Falling Again for the Animal Whisperer

by Becky Wicks

  ‘I’ll defer a year too, then,’ she shot back.

  Dammit. He should have known she would say that. ‘No, Jodie.’

  She looked at him in defiance. ‘Well, I’m not going without you.’

  ‘You have to go, Jodie, it’s all you’ve talked about for years.’

  ‘It’s all we’ve talked about for years. We were going to study together, and then come back here, work on the rescue centre, more horses like Mustang. What’s happened?’ She reached for his face. Tears were pooling in her eyes now and it almost broke him. ‘Cole, what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he lied.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. Her eyes said she expected to hear the truth.

  He just shook his head.

  ‘Talk to me.’ Jodie gripped his hair either side of his head, drew him closer. He could feel her hands shaking. ‘Talk to me. I just told you I love you. Why won’t you say it back?’

  Because if I do, I won’t be able to let you go. The voice in his head was raging. He loved her so much it hurt but he had to put her safety first, and her education. She wanted to go to vet school so badly, she was so excited. He wouldn’t let her risk all that just to be with him in the mess he’d created. He had to stay here for a while at least, keep his mother safe, figure out his next steps.

  ‘You don’t love me? You don’t want to be with me? Is that why you’re pulling out of coming to Edinburgh?’ Confusion flooded Jodie’s eyes. Cole fought not to press his thumbs to the tears streaming down her cheeks but he dug his nails into his palms and forced himself not to move. He’d crack the moment he touched her. Jodie deserved better than this.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, forcing his eyes to the floor. ‘We’re going in different directions.’

  ‘What? I don’t understand what’s happening, Cole!’

  The car’s headlights behind her turned her trembling body into a silhouette and he felt the loss of her overwhelm him instantly. He almost reached for her again. He almost told her that of course he loved her, that he was trying to protect her. But maybe it was better this way. She wouldn’t stay for anyone who didn’t want her. She’d be safer and the further away she was from here and him the better.

  The silence was excruciating. The car pulled up and the driver rolled the window down. ‘Train station, love?’

  Jodie lowered her voice, eyes glistening. ‘You waited all weekend to break up with me right at the last minute?’ She sounded angry now, fuming, humiliated. He focused on his breathing, tried to stay cool. ‘I can’t believe this,’ she hissed.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Jodie started scrambling for her bags. He jumped down and went to help her but she shoved at his chest, forcing him back onto the hay bale with a strength that surprised him. ‘No!’

  She flung the car door open and launched herself into the back seat, slamming it after her. ‘You know where I’ll be when you come to your senses,’ she said through the window. ‘And if you don’t, it’s your loss, Cole Crawford.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘THIS WEATHER! Is it always like this here?’ Emmie looked affronted in the passenger seat and Jodie almost let out a laugh.

  They were somewhere on a rural road between Weymouth and Dorchester, but things looked different from how she remembered. There were more sheds, more farms, more cottages between the villages, out in the sticks. There was definitely more rain.

  ‘It’s not like this in the summertime,’ she told her daughter, which was true. ‘You should see the flowers here usually, all around the ditches. There’s yellow flag, great willowherb, meadowsweet, purple loosestrife...’ She listed a bunch that Cole had told her the names of once.

  Emmie wrinkled her nose at the snowflakes that were now flurrying down on the windows instead of rain. She clearly didn’t care about the flowers, and was already missing her horse, Saxon.

  Up ahead, the traffic had almost ground to a halt. Jodie glanced at the clock on the dashboard. The funeral was in two hours. They were just a few miles from the estate but if it didn’t clear up, they might be late.

  ‘We’re going to be late,’ Emmie announced unnecessarily, pulling out her phone for the hundredth time. Seconds later she moaned, ‘Mum, there’s no signal here.’

  ‘It’ll come back,’ Jodie told her, hoping it was true. She had to call into West Bow soon and make sure things were OK. She was full of butterflies. Scowling at the snow, she knew she could tell herself the butterflies were because of so many things, but who was she kidding? She was about to see Cole again. The thought had left her tossing and turning all night in the hotel bed.

  A tractor crawled up alongside them, urging her further towards the roadside. The snow was coming down heavier now. It was almost a blizzard. With despair she noticed the signal must have died on her phone too and messed up the GPS. The map had sent them down a wrong one-way road.

  ‘Dammit,’ she cursed in frustration, swiping her scarf over her shoulder with her loose hair. She needed to go back, but there was nowhere to turn.

  Emmie rolled her eyes. ‘Way to go, Mum.’

  Jodie’s stomach was in knots. She didn’t even have the energy to tell Emmie not to be so rude. She already knew her daughter didn’t want to be here, but with Ethan and his girlfriend going away for a long weekend she’d had no choice but to take Emmie out of school and bring her.

  ‘This is the worst day ever,’ Emmie grumbled, tapping in vain at her phone screen. ‘We could have spent this weekend riding Saxon! I didn’t even know your uncle Casper.’

  ‘Actually, you did meet Casper once,’ Jodie said, distracted. ‘You were just very small, that’s all. In fact, you hadn’t even been born.’

  ‘Gross!’

  Emmie had been a tiny bulge in her wedding gown the last time she’d seen Casper. He had tried to seem happy for her the whole time, but she’d known deep down he hadn’t been. She’d caught her uncle looking between her and Ethan, like he was trying and failing to spot the same kind of connection he’d often commented on between herself and Cole. He’d always thought of Cole like the son he’d never had. He’d also watched them fall madly in love. She guessed her uncle had always assumed it would be her and Cole having a baby together, eventually. Not that she could ever regret having had Emmie.

  Averting her eyes back to the road, she recalled the moment she’d pulled up the pregnancy test to find the tiny blue line. It had been a signal that her life was about to change once again.

  She’d still been heartbroken over Cole ending their relationship when the accident had happened. Had it been vodka or tequila she and Ethan had been glugging like water when they’d ended up in bed, blurring the lines of their friendship and setting the life-changing chain of events in motion? She couldn’t even remember now.

  Ethan’s father had been on the verge of being re-elected for the fourth time—everyone had known who the Labour MP was, and everyone had known his son, too. The election had already been a roller-coaster for the whole family. Ethan had been under huge pressure to stay out of the limelight, not to screw up his studies, or his life. It was the reason he’d been drowning his own sorrows alongside her behind the closed doors of their shared student flat that night.

  Jodie hadn’t ever come under quite that much pressure. If anything, perfection to her busy screenwriting, jet-setting parents was having her out of their hair for seven years while she completed her degree. But she’d wanted to complete her studies to the best of her ability; vet school had been her dream for as long as she could remember.

  When she’d discovered she was pregnant—from the one night in her life she hadn’t used contraception—neither she nor Ethan had wanted to abandon their studies. But they’d refused to abort the baby.

  ‘You’ll live to regret it, if you have this baby,’ her mother had said.

  But she’d stood her ground. She’d known she’d live to
regret it if she didn’t.

  Ethan had been supportive, but they’d both known they couldn’t study and raise a child with no help.

  It had come as a surprise when their parents had joined forces and offered to finance a home and childcare so they could finish their degrees and keep the baby...with one small caveat from Ethan’s father. They had to marry. A twenty-year-old son with a baby out of wedlock would not have looked good on an MP’s campaign trail.

  Looking back, she knew she should never have agreed to such a ludicrous suggestion. She was still ashamed of how she’d bowed in submission, but she’d cared for Ethan more than for herself at the time, she supposed. She had been lost, naive and still grieving for Cole. Ethan had been her good friend; appeasing their families had also been making the best of a bad situation. They’d been sure they could make it work and divorce quietly a few years later. What was a marriage certificate anyway? Just a piece of paper.

  To this day, only their families and closest friends knew the deal they’d struck. For a second she wondered if Cole had ever questioned her marrying Ethan so young; or wished things had worked out between them.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she scolded herself. He didn’t try to contact you once after breaking up with you! He never even tried to come to Edinburgh in the end. Why would he care if you got married...or divorced?

  Jodie reached for her coffee cup, before remembering it had been empty for almost three hours. She was so far from home already—there was no going back.

  It’s only two nights, she told herself, trying to stay calm as she slowed the car a metre behind the tractor. She’d booked them into The Ship Inn—a fifteenth-century hotel a mile from Everleigh Estate. Even the thought of staying in the same area as Cole Crawford for the weekend was making her feel queasy.

  ‘So, was Casper married?’ Emmie asked now.

  ‘Nope,’ she said, squinting through the snow. ‘Some people said he was married to his horses.’

  ‘Who will be looking after them now he’s gone?’

  ‘I assume he has staff,’ she answered, though she had been wondering herself how the inheritance would be split and what would become of Everleigh. No one had mentioned his will yet, which surprised her. Her father would have said something surely, if he knew.

  The snow was coming down even thicker now, huge white blobs battling with the windshield wipers. The sat-nav still wasn’t working properly and she was about ready to crack when eventually, after crawling the Peugeot along like a caterpillar, she found a place ahead to turn around.

  They’d only just made it past a rickety cattle grid when the car engine spluttered to a stop.

  * * *

  The snow shouldn’t make him too late, Cole thought. The Land Rover had got them through worse than this. He only worried for the people on their way to the funeral. Over five hundred attendees were supposed to be showing up at two p.m. Including Jodie.

  Ziggy started barking manically over the radio. Frowning, he slowed the vehicle, feeling the tyres crunch on the fresh snow. Ziggy never barked unless he was alerting him to danger.

  Then he saw the silver car through the blizzard. It was almost invisible, the windshield covering fast with snow. Clearly the wipers weren’t working.

  ‘They must have broken down,’ he said to Ziggy.

  He steered the Land Rover past the car and noted two figures in the front. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he could make out a woman and a young girl. Jumping out into the blizzard, his boots made fresh dents in the tyre marks as he strode to the back and pulled his tow rope from the boot.

  A woman was standing in the snow now.

  ‘The engine just died,’ she called out, squinting through the flurry. He pulled his hat down against the snow and held up the tow rope.

  He couldn’t see her face but she was standing half-sheltered by the open car door. He fought a smile at her tight denim jeans tucked into unscuffed, too-clean brown leather boots. She clearly wasn’t from around here.

  Cole was at the car door in seconds, peering around her at the kid first, checking she was OK. Her long blonde hair looked freshly brushed and she commanded his gaze with big restless ocean-blue eyes. She was what...ten? Eleven?

  ‘Can you help us, please? We’re late to a funeral,’ the woman said from the confines of a giant red woollen scarf. He pushed his hat up and stepped back to look at her. Her eyes grew round, just as his throat grew tight. ‘Cole?’

  Jodie.

  Her face was as white as the snow, or maybe more ashen. Damn, he thought, taking her all in up close with the snow settling on her hair. Here she was, right in front of him, out of the blue. The kid...was her daughter, he realised now.

  He was half smiling again, more out of shock than anything, but he only realised this when he met Jodie’s narrowed eyes. Ice-blue, just like the last time she’d looked at him, pleading for answers. He tried not to let on the whirlwind in his brain that had replaced all regular cognitive behaviour. ‘Cole...can you just help us?’

  Her voice was trembling slightly as she shut the door. She almost caught her sweater sleeve in it and he heard her tut in annoyance. She was nervous, agitated, like a cornered deer with nowhere to run.

  Age hadn’t changed her much, he noted. He’d feigned indifference back then but the first time he’d laid eyes on her she’d been the most exotic thing he’d ever seen, and she’d seemed disarmingly unaware of how pretty she was. It was like Casper had invited a rare creature onto the estate that, for once, he’d had no clue what to do with.

  The young kid wound the window down, and stuck her head out. ‘You know this man, Mum?’

  ‘One second, sweetheart.’

  He heard Jodie suck in a breath as she followed him to the back of the car. She was hugging her arms around herself against the cold or the shock of seeing him sooner than expected, maybe both.

  She opened her mouth to speak but a motorcyclist slipped past their vehicles and sped off too fast. The action sent a cold slushy shower of muddy water over them and Jodie shrieked.

  He dropped the tow rope and reached for her at the same time as she stumbled against him. In a second he was holding her too tightly at the side of the road. Some protective impulse had kicked in, like the time he’d yanked her from Mustang’s path. The new rescue horse could have mown her down if he hadn’t seen it coming and jumped the fence.

  ‘Cole,’ she whispered shakily against him. Her palms were pressed flat against his chest over his jacket. She drew long, slow, deep breaths under his chin like she was struggling for air. A long-extinguished fire began to smoke from the depths of his core as his fingers scrunched into a tumble of soft, damp hair that made the past fly back in a heartbeat.

  It was maybe three...four long seconds before she pulled back from him, swiping in vain at her muddy jeans, avoiding his eyes. She was soaked and so was he, not that he’d noticed till now. Time was unwinding. Her honey-brown waves were springing into curls, like her hair always had when it had got wet.

  He found his voice, adjusted his hat. ‘You’ll dry off.’

  ‘It’s not like I’m not always covered in mud, whenever I’m around you,’ she replied. Then she scowled to herself, like she’d sworn she wouldn’t remind herself, or him, of anything to do with their past. He was sure they both knew that wasn’t going to be easy, but then she was only staying a couple of days at most so how hard would it be just to stay out of each other’s way?

  Right after he got her out of this mess.

  The towing interface came out easily from its compartment in the back. He could almost feel Jodie’s eyes appraising his muddy boots and jacket from behind him as he screwed it in place. He caught her daughter’s gaze in the wing mirror.

  So this was Ethan Sanders’s daughter. Ethan was an equine dental vet. Cole had looked him up years ago in a moment of curiosity, right after he’d come home from his last
stint in Sri Lanka and broken things off with Diyana. Jodie didn’t know about Diyana. He assumed not anyway, unless Casper had mentioned it.

  As much as it had pained him over the years, he was glad Jodie had married someone who’d gone on to be successful. It wasn’t his business, but he wondered why their marriage had ended.

  His heart was like a wild horse throwing a fit in his chest now. That...thing...whatever it was between him and Jodie that he’d felt the first time he’d kissed her had thrown him off guard. He’d felt something reconnecting the second he’d pulled her head under his chin again; two live wires fusing back together.

  He caught himself. It was all in his head. She was getting to him already. ‘We should go, Jodie. We both have somewhere to be. Attach this to the back of your car.’

  She took the rope he held out to her and he watched her drag a hand nervously through her long hair. ‘The funeral, will we make it on time? Emmie and I still have to get to The Ship Inn, we need to change...’

  ‘Forget that.’ He made for the Land Rover with the other end of the tow rope, wiping his snowy hands on his jeans. ‘No time. You’ll just have to come with me.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE REST OF the day was a blur to Jodie. Five hundred expected guests had become three hundred after the church ceremony and burial because of the weather. There were still more people than she’d ever seen in the huge farmhouse.

  The kitchen was as she remembered it, as warm and inviting as ever, with its dark wooden beams laden with pots and pans and the fire blazing in the hearth. Cole, however, sent a chill right through her.

  He’d changed into a navy-blue suit and tie. She couldn’t help noticing the aristocratic cut of an expert tailor, which surprised her somewhat as it spoke of a man with money. Lots of it. To anyone else the suit would highlight his chiselled features, piercing brown eyes and shrewd mind, but to her, the whole look hid the real him. Cole might have money now but he was anything but a suit and business guy.