Tall, dark and brooding—and back for good?

Claire Thackeray: Hardworking single mom and gossip columnist. Hoping for the inside scoop on sexy billionaire Hal North, aka her teen crush!

Most wary of: Gorgeous men who set her heart racing. (Been there, got the T-shirt—and the baby!)

Hal North: Bad boy made good. Back in his hometown as new owner of the Cranbrook Park estate. Determined to put his troubled past behind him.

Most wary of: Journalists—especially pretty ones, like new neighbor and tenant Claire Thackeray.

“Ten pounds,” she said. “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 a softness in 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.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to my world!

Science fiction and fantasy authors create new worlds where things are strange and new. My world is created from memory and is built with the familiar, the remembered and loved.

I’ve written several books set in Maybridge. Whilst it is a fictional town, it is inspired, like the village of Longbourne and the city of Melchester, by the places where I grew up and know well. In The Last Woman He’d Ever Date, I’ve brought in the little park on an island in the river where I played, and took my own children when they were small. Background stories, heard as I was growing up, add richness to the characters. Cranbrook Park is based on one of the great houses in the countryside surrounding the town where I was born. Oh, and I worked on the local newspaper, just like Claire Thackeray.

That’s where reality parts from fiction. Claire and Hal are characters who became very real to me as I wrote their story: the privileged child who, with bravery and grit, has grown up coping with life handing her lemons, and Hal North, the bad boy who has made good and come home to Cranbrook Park to complete the circle.

Their first meeting is coloured by memory, too, and does not go well. But they both learn to move on, let go of old hurts and find a new life. I hope you’ll enjoy their journey.

With love,

Liz

The Last Woman

He’d Ever Date

Liz Fielding

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full-stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days mostly leaves her pen to do the traveling.

When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors and spends a lot of time wondering, What if...?

For news of upcoming books—and to sign up for her occasional newsletter—visit Liz’s website, www.lizfielding.com.

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With love

For my lovely daughter-in-law,

Veronique Allsopp-Hanskamp

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE

Cranbrook Park for Sale?

THE future of the Cranbrook Park has been the subject of intense speculation this week after a move by HMRC to recover unpaid taxes sparked concern amongst the estate’s creditors.

Cranbrook Park, the site of a 12th century Abbey, the ruins of which are still a feature of the estate, has been in continuous occupation by the same family since the 15th century. The original Tudor hall, built by Thomas Cranbrook, has been extended over the centuries and the Park, laid out in the late eighteenth century by Humphrey Repton, has long been at the heart of Maybridge society with both house and grounds generously loaned for charity events by the present baronet, Sir Robert Cranbrook.

The Observer contacted the estate office today for clarification of the situation, but no one was available for comment. —Maybridge Observer, Thursday 21 April

* * *

Sir Robert Cranbrook glared across the table. Even from his wheelchair and ravaged by a stroke he was an impressive man, but his hand shook as he snatched the pen his lawyer offered and signed away centuries of power and privilege.

‘Do you want a sample of my DNA, too, boy?’ he demanded as he tossed the pen on the table. His speech was slurred but the arrogant disdain of five hundred years was in his eyes. ‘Are you prepared to drag your mother’s name through the courts in order to satisfy your pretensions? Because I will fight your right to inherit my title.’

Even now, when he’d lost everything, he still thought his name, the baronetcy that went with it, meant something.

Hal North’s hand was rock steady as he picked up the pen and added his signature to the papers, immune to that insulting ‘boy.’

Cranbrook Park meant nothing to him except as a means to an end. He was the one in control here, forcing his enemy to sit across the table and look him in the eye, to acknowledge the shift in power. That was satisfaction enough.

Nearly enough.

Cranbrook’s pawn, Thackeray, hadn’t lived to witness this moment, but his daughter was now his tenant. Evicting her would close the circle.

‘You can’t afford to fight me, Cranbrook,’ he said, capping the pen and returning it to the lawyer. ‘You owe your soul to the tax man and without me to bail you out you’d be a common bankrupt man living at the mercy of the state.’

‘Mr North…’

‘I have no interest in claiming you as my father. You refused to acknowledge me as your son when it would have meant something,’ he continued, ignoring the protest from Cranbrook’s solicitor, the shocked intake of breath from around the room. It was just the two of them confronting the past. No one else mattered. ‘I will not acknowledge you now. I don’t need your name and I don’t want your title. Unlike you, I did not have to wait for my father to die before I took my place in the world, to be a man.’

He picked up the deeds to Cranbrook Park. Vellum, tied with red ribbon, bearing a King’s seal. Now his property.

‘I owe no man for my success. Everything I am, everything I own, Cranbrook, including the estate you have squandered, lost because you were too idle, too fond of easy living to hold it, I have earned through hard work, sweat—things you’ve always thought beneath you. Things that could have served you. Would have saved you from this if you were a better man.’

‘You’re a poacher, a common thief…’

‘And now I’m dining with presidents and prime ministers, while you’re waiting for God in a world reduced to a single room with a view of a flower-bed instead of the park created by Humphrey Repton for one of your more energetic ancestors.’

Hal turned to his lawyer, tossed him the centuries-old deeds as casually as he would toss a newspaper in a bin and stood up, wanting to be done with this. To breathe fresh air.

‘Think about me sitting at your desk as I make that world my own, Cranbrook. Think about my mother sleeping in the Queen’s bed, sitting at the table where your ancestors toadied to kings instead of serving at it.’ He nodded to the witnesses. ‘We’re done here.’

‘Done! We’re far from done!’ Sir Robert Cranbrook clutched at the table, hauled himself to his feet. ‘Your mother was a cheating whore who took the money I gave her to flush you away and then used you as a threat to keep her useless drunk of a husband in a job,’ he said, waving away the rush to support him.

Hal North had not become a multimillionaire by betraying his emotions and he kept his face expressionless, his hands relaxed, masking the feelings boiling inside him.

‘You can’t blackmail an innocent man, Cranbrook.’

‘She didn’t have to be pushed very hard to come back for more. Years and years more. She was mine, bought and paid for.’

‘Hal…’ The quiet warning came from his lawyer. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Sleeping in a bed made for a queen won’t change what she is and no amount of money will make you anything but trash.’ Cranbrook raised a finger, no longer shaky, and pointed at him. ‘Your hatred of me has driven you all these years, Henry North and now everything you ever dreamed of has finally fallen into your lap and you think you’ve won.’

Oh, yes…

‘Enjoy your moment, because tomorrow you’re going to be wondering what there’s left to get out of bed for. Your wife left you. You have no children. We are the same you and I…’

‘Never!’

‘The same,’ he repeated. ‘You can’t fight your genes.’ His lips curled up in a parody of a smile. ‘That’s what I’ll be thinking about when they’re feeding me through a tube,’ he said as he collapsed back into the chair, ‘and I’ll be the one who dies laughing.’

* * *

Claire Thackeray swung her bike off the road and onto the footpath that crossed Cranbrook Park estate.

The No Cycling sign had been knocked down by the quad bikers before Christmas and late for work, again, she didn’t bother to dismount.

She wasn’t a rule breaker by inclination but no one was taking their job for granted at the moment. Besides, hardly anyone used the path. The Hall was unoccupied but for a caretaker and any fisherman taking advantage of the hiatus in occupancy to tempt Sir Robert’s trout from the Cran wouldn’t give two hoots. Which left only Archie and he’d look the other way for a bribe.

As she approached a bend in the path, Archie, who objected to anyone travelling faster than walking pace past his meadow, charged the hedge. It was terrifying if you weren’t expecting it—hence the avoidance by joggers—and pretty unnerving if you were. The trick was to have a treat ready and she reached in her basket for the apple she carried to keep him sweet.

Her hand met fresh air and as she looked down she had a mental image of the apple sitting on the kitchen table, before Archie—not a donkey to be denied an anticipated treat—brayed his disapproval.

Her first mistake was not to stop and dismount the minute she realised she had no means of distracting him, but while his first charge had been a challenge, his second was the real deal. While she was still on the what, where, how, he leapt through one of the many gaps in the long-neglected hedge, easily clearing the sagging wire while she was too busy pumping the pedals in an attempt to outrun him to be thinking clearly.

Her second mistake was to glance back, see how far away he was and the next thing she knew she’d come to an abrupt and painful halt in a tangle of bike and limbs—not all of them her own—and was face down in a patch of bluebells growing beneath the hedge.

Archie stopped, snorted, then, job done, he turned around and trotted back to his hiding place to await his next victim. Unfortunately the man she’d crashed into, and who was now the bottom half of a bicycle sandwich, was going nowhere.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.

‘Smelling the bluebells,’ she muttered, keeping very still while she mentally checked out the ‘ouch’ messages filtering through to her brain.

There were quite a lot of them and it took her a while, but even so she would almost certainly have moved her hand, which appeared to be jammed in some part of the man’s anatomy if it hadn’t been trapped beneath the bike’s handlebars. Presumably he was doing the same since he hadn’t moved, either. ‘Such a gorgeous scent, don’t you think?’ she prompted, torn between wishing him to the devil and hoping that he hadn’t lost consciousness.

His response was vigorous enough to suggest that while he might have had a humour bypass—and honestly if you didn’t laugh, well, with the sort of morning she’d had, you’d have to cry—he was in one piece.

Ignoring her attempt to make light of the situation he added, ‘This is a footpath.’

‘So it is,’ she muttered, telling herself that he wouldn’t have been making petty complaints about her disregard for the by-laws if he’d been seriously hurt. It wasn’t a comfort. ‘I’m so sorry I ran into you.’ And she was. Really, really sorry.

Sorry that her broad beans had been attacked by a blackfly. Sorry that she’d forgotten Archie’s apple. Sorry that Mr Grumpy had been standing in her way.

Until thirty seconds ago she had merely been late. Now she’d have to go home and clean up. Worse, she’d have to ring in and tell the news editor she’d had an accident which meant he’d send someone else to keep her appointment with the chairman of the Planning Committee.

He was going to be furious. She’d lived on Cranbrook Park all her life and she’d been assigned to cover the story.

‘It’s bad enough that you were using it as a race track—’

Oh, great. There you are lying in a ditch, entangled with a bent bicycle, with a strange man’s hand on your backside—he’d better be trapped, too—and his first thought was to lecture her on road safety.

‘—but you weren’t even looking where you were going.’

She spat out what she hoped was a bit of twig. ‘You may not have noticed but I was being chased by a donkey,’ she said.

‘Oh, I noticed.’

Not sympathy, but satisfaction.

‘And what about you?’ she demanded. Although her field of vision was small, she could see that he was wearing dark green coveralls. And she was pretty sure that she’d seen a pair of Wellington boots pass in front of her eyes in the split second before she’d crashed into the bank. ‘I’d risk a bet you don’t have a licence for fishing here.’

‘And you’d win,’ he admitted, without the slightest suggestion of remorse. ‘Are you hurt?’

Finally…

‘Only, until you move I can’t get up,’ he explained.

Oh, right. Not concern, just impatience. What a charmer.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, with just the slightest touch of sarcasm, ‘but you shouldn’t move after an accident.’ She’d written up a first-aid course she’d attended for the women’s page and was very clear on that point. ‘In case of serious injury,’ she added, to press home the point that he should be sympathetic. Concerned.

‘Is that a fact? So what do you suggest? We just lie here until a paramedic happens to pass by?’

Now who was being sarcastic?

‘I’ve got a phone in my bag,’ she said. It was slung across her body and lying against her back out of reach. Probably a good thing or she’d have been tempted to hit him with it. What the heck did he think he was doing leaping out in front of her like that? ‘If you can reach it, you could dial nine-nine-nine.’

‘Are you hurt?’ She detected the merest trace of concern so presumably the message was getting through his thick skull. ‘I’m not about to call out the emergency services to deal with a bruised ego.’

No. Wrong again.

‘I might have a concussion,’ she pointed out. ‘You might have concussion.’ She could hope…

‘If you do, you have no one but yourself to blame. The cycle helmet is supposed to be on your head, not in your basket.’

He was right, of course, but the chairman of the Planning Committee was old school. Any woman journalist who wanted a story had better be well-groomed and properly dressed in a skirt and high heels. Having gone to the effort of putting up her hair for the old misogynist, she wasn’t about to ruin her hard work by crushing it with her cycle helmet.

She’d intended to catch the bus this morning. But if it weren’t for the blackfly she could have caught the bus…

‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ Mr Grumpy asked.

‘Oh…’ She blinked as a muddy hand appeared in front of her. The one that wasn’t cradling her backside in a much too familiar manner. Not that she was about to draw attention to the fact that she’d noticed. Much wiser to ignore it and concentrate on the other hand which, beneath the mud, consisted of a broad palm, a well-shaped thumb, long fingers… ‘Three?’ she offered.

‘Close enough.’

‘I’m not sure that “close enough” is close enough,’ she said, putting off the moment when she’d have to test the jangle of aches and move. ‘Do you want to try that again?’

‘Not unless you’re telling me you can’t count up to three.’

‘Right now I’m not sure of my own name,’ she lied.

‘Does Claire Thackeray sound familiar?’

That was when she made the mistake of picking her face out of the bluebells and looking at him.

Forget concussion.

She was now in heart-attack territory. Dry mouth, loss of breath. Thud. Bang. Boom.

Mr Grumpy was not some irascible old bloke with a bee in his bonnet regarding the sanctity of footpaths—even if he was less than scrupulous about where he fished—and a legitimate grievance at the way she’d run him down.

He might be irritable, but he wasn’t old. Far from it.

He was mature.

In the way that men who’ve passed the smooth-skinned prettiness of their twenties and fulfilled the potential of their genes are mature.

Not that Hal North had ever been pretty.

He’d been a raw-boned youth with a wild streak that had both attracted and frightened her. As a child she’d yearned to be noticed by him, but would have run a mile if he’d as much as glanced in her direction. As a young teen, she’d had fantasies about him that would have given her mother nightmares if she’d even suspected her precious girl of having such thoughts about the village bad boy.

Not that her mother had anything to worry about where Hal North was concerned.

She was too young for anything but the muddled fantasies in her head, much too young for Hal to notice her existence.

There had been plenty of girls of his own age, girls with curves, girls who were attracted to the aura of risk he generated, the edge of darkness that had made her shiver a little—shiver a lot—with feelings she didn’t truly understand.

It had been like watching your favourite film star, or a rock god strutting his stuff on the television. You felt a kind of thrill, but you weren’t sure what it meant, what you were supposed to do with it.

Or maybe that was just her.

She’d been a swot, not one of the ‘cool’ group in school who had giggled over things she didn’t understand.

While they’d been practising being women, she’d been confined to experiencing it second-hand in the pages of nineteenth-century literature.

He’d bulked up since the day he’d been banished from the estate by Sir Robert Cranbrook after some particularly outrageous incident; what, she never discovered. Her mother had talked about it in hushed whispers to her father, but instantly switched to that bright, false change-the-subject smile if she came near enough to hear and she’d never had a secret-sharing relationship with any of the local girls.

Instead, she’d filled her diary with all kinds of fantasies about what might have happened, where he’d gone, about the day he’d return to find her all grown up—no longer the skinny ugly duckling but a fully fledged swan. Definitely fairy-tale material…

The years had passed, her diary had been abandoned in the face of increasing workloads from school and he’d been forgotten in the heat of a real-life romance.

Now confronted by him, as close as her girlish fantasy could ever have imagined, it came back in a rush and his power to attract, she discovered, had only grown over the years.

He was no longer a raw-boned skinny youth with shoulders he had yet to grow into, hands too big for his wrists. He still had hard cheekbones, though. A take-it-or-leave-it jaw, a nose that suggested he’d taken it once or twice himself. The only softness in his face, the sensuous curve of his lower lip.

It was his eyes, though, so dark in the shadow of overhanging trees, which overrode any shortfall in classic good looks. They had the kind of raw energy that made her blood tingle, her skin goose, had her fighting for breath in a way that had nothing to do with being winded by her fall.

She reminded herself that she was twenty-six. A responsible adult holding down a job, supporting her child. A grown woman who did not blush. At all.

‘I’m surprised you recognised me,’ she said, doing her best to sound calm, in control, despite the thudding heart, racing pulse, the mud smearing her cheek. The fact that her hand was jammed between his legs. Nowhere near in control enough to admit the intimacy of a name she had once whispered over and over in the dark of her room.

She snatched her hand away, keeping her ‘ouch’ to herself as she scraped her knuckles on the brake lever and told herself not to be so wet.

‘You haven’t changed much.’ His tone suggested that it wasn’t a subject for congratulation. ‘Still prim, all buttoned- up. And still riding your bike along this footpath. I’ll bet it was the only rule you ever broke.’

‘There’s nothing big about breaking rules,’ she said, stung into attack by his casual dismissal of her best suit. The suggestion that she still looked the same now as when she’d worn a blazer and a panama hat over hair braided in a neat plait. ‘Nothing big about hiding under the willows, tickling Sir Robert’s trout, either. Not the only rule you ever broke,’ she added.

‘Sharper tongued, though.’

That stung, too. The incident might have been painful but come on… She’d been chased by a donkey and every other man she knew would be at the very least struggling to hide a grin right now. Most would be laughing out loud.

‘As for the trout,’ he added, ‘Robert Cranbrook never did own them, only the right to stand on the bank with a rod and fly and attempt to catch them. He can’t even claim that now.’

‘Maybe not,’ she said, doing her best to ignore the sensory deluge, ‘but someone can.’ And sounded just as prim and buttoned-up as she apparently looked. ‘HMRC if the rumours about the state of Sir Robert’s finances are to be believed and the Revenue certainly won’t take kindly to you helping yourself.’

Buttoned-up and priggish.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, making a determined effort to lighten the mood, ‘I’ll look the other way, just this once, if you’ll promise to ignore my misdemeanour.’

‘Shall we get out of this ditch before you start plea bargaining?’ he suggested.

Plea bargaining? She’d been joking, for heaven’s sake! She wasn’t that buttoned-up. She wasn’t buttoned-up at all!

‘You don’t appear to have a concussion,’ he continued, ‘and unless you’re telling me you can’t feel your legs, or you’ve broken something, I’d rather leave the paramedics to cope with genuine emergencies.’

‘Good call.’ As an emergency it was genuine enough—although not in the medical sense—but if she was the subject of her own front-page story she’d never hear the last of it in the newsroom. ‘Hold on,’ she said, not that he appeared to need encouragement to do that. He hadn’t changed that much. ‘I’ll check.’

She did a quick round up of her limbs, flexing her fingers and toes. Her shoulder had taken the brunt of the fall and she knew that she would be feeling it any moment now, but it was probably no more than a bruise. The peddle had spun as her foot had slipped, whacking her shin. She’d scraped her knuckles on the brake lever and her left foot appeared to be up to the ankle in the cold muddy water at the bottom of the ditch but everything appeared to be in reasonable working order.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘Winded.’ She wouldn’t want him to think he was the cause of her breathing difficulties. ‘And there will be bruises, but I have sufficient feeling below the waist to know where your hand is.’

He didn’t seem to feel the need to apologise but then she had run into him at full tilt. She really didn’t want to think about where he’d be black and blue. Or where her own hand had been.

‘What about you?’ she asked, somewhat belatedly.

‘Can I feel my hand on your bum?’

The lines bracketing his mouth deepened a fraction and her heart rate which, after the initial shock of seeing him, had begun to settle back down, thudding along steadily with only an occasional rattle of the cymbals, took off on a dramatic drum roll.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ARE you in one piece?’ Claire asked, doing her best to ignore the timpani section having a field day and keep it serious.

If he could do that with an almost smile, she wasn’t going to risk the full nine yards.

‘I’ll survive.’

She sketched what she hoped was a careless shrug. ‘Close enough.’

And this time the smile, no more than a dare-you straightening of the lips, reached his eyes, setting her heart off on a flashy drum solo.

‘Shall we risk it, then?’ he prompted when she didn’t move.

‘Sorry.’ She wasn’t an impressionable teenager, she reminded herself. She was a grown woman, a mother… ‘I’m still a bit dazed.’ That, at least, was true. Although whether the fall had anything to do with it was a moot point. Forget laughing about this. Hal North was a lot safer when he was being a grouch.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s try this. You roll to your right and I’ll do my best to untangle us both.’

She gingerly eased herself onto her shoulder, then gave a little gasp at the unexpected intimacy of his cold fingers against the sensitive, nylon-clad flesh as he hooked his hand beneath her knee. It was a lifetime since she was that timid girl who’d watched him from a safe distance, nearly died when he’d looked at her, but he was still attracting and scaring her in equal quantities. Okay, maybe not quite equal…

‘Does that hurt?’ he asked.

‘No!’ She was too fierce, too adamant and his eyes narrowed. ‘Your hand was cold,’ she said lamely as he lifted her leg free of the frame.

‘That’s what happens when you tickle trout,’ he said, confirming her impression that he’d just stepped up out of the stream when she ran into him. It would certainly explain why she hadn’t seen him. And why he hadn’t had time taking avoiding action.

‘Are you still selling your catch to the landlord of The Feathers?’ she asked, doing her best to control the conversation.

‘Is he still in the market for poached game?’ he asked, not denying that he’d once supplied him through the back door. ‘He’d have to pay rather more for a freshly caught river trout these days.’

‘That’s inflation for you. I hope your rod is still in one piece.’

His eyebrow twitched, proving that he did, after all, possess a sense of humour. ‘Couldn’t you tell?’

‘Your fishing rod…’ Claire stopped, but it was too late to wish she’d ignored the innuendo.

‘It’s not mine,’ he said, taking pity on her. ‘I confiscated it from a lad fishing without a licence.’

‘Confiscated it?’

As he sat up, she caught sight of the Cranbrook crest on the pocket of his coveralls. He was working on the estate? Poacher turned gamekeeper? Why did that feel so wrong? He would be a good choice if the liquidators wanted to protect what assets remained. He knew every inch of the estate, every trick in the book…

‘Aren’t they terribly expensive?’ she asked. ‘Fishing rods.’

‘He’ll get it back when he pays his fine.’

‘A fine? That’s a bit harsh,’ she said, rather afraid she knew who might have been trying his luck. ‘He’s only doing what you did when you were his age.’

‘The difference being that I was bright enough not to get caught.’

‘I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.’

‘It beats the hell out of the alternative.’ She couldn’t argue with that. ‘I take it, from all this touching concern, that you know the boy?’

‘I imagine it was Gary Harker. His mother works in the estate office. She’s at her wit’s end. He left school last year and hasn’t had a sniff of a job. In the old days he’d have been taken on by the estate,’ she prompted. ‘Learned a skill.’

‘Working for the gentry for a pittance.’

‘Minimum wage these days. Not much, but a lot better than nothing. If the estate is hiring, maybe you could put a good word in for him?’

‘You don’t just want me to let him off, you want me to give him a job, too?’ he asked.

‘Maybe there’s some government-sponsored apprenticeship scheme?’ she suggested. ‘I could find out. Please, Hal, if I talk to him, will you give him a break?’

‘If I talk to him, will you give me one?’ he replied.

‘I’ll do better than that.’ She beamed, aches and pains momentarily forgotten. ‘I’ll bake you a cake. Lemon drizzle? Ginger? Farmhouse?’ she tempted and for a moment she seemed to hold his attention. For a moment she thought she had him.

‘Don’t bother,’ he said, breaking eye contact, turning back to her bike. ‘The front wheel’s bent out of shape.’

She swallowed down her disappointment. ‘Terrific. For want of an apple the bike was lost,’ she said, as he propped it against a tree. ‘Can it be straightened out?’

‘Is it worth it?’ he asked, reaching out a hand to help her up. ‘It must be fifty years old.’

‘Older,’ she replied, clasping his hand. ‘It belonged to Sir Robert’s nanny.’

His palm was cold, or maybe it was her own that was hot. Whatever it was, something happened to her breathing as their thumbs locked around each other and Hal braced himself to pull her up onto the path. A catch, a quickening, as if his power was flooding into her, his eyes heating her from the inside out.

Just how reliable was the finger test as a diagnosis of concussion, anyway?

‘I’ve got you,’ he said, apparently feeling nothing but impatience, but as he pulled, something caught at the soft wool of her jacket, holding her fast.

‘Wait!’ She’d already wrecked her bike and she wasn’t about to confound the situation by tearing lumps out of her one good suit. ‘I’m caught on something.’ She yelped as she reached back to free herself and her hand snagged on an old, dead bramble, thorns hard as nails. ‘Could my day get any worse?’ she asked, sucking at the line of tiny scarlet spots of blood oozing across the soft pad at the base of her thumb.

‘That depends on whether your tetanus shots are up to date.’

Was that, finally, a note of genuine concern? Or was it merely the hope she would need a jab—something to put the cherry on top of her day—that she heard in his voice?

‘That was a rhetorical question,’ she replied, tired of being on the defensive, ‘but thanks for your concern.’ And he could take that any way he chose.

Right now she’d gladly suffer a jab that would offer a vaccination against dangerous men. The kind that stood in your way on footpaths, made you say blush-making things when you hadn’t blushed in years. Made you feel thirteen again.

Made you feel…

‘Here. Use this,’ he said as she searched her pockets for a tissue. He dropped a freshly ironed handkerchief into her lap then, as he stepped down into the ditch to unhook her from the thorns, he spoiled this unexpected gallantry by saying, ‘You really should make an attempt to get up earlier.’

She turned to look at him. ‘Excuse me?’

He was closer than she realised and his chin, rough with an overnight growth of beard, brushed against her cheek. It intensified the tingle, sent her temperature up a degree. Deadly dangerous. She should move.

Closer…

‘It’s gone nine,’ he pointed out. ‘I assumed you were late for work?’

His hair was dark and thick. He’d worn it longer as a youth, curling over his neck, falling sexily into his eyes. These days it was cut with precision. Even the tumble into the ditch had done no more than feather a cowlick across his forehead. And if possible, the effect was even more devastating.

‘I am,’ she admitted, ‘but not because I overslept.’

His breath was warm against her temple and her skin seemed to tingle, as if drawn by his closeness.

She really should move. Put some distance between them.

She’d never been close enough to see the colour of his eyes before. They were very dark and she’d always imagined, in her head, they were the blue-grey of wet slate, but in this light they seemed to be green. Or was it simply the spring bright tunnel of leaves that lent them a greenish glow?

He raised an eyebrow as he opened a clasp knife. ‘You had something more interesting to keep you in bed?’

‘You could say that.’ In her vegetable bed, anyway, but if he chose to think there was a man interested in undoing her buttons she could live with that. ‘I’m more concerned about my ten o’clock appointment at the Town Hall with the chairman of the Planning Committee.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘You’re not going to make it.’

‘No.’ There were worst things than crashing into a ditch and losing her job was one of them. ‘If you got a move on I could call him before I’m late and reschedule for later today.’

‘Have a care, Miss Thackeray,’ he warned, glancing up at her, ‘or I’ll leave you where you are.’

About to point out that all she had to do was undo her jacket and she could free herself, she thought better of it.

If Hal North was working for the estate he probably knew far more than the planning department about what was going on.

‘I was going to talk to him about the Cranbrook Park estate,’ she said, moving her hand away from her jacket button. ‘There’s a rumour going round that a property developer has bought it.’

The rumour of a sale was real enough. As for the rest, she was just fishing and most people couldn’t wait to tell you that you were wrong, tell you what they knew.

‘And why would that be of interest to you?’

Yes, well, Hal North hadn’t been like most boys and it seemed he wasn’t like most men, either.

‘The estate is my landlord,’ she said. ‘I have a vested interest in what happens to it.’

‘You have a lease.’

‘Well, yes…’ With barely three months left to run. ‘But I’ve known Sir Robert since I was four years old. I can’t expect a new owner to have the same concern for his tenants. He might not want to renew it and if he did, he’ll certainly raise the rent.’ Something else to worry about. It was vital she keep her job. ‘And then there are the rumours about a light industrial estate at my end of the village.’

‘Not in my backyard?’ he mocked.

‘Yours, too,’ she replied, going for broke. ‘I live in Primrose Cottage.’

‘What about the jobs that light industry would bring to the area?’ he replied, apparently unmoved by the threat to his childhood home. ‘Don’t you care about that angle? What about young Gary Harker?’

‘I’m a journalist.’ A rather grand title for someone working on the news desk of the local paper. ‘I’m interested in all the angles. Protecting the countryside has its place, too.’

‘For the privileged few.’

‘The estate has always been a local amenity.’

‘Not if you’re a fisherman,’ he reminded her. ‘I assume, since you’re covering local issues that you work for the local rag?’

‘The Observer, yes,’ she said, doing her best to ignore his sarcasm, keep a smile on her face. She wanted to know what he knew.

‘All that expensive education and that’s the best you could do?’

‘That’s an outrageous thing to say!’

Oops… There went her smile.

But it explained why, despite the fact that she’d been a skinny kid, totally beneath his notice, he had remembered her. Her pink and grey Dower House school uniform had stood out amongst the bright red Maybridge High sweatshirts like a lily on a dung heap. Or a sore thumb. Depending on your point of view.

The other children in the village had mocked her difference. She’d pretended not to care, but she’d envied them their sameness. Had wanted to be one of them, to belong to that close-knit group clustered around the bus stop every morning when she was driven past in the opposite direction.

‘You were headed for Oxbridge according to your mother. Some high-flying media job.’

‘Was I?’ she asked, as if she didn’t recall every moment of toe-curling embarrassment as her mother held forth in the village shop. She might have been oblivious, but Claire had known that they were both the object of derision. ‘Obviously I wasn’t as bright as she thought I was.’

‘And the real reason?’

She should be flattered that he didn’t believe her, but it only brought back the turmoil, the misery of a very bad time.

‘It must have been having a baby that did it.’ If he was back in the village he’d find out soon enough. ‘Miss Snooty Smartyhat brought down to size by her hormones. It was a big story at the time.’

‘I can imagine. Anyone I know? The father?’ he added, as if she didn’t know what he meant.

‘There aren’t many people left in the village who you’ll remember,’ she said, not wanting to go there. Even after all these years the crash of love’s young dream as it hurtled to earth still hurt… ‘As you pointed out, there aren’t any jobs on the estate for our generation.’ Few jobs for anyone. Sir Robert’s fortunes had been teetering on the brink for years. Cheap imports had ruined his business and with his factories closed, the estate—a money sink—had lost the income which kept it going.

The Hall was in desperate need of repair. Some of the outbuildings were on the point of falling down and many of the hedges and fences were no longer stock proof.

Cue Archie.

‘No one who’ll remember me is what I think you mean,’ he said.

‘You’re in luck, then.’

‘You think I’d be unwelcome?’

He appeared amused at the idea and flustered, she said, ‘No…I just meant…’

‘I know what you meant,’ he said, turning back to the delicate task of unpicking the threads of her suit from the thorns.

Ignoring the cold and damp that was seeping through her skirt, trying to forget just how much she disliked this part of her job, she tried again. This time, however, since he clearly wasn’t going to be coaxed into indiscretion, she came right out and asked him.

‘Can you tell me what’s happening to the estate?’ Maybe the subtle implication that he did not know himself would provoke an answer.

‘There’ll be an announcement about its future in the next day or two. I imagine your office will get a copy.’

‘It has been sold!’ That wasn’t just news, it was a headline! Brownie points, job security… ‘Who’s the new owner?’

‘Do you want a scoop for the Observer, Claire?’ The corner of his mouth quirked up in what might have been a smile. Her stomach immediately followed suit. She might be older and wiser, but he’d always had a magnetic pull. ‘Or merely gossip for the school gates?’

‘I’m a full-time working single mother,’ she said, doing her best to control the frantic jangle of hormones that hadn’t been disturbed in years. ‘I don’t have time to gossip at the school gates.’

‘Your baby’s father didn’t stick around, then?’

‘Well spotted. Come on, Hal,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s obvious that you know something.’

If he had been the chairman of the Planning Committee she’d have batted her eyelashes at him. As it was, she’d barely raised a flutter before she regretted it.

Hal North was not a man to flirt with unless you meant it.

Poised on the brink of adolescence, paralysed with shyness if he so much as glanced in her direction, she had not fully understood the danger a youth like Hal North represented.

As a woman, she didn’t have that excuse.

‘It’ll be public knowledge soon enough,’ she pressed, desperately hoping that he wouldn’t have noticed.

‘Then you won’t have long to wait will you?’

‘Okay, no name, but can you tell me what’s going to happen to the house?’ That’s all she’d need to grab tomorrow’s front page. ‘Is it going to be a hotel and conference centre?’

‘I thought you said it was going to be a building site. Or was it an industrial estate?’

‘You know how it is…’ She attempted a careless shrug, hiding her annoyance that he persisted in trading question for question. She was supposed to be the professional, but he was getting all the answers. ‘In the absence of truth the vacuum will be filled with lies, rumour and drivel.’

‘Is that right?’ He straightened, put away his knife. ‘Well, you’d know more about that than me.’

‘Oh, please. I work for a local newspaper. We might publish rumour, and a fair amount of drivel, but we’re too close to home to print lies.’

She made a move to get up, eager now to be on her way, but he forestalled her with a curt ‘wait.’

Assuming that he could see another problem, she obeyed, only to have him put his hands around her waist.

She should have protested, would have protested if the connection between her brain and her mouth had been functioning. All that emerged as he picked her bodily out of the ditch was a huff of air, followed by a disgusting squelch as her foot came out of the mud, leaving her shoe behind. Then she found herself with her nose pressed against the dark green heavyweight cloth of his coveralls and promptly forgot all about the bluebells.

Hal North had a scent of his own. Mostly fresh air, the sweet green of crushed grass and new dandelion leaves, but something else was coming through that fresh laundry smell. The scent of a man who’d been working. Warm skin, clean sweat—unexpectedly arousing—prickling in her nose.

He was insolent, provoking and deeply, deeply disturbing but, even as the urgent ‘no!’ morphed into an eager ‘yes…’ she told herself to get a grip. He had been bad news as a youth and she’d seen, heard nothing to believe that had changed.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said, doing her best to avoid meeting those dangerous eyes as she clung to his shoulders, struggling for balance and to get her tongue and teeth to line up to form the words. ‘I really have to be going.’

‘Going? Haven’t you forgotten something?’

‘My shoe?’ she suggested, hoping that he’d dig it out of the mud for her. He was, after all, dressed for the job. While the prospect of stepping back into it was not particularly appealing, she wasn’t about to mess up the high heels she carried in the messenger bag slung across her back.

‘I was referring to the fact that you cycled along a footpath, Claire. Breaking the by-laws without a second thought.’

‘You’re kidding.’ She laughed but the arch law-breaker of her youth didn’t join in. He was not kidding. He was… She didn’t know what he was. She only knew that he was looking down at her with an intensity that was making her pulse race. ‘No! No, you’re right,’ she said, quickly straightening her face. ‘It was very wrong of me. I won’t do it again.’

The hard cheekbones seemed somehow harder, the jaw even more take it or leave it, if that were possible.

‘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…’

‘Is there a problem?’ Brian Gough, the news editor, sounded concerned rather than annoyed, but then she had always striven to be one hundred per cent reliable—hoarding those Brownie points that every working mother needed against the days when her daughter was sick and her needs had to come before everything, even the desperate necessity of making a career for herself. ‘Only I’ve just had Charlie on the phone.’

Charlie… That would be Charlie Peascod, the Chief Planning Officer. Her important ten o’clock meeting. She caught sight of the clock and groaned.

Hal heard her and turned. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, with what appeared to be genuine concern.

‘No,’ she hissed, swivelling round so that her back was to him in an effort to concentrate. ‘I’m s-o s-sorry, Brian but I’ve had a bit of an accident.’

‘An accident? What kind of accident? Are you all right?’

‘Y-yes…’ she said as, without warning, she began to shiver.

‘You don’t sound it.’

‘I will be.’ Behind her there was a world of comfort in the sound of the kettle being filled. The sound of the biscuit tin lid being opened. She refused to look… ‘I was going to c-call you but…’ But it had gone clean out of her head. Her important meeting, her job, pretty much everything. That’s what a man like Hal North could do to you with nothing more than a kiss. ‘I f-fell off my bike.’

‘Have you been to the hospital?’ he asked, seriously concerned now, which only added to her guilt.

‘It’s not that bad, truly.’ And it wasn’t. She just needed to get a grip, pull herself together. ‘Just the odd bump and scrape, but there was rather a lot of mud,’ she said, attempting to make light of it. ‘Once I’ve had a quick shower I’ll be out of here. With luck I’ll catch the eleven o’clock bus.’

‘No, no… These things can shake you up. We can manage without you.’

Her immediate reaction was to protest—that was so not something she wanted to hear—but for some reason she appeared to be shaking like a jelly. If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would almost certainly have collapsed in heap.

‘Take the rest of the week off, put your feet up. We’ll see you on Monday.’

‘If you insist,’ she said, just to be sure that he was telling her, she wasn’t begging. ‘I’ll call Mr Peascod now to apologise. Reschedule for Monday.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about Charlie. I’m taking him to lunch and, let’s face it, he’s much more likely to be indiscreet after a glass of wine.’

Of course he was. All boys together. On the golf course or down the pub. No need for Brian Gough to make an effort with his hair, wear his best suit, flutter his eyelashes. He’d take Charlie to the King’s Head and over a plate of their best roast beef—on expenses—he’d hear all about what was going on at Cranbrook Park. It was how it had always been done.

Forget the news desk. At this rate, she’d be writing up meetings of the Townswomen’s Guild, reviewing the Christmas panto until she was drawing her pension. Thank goodness for the ‘Greenfly and Dandelions’ blog she wrote for the Armstrong Newspaper Group website. At least no one else on the staff could write that.

And that was the good news.

All that expensive education notwithstanding, it was as good as a single mother without a degree, a single mother who had to put her child first could hope for. Even then she was luckier than most women in her situation. Luckier than she deserved according to her mother.

The bad news was that the Observer was cutting back on staff and a single mother with childcare issues was going to be top of the chop list.

‘All done?’ Hal unhooked a couple of mugs from the dresser, keeping an eye on Claire while he filled a bowl with warm water. Despite her insistence that she was fine, she was deathly pale.

‘All done,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to call the Town Hall and make your apologies?’

‘No need.’ She looked at the phone she was still holding, then put it on the table. ‘The news editor is handling it.’

‘Right, well I’ll clean up your foot.’

She frowned as he placed the bowl of water at her feet, then she rallied; he could practically hear her spine snapping straight. ‘There’s no need to make a fuss. I’ll get in the shower as soon as you’ve gone.’

‘It’s cut,’ he said. ‘There’s blood on the floor.’

‘Is there?’ She looked down and saw the trail of muddy, bloody footprints on her clean floor. ‘Oh…’ She bit back the word she’d undoubtedly have let drop if she’d been on her own. ‘It must have been when I stepped on a stone.’

One sharp enough to cut her and yet she hadn’t so much as whimpered. His fault. If he hadn’t kissed her, if he’d just scraped the mud off her shoe, let her go…

‘It might have been a piece of glass,’ he said, not wanting to think about that kiss. About the button she’d been playing with or how she’d felt as she’d leaned against him as he’d helped her home. ‘Or a ring pull from a can. I can’t believe the litter down there.’

‘A lot of it blows in from the towpath. It used to drive my dad wild.’

‘It wasn’t just me, then.’ Before she could answer, he said, ‘Stick your foot in this and soak off the dirt so that I can make sure there’s nothing still in there.’ She didn’t bother to argue, just sucked in her breath as she lifted her foot into the water.

‘Okay?’

She held her breath for a moment, then relaxed. ‘Yes…’

He nodded and left her to soak while he made tea, adding a load of sugar to hers. Adding rather more than usual to his own.

He shouldn’t have come to Cranbrook. He hadn’t intended to come here. Not now. Not until it was all done. It had been his intention to keep his distance and leave it all to the consultants he’d engaged, but it was like a bad tooth you couldn’t leave alone…

‘Have you got any antiseptic?’ he asked, setting the mug beside her.

‘Under the sink, with the first-aid box.’

‘Towel?’

‘There’s a clean one in the airing cupboard. It’s in the bathroom at the top of the…’

‘I know my way around.’ He took a chocolate biscuit—it had been a long time since breakfast—and handed another to her. ‘Eat this.’

‘I—’

‘It’s medicinal,’ he said, cutting off her objection, opening the door to stairs that seemed narrower than he remembered. He glanced back. ‘You might want to lose the tights while I’m fetching it.’

‘Are you quite sure I can manage that all by myself?’

He paused, his foot on the bottom step, and looked back. ‘You have a mouth that will get you into serious trouble one of these days, Claire Thackeray.’

‘Too late,’ she said. ‘It already has.’

‘It’s not a one-time-only option,’ he pointed out and as she blushed virgin pink, he very nearly stepped back down into the kitchen to offer her a demonstration.

Peeling down tights over long, shapely legs that he’d already enjoyed at his leisure as she’d lain sprawled on top of him with her skirt around her waist would have offered some compensation in a day that was not, so far, going to plan.

He’d arrived at sunrise and set out for a quiet drive around the estate, wanting to claim its acres for himself. To enjoy his triumph.

The rush of possessiveness, unreasoning anger, when he’d seen a lad fishing from what had once been his favourite spot had brought him up short. Or maybe it had been the fancy rod and antique reel wielded so inexpertly that had irritated him. The boy had sworn it had belonged to his granddad, but he was very much afraid that it had been stolen.

Not the most pleasant start to the day and, once the boy had gone, he’d stopped to look, remembering his own wild days.

That’s when he’d noticed that the bank opposite had been seriously undermined by the torrential winter rain. He’d pulled on the overalls and boots that had been lying in the back of the Land Rover and crossed the stream to take a closer look at the damage and walked right into the Claire and Archie double-act.

And if it hadn’t been part of his plans to come back to Cranbrook Park until he’d made it his own, that was doubly so with Primrose Cottage.

There had been no reason to come down a lane on the edge of the village, a lane that stopped at a cottage that was hidden unless you were looking for it. Forgotten by the estate.

Jack North had never been prepared to use good drinking and gambling money to decorate, repair a house he did not own and Robert Cranbrook would have seen it fall down before he’d have allowed his workmen to touch it.

He never could understand why his mother had stayed. Some twisted sense of loyalty? Or was it guilt?

In his head the cottage had remained the way it had looked on the day he’d fired up his motorbike and ridden away. But, like him, it had changed out of all recognition.

The small window panes broken in one of Jack’s drunken rages and stuffed with cardboard to keep out the weather had all been replaced and polished to a shine. Windows and trim were now painted white and the dull, blistering green front door was a fresh primrose yellow to match the flowers that were blooming all along the verge in front of a white-painted picket fence.

There had always been primroses…

Weeds no longer grew through the gravel path that led around to the rear; the yard, once half an acre of rank weeds where he’d spent hours stripping down and rebuilding an old motorcycle, was now a garden.

Inside everything had changed, too. His mother had battled against all odds to keep the place spotless. Now the walls had been stripped of the old wallpaper and painted in pale colours, the treads of the stairs each carpeted with a neatly trimmed offcut.

He’d once known every creak, every dip to avoid when he wanted to creep out at night and he still instinctively avoided them as he took the second flight to revisit his past.

Everything was changed up there, too.

Where he’d once stuck posters of motorcycles against the shabby attic walls, delicate little fairies now flitted across ivory wallpaper.

Did Claire Thackeray’s little girl resemble her mother? All fair plaits and starched school uniform. Or did she betray her father?

He shook his head as if to clear the image. What Claire Thackeray had got up to and with whom, was none of his business.

None of this—the clean walls, stripped and polished floors, the pretty lace curtains—changed a thing. Taking it from her, doing to her what her father had done to him would be all the sweeter because the cottage was now something worth losing.

A towel…

The door to the front bedroom was shut and he didn’t open it. Claire was disturbing enough without acquainting himself with the intimacy of her bedroom, but the back bedroom door stood wide open and he could see that it had been converted into an office.

An old wallpaper pasting table, painted dark green, served as a desk. On it there was an old laptop, a printer, a pile of books. Drawn to take a closer look, he found himself looking out of the window, down into the garden.

He’d hadn’t been able to miss the fact that it was now a garden, rather than the neglected patch of earth he remembered, but from above he could see that it was a lot more.

Linked by winding paths, the ugly patch had been divided into a series of intimate spaces. Divided with trees and shrubs as herbaceous borders, there were places to sit, places to play and, at the rear, the kind of vegetable garden usually only seen on television programmes was tucked beneath the shelter of a bank on which spring bulbs were now dying back.

He looked down at the piles of books. He’d expected a thesaurus, a dictionary, whatever reference works journalists used. Instead, he found himself looking at a book on propagation. The other books were on greenhouse care, garden design.

Claire had done this?

Not without help. The house was decorated to a professional standard and the garden was immaculate.

He’d suggested that she was still all buttoned-up but her response to his kiss had blown that idea right out of the water. The woman Claire Thackeray had become would always have help.

He replaced the books, but as he turned away wanting to get out of this room, he was confronted by a cork board, thick with photographs of a little girl from babyhood to the most recent school photograph.

Her hair was jet black, and her golden skin was not the result of lying in the sun. Only her solemn grey eyes featured Claire and he could easily imagine the thrilling shock that must have run around the village when she’d wheeled her buggy into the village shop for the first time.

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