The Girl He'd Overlooked

That softly spoken remark, a lazy, tantalising question wrapped up in a statement, was like a bucket of freezing water thrown over her and she stepped back as though she had been slapped.

What had she been thinking? Had she been so shocked to find him in the cottage that she had forgotten how efficiently he could get under her skin? She had managed to keep her distance so how was it that they had somehow drifted into a conversation that was so personal?

‘That was all a long time ago, James, and, like I said, there’s nothing to be gained from rehashing the past.’

‘Well…’ He finally began strolling to where his coat was hanging over the banister. She wondered how she had managed to miss that when she had walked in but, of course, she hadn’t been expecting him. ‘I’ll be heading off but I’ll be back tomorrow and please don’t tell me that there’s no need. I’ll roll the other carpets. Get them into one of the outbuildings and keep them dry so that they can be assessed for damage when this snow decides to stop and someone from the insurance company can come out.’

‘I’m sure that can wait,’ Jennifer said helplessly. ‘I won’t be here long. I plan on leaving… well… if not tomorrow evening, then first thing the following morning…’

James didn’t say anything. He took his time wrapping his scarf round his neck, then he pulled open the front door so that she was treated to the spectacular sight of snow swirling madly outside, so thick that she could barely make out the fields stretching away into the distance.

‘Good luck with that.’ He turned to her. ‘I think you’ll find that we might both end up being stuck here…’

With each other. Jennifer tried not to be completely overwhelmed at the prospect of that. He wasn’t going to stay cooped up in his house when he thought that she needed help in the cottage. He would be around and she had no idea how long for. Certainly, the snow looked as though it was here for the long haul and the house and cottage were not positioned for easy access to handy, cleared roads. They were in the middle of nowhere and it would not be the first time that heavy snow would leave them stranded.

But maybe it was for the best. She couldn’t hide away from him for ever. Sooner rather than later she would be returning to the UK to live. Her father wasn’t getting any younger and she had enough on her CV to guarantee a job, or at least a good prospect of one. When that happened, she would be seeing him once again on weekends.

She decided that this was fate.

‘You could be right,’ she said with more bravado than she felt. ‘In which case, thank heavens you’re here! I mean, I adore Patric, but I have to be honest and tell you that an artist probably wouldn’t be a huge amount of practical help at a time like this…’

CHAPTER TWO

AN ARTIST? Jennifer had gone out with an artist? James could scarcely credit it. She had never shown any particular interest in art, per se, so how was it that she had been enticed into an affair with an artist? And who else had there been on the scene? He was disconcerted to find that she had somehow managed to escape the box into which he had slotted her and yet why should he be? People changed.

Except, there had been something smug about her tone of voice when she had implied that he had changed very little over the years. Still going out with the same blonde bimbos.

He was up at the crack of dawn the following morning and one glance out of the window told him that neither of them would be going anywhere, any time soon. If anything, the snow appeared to be falling with even greater intensity. Drifts of it were already banking up against the sides of the outbuildings and his car was barely visible. It was so silent out here that if he opened a window he would have been able to hear the snow falling.

Fortunately, the electricity had not been brought down and the Internet was still working.

He caught up with outstanding emails, including informing his secretary that she would have to cancel all meetings for at least the next couple of days, then, on the spur of the moment, he looked up Patric Alexander on an Internet search engine, hardly expecting to find anything because artists were a dime a dozen and few of them would ever make it to the hall of fame.

But there he was. James carried his laptop into the sprawling kitchen, which was big enough to fit an eight-seater table at one end and was warmed by the constant burn of a four-door bottle-green Aga. Mug of coffee in one hand, he sipped and scrolled through pages of nauseating adulation of the new up-and-coming talent in the art world. Patric was already garnering a loyal following and a clientele base that ensured future success. The picture was small, but James zoomed into it and found a handsome, fair-haired man surrounded by a bevy of beautiful women, standing in front of a backdrop of one of his paintings.

He slammed shut the lid of the computer, drained his coffee and was in a foul mood when, minutes later, he stood in front of the cottage and banged on the knocker.

It was barely eight-thirty and so dark still that he had practically needed a torch to find his way over. Even with several layers of clothing, a waterproof and the wellies he had had since his late teens, he could feel the snow trying to prise its way to his bare skin. His mood had slipped a couple of notches lower by the time Jennifer eventually made it to the door and peered out at him.

‘What are you doing here so early?’

‘It’s too cold for us to make conversation in a doorway. Open up and let me in.’

‘When you said you were going to come over, you never told me that you would be arriving on my doorstep with the larks’

‘There’s a lot to do. What’s the point in sleeping in?’ He looked at her as he removed his coat and scarf and gloves and sufficient layers to accommodate the warmth of the cottage. She was in a pair of faded jeans and, yes, she really had changed. Lost weight. She looked tall and athletic. She had pulled back her hair and it hung down her back in a centre braid. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you? I’ve been up since five-thirty.’

‘Oh, bully for you, James.’ The day suddenly had the potential to be unbearably long. He followed her to the kitchen, sat down and seemed pleasantly surprised when she began cracking eggs into a bowl. He hadn’t had any breakfast. Great if she could make some for him as well. Did she need a hand?

‘I thought you said that you had made sure to buy some food?’

‘Oh, the fridge at home is stocked to capacity but I didn’t think to make anything for myself.’

‘Even though you were up at five-thirty? It never crossed your mind that you could pour yourself a bowl of cereal? Grab a slice of toast?’

‘When I start working, nothing distracts me. And small point of interest… I don’t eat cereal. Can’t stand the stuff. Just bits of cardboard pretending to be edible and good for you.’

Jennifer had spent a restless night. This was the last thing she needed and she turned to him coolly.

‘This isn’t going to work, James.’

‘What?’

‘This! You strolling over here and making yourself at home!’

‘It’s impossible to stroll in this weather.’

‘You know what I mean! If you think that you need to help, to get the rugs to the outbuildings, then that’s fine, but you can’t just waltz in here for the day. I have things to do!’

‘What?’

‘I have to clear some cupboards and I have lots of work to catch up on if it turns out that I can’t leave tomorrow as planned!’ She felt his eyes on her as she turned round to pour some eggs into a frying pan.

‘It makes sense for us to share the same space, Jen. What’s the point having the heating going full blast in my house when I’m the only person in it?’

‘The point is you won’t be under my feet!’

‘I’m going to be doing some heavy lifting on your behalf today, Jennifer. It’s hardly what I would call being under your feet.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered with a mutinous set to her mouth. ‘I’m very grateful for the practical help you intend to give me but—’

‘Okay. You win, Jennifer. I don’t know why you want to draw battle lines, but if that’s what you’re intent on doing, then I’ll leave you to get on with it.’

He stood up and Jennifer spun round to look at him. Was this what she really wanted? To make an enemy out of the person who had always been her friend? Because she found it difficult being in the same room as him?

‘I don’t want to draw battle lines,’ she said on a heavy sigh. ‘I just don’t want you to… to think that nothing’s changed between us.’ She flicked off the stove and moved to sit at the table. The past was still unfinished business. That clumsy pass had never been discussed and she had carried it with her for four years. The memory of it was still so bitter that it had shaped all her relationships over the past four years, not that there had been many. Two. The first, to a young French lawyer she had met through work, had barely survived three months and, although he had laboured to win her over, she had been hesitant and eventually incapable of giving him the commitment he had wanted.

Patric had been her soul mate from the start and they had had three years of being friends before they decided to take that step further. It was a relationship that should have worked and yet, try as they had, she had not been able to capture the sizzle, the breathless excitement, the aching anticipation she had felt for James.

She knew that all of that was just a figment of her imagination. She knew that she had to somehow find it in her to prise herself out of a time warp that had her trapped in her youth, but eventually she and Patric had admitted defeat and had returned, fortunately, to being the close friends they had once been.

He had laughingly told her that there was no such thing as a friend with benefits. She had told herself that she needed to find a way of blocking James out of her head. She wasn’t an impressionable young girl any more.

James looked at her in silence.

‘I know I… I made that awful pass at you all those years ago. We never talked about it…’

‘How could we? You left the country and never looked back.’