’t ask where she was, only how she was coping.
‘I’m fine, Dad. Really. I’m at Marlowe Court, helping put the finishing touches to the holiday cottages I was telling you about. I just need to be alone for a while.’ And to do something for somebody else after weeks of what, in retrospect, appeared to have been mindless selfishness.
‘Is there anything you need? Anything I can bring you?’
A dozen things sprang immediately into her mind, but she’d manage without them. Not even her father would understand about Mike being here. She didn’t understand it herself. Especially the fact that she was glad he was curled up in his sleeping bag in the room at the other end of the corridor. Near enough if she called out… ‘No. I’ll manage. And I’d rather you didn’t tell Mum—’
‘I won’t.’ Then he said, ‘Willow, about Mike—’
‘Dad—’
‘Well, don’t worry about him, okay? He took it like a man.’
‘But Dad—’
‘Your mother’s coming. Unless you’re ready for a lecture, I suggest you hang up now.’
She bit her lip as tears welled up beneath her lids. The sweet man wasn’t going to tell her that Mike had run out on her. Despite the dreadful day that she had put him through, her father still wanted to save her feelings. But it didn’t make her feel better. She felt infinitely worse. Only one person could do anything to help but he was at the far end of the corridor. She looked around, hoping for a lurking spider to give her an excuse to go running down there and put her sleeping bag next to his.
That was the trouble with spiders. There was never one about when you needed one.
She took a deep breath. She didn’t need one. She was fine. She had a life to plan—one that didn’t include Mike. She sniffed, searched for a tissue and blew her nose. She didn’t have time to mope.
Mike heard the urgent shrill of Willow’s phone as she turned it on, alerting her to messages waiting. She’d be calling Crysse. Or her mother. Neither of them calls to look forward to. He should have thought of some way to get her in here with him. She shouldn’t be on her own in the dark in a strange place.
Well, maybe it wasn’t too late.
He found his mobile and sent her a text message.
Willow’s phone beeped again. A text message this time. Crysse?
‘Are you okay down there?’
Not Crysse. Mike.
‘Absolutely fine,’ she tapped in and despatched to him.
Another beep. ‘No spiders, beetles or earwigs?’
Earwigs? Eeugh! That was a low blow. He knew she hated creepy crawlies and he also knew she was lying on the floor in the dark, tucked into the sleeping bag, with only the light of her phone for company. It was too easy to believe that any loose strand of cotton brushing against her ankle was something far worse. She bit down on her lip, telling herself not to be a wimp.
‘Only bats. Any ideas?’
‘Close the window?’
‘I’d rather risk the bats. Goodnight.’
Mike grinned. ‘Did you hear something on the stairs? Is this place haunted?’ he asked.
Willow wished she hadn’t bothered to look at that one. After the heat of the day the building creaked and sighed like a restless ghost and it wouldn’t stretch her imagination to convince herself that those were footsteps on the stairs.
The phone beeped again. She tried to ignore it, but couldn’t. The message read, ‘Scream if you need me.’
Very funny. There was nothing here to bother her except the man at the end of the corridor.
On the other hand, why suffer alone?
She screamed.
He was in the open doorway in a heartbeat, moonlit temptation in soft grey boxers and a frown. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
For a moment she considered telling him that there was something crawling about at the bottom of her sleeping bag. That he’d have to get in there and have a good look around. Then reality kicked in.
‘Just testing,’ she said.
For a moment he remained where he was. Then he said, ‘The system worked.’
‘Terrific.’
‘Yeah. Goodnight.’
‘Night,’ she said with a smile that hurt and a little wiggle of her fingers that were all she was prepared to allow out of the sleeping bag. Until he shut the door. Then she dived for her bag, looking for the slab of chocolate she’d bought anticipating low moments. This was definitely a chocolate moment.
‘Tea, three sugars.’
Mike’s hand appeared from the humped-up sleeping bag followed by a groan as he blearily checked the time on his wrist-watch. ‘It’s six-thirty, woman. You’re inhuman.’
‘No one said you had to volunteer.’ Life, Willow thought, would be a whole lot simpler if he’d go away. Bleaker, but simpler. ‘But the sun’s shining and I’ve got a room to paint.’ She put the plastic cup on the floor beside him.
‘I don’t get breakfast?’
‘If you’d wanted room service you should have stayed at the pub,’ she said briskly.
‘I can’t work all day on a cup of tea.’ He sat up, raked his hand through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes, and reached for the cup. ‘A couple of eggs. Is that too much to ask?’
‘Not at all. You’ll find a box in the fridge. And Emily thoughtfully brought along a frying pan.’
‘What about you?’ Mike regarded her with a look that might, by someone inclined to self-deception, be interpreted as concern. ‘I’m in enough trouble without you passing out at the top of a stepladder. Breakfast is the most—’
‘—important meal of the day. I know.’ She tried to look irritated, but it was difficult. He had the kind of shoulders that, naked, bypassed her irritation and went straight for the midriff. Her decision not to marry the man had done absolutely nothing to lessen his physical attraction. ‘Tell the truth, Mike. My mother sent you, didn’t she?’
Invoking the spectre of her mother should have been sufficient to break the spell. Unfortunately, his grin had a way of making her go weak at the knees. ‘I can see there’s no point in talking to you. You paint, I’ll cook.’ He made a move and she beat a hasty retreat before he shucked off the sleeping bag. The grey boxers were on top of a pile of clothes and a man who hadn’t stopped to pack a towel wouldn’t have given pyjamas a second thought.
She frowned. And what kind of hotel asked you to bring your own sleeping bag?
Halfway down the stairs, she stopped, glanced back. He