She turned slowly. He was an arm’s length away. All the temptation a girl could want. It felt exactly like that moment when he’d asked her to stay, asked her to live with him, asked her to marry him.
‘I was wrong about that, Mike. No one can ever have it all. There are always sacrifices to be made. Sharing someone else’s life takes all the heart you have and then some. You have to be prepared to give more than you get back. Maybe that’s why Crysse, despite everything, is still with Sean. She loves him enough.’
‘Then, Sean’s a bigger fool than I took him for.’ Willow refused to comment on who was the fool. ‘If I asked you now, what would you say?’
‘Asked me what?’
‘Asked you to marry me, Willow. Just the two of us, with a couple of witnesses, no fuss, no frills. No cake.’
No, ‘I love you’? No, ‘I’m sorry I made such a mess of the whole thing.’? No compromise?
The sun was slanting in through the high windows highlighting tiny dust motes, sparking rainbows off the heavy glasses with the barely touched brandy. There was the indentation of their bodies on the sofa. The scent of wood.
And there was Mike. Tall, strong, golden haired. He was everything she’d ever wanted and she knew that if she lost him, her heart would shatter irretrievably. She’d been so certain that he was the man she was destined to spend her life with. Somewhere inside her a tiny spark of hope told her that it was still possible. But if she’d learned one thing from the first time he proposed, it was that wanting to say ‘yes’ was not necessarily a great reason for saying it. That their relationship had been built on sand and needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. On the rock of truth.
‘No thanks,’ she said.
Maybe she’d taken too long making up her mind because he didn’t seem entirely convinced. ‘Is that a permanent no thanks? Or an “I’ll think about it” no thanks? Or even a “Don’t be cheap” no thanks?’
‘It’s a “We’ve got two lives that don’t converge” no thanks,’ she replied.
‘You mean, I’ve got some more work to do?’
She wanted a big career in journalism. He wanted to make beautiful furniture in Maybridge. Each of them knew what they wanted for themselves. They had to work out whether they were strong enough to fit those two ambitions into one shared life. It wasn’t going to be easy. It was probably a recipe for disaster. It would undoubtedly be wiser to leave things as they were.
‘It means,’ she said slowly, acknowledging that they had both made mistakes, ‘that we both have.’
‘We have to work out what we can’t live without? And what we’re prepared to let go so that we can be together?’ he persisted.
He’d got it. And now they could both see why it was impossible. ‘I really do have to go and buy something to wear for my meeting with Toby Townsend tomorrow.’
‘The London job is not up for negotiation, then?’
‘Is Maybridge?’ Even as she said it she knew it wasn’t the same. She didn’t want him to give up Maybridge whereas he found the idea of her working in London…difficult. If the sacrifice wasn’t equal, would one of them feel cheated? She wished Crysse was home so that she could talk to her. She’d cried, but she hadn’t been ready to give up on Sean. Then, pausing in the doorway, something else snagged at the back of her mind and she turned back. ‘What, exactly, have you got against black leather?’
‘Black leather?’ He looked distinctly uncomfortable.
‘Yes, black leather.’
‘I really hoped you’d have forgotten I said that.’ Which just made her all the more curious. ‘I thought you were coming out to meet Jacob Hallam,’ he said when she stood there waiting for him to answer her question. Willow considered what he’d said for a moment, but before she could react he reached out, his hand stopping a millimetre from her arm. ‘It’s why I followed you.’
Jealous.
She suddenly felt a rush of warmth for this big, lovely man who had tried so hard to change his life for her. How could she have doubted that he loved her? That wasn’t sand. That was rock through and through.
Not that she was letting him off. Jealousy was bad. Following her was bad. She could scarcely stop herself from grinning.
‘To save me from making a “big mistake”?’ She emphasised the words by making little quotation marks with her fingers. ‘What were you going to do? Snatch me from the jaws of temptation? Hit him?’ She knew it was unfair to ask. Yes, or no, he couldn’t win.
‘All of the above.’
She was wrong. That did it for her. ‘How did you work out where I was going?’ she asked; she had to do something to stop herself from flinging herself at him, dragging him up that ladder and restarting the honeymoon without the benefit of church.
‘I didn’t. I stopped by the village shop to see if Hallam was there. Hoping that he was there.’ He couldn’t quite meet her gaze, she noticed. Embarrassed. It just got better and better. ‘Maybe you should take him up on his offer of a date. According to Aunt Lucy he was at a board meeting in London—a lot more your style than this.’ He gestured around him.
‘You leave me to worry about my style,’ she said, ignoring the slightly off note in his voice. Jake was no competition for him but if he didn’t know that now, she wasn’t going to put him right. Laid back, she loved him. Protective and jealous, he made her feel… ‘Date?’ she queried. ‘What date?’
‘Didn’t he ask you out on a date when he turned up at the pub? I heard him ask you to call him,’ he prompted.
‘Oh, right,’ she said. ‘Yes, he did, and I meant to—’ His head snapped back as if she’d hit him. Enough. ‘It was to arrange a time to talk to Aunt Lucy. I wanted to interview her, talk about her life in the village, the shop. The countryside is hot news right now.’
‘Oh. I seem to be the one making “big mistakes”.’ He repeated her quotes gesture. ‘Wholesale.’
‘There’s a lot of it about,’ she conceded. Then she said, ‘You haven’t answered my question, Mike. How did you know where I was going?’
‘It wasn’t difficult. You left a pen mark by my entry in the directory.’
‘Michael Armstrong, Private Investigator.’ She pulled in her lips as she tried not to smile. Pumping Aunt Lucy for information wouldn’t have been difficult. His big problem would have been getting her to stop so that he could get away and use it. She cleared her throat. ‘I really do have to go…shopping… Are you going back to the cottages?’
‘I have to. The shelves. You?’
She nodded. ‘See you later, then. Do you want me to bring food?’
‘No. I’ll cook.’ He led the way down the stairs. ‘Or we could go out. We haven’t had a date since…’ his eyes darkened ‘…since I gave you that table.’
She flushed. ‘It’s okay. You can cook,’ she said, rather more crisply than she was feeling. She was feeling that another moment under those grey eyes and she’d melt.
He was smiling slightly as he opened the door for her, as if he knew it. He probably did. ‘You’re sure you don’t need any help with the hooks and eyes?’
‘I’m a big girl, Mike,’ she said, stepping through into the courtyard, glad of the shade to cool her down. ‘I’ve been dressing myself since I was four years old.’
‘So? You learn to do it yourself and you get this terrific sense of