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‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t?’ she asked, oblivious to the demands of the front page as her upper lip burned in the heat of eyes that were not hard. Not hard at all. Her tongue flicked over it, in an unconscious attempt to cool it. ‘What can I do to convince you?’
The words were out of Claire’s mouth, the harm done, before she could call them back and one corner of his mouth lifted in a ‘got you’ smile.
There was no point in saying that she hadn’t meant it the way it had sounded. He wouldn’t believe that, either. She wasn’t sure she believed it herself.
If it looked like an invitation, sounded like an invitation…
Her stomach clenched in a confused mix of fear and excitement as, for one heady, heart-stopping moment she thought he was going to take her up on it. Kiss her, sweep her up into his arms, fulfil every girlish dream she’d confided to her journal. Back in the days before she’d met Jared, when being swept into Hal’s arms and kissed was the limit of her imagination.
No! What was she thinking!
In a move that took him by surprise, she threw up her arm, stepped smartly back, out of the circle of his hands, determined to put a safe distance between them before her wandering wits made a complete fool of her. But the day wasn’t done with her.
The morning was warm and sunny but it had rained overnight and her foot, clad only in fine nylon—no doubt in shreds—didn’t stop where she’d put it but kept sliding backwards on the wet path. Totally off balance, arms flailing, she would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her round the waist in a grip that felt less like rescue than capture and her automatic thanks died in her throat.
‘You’ve cycled along that path every day this week,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he was right, ‘and I don’t think you’re going to stop without good reason.’
‘Archie is a great deterrent,’ she managed.
‘Not to those of us who know his weakness for apples. A weakness I’ve seen you take advantage of more than once this week. Being late appears to be something of a habit with you.’
He’d seen her? When? How long had he been back? More importantly why hadn’t she heard about it when she called in at the village shop? There might be few people left who would remember bad, dangerous, exciting Hal North, but the arrival of a good-looking man in the neighbourhood was always news.
‘Were you lying in wait for me today?’
‘I have better things to do with my time, believe me. I’m afraid this morning you just ran out of luck.’
‘And here was me thinking I’d run into you.’ He moved his head in a gesture that suggested it amounted to the same thing. ‘So? What are you going to do?’ she demanded, in an attempt to keep the upper hand. ‘Call the cops?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going to issue an on-the-spot penalty fine.’
She laughed, assuming that he was joking. He didn’t join in. Not joking…
‘Can you do that?’ she demanded and when he didn’t answer the penny finally dropped. A fine… ‘Oh, right. I get it.’
He hadn’t changed. His shoulders might be broader, he might be even more dangerously attractive than the boy who’d left the village all those years ago, but inside, where it mattered, he was still the youth who’d poached the Park game, torn up the park on his motorcycle, sprayed graffiti on Sir Robert’s factory walls. Allegedly. No one had ever caught him.
He was back now as gamekeeper, warden, whatever and he apparently considered this one of the perks of the job.
She shrugged carelessly in an attempt to hide her disappointment as she dug around in her bag, fished out her wallet.
‘Ten pounds,’ she said, flicking it open. ‘It’s all I have apart from small change. Take it or leave it.’
‘I’ll leave it.’ Her relief came a fraction too soon. ‘I’m looking for something a little more substantial by way of payment.’ What! ‘Something sufficiently memorable to ensure that the next time you’re tempted to ride along this path, you’ll think again.’
She opened her mouth to protest that parting with all the spare cash she had to see her through until the end of the month was memorable enough, thank you very much. All that emerged was another of those wordless huffs as he pulled her against him, expelling the air from her body as her hips collided with hard thighs.
For a moment she hung there, balanced on her toes.
For a moment he looked down at her.
‘What would make you think again, Claire?’
Had she thought there was anything soft about those eyes? She was still wondering how she could have got that so wrong when his mouth came down on hers with an abrupt, inescapable insistence.
It was outrageous, shocking, disgraceful. And everything she had ever imagined it would be.
CHAPTER THREE
CLAIRE Thackeray abandoned her bike, her shoe and, as her hair descended untidily about her shoulders, a scatter of hair pins.
Hal knew that he would have to go after her, but it hadn’t taken her stunned expression, or her stiff back as she limped comically away from him on one shoe to warn him that laughing would be a mistake.
It was as clear as day that nothing he did or said would be welcome right now, although whether her anger was directed at him or herself was probably as much a mystery to her as it was to him.
The only thing he knew with certainty was that she would never again ride her bike along this path. Never toss an apple—the toll Archie charged for letting her pass unmolested on her bike—over the hedge.
‘Job done, then,’ he muttered as, furious with himself, furious with her, he stepped down into the ditch to recover the shoe she’d left embedded in the mud. He tossed it into the basket on the front of her bike, grabbed the fishing rod he’d confiscated from Gary Harker and followed her.
It was the first time he’d lost control in years and he’d done it not just once, but twice. First when he’d kissed her, and then again as her unexpected meltdown had made him forget that his intention had been to punish her. Punish her for her insulting offer of a bribe. Her pitiful attempt at seducing what he knew out of him. Most of all, to punish her for being a Thackeray.
He’d forgotten everything in the softness of her lips unexpectedly yielding beneath his, the silk of her tongue, the heat ripping through him as she’d clung to him in a way that belied all that buttoned-up restraint.
Which of them came to their senses first he could not have said. He only knew that when he took a step back she was looking at him as if she’d run into a brick wall instead of a flesh-and-blood man.
Any other woman who’d kissed him like that would have been looking at him with soft, smoky eyes, her cheeks flushed, her mouth smiling with anticipation, but Claire Thackeray had the look of a rabbit caught in headlights and, beneath the smear of mud, her cheek had been shockingly white.
Her mouth was swollen but there was no smile and she hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t given him a chance to say… What?
I’m sorry?
To the daughter of Peter Thackeray? The girl who’d been too good to mix with the village kids. The woman who, even now, down on her luck and living in the worst house on the estate, was still playing the patronising lady bountiful, just as her mother had. Handing out charity jobs to the deserving poor. Sending the undeserving to the devil…
That wasn’t how it was meant to be.
But she hadn’t waited for an apology.
After that first stricken look, she’d turned around and walked away from him without a word, without a backward glance as if he was still the village trash her father—taking his cue from Sir Robert—had thought him. As if she was still the Cranbrook estate’s little princess.
The battered wheel ground against the mudguard and stuck, refusing to move another inch. Cursing the wretched thing, he propped it up out of sight behind a tree, then grabbing her shoe he strode after her.
‘Claire! Wait, damn it!’
* * *
Claire wanted to die.
No, that was ridiculous. She wasn’t an idiot kid with a crush on the local bad boy. She was a responsible, sensible grown woman. Who wanted to die.
How dare he!
Easy… Hal North had always done just what he wanted, looked authority in the eye and dared anything, defying them to do their worst.
How could she?
How could she just stand there and let Hal North kiss her? Respond as if she’d been waiting half her life for him to do exactly that? Even now her senses were alight with the heat of it, the blood thundering around her body at the thrill of surrendering to it, letting go in a world-well-lost moment when nothing else mattered. Not her dignity, not her child…
It had been everything her youthful imagination had dreamt about and more. Exhilarating, a dream-come-true moment to rival anything in a fairy tale.
Appalling.
She clung desperately to that word, closing her eyes in a vain attempt to blot out the warm, animal scent of his skin, the feel of his shoulders, solid beneath her hands as she’d clutched at them for support. The taste of his hard mouth lighting her up as if she’d been plugged into the national grid; softening from punishing to seductively tender as her lips had surrendered without a struggle to the silk of his tongue.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’
Of course she’d heard him.
“Wait, damn it…”
He’d sounded angry.
Why would he be angry? He was the one who’d kissed her without so much as a by-your-leave…
‘I brought your shoe,’ he said.
She took it from him without slowing down, without looking at him. It was caked in wet sticky mud and she tossed it defiantly back into the ditch.
‘That was stupid.’
‘Was it?’ Probably. Undoubtedly. She’d come back and find it later. ‘What’s your on-the-spot fine for littering?’
‘Are you sure you want to know?’
She stubbed her toe on a root and he caught her arm as she stumbled.
‘Get lost, Hal,’ she said, attempting to shake him off. He refused to be shaken and she glared up at him. ‘Are you escorting me off the premises?’
Bad choice of words, she thought as his mouth tightened.
‘It’s for your own safety.’
‘Safety? Archie isn’t going to bother me now I’m on foot, but who’s going to keep me safe from you?’ she demanded, clearly not done with ‘stupid.’
‘You’ve had a shock,’ he replied, all calm reason, which just made her all the madder.
‘Now you’re concerned!’
Too right she’d had a shock. She’d had a shock right down to her knees but it had nothing to do with Archie and everything to do with crashing into Hal North. Everything to do with the fact that he’d kissed her. That she’d kissed him back as if she’d been waiting to do that all her life. Maybe she had…
How dare he be all calm reason when she was a basket case?
‘It’s a bit late to start playing knight errant don’t you think?’
‘You’re mistaking me for someone else.’
‘Not in a hundred years,’ she muttered, catching her breath as she stepped on a sharp stone, gritting her teeth to hold back the expletive, refusing to let him see that she was in pain.
The last thing she needed was a smug I-told-you-so from Hal North.
It did have the useful side effect of preventing her from saying anything else she’d regret when Hal moved his hand from her arm and looped it firmly around her waist, taking her weight so that she had no choice but to lean into the solid warmth of his body, allow him to support her.
The alternative was fighting him which would only make things worse as she limped the rest of the way home, her head against his shoulder, her cheek against the hard cloth of his overalls. The temptation was to simply surrender to the comfort, just as she’d surrendered to his kiss and it took every crumb of concentration to mentally distance herself from the illusion of safety, of protection and pray that he’d put her erratic breathing down to ‘shock.’
When they reached her gate, she allowed herself to relax and took the fishing rod when he handed it to her, assuming he meant her to give it back to Gary.
‘Thank you…’ The word ended in a little shriek as he bent and caught her behind the knees, scooping her up like some bride being carried over the threshold. Hampered by the rod, she could do nothing but fling an arm around his neck and hang on as he strode along the gravel path that led around the house to the back door.
‘Key?’ he prompted, as he deposited her with an equal lack of ceremony on the doorstep.
‘I’m home. Job done,’ she said, propping the rod by the door, waiting for him to leave. She was damned if she was going to say thank you again.
‘Are you going to be difficult?’ he asked.
‘You bet.’
He shrugged, glanced around, spotted the brick where she hid her spare key. ‘My mother used to keep it in the same place,’ he said, apparently oblivious to her huff of annoyance as he retrieved it and opened the door. ‘In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the same brick.’
‘Go away,’ she said, kicking off her remaining shoe in the scullery where the boots and coats were hung.
‘Not before the statutory cup of hot, sweet tea,’ he said, following her inside and easing off his own boots.
Her suit was damp and muddy, her foot was throbbing and her body, a jangle of sore, aching bits demanding her attention now that she’d come to a halt, responded with a tiny ‘yes, please’ whimper. She ignored it.
‘I don’t take sugar.’
‘I do.’
Behind her, the phone began to ring. She ignored it for as long as she could, daring him to take another step then, with what she hoped was a careless shrug—one that her shoulder punished her for—she limped, stickily, into the kitchen and lifted the receiver from the cradle.
‘Claire Thack…’
Hal pulled out a chair, tipped off the two sleeping cats and, taking her arm, eased her down into it before crossing to the kettle.
‘Claire?’
‘Oh, Brian…’
