One Hot Summer: A heartwarming summer read from the author of One Day in December

‘Maybe you could make a list,’ she said flatly.

Touring Robinson around the manor had reminded her all too vividly of the life she’d planned to live there, and left Alice ungraciously resenting his presence rather than being glad of his rent.

He nodded easily. ‘I know where to find you.’

‘I’m out quite a lot,’ she said quickly, a complete lie to deter him from dropping by. ‘Leave a note under the Airstream door if it’s urgent.’

She saw her dismissal register on his face and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Pushing her feet back into her wellies at the same time as grabbing her coat, she had the door open in seconds.

‘Right. I’ll leave you to it. Have a good day!’ she called brightly into her hood, and then ducked out into the rain and made a dash for the safety of the Airstream. She was glad of the rain. It hid the tears that streaked her cheeks, and the wind took the sound of the sobs that choked from her body as she ran.

Robinson leaned against the doorframe and sighed heavily. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that Alice McBride was a girl with a damaged heart. Watchful eyes. Defensive words. Bare fingers. Walls around walls around fragile hearts to keep people out.

He recognised the symptoms, because he’d been an in- patient on the same ward for a while now. From the way she’d reacted just now he’d say she’d probably been there for less time than he had; her pain seemed fresher, less under control. He wasn’t in a position to offer her any hopeful words of wisdom; just keep breathing and hoping it hurts less tomorrow didn’t really offer any kind of solace.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_dd166f8d-e4ae-515f-bd3d-9b5c797ea3ca)

Alice swung the door of the Airstream open to inspect the post-storm evening. The blustery weather had finally blown through, leaving behind it a still calm and the hopeful smell of damp spring grass and cherry blossom trees laden with sodden, velvety flower heads.

It was a little after ten, and through the trees she could see the kitchen lights of the manor, indicating that Robinson was home. Not that it came as a surprise; from what he’d said earlier he wasn’t planning on throwing wild parties any more than she was. Picking her way down the caravan steps in her bare feet, Alice tip-toed across the wet grass to flick on the fairy lights she’d threaded around the edge of the awning in a moment of kitsch overload the previous week. They winked into life, candy pink, apple green and lavender blue interspersed with creamy yellow, all reflecting prettily off the shiny silver sides of the Airstream. She hopped and skipped her way back inside the caravan and pulled on her red wellingtons, then slung a woollen shawl around her shoulders as she reached for her rescued garden bottle of rum and a tumbler.

Sitting on the caravan step, her hands wrapped around her glass, Alice did something she rarely allowed herself to do. She let herself remember. She remembered the first time she and Brad had viewed the manor, the way her throat had unexpectedly tightened with tears as she’d looked out of the windows at the lush, rolling gardens. She let herself feel all of the things she’d felt back then. The swooping joy. The nervous excitement. The anticipation of forever. It was as if the place had wrapped its arms around her and welcomed her in, welcomed her home almost. It had kept her safe over the turmoil of the last weeks and months, and even now, living as she was only in the gardens, she felt under its protection. Borne Manor was her home, her beloved place, and her sanctuary. Drinking deeply, Alice’s eyelids closed as she let the heat of the alcohol slide down her throat, warming her from the inside out. Sanctuary. If she had to sum up Borne Manor in one word, she’d choose sanctuary. And that was precisely the moment when the big idea floated into her mind like the blown seeds of a dandelion clock.

‘Any left in that bottle?’

Startled from her thoughts, Alice opened her eyes and found Robinson standing just outside the cover of the awning. He looked like a man who could use a drink; tired eyed and crumpled around the edges, from his faded jeans to his creased, straight out of the suitcase checked shirt that followed closely against the cut of his body. Made from the kind of worn, brushed cotton that Alice knew would be peach soft underneath her fingers, it hugged the breadth of his shoulders and defined the curves of his biceps as he shoved his hands in his jean pockets and tipped his head to one side, waiting for her to answer. God, yes, she needed to answer. Clearing her throat, she shot him a small smile.

‘You’re in luck.’ Pulling herself up, she stepped inside the Airstream and took down a second glass, sloshing a decent measure of rum into it. ‘There’s a deckchair leaning against the caravan, if you want it,’ she called out, watching him casually through the window over the sink. He was quite alien; exotic and out of place, not at all English. She saw him frown at the chair for a second and then pass it over in favour of perching on her cool box as a makeshift stool, his elbows on his spread knees as he rubbed both hands over his face and then scrubbed them through his hair.

‘Jetlag?’ she said, stepping down out of the caravan to hand him his glass.

‘I’m just about caught up, I reckon,’ he said, looking up and accepting the rum, taking a drink before cradling the glass in his big, tanned hands.

Alice settled back onto the step and pulled the shawl around her shoulders, aware that she looked mildly eccentric in her frilled white cotton slip and red wellies, her pale knees poking out under the hem. His eyes moved along the tree line towards the house beyond.

‘It’s quite the place.’

‘It is,’ she said after a moment’s pause. ‘You’ll find it’s a great place to relax.’

He looked at her steadily. ‘Is that what you think I’m doing here?’

The directness of his question took her by surprise, although the mild tone of his voice took any sting from his words.

She studied him for a second. ‘Sorry. That sounded like I was prying and I really wasn’t.’

‘You weren’t all that far from the truth,’ he conceded, rolling his glass between his palms, his eyes fixed on the swirling liquid. ‘Not to my mind, anyway. My sister on the other hand called it escaping, my record label called it reckless, and my ex-wife called it running away. Take your pick.’

Wow. So that was an unexpected information dump. An opinionated sister and an annoyed ex-wife, not to mention a record company chasing his tail. No wonder he looked ragged around the edges. She should have given him a bigger measure of rum.

‘That’s quite a list,’ she said, keeping it simple.

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

Uh oh. That sounded ominous.

‘I’m not going to have to beat them all off with a big stick, am I?’ Alice remembered back to the days of being hounded by paparazzi around Brad’s affair, of how much more difficult they’d made her life just when it was falling to pieces anyway. She looked back now and wished she’d been strong enough at the time to get rid of them, trampling her gardens and invading her privacy. She wouldn’t let that sort of thing ever happen here again, even if it wasn’t strictly her own privacy that she’d be protecting this time around.

He shook his head, a complicated look in his eyes as he huffed softly. ‘I don’t suppose this place has a drawbridge hidden around somewhere to pull up in case of emergency?’

‘’Fraid not, cowboy. No moat, either.’ Alice silently questioned her own words. Cowboy? Just because she called him that in her head, it didn’t mean she should have ever let it out of her mouth. If it surprised him, he didn’t say.

‘Figures. We could always dig one?’

Something in the way he said we rather than I unsettled her, bringing with it an image of being holed up against the world with Robinson in Borne Manor.

‘There’s a trowel around somewhere if you get desperate.’ God knew she’d reached the point of desperation herself a few times recently. ‘There’s one or two people I’d like to throw in it,’ she muttered, unguarded.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ll buy another spade, in that case.’

Alice traced the frilled edge of her slip with her finger against her skin. ‘Deal,’ she said, softly.

They sat in companionable silence for a couple of minutes, an owl hooting somewhere in the trees ahead.

‘Cowboy?’ he said eventually, favouring her with a speculative sideways look that said her nickname hadn’t passed him by.

‘Am I wrong?’

He raised one shoulder, a half shrug, an acknowledgement. ‘I own a ranch and I sang country, so I guess you could call that cowboy.’

She noticed the way he’d used past tense to refer to singing.

‘You don’t sing any more?’

The pretty glow of the fairy lights picked out his profile, pastel hues illuminating the unmistakable twist of his mouth. He looked as if he’d swallowed something bitter. Was it pain, or distaste? It was hard to tell.

‘I kind of lost my love for it.’

For the second time that evening Alice felt as if she’d spoken out of turn. It was clearly not a subject he wanted to get into.

‘I’m prying again. Ignore me.’

He drained his glass. ‘I’ll make you a deal, Goldilocks. You don’t mention my singing and I won’t mention your absent husband. How does that sound?’

Ah. So she hadn’t got away with her borderline nutcase behaviour up at the manor that afternoon, then.

‘Goldilocks?’ she said, picking him up for his nickname as he had with her earlier.

He smiled then, his eyes glittering in the darkness of the evening. It was the first time since he’d arrived that Alice had seen him look genuinely amused, and his slightly crooked grin warmed her unexpectedly.