by Liz Fielding
Holly remembered the woman’s welcoming smile when they’d walked up to the site the day before. It hadn’t been for her. When Laura had noticed her she’d thought she had seen a ghost. The smile had been for Joshua and somehow that was a shock.
Holly tried to analyse the feeling, understand why exactly she should be surprised when, by his own admission, he had helped Mary set up the charity. It made his present behaviour very difficult to understand.
Wrapped in a red and white striped apron of vast proportions and wielding a pair of tongs to turn the sausages and burgers, Holly didn’t have too much time to dwell on the enigma that was Joshua Kent and she felt thoroughly toasted herself when she finally sank on to a blanket beside the fire.
‘I don’t suppose by any chance you can play this thing?’ Laura asked her, holding out a guitar. ‘I’ve burnt my finger and it makes playing even more impossible than usual.’
‘Well,’ Holly said doubtfully, I’m no John Williams.’
‘Hell, who wants John Williams? If you can strum that’s at least a hundred percent better than me. Off you go.’
‘You believe in working a body hard for her supper round here, don’t you?’ Holly laughed and ran her fingers experimentally over the strings.
‘There’s no such thing as a free marshmallow. Not around this campfire.’ The mention of marshmallows brought Joshua sharply to mind and just as sharply she pushed the image away.
She didn’t want to think of him, or his perilous grey eyes.
‘What do they know?’ she asked.
‘Not a lot. Start with something simple and they’ll join in.’
Holly thought for a moment, strummed a chord and began to sing ‘London’s Burning’. With Laura’s encouragement the children soon caught on to the idea of singing in rounds and as the evening progressed her memory obligingly provided a continuous stream of action songs from her days camping with the Guides.
They were so noisily enthusiastic that she was unaware of the approach of a dark figure across the grass until the children’s voices gradually petered out and she turned around to look.
She didn’t actually scream and for that fact alone she would be forever grateful as the black-leather-clad figure removed his helmet and Joshua stared down at her.
‘Having a good time?’ The leap of excitement that his nearness inevitably seemed to evoke was immediately quashed by the coolness of his voice.
He hadn’t forgiven her. Why should he?
And she would do well to remember that he had his own reasons for making himself useful to her. She lowered the temperature of her voice to match his.
‘Yes, thank you.’
Laura moved aside to let him in alongside her and offered him a drink. ‘I’m afraid cocoa is the best I can offer, Josh.’
‘That’ll do fine. I hope you’ve saved me a marshmallow to melt on top.’
Laura went off to fetch his cocoa and Joshua sank down into the space she had vacated.
In an attempt to ignore him, Holly struck a chord and began to play again, but most of her mind was riveted on the man beside her as he peeled off his leather jacket. Suddenly her fingers were all over the place and without a word Joshua reached across and took the guitar from her lifeless hands.
‘What do you want to sing?’ he demanded of the children.
They all shouted back something different.
He put his hand to his ear. ‘What did you say?’ Each time they shouted he pretended he couldn’t hear them and Holly watched as he egged them on, thinking that he would be very easy to love.
He had them almost hysterical with excitement before he raised his hands for silence and in seconds it would have been possible to hear a pin drop. Then he began to play something quiet and simple that they all seemed to know and in a minute the children’s voices were lifted against his warm baritone.
For a moment she listened, until she picked up the words of the old folk song and then joined in. Looking at their faces in the firelight, hearing the sounds of the voices against the backdrop of the sea, was an almost magical experience, one Holly knew she would remember forever.
She glanced at the profile of the man beside her, dark against the late evening sky. Whether the magic was the moment itself, or because he turned just then and smiled at her quite unexpectedly, she couldn’t be certain.
As they finished, Laura and the other helpers arrived with trays of cocoa for the children and then they trailed sleepily off to bed. Holly offered to help, but Laura told her to stay put and the two of them were left alone beside the dying embers of the fire.
‘I didn’t know you had a motorbike,’ Holly said after a while. ‘It doesn’t seem to quite fit the image.’
‘Perhaps you’re looking at the wrong image. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Holly Carpenter. Why don’t you ask your journalist friend to dig a little deeper? Who knows what else he might come up with?’ He shrugged as if it was a matter of complete indifference to him one way or the other. ‘Besides, I refuse to bring the Rolls down that muddy cart-track.’
‘Oh? You weren’t so very careful this morning.’
He raised his eyes from the mug in his hand. ‘I was extremely careful. I cleared your car by at least an inch and a half.’
‘An inch at the most.’
‘That’s all it took.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ she said.
‘I had every right to be angry.’
‘I know. And I apologise.’
‘Oh, well,’ he said, imitating her tone exactly. ‘That’s all right, then.’ Her head came up with a jerk but, to her astonishment, he was laughing.
‘Is it?’ she asked.
He reached out and touched her lips briefly with his finger. ‘Forget it, Holly. I’d have done the same in your shoes.’ She wanted to protest, to explain, but that touch had said plainly enough that the subject was closed. ‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’ He pulled her to her feet.
‘There’s no need. I can walk,’ she said quickly.
He looked at her. ‘You’re not scared of the bike, are you?’
No, she thought unhappily, it wasn’t anywhere nearly that simple. She wasn’t frightened of motorbikes, but if that would do it she was quite prepared to pretend. But it didn’t work. Instead of allowing her to go, his fingers tightened around hers.
‘You’ll love it.’
‘Will I? But what about a helmet?’ she protested.
‘I’ve a spare,’ he said, and that, apparently, was that.
They stopped first to say goodnight to Laura and wish them all a safe journey home the next day. ‘If you need anything dried before you go, come up to the house and use the drier,’ she offered.
‘You’re an absolute angel. It must run in the family. I hope you’ll be here next year.’ Holly glanced across at Joshua by the bike where he had gone to fetch a helmet for her. ‘Thank you, Laura. I hope so too.’
‘Ready to go?’ Joshua asked as she reached him. Holly nodded and he pulled on the helmet for her and fastened the strap beneath her chin.
‘Very fetching. Don’t forget to hold tight.’ He put on his own helmet and then climbed on to an enormous black machine. She sat very primly behind him, her hands scarcely touching the sides of his waist. Then he started the bike and without further warning moved off and she threw herself at his back and clung on for dear life.
Roaring up the lane, the stab of the headlamp into the dark the only source of light in a black world, was bad. As dreadful as it could be. But it was nothing to do with the noise of the bike, or the speed with which the hedge flashed by them. It was her body pressed against the supple leather of his jacket, feeling the steady, reassuring hammer of his heart against the crazy counterpoint of her own, beating much too fast. It was her arms around his waist, her hands clasped desperately under his ribs. That was what she feared. The unavoidable closeness and what it was doing to her.
Then it was over. They were in front of Highfield and s
he was sliding quickly from the machine in an effort to escape, her legs wobbly as she had known they would be. She fought desperately with the uncooperative strap of her helmet to remove it before he could help her, touch her, but her fingers couldn’t, or wouldn’t, find the release and after he had removed his own helmet he bent to do it for her. She shivered at his touch.
‘Are my hands cold?’ he asked.
‘No. Yes.’ With his long fingers brushing against her neck she couldn’t think clearly.
‘Well?’ he asked, pulling the helmet off and putting it with his own on the seat of the bike then leaning back against it. ‘Which is it?’ ‘They’re cold,’ she managed before turning quickly away, determined to get inside before she betrayed herself totally. ‘Thanks for the lift, Joshua,’ she said, from the doorway.
‘Holly?’ His voice grated against her spine and she stopped and turned slowly back to face him. He hadn’t moved.
‘Yes?’ she asked, from the safe distance of her porch.
‘There was something else.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ She fumbled desperately in her pocket for her keys.
‘I don’t believe it can.’ Her margin of safety proved illusory as, in a stride, he was beside her, his eyes smoky dark as he searched her face. It was a look that seemed to touch her, stroke her, burn her up until she thought she would cry out. After a heartbeat, or it might have been an age, in which she felt as if she was suspended at the top of a rollercoaster, waiting for that dizzy, free fall plunge, he said, ‘Not one more moment.’
She closed her eyes in an effort to blot out the desire in his eyes, not quite trusting it, but knowing that it was far too late for her to fight the echoing response he must all too clearly see in hers. Knowing that she was helpless to resist.
He took her face between his hands, tilting her face upwards and holding it cradled in his long fingers until she could bear it no longer and her long lashes fluttered open.
‘Please…’ The word, barely more than a sigh, escaped her lips, but whether she was begging for release or capture she scarcely knew. Until he kissed her. And by then it was too late.
His lips were cool as they began to feather her face with butterfly kisses, each touch to the delicately veined lids of her eyes, her temples, the line of her jaw a gentle, teasing caress that gradually turned her bones to jelly.
She was trembling as at last he slid his hands inside her jacket, pulled her tight against his chest and held her there.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered, her eyes jet-dark in the sudden shaft of moonlight breaking through the clouds.
He laughed, very softly. ‘If you have to ask, darling girl, I must be doing something wrong.’ But he wasn’t doing anything wrong, she was quite sure of that. In fact, as his lips continued their philandering progress, she had the very definite impression that he was an expert. Then he raised his head and she moaned very softly.
‘Don’t stop,’ she protested.
‘I haven’t stopped.’ His arm tightened about her waist, drawing her so close along the length of him that suddenly she didn’t have any breath for words. And then that was no longer a problem, because she had something else to occupy her mind as his mouth claimed hers and she knew he had spoken nothing but the truth. He left her in absolutely no doubt of his meaning.
Her lips parted under the sensuous prompting of his tongue and she responded with an urgency that at once shocked and elated her, her arms snaking around his neck, pulling him down to her until, with a groan, he wrenched himself free.
His ragged breathing matched her own as they stood just inches apart, staring at one another in stunned amazement at the reality of what had just happened to them both.
‘Holly…’ She shook her head. It wasn’t a time for words. Her hand fastened on the cold keys in her pocket and she held them for a moment, clenched tight in her fist. Then, her cheeks flushed with bright colour, she extended her hand and offered them to Joshua.
For a heartbeat they hung from the tip of her finger, glinting in the fitful moonlight between the two motionless figures, then he reached out and his fingers closed around them and she surrendered them into his care. He turned to the door, fitted the key in the lock. The sound of the lever drawing back in the mechanism was like the crack of a pistol in the unnatural silence and then the door swung open.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NEITHER of them moved. Holly wasn’t even sure that she could. Her legs were planted where she stood, her heart hammering so wildly in her own ears that she was sure Joshua must be able to hear it too and she had apparently lost the power of speech.
But he could not have mistaken her invitation. One look at her would be enough to tell the world that the only thing in the world she wanted at that moment was to be swept up by him and carried away to her rose-covered bed.
His sudden movement took her by surprise and she almost cried out as he stepped back, his rejection stamped in granite features. Every inch of her was weak with the trembling need that had quickened under his searching lips, the turmoil of a desire so urgent that for a moment she thought she might fall.
She didn’t fall. Pride insisted that she stiffen her spine and take her pain without flinching. For a moment she steadied herself against the doorpost, found that, despite all expectations to the contrary, her legs would still move, but it was as if in some kind of dream, or nightmare, that she stepped inside and slowly turned to him.
‘Goodnight, Joshua.’ Her voice caught, grated, didn’t quite make the words.
She gave up after that. The effort of thanking him for the lift was too much.
She just wanted him to go so that she could close the door, forget her pride and sink to the floor.
But he didn’t move. He stayed where he was, on the other side of the threshold, his face shadowed, unsmiling, and when he spoke his voice, too, was ragged.
‘I shouldn’t have done that, Holly. God knows, I didn’t intend to.’
A small moan escaped her lips and she swayed and in a stride he was at her side, her icy hands clasped between his. He kissed her, very gently, on the lips, before he turned and walked away, pulling on the black helmet with a fierce expression that gave the lie to his devastating self-control.
He looked at her just once more before he swung a long, leather-clad leg across the bike, but what was in his eyes was hidden by the dark visor. Then the machine roared into life, shattering the silence, sending an owl swooping in panic across the garden, and for a moment they both watched it. When it had gone they exchanged a look, hers betraying the aching void that his departure was leaving inside her, his nothing but the blank black reflection of his helmet.
Then he raised his hand and was gone.
Leaning weakly against the doorframe, she stayed where she was, listening to the changing notes of the engine as it climbed away over the hill, as far as the main road, then it grew fainter and merged with the other sounds of the night.
From somewhere in the garden the scent of an early honeysuckle reached her and she walked for a while, searching for it. But the plant was as elusive as an answer to her confused thoughts. It began to rain again and finally she went inside.
*
She spent a wakeful night. She didn’t toss and turn, she didn’t even bother to try to sleep. Instead she allowed her thoughts to wander where they would, but they always came back to the same place. Joshua, and her ever-present doubts about his motives; because if he was the opportunist that she suspected, then why had he walked away from her tonight?
Not because of a lack of desire for her. She hadn’t imagined the ardour that had blazed in his eyes in that moment before he had stepped back from the brink, the decision entirely his. Which raised another question.
If Joshua was an honourable man, he would disclose any conflict of interests between his role as Mary’s executor and his business dealings. Wouldn’t he?
And something else had been flickering on the edge of her consciousness ever since her doubts
had first surfaced. Not urgent enough to batter its way through the intensity of emotion, of confused feelings that had swamped her since her homecoming, but now, as she lay awake, her whole being concentrated on trying to find some answers, it slipped through and was suddenly very loud, very urgent. If Joshua did have something to hide, it asked, why had he insisted she come home?
The sky was beginning to lighten with the silvery promise of a clear day and she threw back the bedclothes, unwilling to stay a moment longer in bed with the unresolved questions going round and round her head. She showered, wrapped herself in a long towelling robe and went downstairs to make some tea.
She took her mug out into the garden and settled herself on the bench as the sun rose behind her, hoping that the fresh air would clear her mind and provide some answers for the endless questions. One question in particular.
Why had he wanted her to come home?
He had been so anxious for her to sign the contract to sell the house, had been urging her not to delay in case the purchasers backed out. It all seemed clear enough, cut and dried. But then she kept running into the inescapable fact that if he had allowed her to stay in France she would have quite willingly signed his piece of paper, right there and then, under that olive tree. In fact she had offered to do just that.
At the time she would have signed anything to rid herself of his disturbing presence and she would never have known about the caravan site.
Despite his assertion that there were pressing reasons for her to return with him, there had been no evidence of this since she had come to Ashbrooke. She had signed a load of papers, it was true, but they would have kept. Plus there had been Marcus Lynton’s rather odd reaction to her mention of a caravan park.
There was certainly something going on. But quite what she was at a loss to say.
Holly sipped the hot tea. She would tell Joshua today that she had decided against selling. Perhaps his reaction to that news would bring everything into sharper focus.
The sound of someone calling her name filtered through her thoughts.
