A Perfect Hero

‘Good, isn’t it? Lucky devil. I wonder if he’ll sell it to me?’

He threw her a cheeky grin, and then turned his attention back to the road. After a little while they turned off the main road and headed along a winding lane, leading eventually to another lane and thence a rutted track.

‘Where are we going?’ Clare asked, suddenly conscious of their isolation.

He pointed. ‘Over there—that little pink cottage.’

‘Goodness, it is in the wilds of nowhere!’ Clare said as they pulled up outside the cottage. It was tiny, the thatch low down on the walls arching like eyebrows over the little upstairs windows. The warm pink of the faded terracotta walls blended with the soft apricot of a climbing rose that tumbled in profusion over the front door, and more roses clustered under the little latticed windows.

‘Don’t tell me—it’s called Rose Cottage!’

He chuckled. ‘How did you guess? Come on in. Welcome to my humble abode.’

He doffed an imaginary cap and flung open the door with a flourish.

Inside it was just as charming, heavily beamed as she might have expected from a Suffolk cottage, with fascinating little nooks and crannies, and the furniture was mostly old pine. There was a Suffolk brick floor in the kitchen, and the steep staircase was tucked in under the eaves.

‘Oh, Michael, it’s lovely!’

He grinned. Thank you. You’re my first visitor—let me show you round.’

She followed him, enchanted, as he climbed the steep stairs.

‘Mind your head,’ he said as he led her on to the little landing. ‘It wasn’t built for people as tall as us, I don’t think.’ He waved his arm. ‘Bathroom here, and a bedroom at each end—neither of them exactly furnished to excess at the moment, but I’ll get there. I only took possession of it last Thursday—I should have had it early in the week but I got caught in a storm off the Scillies.’

‘The Scillies? The islands, you mean?’

He nodded. ‘Yes—I took Henrietta out there for a few days’ R and R, and it backfired on me a bit.’

Heavens, she thought, here we are, standing in the middle of his bedroom and he’s telling me all about his problems with Henrietta, whoever she is!

‘I’ll take you to see her some time—she’s very pretty, and I can handle her on my own easily unless the wind’s very fierce. She’s a bit of a handful then. You’ll like her—do you get seasick?’

It dawned on Clare that Henrietta must be his boat, and she almost laughed out loud—till she realised that the feeling she had experienced had probably been jealousy. She wasn’t sure, she’d never felt it before, and couldn’t imagine for the life of her why she was feeling it now, but life was full of little surprises …

‘No, I don’t get seasick—or I didn’t. I haven’t sailed since I was about thirteen, but I used to go out a lot with my brother before that.’

‘Snap! We had a Mirror, then a Fireball. Henrietta was my grandfather’s boat—I spent a lot of time on her with him when I were a lad, as they say.’

Their laughing eyes met, and Clare was suddenly terribly conscious of the high iron and brass bedstead behind them.

‘Why don’t you go on down and find yourself a drink? There’s white wine in the fridge, or red if you prefer, open on the side, and all sorts of soft drinks—I just want to get out of this suit and relax a bit.’

‘Fine,’ she said, a trifle breathlessly, and turned for the stairs as he stripped off his tie and kicked off his shoes. She heard them land with a thud as she ran down the stairs, and then he was humming, and she could hear drawers opening and shutting above her head as she rummaged in the kitchen for the fridge. She was still looking for it when he ran lightly down the stairs in his bare feet, clad only in a pair of old jeans that clung lovingly to every contour of his body. He was tugging on a T-shirt over his head, and his chest gleamed golden brown under the soft scatter of blond curls.

Her fingers itched to touch him, and she rammed her hands into her pockets to control them.

‘Where’s the fridge?’ she asked, her voice sounding strained to her ears.

‘Here—sorry!’ He opened a cupboard like all the others, hand-built in dark oak to match the beams, and she saw a built-in fridge tucked in behind the door.

‘How clever!’

‘It’s been well done—it belonged to an interior designer who’s gone to Scotland to escape the rat race.’

‘Rat race—here?’

He laughed. ‘Over-populated, she said. I gather their nearest neighbour up there is ten miles away. Red, white or something soft?’

‘White with something in it?’

‘Good idea.’ He took a bottle of hock from the fridge, pulled the cork deftly and splashed it into two tall glasses, adding soda water and ice.

‘Cheers!’

‘Cheers! Welcome to the Audley.’

He smiled. ‘Thank you, Clare. Right, sit down over there and tell me all the pitfalls—who’s fallen out with who, who I mustn’t speak to, who does the crossword in the staff lounge, all that sort of thing.’

It was her turn to laugh. ‘Nothing like that. The Audley’s a very happy hospital, and there’s practically no hierarchy. We’re all in the same business, after all.’

‘Well, thank God for that! My last hospital was the giddy limit—I was forever treading on someone’s toes.’ He put the washed lettuce in the salad spinner, and placed it on the table in front of her. ‘Now, what do you fancy? I’ve got a fresh sea-bass, or we could have steak if you’d prefer.’

‘Did you catch the bass?’

He laughed. ‘Afraid not, not this time. I bought it from the guy on the next boat. He caught it last night.’

‘Sounds wonderful.’

While she spun the lettuce and made the salad, he washed the fish, stuffed it with butter and a handful of fresh fennel from the garden, and pinned it together with cocktail sticks.

‘Thirty minutes in the oven,’ he said with a grin. ‘Time for a walk round the garden.’

It was lovely, heavy with scent and ripe with colour, and in the last rays of the June sunshine it was quite intoxicating.

Michael’s enthusiasm was infectious, as he discovered things in the garden and pointed out others to her that he had noticed before. Under a tree at the end was a swing, old and creaky, but he tested it and then offered her a ride.

She shook her head. ‘I never could make them go high enough.’

The next second his arm had snagged her waist and she was on his lap, swinging high in the air and laughing with delight as the wind tugged at her hair and the ground rushed up to meet them.

Finally he slowed it, and as they drifted gently back and forth, his lips touched warmly against hers before his arm released her.

She stood up, her legs shaking, but whether from the dizzying ride or the effects of the kiss she wasn’t sure. After all, it had only been a very tiny kiss, not at all the sort of thing that smouldering passion was made of, but it had affected her more deeply than she dared admit, even to herself. She could still feel the hard imprint of his thighs against her legs, and the warmth of his chest against her side.

‘The fish,’ he said abruptly, and she followed him back to the kitchen, her emotions in turmoil. As he unwrapped the bass and lifted it carefully on to the plate, she forced herself to behave calmly.

‘Do you have any salad dressing?’