Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets

Everything ached, but Leonie was so relieved that she hadn’t cut herself to ribbons that she didn’t mind. Nothing was broken, although she knew she’d be stiff and sore for a few days.

Just as well I’m not planning on wearing a little flirty outfit to Ray’s wedding, she told herself, looking at the hideous purple colour of one elbow. She used the towel to dry her hair and wipe the mud from her face and neck. When she was finished, she left it and her clothes in a neat pile. She’d bring it home and wash it: she couldn’t leave it here filthy.

The dogs whirled around her when she opened the door again and she followed them through the parquet-floored hall, down a half-flight of stairs into the kitchen. All wooden flooring and old wooden units, it was a warm, friendly room with two comfy dog baskets beside an ancient, squashy russet couch in one corner. He was standing near the sink and didn’t turn round when she spoke.

‘Thanks for the clothes.’

‘How are you? Do you want to go to the doctor?’ he said, still not turning round.

‘No, I’m all right. Sore though, and my career as a photographic model is finished, obviously,’ she joked. ‘I look like I’ve done a few rounds in the ring with Mike Tyson.’

He turned with a half-smile on his face. It was the first time she’d got a proper look at him. He was perhaps ten years older than her with a shock of dark auburn curly hair that was streaked with grey and a bushy beard to match. A huge man well over six foot, he had broad shoulders yet his clothes hung from them, as if he’d lost a lot of weight from his big frame. His face was curiously hollowed, dark russet eyebrows beetling across opaque, hooded eyes. The smile lifted his face miraculously, made him almost handsome: without it, his expression was cold and grim.

‘I’ve got some painkillers, if you want them,’ he offered. ‘I got them for my face,’ he added bluntly.

Leonie looked at him. She could see the scars on one side of his face, dark and angry purple spreading from his jaw up to his cheekbone yet hidden by the thick bushy beard. They were like marks from a fire, she thought. He kept looking at her, as if daring her to look away. But Leonie was made of sterner stuff. She’d seen animals hurt in fires, their skin a mass of cooked flesh and their agonized eyes begging for the pain to disappear.

It was torture to look at. She was much better coping with injured people than injured animals.

‘You’re healing well,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Was it a fire?’

‘Yes,’ he said, as if stunned that she’d mentioned it at all. ‘Two years ago.’

She held out her hand. ‘I better introduce myself. I’m Leonie Delaney and this is Penny.’

Penny, stretched happily out in one of the collie’s baskets, wagged her tail at the mention of her name.

‘I better be going,’ Leonie said, ‘my two daughters are at home waiting for dinner and, although they probably wouldn’t miss me if I disappeared, I better get home to them.’

‘I made you a hot whiskey,’ he said. ‘I thought it would help. They help me. I don’t know if it’s advisable to have one with painkillers or not, but I daresay it won’t kill you.’

‘I’m a glutton for drugs and alcohol,’ Leonie said wryly, sitting down on the couch where she was immediately surrounded by dogs. ‘I’ll stay for one whiskey.’

She didn’t know why she’d agreed to stay. She must be mad. This guy was obviously shy and anti-social. He was also blunt and very edgy, as if he wasn’t used to company and felt uncomfortable having someone in his home. And he was utterly hung up about his injuries. He hadn’t even told her his name…

‘I’m Doug Mansell,’ he said, handing her a glass wrapped in some paper towels. ‘This is very hot and quite strong.’

‘You mean I’ll be so plastered after this that I’ll fall back into the pothole on my way out,’ she remarked, taking the glass.

He laughed, a deep, hoarse laugh that sounded as if it hadn’t had a good airing in months. ‘I promise to drive you,’ he said. ‘I also promise to get that hole filled in. Can’t have the neighbours killing themselves outside my property.’

He sat on one of the kitchen chairs, a few feet away from her, so that she couldn’t see the scarred right-hand side of his face. The collies sat either side of him, arching their heads back for him to pet them. He had huge hands, she noticed as he fondled the dogs. They quivered ecstatically under his touch, obviously adoring him.

She remembered seeing him walking the dogs and thinking that he looked like the gruff sort who’d keep them in a shed and never let them inside the house or call them honey-bunnies. Grinning, she realized that she’d been as wrong as you could be. They clearly had the run of the house and their baskets were stuffed with dog toys. Although she still couldn’t see Doug being the sort of man who went in for cute pet names.

‘What are they called?’ she asked.

‘Jasper,’ he said, nodding to the dog with the silky, all-black coat, ‘and Alfie,’ petting the one with white socks and a white blaze on his chest. ‘Alfie is Jasper’s son. He’s two and Alfie is eight.’

They talked about dogs for a time, while Leonie sat back and drank her hot whiskey.

‘The only problem with dogs is having to walk them when it’s raining and freezing,’ Leonie remarked, petting Penny’s silky ears. She drained her glass.

‘Let me get you another one,’ Doug said.

‘No, it’s OK. You’ve done your good Samaritan bit,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to intrude any longer.’

‘You’re not intruding,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’m not used to having visitors; turned into a bit of a hermit, really. But it’s been nice talking to you.’

‘Oh.’ She sat back and let him take her glass.

‘I think I’ll join you,’ he added.

‘You must come to dinner some night,’ Leonie found herself saying. ‘I only live over the road and you’d like the kids. It’s bad to turn into a hermit.’

‘It’s your turn to be the good Samaritan, is it?’ he said caustically.

‘I’m only offering dinner, not emergency rescue services,’ she replied easily. ‘And my humble abode isn’t a patch on your palace, so I can understand if you say no.’ She got up to go.

‘I’m sorry,’ he looked humble. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just…I’ve forgotten how to behave in polite society,’ he said. ‘Forgive me. Please stay. I’ll show you round. I’m sure you’d like to see the rest of the house, although it’s no palace, I promise.’

Leonie treated Doug to the sort of don’t-mess-with-me look that Danny, Mel and Abby were familiar with and would have instantly recognized as teasing. ‘Bribing me on the grounds that women are terminally nosy and can’t resist a sneaky glimpse of other people’s houses, eh?’

He nodded.

‘It’s a deal.’

Clutching her second hot whiskey, Leonie followed the procession of Doug and dogs around the downstairs. It was a truly beautiful house, but somehow unloved. Graceful, airy rooms with large windows, exquisite marble fireplaces and cornices picked out in subtle gold leaf looked lonely without any homely clutter.

‘I pretty much live in the kitchen,’ Doug confessed, as they trailed from one cold room to another, ‘and in my studio. I’m a painter.’

‘It’s a lovely house,’ Leonie said truthfully, but she’d have liked it much better if there’d been plants spilling out of tubs or newspapers flung carelessly on the low tables. It was like a museum exhibit: a perfect re-creation of a regency villa yet with only paying guests passing through, gazing at the huge white couches and the armchairs upholstered in pretty striped fabrics, yet never actually sitting in them. There were no paintings anywhere. She decided that Doug was so reclusive he didn’t like anybody seeing his work.

‘You live in one of the cottages on the main road, don’t you?’ Doug said, when they returned to the kitchen after their tour of the ground floor.

‘It’s about an eighth of the size of this house and there isn’t a spare inch of it that isn’t given over to teenage clutter, empty crisp wrappers and videos that haven’t gone back to the shop yet,’ she said. ‘You obviously like the minimalist look; you’d hate my house.’

‘I don’t like the minimalist look, as a matter of fact,’ Doug remarked. ‘I bought this place as an investment. I didn’t intend to live here. The…’ he paused, ‘the accident changed my mind about that. It’s secluded enough to be suitable. I just never did anything with the rest of it when I moved in. I haven’t been in the mood for making it more homely.’

‘Buying stuff for a house can be a pain in the neck,’ Leonie agreed, deliberately misunderstanding what he was implying. If Doug thought he was too hideous to be seen out and that was why he hadn’t been shopping, that was his problem. She wasn’t going to go along with it.

He shot her an amused glance. ‘When is this Samaritan’s dinner on, then?’ he enquired. ‘As I haven’t met any of the neighbours up to now, I may as well start with your family.’

‘I’ll have to check their diaries,’ she said. ‘Boring old mother is always in, but the three of them are always out. I’ll get back to you. I better go home,’ she added. ‘Doubtless the girls won’t have missed me yet, but in case they are wondering where I am, I should push off.’

‘I’ll drive you,’ Doug said. ‘It’s still raining and you’ll be drenched.’

They drove in silence until Leonie told Doug which house to stop outside.