‘Ouch!’
‘I left as soon as I could, and fled back to Dad. He’d just come out of rehab for his drug addiction. I’m assuming you know about that; it’s pretty much common knowledge. He spent a few years living too fast and hard after my Mum died of cancer. He needed me home as much as I needed to get away.’
‘What about a career?’
She snorted. ‘Looking after Dad is a full-time job, believe me! I’ve been Dad’s manager for the past five years. Consider me a personal assistant, troubleshooter and babysitter all rolled into one. The band don’t do as much as they used to, but it can be pretty hectic at times.’
Jake handed her a glass of champagne. ‘What would you do if you could do anything? Travel?’
She took a small sip and shook her head. ‘No, not travel. My life has been nomadic enough. Something completely different.’
‘Run away with the circus?’
She smiled at him and said nothing. It wouldn’t do to reveal her real desires for the future. Announcing that your greatest wish was to become a wife and mother was like a starter’s pistol for some men, and she wasn’t ready to see this one disappearing in a cloud of dust.
Jake ticked all the right boxes: stable job, successful enough not to be after her dad’s money, thoughtful, charming—the list was endless.
He put one hundred per cent commitment into all he did, and everything he did was first class. Just look at this hamper of picnic food from London’s most exclusive department store. No ham sandwiches wrapped in an empty bread bag here.
But something inside her longed for ham sandwiches, lemonade, and children running down the hill with jam on their faces and grass stains on their knees.
She’d had enough champagne to fill a lifetime. It had lost its sparkle for her. Probably because she’d seen her father drink enough for two or three lifetimes. She’d been pushing him to get help for his drinking, and, although he denied it furiously, she thought he was almost ready to go back to rehab. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Dad was the only family she’d got, and she was hanging onto him. Tight. Just entertaining any negative thoughts in that direction made her shudder.
‘Cold?’
‘A little.’
Jake put a protective arm round her and she leaned back on him. They said nothing more as they ate the last morsels of their picnic, but she took great care not to give Jake an opportunity to move away. The kind of heat he was generating had absolutely nothing to do with layers of jumpers and wool coats, and everything to do with the man inside them. If only she could hibernate like this, huddled up to him, until spring. It was wonderful to let someone else do the caring, just for a little bit.
When they had finished, Jake picked up the basket and offered a hand to help her up. Such a gentleman! He didn’t release her hand when they started to walk down the path, and she didn’t want him to. Even without the tickle of electricity that crept up her arm, the simple gesture of human contact felt good. It had been too long since she’d held hands with anyone.
They passed the Royal Observatory and took the little railed path that crossed the hill beneath it. Jake refused to release her hand as they negotiated the kissing gate there. It took quite a while before they untangled themselves enough to pass through. She had more than a sneaking suspicion that Jake had been deliberately clumsy with the hamper, just to keep them squashed up together while they swung the gate open in the confined space.
Once free of the gate, she was going to walk on, but Jake stopped moving and her arm tugged taut. She glanced back at him, puzzled.
He looked down at their feet and she followed suit. A brass strip was embedded in the tarmac, symbolising the point where the Greenwich meridian dissected not only the path, but the city. Jake hadn’t crossed it, and they stood facing each other, as if at a threshold.
‘Zero degrees longitude,’ he said, looking deep into her eyes. ‘A place of beginnings.’
If Jake thought today was only a beginning, it meant there was more to come. She couldn’t stop her mouth from curling at the thought. ‘Don’t you think this is a bit surreal? We’re standing so close, but we’re in different hemispheres.’
‘We’re not that close.’ He dropped the picnic basket by his side and took hold of her other hand. ‘We could be closer.’ In demonstration, he tugged her towards him so the fronts of their coats met and her eyes were level with his chin. She could feel his breath at her hairline. If she tipped her chin up just a notch his lips would be so close.
The heat of a blush stained her cheeks. No one had ever made her feel this way. The only point of contact was their fingers, yet her pulse galloped like a runaway horse.
‘Still feeling strange?’ he whispered into her hair.
‘I think it’s worse, if anything.’ She swallowed hard, and raised her eyes to meet his. They were impossibly blue beneath his dark brows, and he wasn’t smiling any longer. Deep in his eyes she saw a flicker of something previously hidden. Beneath the smooth-talking, city-slicker image, this was a good man, with a good heart.
His voice was warm on her cheek. ‘A few more millimetres and we could really set the world spinning on its axis.’
‘That was really cheesy,’ she whispered back.
Still, it didn’t stop her eyelids fluttering closed as his lips made the achingly slow journey to hers. In the moment just before they touched, she trembled uncontrollably.
It was everything a first kiss should be. Soft, sweet, full of promise. Never mind about separate hemispheres, they seemed to be the only two people on the planet. She clung to him and buried her fingers in his thick hair—the way she’d been longing to ever since their lives had collided in the rush hour traffic only a few days ago.
His palms cupped her face and his fingers stroked her jaw.
Never had she been kissed like this. It had never been anything more than a clashing of lips and teeth with the drifters she’d gone out with when she had been younger, and stupid enough to believe they could fill the empty spaces in her heart. Kissing Jake was so different. The sensation travelled from her lips right into her very soul.
Too soon he pulled away, tugged her crocheted hat a little more firmly onto her head, and led her down the path towards his car. All she could focus on for the rest of the afternoon was when—please, let it be when, not if—the next kiss was coming.
If Cassie had been any more desperate for information, she’d have been dribbling.
‘I want to hear all the gory details.’
‘I’m pretending I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cass. Absolutely nothing about my love-life could ever be described as “gory”.’
‘Not even the crash-and-burn flings of the past?’
‘Yes … well … That was then—this is now.’ She gave what she hoped was a superior look. ‘I have evolved.’
Cassie grinned and shuffled a little closer. ‘Come on, girlfriend. How’s it going with the hot-shot accountant?’
‘You know, Cass, a vicar’s wife can definitely not pull off a word like “girlfriend”.’
‘Not even one with funky pink hair and a nose-stud?’
She smiled. Cassie was the most unconventional minister’s wife you could hope to see. Her short baby pink hair stuck up every which way, and she had four holes in each ear and one in her nose. ‘Not even close, darling.’
‘Shame. I pick phrases like that up from the youth group. I hardly notice I’m doing it. Anyway, stop being