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And when she didn’t walk off, neither did Ross.
‘Do you want to come riding?’ There was an argument raging in his head—he was going away soon, they had promised to keep things on ice till he returned, and yet he couldn’t just leave her like this.
‘Riding?’
‘At the farm.’
‘I’ve never ridden.’
‘It’s the best thing in the world after a tough day,’ Ross said. ‘You’ll love it.’
‘How do you know?’ Annika said.
‘I just know.’ He watched her cheeks darken further. ‘Annika, I will not lay a finger on you. It’s just a chance to get away …’
‘I don’t like talking like this when I’m on duty.’
‘Then give me half an hour to call in a favour and I’ll meet you in the canteen.’
She wasn’t going back to the farm with him. Her hand was shaking as she opened her locker, and then she picked up her phone and turned it on. She saw missed calls from her mother, her family’s agent, her brother Iosef, a couple from Annie and four from Aleksi. She turned it off. Right now she was finding it very hard to breathe.
She didn’t want to go home.
Didn’t want to give a comment.
Didn’t want a spin doctor or a night out at some posh restaurant with her family just to prove they were united.
Which was why she turned left for the canteen.
He drove; she followed in her own car. He had a small flat near the hospital, Ross had explained, for nights on call, but home was further away, and by the time they got there it was coming up for five. As they slid into his long driveway, she saw the tumbled old house and sprawling grounds. For the first time since she had been awoken by a journalist at five a.m., asking her to offer a comment, Annika didn’t have to remember to breathe.
It just happened.
And when she stepped out of the car she saw all the flowers waving in the breeze—the same kind of flowers he had brought for her.
Ross had picked them.
The inside was scruffy, but nice: boots in the hallway, massive couches, and a very tidy kitchen, thanks to the cleaner who was just leaving.
‘Hungry?’ Ross asked, and she gave a small shrug.
‘A bit.’
‘I’ll pack a picnic.’
‘Am I to learn to ride in my uniform?’
He laughed and found her some jodhpurs that he said belonged to one of his sisters, some boots that belonged to someone else, though he wasn’t sure who, and an old T-shirt of his.
Annika didn’t know what she was doing here.
But it was like a retreat and she was grateful for it.
She was grateful too for familiarity in the strangest of places. There were pictures of Iosef there with Ross, from twenty years old to the present day. They grew up before her eyes as she walked along the hallway—and, though she had never really discussed the Detsky Dom with her brother, somehow with Ross she could.
‘I expected them to be more miserable,’ Annika said, staring at a photo of some grinning, pimply-faced teenagers, with Ross and Iosef beaming in the middle. It was a Iosef she had never seen.
‘Our soccer team had just won!’ Ross grinned at the memory. ‘It’s not all doom and gloom.’
‘I know,’ Annika said, glad that now she did, because there were so many questions she felt she couldn’t ask her brothers.
‘There’s an awful lot of love there,’ Ross said, ‘there’s just not enough to go around. The staff are wonderful …’
And she was glad to hear that.
She was glad too when she walked back into the kitchen. They had had very little conversation—she was too tired and confused and brain-weary to talk—but he got one essential thing out of the way.
He held her.
It was as if he had been waiting for her, and she stepped so easily into his arms. She never cried, and she certainly wouldn’t now, but it had been a horrible day, a rotten day, and although Iosef, Annie, Aleksi, her friends, would all do their best to offer comfort—she was sure of that—Ross was far nicer. He didn’t ask, or make her explain, he just held her, and the attraction that had always been there needed no explanation or discussion. It just was. It just is, Annika thought.
His chest smelt as she remembered. He was, she decided as she rested in his arms, an absolute contradiction, because he both relaxed and excited her. She could feel herself unwind. She felt the hammer of his heart in her ear and looked up.
‘One kiss,’ she said.
‘Look where that got us last time.’
‘Just one,’ Annika said, ‘to chase away the day.’
So he kissed her. His lovely mouth kissed hers and her wretched day disappeared. He tasted as unique as he had the first time he’d kissed her, as if blended just for her. His mouth made hers an expert. They moved as if they were reuniting, tongues blending and chasing. His body was taut, and made hers do bold things like press a little into him. Her fingers wanted to hook into the loop of his belt and pull him in harder, and so she did. Their breathing was ragged and close and vital, and when he pulled back he gave her that delicious smile.
‘Come on.’
He gave her his oldest, slowest, most trustworthy horse to ride, and helped her climb on, but even as the horse moved a couple of steps she felt as if the ground was giving way and let out a nervous call.
‘Sit back in the saddle.’ Ross grinned. ‘Just relax back into it.’
She felt as if she would fall backwards, or slide off, every muscle in her body tense as they clopped at a snail’s pace out of the stables.
‘Keep your heels down,’ Ross said, as if it were that easy. Every few steps she lost a stirrup, but the horse, along with Ross, was so endlessly patient that soon they were walking. Annika concentrated on not leaning forward and keeping her heels down, and there was freedom, the freedom of thinking about nothing other than somehow staying on. After a little while Ross goaded her into kicking into a trot.
‘Count out loud if it helps.’ He was beside her, holding his own reins in one hand as she bumped along. It was exciting for maybe thirty seconds, as she found her rhythm and then lost it. She pulled on the reins to stop, and then the only thing Annika could do was laugh. She laughed with a strange freedom, exhilaration ripping through her, and Ross was laughing too.
‘Better?’
‘Much.’ She was breathless—from laughing, from riding, from dragging in the delicious scent of dusk, and then, when she slid off the horse and he spread out a picnic, she was breathless from just looking at him.
‘It helped,’ Annika said. ‘You were right.’
‘After a bad day at work,’ Ross said, ‘or a difficult night, this is what I do and it works every time.’ He gave her a smile. ‘It worked for me today.’
‘Was today a bad day?’ Annika asked, and he looked at her.
‘Today was an exceptionally bad day.’
‘Really?’ She cast her mind back. Was there something she had missed on the ward? An emergency in ICU, perhaps?
But Ross smiled. ‘I had a meeting with the CEO!’
‘I wondered what was with the suit.’
‘On my return they want me to commit to a three-year contract. So far I have managed to avoid it …’
‘Does a three-year contract worry you?’
‘More the conditions.’ He gave a tight smile. ‘I’m a good doctor, Annika, but apparently wearing a suit every day will make me a better one.’
‘At least it’s not an apron,’ she joked, but then she was serious. ‘You are a good doctor—but why would you commit if you are not sure it is what you want?’
And never, not once, had he had that response.
Always, for ever and always, it had been, ‘It’s just a suit. What about the mortgage? What if …?’
‘I love my job,’ Ross said.
‘Do you love the kids or the job?’ Annika checked, and Ross smiled again. ‘There will always be work for you, Ross.’
‘I’ve also been worrying about you.’
‘You don’t have to worry about me.’
‘Oh, but I do.’
They ate cold roast beef and hot mustard sandwiches and drank water. The evening was so still and delicious, so very relaxing compared to the drama waiting for her at home.
‘I should get back …’ She was lying on her back, staring up at an orange sky, inhaling the scent of grass, listening to the sounds of the horses behind them. Ross was so at ease beside her—and she’d never felt more at home with another person.
She looked over to him, to the face that had taken her breath away for so long now, and he was there, staring back and smiling.
A person, Annika reminded herself, who barely knew her—and if he did …
If she closed her eyes, even for a moment, she knew she would remember his kiss, knew where another kiss might lead, right here, where the air was so clear she could breathe, the sky so orange and the grass so cool.
‘I should get back,’ she said again. She didn’t want to, but staying would be far too dangerous.
‘You don’t have to go,’ Ross said.
‘I think I do,’ was her reluctant reply. ‘Ross, it’s too soon.’
‘Annika, you are welcome to stay. I’m not suggesting a weekend of torrid sex.’ Low in her stomach, something curled in on itself. ‘Though of course …’ he grinned ‘… that can be an optional extra …’ And then he laughed, and so too did she. ‘There’s a spare room, and you’re more than welcome to use it. If you want a break, a bit of an escape, here’s the perfect place for it. I can go and stay at the flat if you prefer …’
‘You’d offer me your home?’
‘Actually, yes!’ Ross said, surprised at himself, watching as she turned on her phone again and winced at the latest flood of incoming messages. ‘Hell, I can’t imagine what you have to go home to.’
‘A lot,’ Annika admitted. ‘I have kept my phone off all day.’
‘You can keep it off all weekend if you like.’
Oh, she could breathe—not quite easily, but far more easily than she had all day.
‘I don’t want to stay here alone.’
‘Then be my guest,’ he said.
‘I have a shift at the nursing home tomorrow night.’
‘I’m not kidnapping you—you’re free to come and go,’ Ross replied, and after a moment she nodded.
‘I’d love to stay, but I should let Aleksi know.’
She rang her brother, and Ross listened as she checked if he was okay and reassured him that she was fine.
‘I’m going to have my phone off,’ Annika said. ‘Tell Mum not to worry.’
He busied himself packing up the picnic, but he saw her run a worried hand through her hair.
‘No, don’t—because I’m not there,’ she said. ‘I’m staying with a friend.’ She caught his eye. ‘No, I’d rather not say. Just don’t worry.’
She clicked off her phone and stood. Ross called the horses, and they walked them slowly back.
‘It’s nice,’ Annika said. ‘This …’ She looked over to him. ‘Do your grandparents have horses?’
‘They do.’
And he’d so longed for Spain, longed for his native land, yearned to discover all that had seemed so important, so vital, but right now he had it all here, and the thought of Spain just made him homesick.
Homesick for here.
It was relaxing, settling the horses for the night, then heading back to his house.
‘Have a bath,’ Ross suggested.
‘I have nothing to change into. Maybe I should drive back and pack. I haven’t got anything.’
‘You don’t need anything,’ Ross said. ‘My sisters always leave loads of stuff—they come and stay with the kids some weekends when I’m on call.’ He went upstairs and returned a few moments later with some items of clothing and a large white towelling robe. ‘Here.’ He handed her a toothbrush. ‘Still in its wrapper—you’re lucky I did a shop last week.’
‘Very lucky.’
