A Seductive Revenge

The air whooshed out of her lungs. ‘Oh!’ Her eyes searched his face. Given the circumstances, it wasn’t very flattering that he looked as if he were trying to digest something particularly bitter and unappetising.

She smiled distractedly at Liam, who opened his grubby little hand to offer her a smooth black stone. ‘Black,’ he explained patiently.

‘It’s his favourite colour,’ his father elaborated tersely.

‘Lovely, Liam.’ She smiled, pocketing the gift. ‘Thank you.’

She stiffened. Am I slow or what? How could I have forgotten a minor detail like the ring on his finger, especially when the physical proof of the wretched man’s unavailability is playing around my feet? What is wrong with me? I’ve had better kisses than that and not ended up with mush for a brain. It was a mistake to think about the kiss…stop hyperventilating, Flora.

‘Does your wife know you go around doing things because you want to?’ she enquired with icy derision. Her cold pose slipped. ‘I think you’re the most disgusting man I’ve ever met!’ she told him in a quivering voice.

The pain that swept across his face made Flora’s voice fade dramatically away. It occurred to her that she could never despise him half as much as he did himself.

‘My wife’s dead.’ His voice sounded the same way.

Flora didn’t know how to respond and he didn’t appear to expect her to.

‘I haven’t wanted to kiss a woman since…’ The harsh explanation emerged involuntarily.

Flora closed her eyes against a sudden rush of hot, emotional tears and wished he hadn’t told her that. She’d come out here to regain a bit of inner peace, not get mixed up with some moody, brooding type who was way too good-looking. He’d got a kid, and—hell!—even more unresolved angst than she had. He was the one that introduced the subject of self-preservation.

Flora’s heart ached as she watched them go, but she made no move to prevent them. She had troubles enough of her own without courting the extra ones a man like this one represented.

CHAPTER TWO

‘NIA didn’t say you were coming.’ Megan Jones handed her husband, who was sitting with his heavily plastered leg propped up on a footstool, a fresh cup of tea.

‘No.’ Josh helped himself to another slice of his brother’s mother-in-law’s excellent bara brith. ‘It was a spur of the moment thing.’

Megan Jones nodded understandingly. ‘You need a break; Nia says you work far too hard.’

‘Does she…?’ He suspected his sister-in-law said far too much entirely. The next statement from one of her brothers confirmed this suspicion.

The kitchen door swung open. ‘Nia says you need a woman, Josh. Like the haircut,’ he added. ‘Not so girly, makes you look nearly respectable.’

‘Geraint!’ his mother exclaimed, slapping her large, burly son’s hand as he filched a slice of cake and crammed it whole into his mouth. ‘Josh is respectable!’ She flashed Josh a worried look and was relieved to see her guest didn’t look offended by the slur. ‘And look what your boots are doing to my nice clean floor,’ she scolded her big son half-heartedly.

‘I’ll be back from Betws before milking, Mam,’ her grinning son promised unrepentantly. He winked at Josh and ruffled Liam’s hair before he departed just as speedily as he’d arrived.

‘Now there’s someone who is definitely working too hard,’ his mother announced with a worried frown.

‘I’ve told you I’d take on another man if we could afford it.’ Geraint’s father gritted his teeth in frustration. ‘You’d think with five sons there’d be more than one around the place when you need them,’ he complained.

‘Yes, well, I’m sure Josh doesn’t want to hear us grumbling,’ Megan said, pinning a bright smile on her face.

No wonder Megan was looking strained; Josh suspected that energetic Huw Jones was not an easy patient.

‘I don’t suppose there’s ever a good time to break your leg, Huw…?’

‘But some times are worse than others,’ Huw rumbled, ‘you’ve got it right there, boy.’

‘Where are you staying, Josh?’

‘I was hoping you could recommend somewhere nearby.’

‘You couldn’t do much better than The Panton,’ Huw responded. ‘Though it’ll cost you an arm and leg.’

‘The Panton, Huw, really!’ Megan chided indignantly. ‘Josh and Liam will stay with us, of course. Just like they always do. I miss having a child about the place.’ She smiled fondly at Liam.

Since Jake had married Nia, Josh, a keen climber, had joined his brother here at Bryn Goleu for several weekend climbing expeditions in the rugged Snowdonian mountains. Megan Jones’s hospitality was as warm as her smile.

‘I think you’ve got your hands full without extra guests right now, Megan. We wouldn’t dream of imposing.’ Josh saw his hostess looked inclined to press the issue and a workable compromise occurred to him. ‘I will stay, on one condition: you let me work for our board. I don’t know a cow from a sheep,’ he warned them with a grin, ‘but I’m a willing pair of hands.’ He held out his hands to demonstrate their willingness.

‘We wouldn’t dream…’ Megan began politely.

Huw put aside his newspaper. ‘What do you mean, woman? Of course we’d dream. Beside, a bit of honest sweat’ll do the boy a world of good, build up a bit of muscle.’

Josh took the scornful inference he was some sort of seven-stone weakling in his stride.

‘If you let him talk much longer, Josh, he’ll convince you you ought to be paying him for the privilege of letting you break your back!’ Megan threw her husband a withering glance, but Josh could see she felt just as relieved as the reluctant invalid. Their gratitude made him feel guilty because his offer of help wasn’t entirely altruistic. He hadn’t been able to believe his luck when Flora had named the village she was staying in as one a mere mile from the Jones farm—it suited him very well to stay for a while at Bryn Goleu.

Flora’s walking boots had never actually seen a puddle before; the country experience was proving a baptism by fire for her and them both. The boots seemed to be coping better with water than she had with the mouse in the house last night. Fortunately the village store stocked mousetraps, but Flora wasn’t sure which horrified her most: the idea of coming face to face with a live mouse or a dead one.

She consulted the map in her pocket; if she was reading it correctly this footpath would cut her return journey by half. It seemed to go directly through a farmyard. Right on cue a farmyard came into view around the bend. She’d heard tales that suggested all farmers weren’t exactly welcoming to ramblers; she hoped these natives, if she came across any, were friendly. Still, she reasoned, they couldn’t possibly be as bad as tabloid journalists.

She did see one—it was hard to miss him—a large, shirtless specimen wheeling a barrow piled with fencing posts out of one of the stone outbuildings. His back was turned to her; it suggested he would make short work of driving those heavy wooden posts into the ground. She tried not to stare too obviously at the sculpted power of those rippling, tightly packed muscles; she had limited success.

She cleared her throat to let him know she was there. ‘Good morning,’ she called out politely. The figure turned slowly.

‘Bore da, Flora.’ Josh exhausted the limit of his Welsh.

She must have walked into the shop and bought it all up, he decided, giving her a quick once-over from her sunlit hair to her shiny new boots. All the stylish, squeaky new clothes were top-of-the-range mountain gear which showed off her lovely long length of leg and neat, incredibly small waist. A light crop of freckles had emerged across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks were healthily flushed, whether from exertion or from the shock of seeing him he wasn’t quite sure…but he had his suspicions.

‘You!’ Flora, who had forgotten to breathe for several stupefied moments, took a deep noisy gulp to compensate.

‘It’s enough to make a man believe in coincidence,’ he drawled, lifting a hand to shade his eyes from the sun.

She nodded in a dazed sort of way. Looking at her with a clear-eyed sardonic grey gaze, he was displaying none of the awkwardness she, because of the way they’d parted, felt—he didn’t even seem surprised to see her. Willing her eyes not to make any detours over his naked torso, she kept them firmly trained on his face.

‘Or fate.’ Now why, she wondered with a silent groan, did I say that?

‘And do you?’ he enquired, unexpectedly expanding on the theme. ‘Believe in fate?’ He speared a pitchfork into the ground and leaned on it to casually watch her. Flora found the unblinking scrutiny uncomfortable.

Her curiosity reached boiling point and she succumbed to growing temptation and risked a quick, surreptitious peek at his leanly muscled chest and flat belly. Her stomach muscles did uncomfortable and worrying things. The earthy image hadn’t done anything to soothe her jangled nerves or hot cheeks.

It was the little details like the line of hair that disappeared like a directional arrow beneath the waistband of the worn blue jeans he wore that got her especially hot under the collar. She wondered what he’d make of it if she picked up the discarded plaid shirt she’d spotted and begged him to put it on—too much is what he’d make of it, she told herself derisively.

‘Fate!’ she hooted robustly. ‘Of course not.’ Her tone was laced with a shade of indignation. What sort of silly woman did he think she was? ‘You live here, then?’ She recalled he never had got around to telling her what he did for a living. He didn’t look much like her idea of a farmer, but then what did she, the ultimate townie, know?