by Anna Clifton
“I think I took a wrong turn,” Abbie confessed, her cheeks glowing from her activity on that chilly English morning.
“I’ll say. If Dad hadn’t picked you up you’d be in Oxford by now.”
“How are the tarps looking?” Tony asked Abbie, back to business.
“A force ten won’t bring them down. And don’t worry, although I was the worst Scout in history I do remember how to tie a knot. Have you got any others that need to go up?”
“No, that’ll do it, thanks.”
Tony smiled at Abbie then with such a look of fondness that Adam was completely taken aback. How on earth had she managed to charm the socks off his father so quickly?
“Now, you should go straight back to the cottage and have a shower,” Tony pressed.
“You’ve been up on that freezing roof for nearly half an hour. And for God’s sake don’t tell Clarissa I let you do that or I’ll be in the doghouse for weeks. But hurry back—we’re opening the tombola at nine.”
“Yes, sir!” Abbie threw a salute and a grin at Tony as she began to take steps backwards before swinging on her heel to head towards the cottage.
“Quite a bossy little thing, isn’t she?” Tony Cooper commented as he watched Abbie disappear through the crowd.
“That would be an understatement,” Adam replied dryly.
“She has spirit though,” Tony went on thoughtfully as he stooped to pick up some loose ropes lying about his feet. “I like spirit. A man needs a woman with plenty of it to keep him in line. Now for these trestle tables. You can make yourself useful, Adam, seeing as you’ve decided to turn up.”
There was plenty to do and Adam was happy to help, as he did each year if he was in the district. The winter fete was important to the village. It was the second highest fundraiser for the local primary school after the summer fete. Adam knew that hundreds of pounds would be raised that day from the book, cake and craft stall[10] s and the tombola alone.
It never ceased to amaze him how the tourists came out of the woodwork in their hundreds to crawl around the country fetes on a Saturday. They always spent a truckload of money too, even on the most bitterly cold days, and that day was no different. By nine o’clock the village was buzzing with crowded activity.
At some stage Abbie had returned from the cottage without Adam noticing, joining the bottle tombola stall with his father and his best local chums. But as Tony had promised, Adam became chained to the pork roll barbeque for hours and could do no more than grab the occasional glimpse of her as she chatted with visitors and was introduced to family friends.
It was the fact that he was feeling an urgent need to grab glimpses of Abbie that was bothering him. Not so long ago he’d been steadfast in his resolve not to let anything distract him from Pete’s needs and his promise to Ellen. And now a woman was distracting him—big time. The woman who was the mother of one of his sons and was fast becoming as good as a mother to his other son; the woman he’d once evicted from his life as nothing more than an inexplicable outbreak of grief over losing Ellen. The only problem was that now he wasn’t so sure she’d been just that at all.
It took Pete and Henry’s expectant faces to finally interrupt his heavy thoughts when they appeared in front of him.
“Don’t tell me you’ve run out of money again?” Adam complained with mock impatience from behind the barbeque.
“We spent it all at the tombola,” Pete explained. “Abbie said that if we’re going to keep winning, could you please talk to grandfather and make sure we win something other than bottles of Australia’s worst plonk.”
Adam laughed and looked over at Abbie. He was hoping to catch her eye, but she was busy chatting to a couple of tourists lingering in front of her stall.
In the late afternoon the tombola sold out and its volunteers headed off to the pub down the road. Abbie went too, with Pete and Henry in tow. It wasn’t for another hour, with the pork roll stall and the rest of the fete dismantled, that the other villagers finally piled into the pub to join their friends and families.
It was packed by that stage. The air was pungent with wood smoke and beer hops as Adam squeezed through the noisy, jubilant crowd. He suspected he’d find Abbie at the bar amongst his father’s friends. He was right.
She was perched on one of the few barstools available and engaged in a lively discussion with the elderly men around her. He could hear cricket talk as he approached—she was teasing them about the patchy English form. But when her eyes landed on him, she signalled for him to come over.
“Save me from the imperialist attack!” she pleaded as he asked the busy barmaid for a pint of one of the pilsners on tap. “I can’t hold them off for much longer. I don’t know enough about cricket to do that.”
“It looks as though you’ve created a mutiny amongst them, so perhaps you’ve won the battle anyway,” Adam offered with a conspiratorial look.
He watched her as she listened to the feisty arguments continuing to erupt around her as his father and his friends debated the reasons behind their nation’s abysmal performance in recent seasons.
“Actually, you’re right. I have caused a mutiny,” she laughed in satisfaction. “Cheers!” And with that she clinked her glass against his and took a sip of her wine.
“Have you had fun today?” Adam asked.
“Are you kidding? I haven’t had this much fun in years,” she enthused, her eyes shining. “This is such a wonderful village and such great people. I keep thinking about the incredible childhood you must have had here.”
“It was a pretty spectacular childhood I’ve got to say,” Adam agreed readily. “Where are the boys?”
“Over in the corner chatting to your mum and her friends. I think the jet lag’s beginning to get to them though. I bought them dinner and your mum has asked whether she can take them home soon. Henry wants to sleep over with Pete again tonight, needless to say.”
“Are you okay with that? I don’t want you feeling isolated at the cottage.”
But Abbie was looking up at him with eyes the colour of warm cognac. “I’m happy in the cottage,” she reassured him. “It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and the quiet suits me.”
Adam nodded but couldn’t say another word. Unable to endure the emotional distance from her for a second longer, he dropped his mouth close to her ear, so close that he could feel her soft hair against his lips.
“Abbie, where is this going—you, me and the boys?” he murmured quietly.
He sensed her stiffen sharply next to him but before she could reply or even look his way, the head of the parent body of the school launched into speeches of gratitude to the organisers of the fete. When she’d finished, the pub grew noisier than ever as one half of the crowd settled in for the evening and the other half began to disperse, with them Clarissa and Tony and their two tired grandsons.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come home with you and the boys now?” Adam asked his mother as he walked her to the pub’s front door.
“No, darling. You and Abbie stay here and enjoy yourselves. Your father and I will love having the boys to ourselves so that we can spoil them rotten without their parents knowing it.”
With that he gave each of the boys and his mother a kiss before heading back to Abbie.
“I’ve had enough. What about you?” he asked as he returned to her side at the bar, unsuccessfully battling an urgent desire to be alone with her.
With Abbie in agreement, it took them the better part of five minutes to walk the short distance from the bar to the front door. There were many farewells to be made as they passed through the packed crowd of noisy locals, young and old.
When they finally emerged from the pub and out onto the footpath, they found that the still, misty peace that had settled over the darkened village wrapped itself around them like a blanket. In fact, the darkness was so impenetrable that Abbie tripped twice on the uneven surface of the path as she walked. Taking her gloved hand Adam slipped it through his arm for suppo
rt. He knew every inch of the village and could have walked home blindfolded without faltering.
Neither of them spoke but the silence was comfortable as the cottage, with its rosy glow from the fireplace within, finally came into view. Adam slipped a key out of his pocket and opened the heavy wooden front door, stepping back to let Abbie through.
She turned to him as he rested a hand on the stone lintel above the low doorframe.
“Today was a good day,” she smiled at him, awash with a peace between them she’d never experienced before. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he nodded before adding. “Are you sure you don’t want to come home with me to the house?”
“Why do you keep asking?” she asked with a curious smile. “I’ll come if you think it’s important.”
“You don’t have to, though I do feel discombobulated with you down here and Pete and Henry up at the house.”
Trying to ignore the mists of attraction that were wafting around the two of them, drawing them closer, she said, “You know sometimes I forget you’re the proper English gentleman. Then you go and use an utterly obscure word like ‘discombobulate’.”
Although she teased, she was reeling inside.
Things were changing between them.
It had started the moment they’d driven into the village the day before. Adam was reaching out to her—wanting her. Yet he’d reached out to her once before, stripped her for parts and then walked away without batting an eyelid. How could she ever be sure that little piece of history wouldn’t repeat itself when McCarthy women knew that when things got tough, their men were nowhere to be found?
“I know what you mean about the walking dictionary thing,” Adam agreed, his shoulders filling the doorway as he rested the sole of his boot on the stone edge of the step, still gripping onto the lintel as though it was the only thing that could keep them apart. “Dad loves to confuse an audience by using words no one ever uses anymore and I’ve picked up the habit. Justin hates it. He reckons he’s going to pay a bonus out of his own pocket to the first person who can prove I’ve used a word incorrectly—just to show me I’m not as smart as I think I am.”
“What would we do without Justin?” Abbie laughed.
“Without Justin, we would never have met. There would have been no you and me,” Adam said, serious all of a sudden as he watched for her reaction before adding, “and without Justin, there would have been no Henry.”
“There might be a Henry, but was there ever a ‘you and me’?”
“What happened between us all those years ago was real.”
“Was it?” Abbie threw back derisively. “It was only three weeks. And anyway, you sure got over me fast.”
“I didn’t get over anything,” Adam argued. “But when I got back to the UK I couldn’t get my head around what had happened between us with anything that seemed acceptable, so I put it down to grief and then put it behind me. But it didn’t stop my guilt over what I felt for you so soon after losing Ellen. And yet I know that if I hadn’t had that time with you, I could never have come home and become the father that Pete needed.”
“I’m so glad I provided a holiday mental health service for you,” Abbie replied, gobsmacked at the bitterness in her voice. But at that second she was struggling anew with those memories of the months of relentless, gnawing loneliness in the wake of his departure as his baby grew inside her.
“Let’s not go there now,” Adam replied gently, plainly reluctant to let their conversation disintegrate into a blame-game that night. “We’ve had a peaceful day together and I don’t want to spoil it. Anyway, I want to ask you something that I’ve wanted to ask you for ages—about Henry’s birth.”
Abbie looked back at Adam, her bitterness dissolving instantly as she remembered that night.
“He was a thoughtful angel—as always,” she smiled. “He waited until five o’clock when I’d finished work and then arrived four hours later. I can’t say it didn’t hurt like crazy, but I didn’t need drugs and there were no stitches or complications—just a gorgeous baby boy.”
“And afterwards, how was he?”
“Wonderful. Very settled. Slept and ate when he was supposed to, squirmed and smiled the rest of the time.”
“And you?” he asked tentatively. “How were you?”
Abbie bit her bottom lip, uncertain whether she should tell Adam absolutely everything. But then she knew she must. He’d been kept in the dark about matters concerning Henry for long enough.
“To be honest, I was not so great,” she began slowly. “I don’t know what I would have done without Maeve because I had migraines during the pregnancy and most of Henry’s first year. And the thing is, I thought I would, but I never managed to get over you as you got over me. I know that’s not fair, because all we had was those three weeks together at the worst time of your life. I should never have expected anything from you after that. But the problem was that having Henry in my life was like having you with me, but not having you with me—if that makes any sense at all.”
“Abbie!” Adam murmured wretchedly, and stepping through the door immediately took her head in his hands, tilting her face to his. “Why the hell didn’t you contact me? Despite everything, I would have come back if you’d asked me to. You know that!”
“I know you would have. And as I told you, I went to London and for three days tried to work up the courage to visit you. But it seemed that you and Ellen were featuring in every newspaper and magazine at that time, and so I lost my nerve. Anyway, I didn’t want you to come back just for Henry; I wanted you to want to come back for me too. But by the end of the three days I knew that would never happen.”
“God, the hell I must have put you through!” Adam almost groaned, a look of sheer agony on his face as he swallowed hard. “But it seems hell is all I bring to the lives of the women I love.”
Abbie wanted to say something to ease the million and one self-recriminations he was battling against. But then she couldn’t, because his mouth had seized hers.
She could have pulled away—that was what her head was telling her to do—but it was too late. She was yielding to the need of his advancing hips against hers and slipping her arms inside his warm coat to draw him closer and let him explore her mouth at will, her lips parting beneath his to allow a passionate search within.
When Abbie felt and heard the moan rising in his chest she could hardly believe it was his, or that she was making him feel that way. And as his mouth broke away and he gazed at her, she knew there would be no resolution of their looming problems before they cast sense and reason to one side that night.
In a decisive act of possession, she slid her arms around his neck and he picked her up, allowing her legs to wrap tightly around his waist. With a shove with the toe of his boot, the front door slammed and the cottage shuddered as he carried her to the rug in front of the fire and lowered her to the floor.
Lying down next to her, he traced the line of her jaw and then her lips with his fingertips. With eyes like dark pools amidst the hard, male angles of his face he watched her with a distant, primitive hunger that both thrilled and disturbed her.
Trailing his fingers through her hair he kissed her again, slowly and tantalisingly, this time leaving her in no doubt about the level of sensuality he would offer her that night. At that moment Abbie knew her struggle was over. The stopper had finally been pulled on all those years of bottled-up longing for the man in her arms—nothing would stem the flow of her feelings for him that night.
Yet even as she surrendered willingly to the fever of desire between them, Abbie knew she was sipping at a dangerous cocktail of fear and love. For how could it be any other way when the bond between them was no less fragile than one of Pete and Henry’s hastily thrown together sandcastles, likely to be wiped out without a trace under the first tidal surge.
Chapter Ten
“You’re not Adam!” the woman at the front door of the cottage announced in obvious irritation.
>
“Evidently,” Abbie replied in stunned surprise to her visitor.
The clock hadn’t yet ticked past seven and Abbie was still wrapped up in her dressing gown. She’d been making coffee and waiting for Adam to appear from his shower when she’d heard the peremptory knocking at the front door.
“Who are you then?”
“Abbie McCarthy. Who are you?”
The woman standing in front of Abbie was very tall—close to six feet—with an aristocratic air like Adam’s, but much more cultivated. She also had a highly developed plum in the mouth, formidable within her rich mellifluous voice. Large brown eyes swept around the interior of the cottage as if she was on an information gathering exercise. There was also something oddly familiar about her that Abbie couldn’t put her finger on.
“I’d like to see Adam,” she stated without answering Abbie’s question. “Is he here?”
Abbie nodded. “He should be down any minute. Won’t you come in?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Abbie’s visitor stooped to come through the front door, and because it led directly into the lounge it offered an immediate and comprehensive view of the clothes, pillows and blankets strewn licentiously about the room.
The visitor straightened herself and rested her hands on her hips like a strict boarding mistress, casting her eyes around the mess disapprovingly. She was clearly putting two and two together about the man she knew upstairs, the woman in front of her and the goings-on in that room the night before.
“Come through to the kitchen,” Abbie directed, picking her way through the mess and kicking herself for not telling the caller to come back later. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Milk, no sugar,” she replied crisply, following Abbie into the kitchen and towering in an imperious manner next to her as she poured it.
“Do we know each other?” Abbie asked handing her a mug. “You’re very familiar to me.”
“No, we’ve never met,” the woman threw back in a bored voice, and wandering across the kitchen lowered herself onto the little window seat looking out onto the lane outside. She crossed her legs easily and then proceeded to look Abbie up and down.
