‘You were headed for Oxbridge according to your mother. Some high-flying media job.’
‘Was I?’ she asked, as if she didn’t recall every moment of toe-curling embarrassment as her mother held forth in the village shop. She might have been oblivious, but Claire had known that they were both the object of derision. ‘Obviously I wasn’t as bright as she thought I was.’
‘And the real reason?’
She should be flattered that he didn’t believe her, but it only brought back the turmoil, the misery of a very bad time.
‘It must have been having a baby that did it.’ If he was back in the village he’d find out soon enough. ‘Miss Snooty Smartyhat brought down to size by her hormones. It was a big story at the time.’
‘I can imagine. Anyone I know? The father?’ he added, as if she didn’t know what he meant.
‘There aren’t many people left in the village who you’ll remember,’ she said, not wanting to go there. Even after all these years the crash of love’s young dream as it hurtled to earth still hurt… ‘As you pointed out, there aren’t any jobs on the estate for our generation.’ Few jobs for anyone. Sir Robert’s fortunes had been teetering on the brink for years. Cheap imports had ruined his business and with his factories closed, the estate—a money sink—had lost the income which kept it going.
The Hall was in desperate need of repair. Some of the outbuildings were on the point of falling down and many of the hedges and fences were no longer stock proof.
Cue Archie.
‘No one who’ll remember me is what I think you mean,’ he said.
‘You’re in luck, then.’
‘You think I’d be unwelcome?’
He appeared amused at the idea and flustered, she said, ‘No…I just meant…’
‘I know what you meant,’ he said, turning back to the delicate task of unpicking the threads of her suit from the thorns.
Ignoring the cold and damp that was seeping through her skirt, trying to forget just how much she disliked this part of her job, she tried again. This time, however, since he clearly wasn’t going to be coaxed into indiscretion, she came right out and asked him.
‘Can you tell me what’s happening to the estate?’ Maybe the subtle implication that he did not know himself would provoke an answer.
‘There’ll be an announcement about its future in the next day or two. I imagine your office will get a copy.’
‘It has been sold!’ That wasn’t just news, it was a headline! Brownie points, job security… ‘Who’s the new owner?’
‘Do you want a scoop for the Observer, Claire?’ The corner of his mouth quirked up in what might have been a smile. Her stomach immediately followed suit. She might be older and wiser, but he’d always had a magnetic pull. ‘Or merely gossip for the school gates?’
‘I’m a full-time working single mother,’ she said, doing her best to control the frantic jangle of hormones that hadn’t been disturbed in years. ‘I don’t have time to gossip at the school gates.’
‘Your baby’s father didn’t stick around, then?’
‘Well spotted. Come on, Hal,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s obvious that you know something.’
If he had been the chairman of the Planning Committee she’d have batted her eyelashes at him. As it was, she’d barely raised a flutter before she regretted it.
Hal North was not a man to flirt with unless you meant it.
Poised on the brink of adolescence, paralysed with shyness if he so much as glanced in her direction, she had not fully understood the danger a youth like Hal North represented.
As a woman, she didn’t have that excuse.
‘It’ll be public knowledge soon enough,’ she pressed, desperately hoping that he wouldn’t have noticed.
‘Then you won’t have long to wait will you?’
‘Okay, no name, but can you tell me what’s going to happen to the house?’ That’s all she’d need to grab tomorrow’s front page. ‘Is it going to be a hotel and conference centre?’
‘I thought you said it was going to be a building site. Or was it an industrial estate?’
‘You know how it is…’ She attempted a careless shrug, hiding her annoyance that he persisted in trading question for question. She was supposed to be the professional, but he was getting all the answers. ‘In the absence of truth the vacuum will be filled with lies, rumour and drivel.’
‘Is that right?’ He straightened, put away his knife. ‘Well, you’d know more about that than me.’
‘Oh, please. I work for a local newspaper. We might publish rumour, and a fair amount of drivel, but we’re too close to home to print lies.’
She made a move to get up, eager now to be on her way, but he forestalled her with a curt ‘wait.’
Assuming that he could see another problem, she obeyed, only to have him put his hands around her waist.
She should have protested, would have protested if the connection between her brain and her mouth had been functioning. All that emerged as he picked her bodily out of the ditch was a huff of air, followed by a disgusting squelch as her foot came out of the mud, leaving her shoe behind. Then she found herself with her nose pressed against the dark green heavyweight cloth of his coveralls and promptly forgot all about the bluebells.
Hal North had a scent of his own. Mostly fresh air, the sweet green of crushed grass and new dandelion leaves, but something else was coming through that fresh laundry smell. The scent of a man who’d been working. Warm skin, clean sweat—unexpectedly arousing—prickling in her nose.
He was insolent, provoking and deeply, deeply disturbing but, even as the urgent ‘no!’ morphed into an eager ‘yes…’ she told herself to get a grip. He had been bad news as a youth and she’d seen, heard nothing to believe that had changed.
‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said, doing her best to avoid meeting those dangerous eyes as she clung to his shoulders, struggling for balance and to get her tongue and teeth to line up to form the words. ‘I really have to be going.’
‘Going? Haven’t you forgotten something?’
‘My shoe?’ she suggested, hoping that he’d dig it out of the mud for her. He was, after all, dressed for the job. While the prospect of stepping back into it was not particularly appealing, she wasn’t about to mess up the high heels she carried in the messenger bag slung across her back.
‘I was referring to the fact that you cycled along a footpath, Claire. Breaking the by-laws without a second thought.’
‘You’re kidding.’ She laughed but the arch law-breaker of her youth didn’t join in. He was not kidding. He was… She didn’t know what he was. She only knew that he was looking down at her with an intensity that was making her pulse race. ‘No! No, you’re right,’ she said, quickly straightening her face. ‘It was very wrong of me. I won’t do it again.’
The hard cheekbones seemed somehow harder, the jaw even more take it or leave it, if that were possible.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t?’ she asked, oblivious to the demands of the front page as her upper lip burned in the heat of eyes that were not hard. Not hard at all. Her tongue flicked over it, in an unconscious attempt to cool it. ‘What can I do to convince you?’
The words were out of Claire’s mouth, the harm done,