Playing With Fire

As they rolled to a slow speed, she began to loosen her hold around Aidan’s waist, prepared to flip up her visor to shout at him, or take the opportunity to dismount if necessary. But she found herself stopped by a sudden firm grip encasing her wrists, trapping them in place. Before she could even think to pull herself free, the grip was gone and the bike jumped forward again, throwing her off balance and leaving her instinctively to grab on tight.

Her heart leaped into her throat as she realised they were turning right. No. This couldn’t be happening. Panic took hold, desperate, helpless panic, as though she were racing head-on towards a cliff edge with no way to stop, no way to turn, no way to get off.

She fought the rising sense of light-headedness that had little to do with the sudden twists and turns of the narrow country lane as it wound through hedgerow-fringed fields and into the dappled shade of a small wood. Even before they rounded the final turn that would take them out of the trees, she knew what she’d find. The small roadside sign announcing that they were entering the village of Marton Chilbury, and just beyond that …

She thought about closing her eyes as they rode past, figuring that, if she didn’t look, she could pretend it wasn’t there. Yet when they rounded the bend, she found her eyes drawn to the exact spot she wanted to avoid. There, on the lefthand side of the road, where it had stood for hundreds of years, was an old thatched coaching inn. The place she’d once called home. The White Harte.

A cry of disbelief escaped her when she registered that Aidan was slowing the bike and pulling into the entrance of the carpark. She realised she’d been holding her breath for too long when her vision blurred and a rush of dizziness assaulted her, making her feel like she was going to throw up, or pass out. Or quite possibly both.

She tried to fill her lungs but within the close confines of her helmet she couldn’t seem to find enough air. What had happened to all the oxygen? She began to gasp, but that only made the dry, tight feeling in her chest grow worse.

She couldn’t breathe. She needed to get the helmet off or she was going to suffocate.

Barely waiting for the bike to stop, she jumped off, stumbling in her haste and nearly ending up flat on her face. Her knees felt too weak to hold her up so she let herself drop to them as she fought to pull the helmet off.

Her sense of panic increased as she realised it was stuck. Holding it tightly between her hands she tugged harder. It was only then she remembered the chinstrap. She tilted her head back, finding herself blinded by the sun shining on her visor, the rasping sound of her sobbing gasps filling the confined space as her gloved fingers, numb and clumsy, scrabbled to release the strap.

Then a shadow fell over her. Her hands were firmly grasped and lowered from their futile fumbling. An instant later the chinstrap was released and Annabel ripped off the helmet and sucked in huge sobbing gulps of air.

‘Take it easy, a mhuirnín. You’re going to hyperventilate.’

Aidan’s gentle, reasonable tone should have calmed her, but instead it infuriated her. Take it easy? He wasn’t the one who’d nearly suffocated, whose fingers and toes had gone numb and tingly through lack of oxygen. She dragged in another lungful and another and another.

‘Come on now. You’ll only make it worse.’ This time, his soothing murmur was accompanied by a stabilising hand that slid around her nape and exerted steady pressure downwards, pushing her head toward her knees. ‘Breathe.’

Couldn’t he tell that was what she was trying to do? Anger erupted through the panic. This was his fault anyway.

She pushed back against the pressure of the hand until she could glare at him where he crouched in front of her, his own helmet nowhere in sight. ‘Why the fuck did you ignore me? I wanted you to pull over miles ago,’ she bit out between gasps. ‘We need to turn around and go back. I can’t be here.’

He reached for her again. ‘Calm down –’

‘Don’t you dare!’ she shouted over him. ‘Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. We need to leave. Now.’ Staggering back to her feet, she grasped the helmet between her hands as she mustered every ounce of the courage she’d need to make herself put it back on, even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. ‘You’ve no idea what you’ve done here.’

Aidan also straightened. ‘I do know, Annabel. I know what this place is to you.’

Something icy-cold shot up the back of her neck, and her gaze flew up to his face. ‘What?’

‘I know this is where the photograph of you and your father was taken.’ Those grey eyes of his seemed even more intense than usual, focused unwaveringly on her. ‘The place you grew up. I brought you here for a reason.’

Annabel gaped at him for a frozen moment then the shock cracked open and she went for him, shoving the helmet at his chest with enough force to push him back half a step. ‘You bastard. How dare you?’ She shoved again, but this time he was braced and ready and simply rocked on the spot. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

‘I’m not playing,’ he said, raising his hands to block the third shove aimed at his chest so that they both held the helmet gripped between them. ‘This is too important for it to be a game.’

‘Oh, please! Everything’s a game to you.’ Including her. This was why she needed to protect herself against him. He had no boundaries when it came to bulldozing his way into every corner of her being, exposing every part of her.

‘Not this. Believe me.’

‘Believe you?’ she stared at him with wide-eyed incredulity. ‘When all you do is pull dirty tricks?’

‘I’m not trying to trick you. I’m trying to help you.’

No. Any fool could see that he was trying to control and manipulate her. And she wasn’t a fool. ‘You want to help me?’ she snapped, tugging the helmet free from his grasp. ‘Great. The most helpful thing you can do is take me back to London.’

Spinning away, she spotted the bike standing nearby and stomped towards it. Pulling her helmet on, she found herself having trouble with the blasted chinstrap again. She needed to slow down a bit and concentrate, but honestly, she couldn’t believe the audacity of the man. To think he thought it acceptable to interfere …

Aidan was suddenly in front of her again, his fingers joining hers under her chin. But this time they seemed intent on hindering her efforts rather than helping. She pushed them away, and ducked to avoid his hands as they reached out to remove the helmet from her head. She wasn’t quite quick enough to stop his next move, which flipped her visor up.

‘We’re not going anywhere,’ he announced through the opening. ‘Not until we’ve sorted this.’

She stared at him. ‘I am not staying here! I can’t. You seriously thought trying to force me into coming here for the night was a good idea?’

‘We’re not staying here. It’s only a lunch stop, Annabel.’

That was supposed to make it any better? ‘Then let’s find somewhere else for lunch.’

Aidan started to shake his head.

‘Fine. I’ll call a cab.’ She removed the helmet and tossed it to him, then unzipped a pocket in the leather jacket and got out her phone. No bloody signal. Feeling Aidan’s gaze upon her every move, she shoved the useless device back in her pocket. ‘Or I’ll walk.’

As she strode off across the carpark towards the road, she was aware of him falling in beside her, his long legs making it easy for him to keep up, though he made no move to touch her or stop her.

‘Your reaction says that you do need to be here, Annabel. You need to face this.’

‘Don’t “shrink” me,’ she snapped, not turning, not breaking stride. ‘You’re trying to fix me. If I’m not good enough for you, you know what –’

‘You’re perfect for me,’ he interrupted. ‘The small part of you that you’re prepared to share, at any rate. So no, I’m not trying to fix you, I’m trying to get to know more about you. Understand you.’

‘And you think dragging me to a place I haven’t been in twenty years and raking over a past that has nothing to do with you is the best way to understand me?’ She gave him a look that matched the sarcasm in her tone. At the end of the driveway she turned and continued marching along the road in the direction from which they’d just come.

‘I think it’s a relevant place to start, at least,’ Aidan persevered, still keeping step with her. ‘What’s here that you can’t bear to face? Does it bring back such bad memories?’

Only the devastating memory of losing the only place in her life where she’d felt safe and happy and loved for who she was. ‘No.’

‘Then think about that for a moment. If that’s the case your reaction makes no sense. From what I can tell, things from your past still haunt you. You won’t be able to move on until you face whatever ghosts you carry. You can’t do that if you keep running from them.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. And even if you did, you certainly don’t get to make those sorts of decisions for me.’

‘Annabel, please. Trus–’

Sensing what was coming she swung on him. ‘If you dare say, “Trust me,” I will slap you!’

His black brows shot up at the threat, but his tone remained mild, perhaps a little amused, as he said, ‘I was going to say, “Trust yourself,” actually.’ Then the humour melted away to be replaced by sincerity. ‘That’s the only thing that really matters here,’ he said, the lyrical tones of his Irish accent softening to an alluring lilt. ‘Believe in yourself. You know you can do this.’

She stood there, breathing heavily, aware that he was trying to play her with charm – even more aware and perturbed to discover that there was a part of her that wanted to fall for it. Unsettled, she blurted somewhat petulantly, ‘Maybe I don’t want to do it.’

Pulling off a glove, Aidan took a step closer. He placed his bare fingertips on the side of her neck, resting them lightly over the spot where she could feel the racing gallop of her pulse.

‘There’s no “maybe” about it,’ he murmured with a crooked smile. ‘It’s perfectly obvious that you don’t want to.’

‘Then we’re in agreement for once. Let’s go.’ She turned and started walking again but Aidan caught her hand and pulled her off the road onto the wooded verge.

‘I’ll make a deal with you. If you can give one valid reason why you don’t want to do this, we’ll leave.’

Was irrational fear a valid reason? she wondered. Too bad if it was. She’d never admitted that kind of weakness to anyone before, and she wasn’t going to start now. Nor was there much point in trying to make something up, given Aidan’s uncanny ability to see through her deceptions. He was as astute as he was infuriating.

She tried to pull her hand free, but he only tightened his grip.

‘Come on, Annabel,’ he challenged. ‘What are you really afraid of?’

Since he’d come into her life? Too much, it seemed. She was afraid of him. Of herself. Of the past, the future. Afraid of her own bloody shadow. ‘Nothing. Everything. I don’t know!’ she shouted, exasperated.

He looked at her for a long moment – calm, cool, collected. ‘And that’s why I really think you should do it. Come on.’ He stepped back onto the road, and, using the hand he’d effortlessly kept hold of, towed her back towards the inn.

Chapter Seven

Aidan watched Annabel’s every move carefully as, back in the carpark, he secured the bike and collected their helmets. After the way he’d shocked her, she’d be justified in bolting.

When she refused point-blank to set a foot through the front door of the old timber-framed building, he led her around the side, following the signs to the beer garden.

Even getting her onto the grounds was more than he’d really dared hope for. He’d known pulling something like this would be a huge gamble, but it was one he’d decided had to be worth the risk. Because while on the surface Annabel Frost appeared to be thawing, he couldn’t shake the feeling that surface-deep was as far as it went; that she was going through what she thought were the right motions, but without the emotional depth to back them up. He’d begun to realise that if he wanted to get deeper, and he did, he’d need to start pushing.

As they rounded the building and came to the long stretch of green lawn behind, he left her to decide where to sit. Of the dozen or so wooden picnic tables spaced out on the grass, only a few were unoccupied and she chose the one furthest away from the building, where the lawn sloped away to meet a tiny stream. She sat on the bench with her back to the building, almost vibrating with tension.

Leaving the helmets and his gloves while he went to get drinks and menus, Aidan hoped he’d called this right. As far as he could make out, the pain of losing her father and this place when she was so young and vulnerable had become the defining influence on her life. She was so used to protecting herself that it was proving hard to get her to open up. Maybe showing her that she had nothing left to fear here would help unlock her emotions, let them flourish.

Approaching the rear entrance of the inn, he couldn’t help throwing a glance over his shoulder to check Annabel was still where he’d left her. He ducked through the door. Inside, the décor was typical of the evolved style of the English country inn – the dark traditional interior giving way to the modern rustic look favoured by the weekend gastropub crowds. The low ceilings and time-worn flagstone floor remained, but other ancient features such as the original exposed beams had been stripped and limed, the plasterwork and wood panelling painted in light chalky colours.

He headed to the bar and ordered two orange juices from a skinny young man uniformed in white shirt and black trousers. As he handed over a banknote in payment he asked for a couple of lunch menus.

‘That’s all right, Josh, I’ll see to it,’ said an extraordinarily pretty blonde woman dressed in matching white and black who stepped up beside her colleague. She turned big cornflower-blue eyes on Aidan and sent him a radiant smile. ‘I can bring those to you if you like. Where are you sitting?’

‘We’re outside.’ He smiled back. ‘I don’t mind taking them myself.’

‘It’s no problem.’ The radiance shone brighter. ‘Go and enjoy your drinks and I’ll follow you out in a minute.’

Aidan rejoined Annabel, who muttered, ‘There’d better be vodka in this,’ as she grabbed the glass of orange juice. Coming from someone who didn’t drink alcohol, the comment was telling.

He unzipped his jacket and removed it before settling himself on the bench opposite her and raising his glass. ‘Here’s to you, and to courage.’