Pippa's Cornish Dream

DEBBIE JOHNSON

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HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2015

Copyright © Debbie Johnson 2015

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the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007594566

Version 2018-02-15

Praise for Cold Feet at Christmas

‘Fun, sexy and fabulously festive…I enjoyed every minute of it.'

Bestselling author Jane Costello

'A real feel-good book that had me smiling, purring and laughing in equal measure'

Becca's Books

'It is without a doubt one of the best Christmas reads I’ve ever read…It is fabulous!'

The Book Geek Wears Pyjamas

'A fun and flirty Christmas romance with plenty of steamy moments, this book is anything but cold.'

Book Chick City

'This is the most wonderful Christmas novel to curl up with during the cold months. I loved it.’

Girls Love To Read

'Currently holding a spot in my heart for favourite Chick Lit heroine of the year (possibly of all time…).'

Chick Lit Love

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Cold Feet at Christmas

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Also by Debbie Johnson …

Debbie Johnson

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

“Looking hot today, babe,” Pippa Harte said out loud as she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror.

If, she thought ruefully, your definition of “hot” ran to electric-shock hair dragged back into an elastic band, smudges of oil as blusher and WD40 as perfume. Not to mention the glamorous accessories – elbow-length green rubber gloves, fresh from the Paris catwalk. Ooh la la!

In her hand she was wielding a toilet brush, the bristles wrapped in a plastic carrier bag from the local supermarket, the handles tied in a dangling bow around the pole.

“Well, here goes nothing…” she muttered, gazing down into the bowl of the loo. The very blocked bowl of the loo. The water was already up to the rim and one more flush was likely to send it over the edge. She’d been there before and knew that this one bit of dodgy plumbing was capable of recreating scenes from the Titanic.

Not, she thought, this time. This time, she would triumph – using her scientific know-how to defeat the Evil Bog of Destiny. She plunged the toilet brush in, shoved it hard and as far into the U-bend as she could. Create a vacuum, she recited in her head, then nature will fill it…

She sent up a quick prayer to the Patron Saint of Holiday Home Owners and tugged the flush handle, simultaneously pulling the wrapped brush out with a flourish. She stood back, prepared to jump aside if the floodgates opened, and looked on with something akin to joy as the water ebbed, flowed and swirled – all the way down the pipes!

“Yay!” she shouted, doing a victory jig around the room and out into the landing of Honeysuckle Cottage, “I did it! I am woman! I created a vacuum! Yay! Thank you YouTube!”

She was so happy, she managed to ignore two things – the tiny drops of toilet water flying from the plastic bag as she danced, and the man who had been standing outside in the hallway watching her. She jigged her way smack bang into him and dropped the brush in shock. It landed with a soggy, plastic plop on his expensive-looking walking boots. Oops!

“Oh!” she said, jumping back in surprise. “I’m so sorry…don’t worry, it was clean water…” she added, using her wellies to toe the offending item away. “Not like last time…that was, well. Yuk. You probably don’t want to know…”

She looked up, a wide grin cracking her oil-smudged face – nothing could bring her down, she decided, not after that minor miracle. And really, nothing she was looking at could dissuade her that the patron saint hadn’t been listening after all – he was gorgeous. Six-two or thereabouts; broad shoulders packed up in a khaki-green Berghaus; long legs in denim; and the deepest, darkest brown eyes she’d ever seen on a human. Really, even the dairy cows she knew up close and personal couldn’t compete. A wide mouth, kissable lips and dark, longish hair drifting over tanned, outdoorsy skin, damp from the drizzle outside. Or possibly the toilet brush, she thought with a twinge of guilt. Welcome to Cornwall.

“Are you Mr Retallick?” she asked, knowing the names of all her guests in advance. This one was early, but she wouldn’t let that sour her mood. Not when the gods of the toilet had smiled upon her so warmly.

“I am – I hope it’s okay to be here a few hours ahead of schedule? You seemed to be having some kind of rave…” he said, gesturing into the bathroom. His voice was deep and sounded like chocolate would if it could talk.

“Yes, that’s what we do for fun around here, bathroom raving – the more the merrier, Mr Retallick, feel free to join in!”

She rubbed her face, realising that using a flirtatious tone with a handsome stranger might work better if she didn’t look like a teenage grease monkey. The dungarees she wore were practical when she was doing her jobs around the farm, but it wasn’t what you’d call chic. Mr Retallick – Ben, if she remembered rightly – looked like money. And style. And sex. He wouldn’t look twice at a girl like her, even if she did have world-class DIY skills.

“I was just celebrating,” she added. “I used my superior intellect to defeat the evil toilet, you see.”

“You’re celebrating the fact that you have a superior intellect to a toilet?” he asked, shrugging off his backpack and raising an amused eyebrow.

“Well, us country girls have to take our victories where we can find them, Mr Retallick…Retallick…that’s a local name, isn’t it?” she asked. It didn’t seem likely that anyone from North Cornwall was coming on holiday to North Cornwall, but stranger things had happened. Maybe his wife had kicked him out, she thought, glancing surreptitiously at his ring finger. His bare ring finger. Not that she cared.

“Yes, I had family here once,” he answered. “Long gone now.”

He was perfectly polite, but something in his voice told her to back off. That was fine by her – she knew enough about families to understand that they were complicated. Her own, for example, was so weird you could make a sitcom about it. A lot of people came to Harte Farm for privacy, peace, seclusion. Which was a good job, as it was perched on top of a windswept hill overlooking the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean – not the place for a buzzing social life. If Mr Retallick wanted to be left alone, she would respect that. Even if he was the hottest thing in hotsville.

“How’s it going in there?” he asked, gesturing towards the bathroom, where her various tools lay scattered on the harlequin-tiled floor. Not the best of first impressions, she thought, gathering them all back up and stowing them in her dad’s old metal box. But then again, that’s what you got when you turned up two hours before check-in. Behind the exterior of every chocolate-box-perfect holiday cottage lies a potential plumbing disaster – one she couldn’t afford to pay a professional to deal with.

“Fine and dandy, I assure you,” she replied, wiping her oil-smeared hands down on her dungarees.

“I’m Pippa Harte, welcome to our farm,” she said. “I’d offer you my hand but – ”

“I don’t know where it’s been?” he finished, his face deadpan but his tone amused. He was one of those chaps, she thought. Not one for belly laughs and grin-fests, but dry and witty. She liked those chaps. Or she used to, back in the day when she had anything to do with chaps at all.

“Well, I think you know exactly where it’s been – that’s the problem! You’re staying for a week aren’t you, Mr Retallick? Lovely weather you have for it!”

As the skies had been lashing a steady drizzle for the last two days, slanted almost horizontal by the gale-force winds, she was obviously joking. A lot of guests would have complained – city types in particular seemed to think the countryside should come with guaranteed sunshine whenever they visited – but he just shrugged those actually-now-you-mention-it-pretty-awesome shoulders and made a “them’s the breaks” comment.

Pippa stared at him as he unzipped his coat, wondering if they’d met before. It wasn’t just the Cornish name – it was the face. The eyes in particular. They were pretty spectacular eyes, after all, and she had the uncanny feeling she’d looked into them before.

“Have we met?” she asked. “You look really familiar…”

His face changed as fast as a storm raging in from the sea, the already dark eyes shading even deeper, a frown marring the skin of his fine, strong forehead. She felt a rebuff coming on and prepared to handle it. She’d been running this holiday business practically single-handed for three years now and had learned to deal with all kinds of strange visitors and their foibles.

As he opened his mouth to speak, the front door flew open and Daisy ran in, blonde curls swirling in a wild, tangled halo around her face. Predictably enough Lily followed, hot on her heels and just as flustered.

Daisy screeched, “SpongeBob’s escaped again! She’s –” “– pooing all over the courtyard!” finished Lily. They were identical twins, nine years old, and never seemed to be able to complete a sentence without each other’s help. Which was at least an improvement on the secret language they’d used exclusively until they were seven. Pippa had been on the verge of calling in an exorcist when they suddenly stopped, although she still occasionally heard them gibbering together at night in their bedroom. Still, as long as their heads weren’t spinning round, she was happy.

“Oh…sausages!” said Pippa, vaulting over Mr Retallick’s rucksack and sprinting out and around the back to the courtyard. Sure enough, there was SpongeBob – that’s what happens when you let kids name cows – munching away on the hydrangeas. She looked up as Pippa approached, her wide mouth sliding slowly from side to side as she chewed, her long-lashed eyes placid. At least to the untrained eye. Pippa had tangled with SpongeBob one too many times to be tricked.

“Daisy, Lily! One to the left, one to the right!” she shouted. “Scotty – I know you’re out there somewhere – get the gate open!”

On cue, a little boy of about four, with the same long, wild blonde hair, appeared from behind the decorative water trough and ran over to a broad metal gate, reaching up on tiptoes to unhook the blue nylon string that tied it closed.

Pippa advanced steadily, hopping over the steaming gifts that SpongeBob had deposited on the cobbles, muttering the fake swear words she used in front of the kids – variations of “sugar”, “broomsticks”, “rubber ducks” and her personal favourite, “molluscs!” She noticed Mr Retallick coming closer from the corner of her eye and shouted out to him, “Don’t be fooled! I know she looks like a pin-up, but this is the Osama bin Laden of cows! Best stay away!”

He nodded and instead headed towards the metal feed bucket that had been abandoned next to the gate. He picked it up and banged it with his fist so the contents rattled. SpongeBob looked up and over, her broad head turning towards the noise. Her eyes narrowed – Pippa swore they did – as she thought about it. Weighed up the pros and cons in her big cow brain.

Mr Retallick shook the feed bucket some more and walked through the gate towards the barn. Pippa walked closer to the cow, making gentle shooing gestures with her hands. Daisy and Lily edged in nearer on either side and Pippa could see their tiny blonde heads reflected in SpongeBob’s huge, liquid brown pupils. They patted her on the side and Pippa gave a delicate shove from the rear, careful to avoid clomping hooves and swishing tails that could catch you in the eye if the animal got her dander up.

Finally, the combination of carrot and stick worked and she lumbered slowly towards the gate, after one final defiant munch of bright-purple hydrangea petals. She still had one dangling from her mouth as she walked.

“Into the barn!” shouted Pippa, watching as her early guest nodded and strode forward, angling long legs over the muddy puddles, leading the evil cow genius right inside. He smacked her on the behind as she wandered through and SpongeBob turned to give him the evil-cow genius eye. He gave her the eye back before shutting and latching the barn door.

Then he stood, hands on hips, threw his head back and laughed. Laughed long and hard, and loud. Pippa looked on in fascination, drinking in the sight of this stunning male specimen standing in her farmyard in the rain. Drizzle dripped from his soaked hair, over his forehead, along the slightly aquiline ridge of his nose, down to the sensual curve of his wide mouth. He really was drop-dead gorgeous. And even better, seemed to know his way around a cow. Wow! The perfect man. Now, if he could iron school uniforms and turn into a pizza after sex, even better.

The children scurried closer, looking at him with similar curiosity, Scotty clutching onto her hand for security. The twins were fearless, but her baby? He always needed an extra layer of security. Which was fine by her – as long as he still wasn’t climbing into bed for cuddles when he was 16, she would always be available for hand-holding. She gave his fingers a little squeeze of reassurance.

“Thank you, Mr Retallick,” she said. “ I see you’ve spent some time in the company of cows before?”

“There are many answers to that, Miss Harte, but I’ll restrain myself – and it was my pleasure. Been a while since I was at the business end of a Friesian. This used to be a dairy farm, didn’t it?”

“Yes. 500 head. But my parents…aren’t here any more. It’s just us. So we converted to holiday lets. A working farm is – well, a lot of work. Too much for this gang of troublemakers, anyway.”

“By ‘us’, you mean…” he cast his spookily sexy brown eyes over the gathered crowd, which now numbered Pippa, Daisy, Lily, Scotty, a nanny goat called Ben Ten and a pair of Muscovy ducks known as Phineas and Ferb. In fact, Pippa thought, there was only one person missing. As usual.

“Yes. Us. These are my brothers and sisters, and our animal friends,” she said, introducing them all individually. “And there’s one missing. Patrick. He’s seventeen, and he’ll be the one hiding somewhere after leaving the barn door open.”

“Again!” said Lily and Daisy in unison, rolling their eyes in a way that spoke volumes about Patrick and his various misdemeanours.

“You look after all of…these?” said Ben Retallick, frowning as he looked at this slip of a girl, smudged in oil, crazy blonde hair escaping in corkscrew tufts from an elastic band, soaking wet in her torn dungarees.

He couldn’t quite believe that she was playing mother hen to this whole brood. She only looked about eighteen herself, which had been giving him some major fits of the guilts since he’d arrived. The minute he’d seen her leaning over that broken lav, pert butt in the air, he’d noticed the fact she wore nothing but a tatty hot-pink t-shirt beneath those dungarees. He’d been working very hard not to notice how tight it was – or the fact that she didn’t have a bra on – ever since. It had been difficult to know where to look. He had enough self-loathing going on as it was, without adding perving over a teenager to the list. And now it seemed he’d been wrong – she must be a bit older than that, surely, to have all this responsibility resting on those slender shoulders?

“Yes, Mr Retallick,” she said firmly, drawing herself up to her full height – which had to be all of five foot three in her ancient Hunter wellies – and fixing him with kind of withering look clearly intended to make parts of him shrivel up and die. “I do indeed look after all of…these. We live together in an old shoe on top of the hill. Now, thanks for your help, and feel free to take yourself right back to Honeysuckle and settle in.”

Her tone had changed – the easy humour and casual flirtation of earlier had disappeared – and instead she sounded wary, formal. Mightily huffy, in fact. He’d upset her without even trying – a specialist subject of his. He felt a shiver run through him: not fear, not quite, but a spark of something…admiration, he thought. That was it. This tiny woman, almost a child from the looks of it, was swollen up with pride and fury and protective instinct. He’d poked a stick at her family, and now she was preparing to shove it right where the sun doesn’t shine. Which, he thought, looking around him at the familiar farmyard, was pretty much everywhere in Cornwall right now.

“Right. I’ll do just that,” he said. “See you around, Pippa. Daisy. Lily. Scotty. Ben Ten. Phineas and Ferb. Give my regards to Madame SpongeBob.”

He nodded at each of them individually as he turned to walk away, and Pippa felt her anger soften down to mild irritation. He’d remembered all of their names. Even the animals. That was pretty much a first in her experience; even she forgot them sometimes, resorting to “You, there, with the feathers!”, or “Oi! Boy child!”

Maybe he wasn’t that bad after all, she thought. Possibly he was just one of those unintentionally rude people who doesn’t realise they’re being offensive. Or possibly, she admitted, she was just one of those unintentionally prickly people who don’t realise they’re being defensive. She’d had a lot to defend over the years, and when it came to the kids and her ability to care for them, defensive was her default setting. None of which was tall, dark and cow-handy’s fault.

She chased after him as he strode away, wellies squelching in the mud.

“Wait!” she shouted, tugging hold of his arm to stop him. “Where do I know you from, really? You’re so familiar…” she said, realising as she touched it that his arm was solid as the oaks shading the side of the farm driveway. He looked city, but he felt country. He felt good.

The shutters went down again and he glanced at her clinging hand, raising his eyebrow eloquently: Back Off, Broomstick, clear as day.

Ben sighed, watched as her hand peeled away from his arm. She was the same as all the rest. Just another stranger who felt she knew him. Not quite there yet, still piecing it together, but give it a few minutes – she’d match the face with the name, with the story, with the legend. And she’d assume she knew him inside out. They all did.

He felt the familiar sense of frustration rise within him. It had been over a year since his release from prison, but still people stopped him. Still people chatted to him, touched him without permission, slapped him on the back and tried to shake his hand. Congratulated him, told him well done, like he was a hero for having survived eight months in HMP Scorton. He hated it. The lack of privacy, the pictures in the paper, the feeling of having his whole life played out in public. In fact, he’d come here to try and escape exactly that – back here to this isolated stretch of Cornish coastline, where the cows outnumbered the people and the internet was patchy at best. He’d hoped to have a week of solitude, without any prying eyes or being expected to bare his soul to complete strangers. Which showed what he knew – even here, his face was known.

Pippa stared at him intently, rubbing her cheeks and smudging that oil patch even harder into the milky-smooth velvet of her skin. Huge, cornflower-blue eyes. English rose all the way, if English roses had taken to abandoning the need for underwear and had just trodden in a cow pat.

He waited the few beats he knew it would take, saw the confusion in her eyes clear as she finally recognised him. Never mind, he thought. He could leave in the night; find somewhere even more deserted. Somewhere his face wouldn’t be known. Somewhere they wouldn’t have him pegged as the UK’s most popular jailbird. Somewhere he wouldn’t have to face someone who thought they knew him, thought they understood his story.

She pointed one grimy finger at him, and said, triumphantly: “You! I’ve figured it out! I know who you are! You’re that bastard who threw me in the duckpond when I was seven!”

Chapter 2

Ben stared back at her, wondering if he’d fallen into some kind of wormhole and landed in an alternative reality. Okay. She did recognise him – but not for the reasons he’d assumed. She hadn’t got a clue who Ben Retallick really was, had never heard of his case, never heard of Darren McConnell, and clearly hadn’t got any idea that he was one of the most famous criminals in the country. He’d assumed she would be like all the rest – about to quiz him, prod him, look at him with that familiar mix of admiration and fear.

Well…she hadn’t. She seemed to have him pegged for a far more historic crime – one he couldn’t even remember. Maybe he’d started to believe his own hype…

“It was a long time ago – fourteen years or something like it – but I know it was you, there’s no point denying it!” she said, almost jumping up and down in her excitement. Again, he studiously avoided looking at her upper half. She might be twenty-one, if he had the maths right there, but it was still a decade or so younger than him. It was still…wrong. And he’d worked very hard at avoiding women altogether since he’d been released. Since Johanna and her family made it clear they wanted nothing to do with a common-or-garden ex-con, no matter how justified his actions had been. Johanna – his fiancée when the incident that changed his life forever had occurred – had disappeared as fast as his career. She was engaged again now, he heard, to some corporate lawyer in Abu Dhabi. Good luck to her. And him, poor bastard – he’d need it.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about,” he replied, ragging himself back to the here, the now, and to Pippa – wondering if she’d accidentally sniffed some adhesive while she was fixing the loo.

She poked him in the chest with one finger – hard enough that it made him take a step back.

“You remember! Of course you do! It was ages ago, and you were here with your…grandfather, I think? Is that right? He was talking to my dad about some business thing or another, and you stayed here for a couple of nights. I was seven, so Patrick would have been, well, about three, and the twins and Scotty didn’t even exist then. You seemed really glamorous, all the way from London – don’t you remember, really?”

She gazed up at him expectantly, eyes huge and sparkling, and he realised he didn’t want to disappoint her, didn’t want to dismiss what was clearly still vivid in her mind – but he genuinely couldn’t remember.

“I know I came here,” he said, screwing his eyes up in concentration. “It’s one of the reasons I booked my stay. I was eighteen, I think, spending the summer with my granddad before I went off to uni. I was bored rigid. There were…yes, there were some kids, I remember now!”

He cast his mind back: eighteen. Jesus. A whole lifetime ago. His parents had just moved to Australia and he was packed off to his granddad for a few months, filling in time until he started his law degree.

It was a different world back then. A world of youthful arrogance and easy potential and the safe and certain knowledge that the whole universe was his for the taking. An endless summer of heat and rain and surfing; blonde-haired girls with skin that tasted of saltwater; of working on his grandfather’s farm and drinking cider and planning the rest of his life. His granddad, a wizened old man with a leanly corded body even in his seventies, had brought him to Harte Farm to discuss a joint venture with the vaguely hippy-ish couple who owned it. They were organic, he thought – ahead of their time.

And there were kids, yes, now he thought about it. A sulky brat of a boy, who had a habit of hiding and spying, and a hooligan girl with wild hair and a tendency to walk around naked. He looked at Pippa again. At the windswept tresses, roughly tied up into a boisterous ponytail. At the braless chest beneath the hot-pink jersey.

Really? Could that be her? All grown up, in ways you can never imagine when they’re seven and you’re eighteen? When that feels like a world of difference, the unthinkable rather than the inadvisable?

“You jumped on my head,” he said, smiling at the memory. He saw it now: he’d had a hangover, as was usual back then. Too much scrumpy the night before. He’d been trying to sleep it off in the fields, found a patch of shade beneath the spreading arms of one of the old oaks that dotted the place. Half asleep, dreaming of London and home and those sailing girls with the salty skin and dirty laughs.

She’d yelled, like Boadicea screaming out a war cry, and launched herself from the lower branches of the tree, landing straight on top of him. He’d never even noticed her – she’d been wearing camouflage paint, greened-up like Rambo, hiding in the dappled leaves. Twigs stuck in her hair, soles of her bare feet covered in mud from running wild all day.

It amused him to think of it now, but he’d been a bit embarrassed at the time. Shocked out of his stupor by Stig of the Dump, caught out by a kid. A strange and slightly scary kid, who seemed to have made him the target of some kind of farm-based war game. God knows how long she’d been up there, watching him as he snored and drooled and sweated cider.

He’d picked her up by the skinny ankles and run all the way across the field, dangling her inches from the ground. She screamed and yelled and twisted herself up to try and scratch him, but he held firm until he reached the duck pond – where he’d swung her back and forth as if he was winding up for the Olympic discus, then let her fly through the air and land with a huge splash in the middle of the water.

His grandfather had given him a right telling off – what if she couldn’t swim? What if she’d banged her head? What if she’d squashed a duck? But her parents, they’d been cool. Just laughed and said it served her right – she was a little savage and deserved a bit of her own medicine. Yeah, they’d been cool, and from what she said a few minutes ago, they were gone now. They might have taken off for a commune in Marrakesh, but he got the impression that wasn’t what she’d meant. Rather that they were dead, like his grandfather. That the little girl he remembered had had to grow up very quickly, and way too soon.

“You remember now, don’t you?” she asked, laughing. “You remember my war cry?”

She let it out again and he heard Scotty, Lily and Daisy join in in the background. My God! A whole family of them! Savages, one and all.

“Okay, okay…I surrender!” he said, holding up his hands in the universal gesture of giving up. “I do remember now – but you can’t blame me for not recognising you. You have changed a bit, you know? You’re more…”

He floundered, trying to find a word that didn’t sound lecherous, curling fingers against his palm in case they accidentally made the equally universal gesture for “curvy-woman shaped”.

“Yes?” she said, hitching an eyebrow up at him suggestively. “More what, precisely?”

He looked awkward, less self-assured and arrogant. The tiny lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled up, showing white beneath his healthy outdoorsy tan. She’d had a terrible crush on him back then, Pippa remembered. He’d been this tall, handsome, exotic stranger and she used to sneak around following him. Obviously, she barely registered on his all-grown-up radar. The scream-and-jump routine had just been her way of getting his attention. Her pick-up techniques had improved…well, not significantly since then, she acknowledged. It’s not like she’d had much practice.

“Just…more,” he said, finally, gazing over her shoulder as though he was trying to avoid making eye contact with her. “Who’s that?” he asked, chocolate-drop eyes narrowing.

“What? Who?” blathered Pippa, who’d been slightly lost in thought as she looked up at his face. How could she not have remembered him straight away? He’d been the first love of her life, and had broken her tiny heart by dunking her in the duck pond – which, she had to admit, she thoroughly deserved.

She turned, following his gaze. Saw a plume of black smoke, then heard the bang. The scrape. The crash and grind of metal clashing on the gravel.

“Oh,” she said, the fun fading from her cornflower eyes, “that. That’s Patrick. On his bike. Or off it, perhaps.”

“Has he…just crashed it? Is he all right?” said Ben, watching as the gunmetal smoke funnelled up into the equally grey sky. This was all a bit surreal, as though he’d wandered into an episode of the Twilight Zone. And he’d thought his life was odd.

“Yes, he’s just crashed it,” she replied, setting off at a fast clip towards the scene of the accident, “and yes he’ll be all right. He crashes it at least once a day, just to keep me on my toes. Don’t feel obliged to follow – he’ll just be a pig to you. You’ll want to thump him and I’ll feel embarrassed.”

“Well, with an offer like that! How could I refuse?” he answered, striding to keep up with her. She seemed relaxed – if a little downtrodden – but he thought he’d better tag along, just in case this was the one time the crash-test dummy had taken his antics a step too far.

The younger children trailed behind them and he felt a tiny hand creep into one of his. The little boy. Scotty. The kid looked up at him, the same glowing, healthy looks as the rest of them. They all looked like adverts for Scandinavian log cabins, with their shining blonde hair and big blue eyes. Thoroughly disconcerting.

“Don’t worry,” said Lily – or maybe Daisy – as they passed. “Patrick’s just a bit of a mollusc,” said the other one, completing the sentence.

The mollusc in question was sprawled on the path, one of his legs trapped beneath what looked like an old Kawasaki. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and his hair – predictably blonde, but a lot dirtier than the others’ – was splayed across a face that was scratched raw with gravel burn. It had to hurt and would be a swine to clean with all those tiny scrapes pockmarked with even tinier stones.

Pippa paused, her lips twisting into a grimace, then walked over without a word. She leaned down, picked up the bike and threw it to one side. It bounced, the spokes whirring in the wind. Wow, thought Ben, she was stronger than she looked. Or maybe, he realised, it was just that she’d had a lot of practice – nobody was reacting as though this was an unusual occurrence, not even the younger kids. In fact, Daisy and Lily had their arms crossed over their chests and were mimicking the exasperated expression their big sister was wearing. Lord help the local boys with those two when they were older!

“This,” she said, kicking her younger brother in his good leg with her mud-coated wellie, “is Patrick. Patrick, this is Ben Retallick. He’s staying in Honeysuckle for the week. If you could try and avoid hitting him with the death machine, blowing up his belongings or stealing his car, I’d really appreciate it. What do you say?”

The teenager gazed up at them all, looking from his stern big sister to a confused-looking Ben. His sullen face, seared red by his scrapes, broke into a huge grin.

“Wow, sis!” he said, brushing himself down and standing up. “Do you know who this is?”

“Yes, Patrick, I do,” she replied, sighing. “It’s Ben Retallick. The boy who threw me in the duck pond when I was seven.”

“Nah,” he replied, staring at Ben as if he was the only interesting thing he’d ever seen in his whole existence. “This is Ben Retallick – that posh lawyer who got sent down for beating the shit out of some loser who got off with it. You remember? Bad Boy Ben, they called him – it was all over the bloody newspapers! Put the bloke in hospital for weeks! You treat me like I’m dirt ‘cause PC Plod in the village has a whinge about me, sis, but you’ve gone and invited a proper ex-con into the family home – what will people say?”

Chapter 3

Pippa couldn’t sleep, for about a million and one reasons, not all of them involving caffeine. After he’d dropped his bombshell – thrilled that he’d got one over on her – Patrick had limped off to the village saying he was going butterfly-hunting. That was a lie, clearly, and not even a good one. He was going to the pub. Everyone knew he was under-age, but as his birthday was only a few weeks off, the eyes of the staff were well and truly turned. They didn’t see the harm – mainly because they didn’t have to deal with the fallout. She was lucky enough to have that plum job.

He still wasn’t back and she knew there was a strong possibility he wouldn’t be – that he’d spend the night crashed out on a pal’s sofa, in the nearest hay barn, with one of the girls who seemed smitten by his small-town Steve McQueen routine, or even on the beach. At least he wasn’t on his bike this time, she thought. They’d played out this particular drama a hundred times before, and she knew it called for deep breaths and calming thoughts. He was a big boy – too big for a spanking. Too big for a cuddle. Although she suspected he’d probably needed both on regular occasions over the last few years, and she hadn’t been parent enough to provide either. Possibly because she was only a few years older than him herself – physically, at least.

She’d tossed and turned so many times in her bed, worrying about him, about what he was doing. About what she wasn’t doing. About how she could try and reach him. About how she’d quite like it if he just buggered off and lived somewhere else.

That last one was usually the final stop on the late-night train ride through her brain. She knew Patrick – she loved Patrick. She understood why he was the way he was – but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with.

That’s when she usually reached the point where she had to try and talk herself down, get some rest so she could deal with the challenges of the next day. With the needs of the kids still young enough for her to matter to them – the ones she could still save, if Patrick was determined to plough his own destructive path.

The calming thoughts, though, just weren’t coming that night. They were being chased away by all the anxious thoughts instead. And the anxious thoughts were bigger, nastier and came equipped with badass stun guns.

She couldn’t stop the anxiety flooding over her, dozens of tiny and not-so-tiny concerns drowning her in a crushing wave. Like the fact that the second instalment of the tax bill was due at the end of the next month. That the dishwasher in Primrose needed replacing. That their account at the vet’s was bigger than the national debt of a small African republic. That Social Services were due their quarterly visit in a few weeks’ time, and they’d all need to scrub up, shape up and pass muster. Four times a year she had to prove that she was a suitable person to be raising the kids. That Patrick’s problems weren’t dragging them all down; that Scotty’s issues at school were just due to shyness; that Daisy and Lily were communicating properly with the outside world.

She’d been doing this for years now, since she’d managed to convince them to take a risk on her after the car crash that claimed their parents. She was eighteen at the time and expected to head off to Oxford to study history. One drunk driver changed all that and instead she found herself playing mother to the other four, including baby Scotty. It wasn’t what she’d planned for her life – but she couldn’t stand by and watch them all get split up and packed off into foster care, could she? Not that the thought hadn’t crossed her mind – she was eighteen. Nowhere near old enough to become a mother, she knew. And maybe, she thought, when Patrick was playing up and her self-esteem was hiding somewhere round her ankles, they’d all have been better off if she’d thrown in the towel.

But…well. They’d survived so far and they’d carry on surviving.

She kicked the covers off her with her feet, lying in the dark and staring at the shadowed ceiling, criss-crossed with wooden beams. She glanced at the clock and didn’t like what she saw. Tomorrow was going to be an absolute bastard.

Her brain was just too busy to let her body go to sleep. It was all twisting and turning in there, like a barrel of angry snakes. Patrick, the money, Social Services – and, if she was honest, the man in the cottage across the way. Ben Retallick. Duckpond-slinger, cow-wrangler and convicted criminal.

Patrick’s revelation had shocked her, but not Ben – his face had fallen into a well-worn mask, almost as though he’d been expecting it. As though he’d played this scene out before. No replies, no response to her brother’s mockery or to her perplexed look. He gave them all a polite smile as he backed off, traipsed down the hill and retreated into Honeysuckle. No explanations. No comment at all, in fact. He’d shut the door behind him and never emerged again, not even when the rain cleared up and the sun started to shimmer gold onto the blues and greens of the Atlantic. He looked mega-fit, active, the type who went fell-running or surfing or at least cliff-walking. But he stayed in, presumably Minding His Own Business.

Which was certainly more than she’d managed. As soon as the kids had been packed off to bed – a long, multi-tiered process that involved stories, games of I-Spy, the forcible brushing of teeth and the collection of discarded underwear from the bathroom floor – she’d settled down with too much coffee and hooked up to her patchy internet access. It was frustrating, constantly having to reconnect, but she was used to it. All part of the charm, she told her guests, while swearing silently as she waited for pages to load. All she really wanted to do was watch an hour of crap telly and pass out, but she needed to know more about Ben Retallick. About Patrick’s comments and about the kind of man who was staying in a cottage just a few short steps away from her and her family in the main farmhouse.

The online newspapers were full of stories about him – so much so that she couldn’t believe she’d missed it. He must have been on the TV, on front pages, on billboards. Huge news in the local press. All over the known universe, in fact, and still it had slipped her notice. That’s what running a business and raising four kids did for you, she thought. You lost your grip on the world at large – all that mattered were the concerns of daily life, getting through every blocked toilet and piece of homework and dentist’s visit and random call from the local police. Feeding five humans and a menagerie of animals. Cleaning a farmhouse and three cottages and a barnyard and washing clothes for the whole tribe. Ironing school uniforms and plaiting hair and mowing the lawn and watering the plants and dealing with bookings and bills. It was endless and left approximately zero minutes per day for watching the news or reading tabloids. Frankly, she’d probably have missed a zombie apocalypse until the undead trudged over the hill looking for the next human limb to chomp on.

Now, though, she knew it all. Or at least knew what had been reported. She knew that Ben Retallick, up until two years ago, had been a celebrated criminal prosecution barrister living and working in London. He’d come a long way from the days of hangover recovery on a Cornish hillside.

That had all changed when he accepted a case involving Darren McConnell, a man who was accused of swindling pensioners out of their life savings. One of them had been so overcome with guilt at losing his and his wife’s nest egg that he’d committed suicide, leaving evidence for the police of McConnell’s involvement.

Eight other elderly couples came forward with their version of events, claiming McConnell had done the same to them. Ben Retallick, though, had not managed to secure a conviction – the evidence was all circumstantial, leaving the jury with enough doubt that they were unable to convict him.

The rest of the story came out at another court case – Ben’s own. He was charged with criminal assault after beating McConnell so badly he was left with three broken ribs, a broken jaw and concussion. Various versions of events were recalled, but the conclusion seemed to be that McConnell had gone to see the lawyer after the case and thanked him for “letting him off”. During the course of the conversation, he gloated about the fact that he had been guilty all along. That he’d stolen the money, that they’d been “asking for it”, that he had no remorse. That he didn’t give two hoots about the “old codger” who died.

Retallick had snapped and taken a swing at him. A fight ensued, with McConnell coming off much the worse – unsurprising as he was a weasel of man who ended up hospitalised. Ben had been sentenced to a year in jail and disbarred, despite a media campaign that portrayed him as a hero. The press came down mainly on his side, stressing the way the legal system had let the victims down, and that Ben Retallick had finally cracked under the pressure.

He’d never given an interview, never gone on the record outside the court case, never spoken publically about the mess his life was in, even after his release. In fact, he became something of a hermit, with near-legendary status – people snapped pictures of him on their mobiles and posted them on websites, reported sightings of him, wrote messages of support to newspapers. Someone had even set up a fake Twitter account in his name with photoshopped pictures of Big Bad Ben taking down historic villains with a handy right hook.

McConnell might have been the victim – and there were plenty of pictures of him with his taped-up ribs, matching black eyes and head bandage – but Ben came out as the one people sympathised with. Ben Retallick was a criminal – but he was one the nation very much approved of. Despite his silence, newspapers and columnists were still debating the rights and wrongs of the whole fiasco. A convicted criminal or a national hero, depending on your point of view.

Exactly which Ben Retallick was here, with her family, Pippa wondered? Hiding out in Honeysuckle Cottage. Moments away. Probably asleep, although the light was still burning in his bedroom window. What should she do about it? He’d seemed a nice man, a calm man. A thinker, not a fighter. He’d even helped with the recalcitrant cow. Yet the photos didn’t lie – he’d come close to killing McConnell, and no matter how much he might have deserved it, that kind of violence was frightening.

As she often did when she was troubled, Pippa turned to her parents for answers. She twisted around in bed, looked at the framed photo of them on the cabinet. A rare shot of all of them together, Scotty a babe in arms, Patrick lurking in the background, already looking sullen and angry with the world – as though he knew the world was going to punch him in the face even before it actually did.

Marissa and Stuart Harte had been kind people. They never judged and they’d raised their kids to do the same. They were always encouraged to think freely, to use their own instincts. To trust their own feelings. Even if that ended up getting them dunked in a duck pond.

And that, she thought, climbing out of the tangled sheets and pulling on a pair of old tracksuit trousers and a vest top, was exactly what she had to do now. She needed to follow their lead and trust her instincts. Use her own judgement – not that of the tabloid press.

She checked in on the kids as she tiptoed down the hallway, avoiding the patches of old wooden floorboard that creaked – they needed replacing, which was coming in at about number ninety-eight on her to-do list. Daisy and Lily were top-to-tail in one bed, as usual, even though they each had their own, and Scotty was crumpled up in his traditional tiny ball of warm flesh. His hair was too long, she thought, seeing it stuck to his forehead in blonde clumps. She lingered an extra moment, the sweetness of the sight filling her heart and chasing away at least some of the strain of the day. Bless him. He was the anti-Patrick – for now at least. With her parenting skills, though, he could be a criminal mastermind by the time he was ten.

Satisfied they were all firmly in the land of nod, she crept downstairs and slipped out of the side door, crossing the cobbles to Honeysuckle, realising it was too chilly for flip-flops. She paused and looked up at the cottage. The light was still on. She wouldn’t be waking him. And even if she was… well, it had to be done, and it pretty much had to be done now.

She knocked lightly as her hair flew around her face in the wind. Not quite gale force, but the waves would be crashing into the cove. She could hear them rolling in already. She hoped Patrick had found somewhere more civilised to bunk for the night, then switched that train of thought off – there was nothing she could do about Patrick. Not right now, probably not ever.

Ben opened the door, interior light flooding around him as he looked down at her. She took a gulp and hoped it wasn’t audible. He was wearing only a battered pair of faded Levis and his hair was damp from the shower he’d obviously just taken. Tiny droplets of water had scattered over broad shoulders and the moonlight played over the smooth, dark skin of his bare chest, even the small movement of holding the door open showing her the ripple of muscle in his arms. A fine line of silky black hair trailed down into the waistband of his jeans, and she tried not to stare at it. She was here for answers, not to lech, she reminded herself.

“Can I come in?” she asked simply, and he moved back, inviting her into the cottage that technically she owned. She sat down on one of the squashy armchairs and noted the open laptop with a screen full of text, a glass of rich amber liquid next to it. At least she hadn’t woken him. Maybe he had badass stun gun-wielding worries in his brain as well.

“Whisky and work,” he said, grabbing a black t-shirt and pulling it on. “The two essentials of my life. Want one?”

He held up the bottle – the label looked Scottish and expensive – and she shook her head. She rarely ever drank, and this didn’t seem like a good time to start.

“What is work now…after, you know…?” she asked.

He settled down opposite her, looking no less attractive for being clothed, but certainly less distracting.

“Why? Are you worried I won’t be able to pay my bill?”

“That’s not what I meant at all…and I didn’t mean to pry, but I’m sure you can imagine I have some questions.”

“Yeah. I can. To answer one of them, I’m writing a book. My second – the first is due out later this year. And no, it’s not about me and what happened – although there were plenty of offers to do just that. It’s a legal thriller. I’ve wanted to do it for years, but never had the time. Now, I have nothing but time, and a three-book publishing deal to keep me occupied. Next?”

She took a breath, wondered if she should have accepted that whisky after all. Time to belly-flop into the deep end – small talk would get them nowhere.

“I didn’t know anything about it,” she said. “Honestly, I didn’t. To me, you were just the boy from the duck pond. The last few years have been…well, busy. I’ve not exactly been keeping up with current events, and I had no idea what Patrick was talking about earlier. But thanks to the magic of the internet, now I do. Or at least one version of it.”

He was silent, waiting for more. Ben had been expecting this all day, from the minute her oik of a brother had recognised him – expecting to get his marching orders, or to be asked for his autograph. He’d known both to happen. When she didn’t continue, he asked, “Okay. So now you know. Why are you here? Have you come to ask me to leave?”

“No,” she replied simply. “I said I know one version of it. Now, I want to know yours.”

He smiled at her, but to Pippa it looked like a bitter, twisted thing, full of frustration and controlled fury. His eyes were downcast, his hair falling across his forehead. Beneath the thin jersey of his shirt, she could see packed muscle bunching and releasing in tension as he breathed hard and fast. His large hands were clenched into fists, and he was biting down on his lower lip, as though he was trying to keep angry words inside. No, McConnell wouldn’t have stood a chance. And neither would she, if he went all Hulk on her right now.

“Why do you want to know?” he finally said, reaching out and snapping the lid of the laptop shut with a dull thud. “And why should I tell you? I’ve kept quiet all this time. The only person I tried to talk to about it…well, she made her feelings quite clear. She left me as soon as I was found guilty. She didn’t want to know the truth and after that I decided there was nobody else important enough to tell. Certainly not reporters or complete strangers, even one I threw in a duck pond once upon a time. Why should I tell you?”

Pippa leaned towards him, which was harder than it looked in the squashy chair. She stared him in the eye, wanting him to know that she wasn’t going to give up.

“I want to know because you’re living here, with us,” she said. “With my family. With people I love, people it’s my job to protect. That’s the only reason. Believe me, I’ve no interest in the dirty details, or sharing anything with the rest of the world. As I think we’ve already established, I’m not exactly plugged into the rest of the world. I just need to know that I can trust you. My instinct says I can, but I need to hear it from you before I can relax and allow you to remain here with us.

“I’m sorry you were hurt, but that was nothing to do with me, and that’s not my burden to carry. My responsibility to the kids is. So I need you to tell me why you did it. That simple.”

He looked up, surprised at her choice of words. Simple? Nothing about it was simple, he thought. She sat there, swamped in that stupidly chintzy chair, dressed like a homeless teenager, hair falling over her shoulders and back like a yellow waterfall. One flip-flop dangling half off her foot. Her eyes were direct and clear, her expression calm and still. She was waiting for him to reassure her, to tell her his version of events. Wanting him to back up her instincts, but wary. A tigress looking out for her cubs.

Not simple at all – but at least, he supposed, she was giving him a chance. She hadn’t made up her mind, not like Johanna and her family. And, he realised, he believed her when she said she wasn’t looking for the dirty details. She wasn’t prying – she was safeguarding her territory. Could he blame her for that? Wasn’t that what any decent mother would do? It was certainly a better motivation than pure nosiness.

He raked his hands through his hair, reminded himself that he needed to get it cut. Without the need to head into an office every day, these things had a tendency to slip. He sipped the whisky, grimaced as it burned down his throat.

Finally, he looked up. Met the cornflower-blue gaze, glanced at the determined tilt of her head, the stubborn set of her full lips. A child, really. That’s all she was – and yet she was having the strangest effect on him, making him feel calm and settled at the same time she made him feel hyper-aware of her physical presence. The way his body was responding to it. It was hard to think straight and unlikely to get any easier the longer he let this moment linger.

“Some of the stories were right,” he said, staring off through the window into the still darkness of the courtyard. He hadn’t told this story before – not properly – and he needed a small sense of distance to allow him to get the words out.

“It was partly the pressure. I’d been prosecuting for while by then, and I did the best I could. But you always feel the dice are loaded against you. The paperwork, the bureaucracy, the loopholes. McConnell got to me and I shouldn’t have allowed him to. Maybe a year earlier, he wouldn’t have done, who knows? But that case…he was so clearly guilty. He’d destroyed the lives of so many people, older people who’d worked hard all their lives. People like my granddad, who lost his farm to the banks when he couldn’t make farming work any more. Maybe that’s why it touched a nerve, I don’t know.”

He paused, poured himself another drink. God knew he needed it. Pippa remained still and quiet, her legs tucked beneath her as she listened. The neon-orange flip-flops had dropped to the floor, lying there criss-crossed.

“I always knew it would be hard to make the case,” he continued. “The evidence was flimsy, when it came down to it. He’d been clever, covered his tracks well. I knew, his lawyer knew, the jury knew that he’d done it. But the way our system works, we couldn’t make it stick. It was depressing and even before I’d been thinking of quitting. I couldn’t take it much more and watching him walk was the final straw. I thought it was – at least. Until that night, when he found me in my office. He was drunk, been out celebrating his freedom.

“He came to gloat, to push, to confess. Rub my nose in it. He actually laughed about the man who killed himself, said it was survival of the fittest, that he’d done his wife a favour, because at least she had the insurance money now. There was no remorse – he didn’t even see them as people. Just old, weak victims.

“What can I say? I lost my temper. I hit him. He hit me back. We fought. You know what happened next. I shouldn’t have done it – I know that. I’ve always regretted it, not just because of what happened to me, but because it was wrong. Stooping to that level, it made me as bad as the people I’d been trying to put away. The papers can talk as much as they want about me being on the side of the angels, but I was wrong. I’d never done anything like that before and I never will again. Afterwards, when I looked down at him crumpled on the floor of my office, when I called the ambulance and saw my knuckles were scraped and scarred and my hands were covered in his blood, I was sickened. Sickened by what I’d done. What I’d allowed myself to become. And I’ve regretted it every single day since.”

He stopped, looked at her, his eyes shining with the pain of the memory, his voice rough, tense, his breath coming in fierce bursts, as though he’d worn himself out forcing the words she’d asked him to share.

“Is that what you wanted to know?” he asked, as she studied him intently, still silent. “Because I can tell you more…I can tell you how many times I hit him, how it felt when my fist slammed into his jaw; how hard it was to control myself and stop…or do you want to know what prison was like? How I’ve walked outside every single day since I got out, to try and clean myself of the memory? Do you want to know what my fiancée said about it on the day she left me there? Is that what you want to know?”

“No,” Pippa replied quietly, getting to her feet and tugging her top down, tucking stray hair behind her ears. She slipped her feet back into the flip-flops and looked up to face him. “That’s enough. That’s all I need. Thank you for explaining. I know it was hard for you, but I needed to hear it.”

He stood, looked at her, feeling the familiar anguish well up inside him. Waiting for the “but”. It had been a long time since he’d discussed this with anyone and he felt sick to his stomach even thinking about it. The whisky ran warm through him and he realised – completely inappropriately – that it had also been a long time since he’d been with a woman. Almost two years since he’d felt the touch of soft skin, the drape of long hair in his hands, since his fingers had skimmed delicate curves.

He closed that thought down and waited for the verdict, hovering next to her as she prepared to leave. With Johanna, he had expected forgiveness. The reassurance that she loved him and they would get through this together. The touch of her fingers twined in his, the feel of her lips promising she’d be there for him. That she understood, and that she’d wait for him – that they’d still build a life together.

He’d been wrong to expect any of that, and the memory of the cold sheen in her eyes was something he would always carry with him. It had been a stark lesson in what women were capable of: a ruthlessness he’d never seen before. She’d shut him out, closed him down, thrown him out with the trash and moved on to better things. The papers could call him a hero as much as they liked – but headlines didn’t keep you warm at night. They didn’t love you, give you hope or belief in the future. He hadn’t had any of those things for a very long time – thanks to his own actions and Johanna’s response.

And now here he was again, having poured out his heart, waiting for a woman’s verdict – and with almost as much tension as he’d felt in court. This was the part, he knew, where Pippa Harte told him to pack his bags and leave, and did it all with a sweet smile. Off you go, Mr Retallick! Don’t let the barn door hit you on the arse on the way out…He was braced, he was ready. In fact he hadn’t even unpacked at all, just in case – just plugged in the laptop to charge, showered and changed clothes, and left everything else in his bags. He had his polite smile ready for when she told him to sling his hook – or at least phoned him a cab, because he’d drank far too much whisky to be driving.

Instead, she reached out. Took one of his hands and gently squeezed it, as he’d seen her do with Scotty that afternoon. He felt the shock of the unexpected contact like a delicious slap: her slender fingers in his, all that glorious hair only inches away. The tempting shape of her body beneath her shabby old clothes.

“That’s enough,” she said. “The rest is private. I know what I need to know. I’m so sorry that happened to you, all of it. And we’d be glad to welcome you at Harte Farm for as long as you need to stay. Just try and keep a low profile – the last thing I need is the villagers deciding to throw you a street party or storming the castle with pitchforks. But…stay. Enjoy the place, for as long as you’re here.”

He was stunned. Silent. Flooded with emotion at her gentle acceptance, the way she looked up at him, her eyes liquid. Her hand, warm, soft, still in his. Sweet Jesus – this slip of a girl, this virtual stranger, had given him more comfort and consolation in that one short speech than he’d received in the last eighteen months. It warmed him even more than the whisky.

“Thank you,” he murmured, pulling her gently towards him, needing to feel her against him. To share the way he felt, even for a second. She came, taking tiny steps, and laid her head against his chest. He could feel her breath, hot and fast against him; could smell the lavender of her shampoo, the slight tremble in her arms as they slid around his waist, briefly stroking his lower back before she slipped back out of reach.

“Now I’d better get to bed,” she murmured. “Before I start letting out war cries and jumping on your head.”

He watched her go – face flushed, breasts rising and falling, eyes blinking too rapidly – and knew that she’d felt it too. That moment. That magical moment between a man and a woman, where you feel the thrill of potential, the primal joy of heat calling out to heat.

Scarier than a war cry any day, he thought, as the door slammed shut behind her and she disappeared back out into the darkness.

Chapter 4

By the time the roosters started calling, Pippa had already been awake for an hour. Her days always started early, but this, she thought, glugging coffee, was ridiculous. Up and about by 5am, ready to get the feeds done and crack on with some paperwork.

She grimaced as she drank the last cooling dregs, tried to convince herself it was a good head start to the day. Except it didn’t feel like that. She normally valued these quiet hours before the rest of the family got up, the time on her own to think, to plan. To eat chocolate digestives and occasionally have a little cry.

But today was different. Today, she didn’t feel alone – because her head was full of Ben Retallick. Full of his story, his sadness, the pain in his chocolate-brown eyes. Full of the feel of him as they’d embraced, the way it felt to run her fingers over the packed muscle of his back, the way her heart sped up the minute he touched her. It was all…weird.

She wasn’t a blushing virgin by any means, but her sexual experience was limited to one boyfriend several years ago. And when he’d touched her, it certainly hadn’t felt anything like the fireworks that had popped in psychedelic glory when Ben held her the night before.

Growing up on a farm, you got your sex education the natural way – but at no time in her life had she experienced anything like the flood of sensation she’d felt in Ben’s arms.

All he’d done was hold her, wrap her in his arms as she leaned into him. It was comfort, it was innocent. It was one human being in need recognising another. And yet…she’d left Honeysuckle a mess. Knowing that it would have been so easy to raise her head to his, to invite his lips. To invite his touch. To invite absolute chaos into a life that was already pretty ragged around the edges. If he’d wanted more – if he’d wanted to throw her on the floor and ravish her – she wouldn’t have been able to stop him. Wouldn’t have even wanted to. Luckily, she thought, he’d been a gentleman. Even though part of her was wishing he hadn’t been.

She needed to get a grip. She didn’t have the time for a relationship, no matter how much her body told her it wanted one. She didn’t even have time for a mindless quickie on the shag pile of Honeysuckle, for goodness sake. That could all come later, when the kids were older. When life was more settled. She’d switched off those thoughts years ago, set it all aside. It hadn’t been easy – but there was so much else to do.

She wasn’t a saint, she had her moments of desperation. Of self-pity. Of wishing she had someone else’s life. For one small period she’d hoarded travel brochures in her bedroom, giving in to fantasies about jacking it all in – letting Social Services take the kids and backpacking around Asia to find herself. Or lose herself, whichever came first. But that’s all they were: fantasies. Even they left her with the guilt hangover from hell, when Lily and Daisy had found the glossy magazines and asked if they were going away on holiday.

So she compartmentalised, as the books say. Learned to set aside her own needs and focus on everyone else’s so hard she almost forgot she had any. It had seemed the only way to cope.

Until now, until last night, it had been working. Last night she seemed to have regressed to being a love-struck teenager, wondering how it would feel to slip her hands beneath that t-shirt; to have him bury his hands in her hair. How it would feel to put her skin next to his and let all that heat take its course.

She’d be doodling his name on a pencil case inside a loveheart next, she thought, shaking her head in an effort to clear it. This was real life, not a romance novel: and real life was busy. Hard. Challenging in every single way. She didn’t have time for mooning around, or for imagining Ben naked, or even for drinking coffee and staring out of the window down to the bay.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing and she felt a swoosh of panic flow through her. Phone calls late at night or this early in the morning never meant anything good. It’s not as if it was going to be the man from the Premium Bonds telling her she was a millionaire, or even a utility company trying to persuade her to change supplier. Not at this time of day.

She lifted the receiver, muttered a cautious hello.

“Sis? Is that you?” said Patrick, his voice low and whispering.

Patrick. Of course. She’d glimpsed into his room when she’d woken up and seen that he wasn’t there. At least she thought he wasn’t. It was hard to tell for sure under all the mess. She’d expected him to roll up in a few hours, hung over and smelly, as usual. Except he was calling her – and sounding scared.

“Yes, of course it’s me. Who else would it be?” she replied, trying to hold down her temper. After all, for once her agitated mental state wasn’t Patrick’s fault – it wasn’t down to him that she’d been tossing and turning all night. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what to do, sis,” he replied, voice urgent and sounding way younger than usual. “Me and Robbie got into a bit of trouble last night. We didn’t mean anything by it, honest, but we went a bit too far. It was after the pub. Old man Jensen had been in there, winding us up, telling us all those stupid stories about what he was doing at our age – all that crap about the war. So later, after we’d had a skinful, we went round to his house. We only meant to scare him, maybe throw a few bricks at the window, whatever. But…well, we got carried away. Made a real mess of the garden. Broke the windscreen of that ancient Volvo he drives round in. And, well, the thing is, I think he saw us.”

She couldn’t tell which he was most upset about – that he’d done this awful thing, or that he’d been spotted. If it was the latter, she didn’t know what she could do for him. Please God, she thought, closing her eyes and clenching back the tears that were stinging at her tired eyes, let him actually regret it. She so didn’t need this right now – not with the review coming up. Not with her mind full of Ben. Not ever.

She felt like hanging up. Giving up. Entirely possibly shooting up.

“Okay,” she said, keeping her voice calm despite her inner turmoil. If she screamed at him, he’d bolt. He’d do one of his disappearing acts and leave her fretting for days on end. “Where are you now?”

“In that phone box by the Surf Shack. Mine’s out of charge. Robbie’s still crashed in the back of his car. What should I do, sis?”

She wanted to yell at him, “Grow up!” but she didn’t. Instead she took a deep breath and told him to stay where he was. That she’d come and get him.

Then she put the phone down and wondered how exactly she was going to manage that. How she could leave the kids alone, feed the animals and rescue her brother all at the same time. Yet another impossible day stretched ahead of her.

She looked up at the kitchen clock. Almost six. The kids would be awake soon. Scotty would be climbing into her bed looking for a cuddle and the twins would be ready to rampage their way through another day. The guests in Foxglove were settled, so no worries there. And the elderly couple in Primrose had gone to Penzance for the night. Which only left…Ben.

Could she ask him for help? Should she? It seemed as though she had no alternative. Yet again, Patrick had her boxed into a corner.

Pippa got up, rinsed out her coffee mug and looked across the courtyard to Honeysuckle. The curtains were open in the living room. Looked like Mr Retallick was an early riser as well – that or he’d had problems sleeping too.

She made her decision and walked across the cobbles. Before she’d even had chance to knock, the door opened. At least, she thought, he was dressed this time. Although the damage was already done – her brain had logged every inch of his bare torso last night and her imagination was keeping it on file for future reference. She could replay it with a glass of wine later.

“Hi,” he said. “You’re up early…is everything okay? You look terrible.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she replied, suddenly conscious of her unbrushed hair, the fact that her denims had holes in the knees, that she hadn’t worn make-up for what felt like years. Not that any of it mattered, she told herself. Those were things other girls worried about. She had more pressing concerns.

“I’m really sorry to ask,” she said, “but I wondered if you could do me a favour?”

An hour later, she pulled up in the driveway, the wheels of the battered Land Rover spitting gravel the same way she felt like spitting swear words. Holding it all in, she unlatched the door of the farmhouse, Patrick following silently behind her. She was desperate to see how the kids were, hoping against hope that they’d all stayed in bed for a lie-in.

Instead, they seemed to have got up early and decided to start a bakery business.

The twins were at the kitchen table mixing currants into a big bowl of dough. Scotty was standing on a chair by the counter using his tiny fists to knead another bowl of slop. And Ben – he was standing right next to him, making sure he didn’t slip.

“Pippa!” said Lily and Daisy in unison. “We’re making scones for breakfast!”

“I see that,” replied Pippa, “weren’t cornflakes good enough today?”

“We’ve built up quite an appetite,” said Ben, flicking on the kettle and preparing a mug of coffee for her. “We’ve done the morning feed and mucked out Harry Potter. That was fun. I’d forgotten quite how…productive pigs could be. A magic wand would have been quite helpful. So…now we’re preparing a feast. I hope that’s okay? I promise we all washed our hands very thoroughly.”

He handed her the coffee and she grabbed it gratefully, using the hot china to warm her shaking hands. It was still early, still chilly and her life was still a mess.

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