‘Thanks—I think,’ she said, trying not to remember that Mike had said much the same thing when he’d wiped the stuff off her cheek with his thumb. She really needed not to think about the way he touched her, the way it made her feel cherished, loved.
‘So? Will Aunt Lucy be having the pleasure of your custom?’ She must have looked blank because he said, ‘Use it or lose it. The village store is the centre of the community and Aunt Lucy runs this one.’
‘Oh, right. Yes. Or rather, no.’
The grin deepened. ‘Are you always this decisive?’
Oh, please! Flirting, she could do without. ‘I don’t live here, I’m helping out at the Trust cottages at Marlowe Park. Decorating.’
‘I heard they were looking for volunteers. Maybe I’ll come along and give you a hand.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you had a lot of time,’ she said, not wanting to sound discouraging—they needed the help—but definitely not wanting to sound as if she was panting for his company.
‘With the shop you mean? I’m just helping Aunt Lucy out for a couple of days, carrying boxes, filling shelves during the day.’ A slight pause invited her to ask what he did with his evenings. She ignored it. ‘The lad who usually does it is on holiday. Would a part-timer be welcome at the cottages?’
‘Many hands make light work,’ she assured him. ‘Give Emily Wootton a ring if you want to volunteer,’ she advised, distancing herself from whatever decision he made. ‘I’ve got her number here somewhere.’ She found her notebook and wrote Emily’s number on a discarded till receipt.
‘Thanks…’ His eyebrows invited her to fill in the gap with her name.
‘Willow,’ she said. ‘Willow Blake.’
‘Thanks, Willow.’ He offered her his hand. ‘Jacob Hallam.’
‘Jacob,’ she acknowledged, taking his hand for the briefest moment. Then she paid for her shopping and beat a hasty retreat before he suggested closing the shop and adjourning to the pub to discuss his painting technique.
She returned to the holiday cottages by turns dawdling, scarcely able to bear the thought of seeing Mike again, to see him but not to be able to reach out, touch him, hold him, be part of him. And then foot down, unable to wait another moment…
As she swung around into the parking space behind the cottages, heart hammering, there was only Emily’s battered van to keep her car company. She felt like a balloon with the air let out. Flat and joyless.
Emily looked up as Willow joined her upstairs where she was making a start on one of the bedrooms. ‘I understand you’ve got company.’ She dipped her brush into the paint and carried on. ‘Mike phoned me this morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘Are you okay with him being here? I’ll tell him to get lost if you’d like me to.’
‘No, I can handle it.’
‘That’s a relief. He’s offered to make some shelves and we can certainly do with them.’
‘I hope he knows what he’s doing.’ The idea of Mike with a saw in his hands, making shelves, was an entirely new concept, but she’d be lying if she said the prospect of seeing him stripped to the waist and working up a sweat wasn’t thoroughly appealing. ‘I might have got a new recruit. Jacob Hallam. He’s helping out in the village shop. I gave him your number.’
‘Oh, right.’ Emily grinned broadly. ‘Now I see my mistake. I shouldn’t have asked for volunteers to help out of the goodness of their hearts, I should have put a big picture of you in the paper and said, come and have some fun with Willow Blake. I’d have been fighting them off.’ Then, perhaps remembering that her number one volunteer shouldn’t have been available as an attraction for lustful men with a talent for decorating, she rapidly changed the subject. ‘I brought some sandwiches. They’re in the fridge, if you’re hungry.’
Willow forced a sandwich down before setting to work, constantly on the listen for Mike. Then, when he finally did turn up, she just kept going, refusing to rush out so that he’d see just how much she’d missed him. And he didn’t come rushing in to see her, either. She heard him talking to Emily and, later, the sound of an electric handsaw being applied to wood.
She tried to ignore it, but after a while—only because she had to stand up and move anyway—she glanced out of the window, watched him for a little while, measuring, marking, cutting.
He did it with the same ease and familiarity with which he approached an auditor’s report. Not happier exactly, but relaxed, in his element with his corn-silk hair powdered with fine sawdust, sawdust streaked across his finely muscled torso. She wanted to put out her hand to see how it felt beneath her fingers.
He could still do it to her, would still be able to do it when she was ninety. That odd breathless catch at her throat, the stirring of the fine hairs at her nape, an atavistic yearning for one man, her man, linked her with all women, back through to the distant ages.
But they had more than that. Their relationship had matured, deepened beyond the driving physical urge to mate, procreate, that brought men and women together.
She longed to cherish Mike, to care for him, grow old with him, wherever life might take them. So how, with all that, could they have been so careless with what they’d been given?
She watched him for a long time but he didn’t once look her way.
Maybe that was why she didn’t react when, a while later, she heard him come into the day room. She was down on the floor, working close to the skirting board. Getting up was going to be painful and she wasn’t doing it until she’d finished.
He didn’t speak and she jumped as he put his hands on her shoulders, then gradually relaxed as he began to knead at the ache between her shoulder blades with his thumbs. It was blissful. He seemed to know exactly where her muscles were screaming for relief and it felt so good that she didn’t want him to stop. Ever.
Then, as his hands moved across her shoulders, feathering over the sensitive nerve endings that he knew reduced her to jelly, it felt a whole lot better.
Not fair. Not fair.
‘Where have you been all day?’ Willow demanded, pulling away while she still could. ‘It doesn’t take this long to buy a couple of planks of wood.’
‘You missed me?’
‘Like I missed you at the altar,’ she retorted.
‘Yeah. Right.’ He sat back on his heels. ‘You know, this isn’t an endurance test, Willow,’ he said softly. ‘Leave it now. Come and have something to eat.’
‘I’ll eat when I’m good and ready.’
He didn’t argue with her, but stood up. ‘Better make it soon. You’re getting cranky.’ She glared at him and he held up his hands, palms out, as if to fend off her wrath. ‘Okay, okay, it was just a suggestion.’
She watched him walk away. She stood up, balanced the paintbrush across the tin and peeled off the rubber gloves. She wasn’t having him saying she was cranky. Why would she be cranky? She had reclaimed her life, got exactly what she wanted.
She followed him into the kitchen, picked up the kettle and began to fill it. ‘Where’s Emily?’
‘She had to go. She said to tell you goodbye and that she’ll try and get over tomorrow afternoon.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you fancy a bar meal at the pub tonight?’
‘Looking like this?’
Mike