‘You certainly know how to give a girl a good time.’
‘I was the one who suggested St Lucia, remember? You were the one who thought this would be more fun.’ He crossed to the sink, standing behind her, his hands hovering an inch from her shoulders, desperate for her warmth. There was no excuse here. No pretence that he was simply easing her shoulders. Besides, he’d blown that one when his fingers got ambitious. ‘You don’t have to punish yourself, sweetheart,’ he said gently. ‘You haven’t done anything bad.’
She looked back and up at him. ‘I don’t suppose you could get that in writing from my mother, could you?’
‘She wasn’t the only one who got it wrong, you know.’
‘I know. I should have been tougher about the bridesmaids.’ She plugged in the kettle. ‘And the cake. No one needs a cake that big. What do you suppose will happen to it?’
He hadn’t been thinking about the wedding arrangements. He’d been thinking about his father and that wretched house. But that was his nightmare, not hers. Well, maybe they’d agreed on the hideousness of the taps… ‘I’m sure the caterers will find a good home for it.’
‘But it had our names and the date inscribed in icing…’ She stopped. ‘I’m just being silly, aren’t I? They’ll have them scraped off and something else in their place in ten minutes flat.’ Willow took a deep breath. ‘That’s good. I hate waste—’ She turned and he was still there and she laid her cheek against his chest and his arms went around her, holding her. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a cuddle. Friends did that, didn’t they? Cuddled you when you were down?
He kept telling himself it didn’t mean anything. It was just reaction. She was upset. But he loved her, wanted her. If he could be transported back to the church…
Talk about fooling himself. She hadn’t come to the church. He could have waited for her until he turned to dust and she would never have turned up. She didn’t want him when he was Michael Armstrong, heir apparent to Armstrong Publications, a thriving company in a vibrant city. Why would she want him as Mike Armstrong, head of nothing more important than a little workshop that might have a customer-waiting list two years’ long, but would never turn out more than one or two pieces of furniture a month?
He didn’t try to hold her as she pulled away, rubbing the back of her hand across her cheek in an attempt to wipe away the tears. ‘I’ll make that tea.’ She sniffed. Mike tore a couple of sheets of kitchen paper from a roll on the draining board and lifting her chin, blotted her cheeks dry. ‘It’s the smell of the paint,’ she said. ‘It’s making my eyes run.’
He didn’t contradict her. ‘You need some fresh air, I expect. We could walk across the fields to the village.’
‘Give me a couple of hours to scrape off the paint.’ Willow sniffed again, then made herself turn away from the broad wall of his chest, the temptation of easy comfort. Forced herself to remember that they weren’t lovers any more. He was right, they should go out. It would be a lot easier to remember that they were just good friends if they were in the company of other people, instead of cooped up alone with nothing more exciting than a game of I-spy to distract them. She pushed her hair back from her face. ‘I must look like some wild woad-daubed Ancient Briton.’
‘You do,’ he agreed seriously. ‘An Ancient Briton who could do with some lessons in body art.’ And she giggled, as she knew she was meant to. Never had anything been so hard. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes.’
Half a dozen towels had appeared in the bathroom. Big, comforting, dark red towels. Emily must have realised she’d need some, Willow thought gratefully, picking one up, holding it to her face. It smelled…it smelled of wood. It smelled just the way Mike had the day he’d brought home that beautiful little table: not of polished wood, but as if he’d been handling raw, newly sawn timber.
It had been the last evening they’d spent together before the wedding and she’d been brittle with nerves, desperate to pour out her doubts, tell him what was in her heart. She hadn’t, certain that it was simply a case of the ‘pre-wedding nerves’ that every woman famously went through before taking the biggest step of her life.
It would be all right. If she just hung on, it would be all right. Then their hands had brushed as he’d reached for her suitcase packed with her honeymoon clothes so that it would be waiting, with his, at the hotel for them.
Mike had been distracted too and when he’d said he had to go, had things to do, it had almost been a relief. Then his fingers had touched hers and it had been like lighting the blue touch paper. Instant conflagration, urgent, desperate.
And afterwards, her skin had been suffused with the scent of new-cut wood.
She held the towel for a moment, breathing it in, feeling weak with longing for him to hold her again, love her with that same end-of-the-world passion that had taken them somewhere else, a place where ambition, career, the vast, unstoppable momentum of the wedding did not exist. When he’d held her, whispering hot words of love, nothing could touch them.
She dropped the towel as if it scorched her. Emily hadn’t brought it. The towels belonged to Mike but they hadn’t come from his flat in Melchester. The towels there were blue.
So what? It wasn’t her business any more. Except, standing beneath the hot blast of the shower, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it. He’d had a home of some kind in Maybridge. It would seem that he still did have one. Had he shared it with someone and that was the reason he’d never talked about it, shrugging off the past as if it didn’t matter?
Well, she had news for him. It mattered.
Angrily, she ignored the big, plush towels and used the little tea towels she’d bought, to dry herself, and spent rather more time than she’d intended on making up her face, flicking her hair into place. Then, instead of the nearly clean T-shirt she’d used to dry herself with the night before, and had worn for her shopping trip to the village, she dug out a slate-blue silky knit top that had come out of the drawer with her underwear.
She’d thrown it into her bag, too desperate to get away to bother with sorting silk from cotton. She was glad now because, even when she didn’t care what she looked like, a girl needed to have something that she looked good in.
Mike, his hair still damp from the shower, his forearms tanned and sinewy and strong, had never looked more relaxed, more at ease with himself. More desirable. But Willow kept her distance as they crossed the yard to the stile and she clambered over before he could give her hand.
‘How far is it across the fields?’ she asked.
‘About a mile. Just about right to work up an appetite.’
‘You speak for yourself, I’ve been working all day. I’ve already got an appetite.’ Well, she couldn’t have him thinking she was pining for him. With luck he’d put her crankiness down to hunger. Again.
She felt him glance at her, knew without looking that a crease would have formed in the wide space between his grey eyes. She knew everything about him. How he looked, how he smiled, how he’d respond when she touched his hand, his shoulder, his face.
But that was superficial stuff. What about inside his head? She realised she knew nothing about what had been going on in there. She had a legitimate reason for running out on her wedding. What demons, what memories, had sent him running from the church?
And