Second Chance For Love

‘Right.’ She hurried away to the kitchen before he could notice that her cheeks were flushing a deepening pink.

But it proved far from easy to manage the simple task of filling the kettle with only one good hand, and she splashed water all over the place. Then trying to unscrew the lid from the coffee jar, she split the granules all over the scullery floor.

Her overwrought nerves seemed to snap in frustration, and she swore fiercely, tears springing to her eyes. From the doorway came the sound of Tom’s laughter, low and husky. ‘Having trouble?’ he teased gently.

‘I couldn’t get the lid off. I’m sorry, I…’ She knew she was dangerously close to making a complete fool of herself.

‘Hey…!’ To her surprise, he came over, and took her gently in his arms, drawing her against him. ‘Come on—it isn’t that important,’ he soothed, stroking his hand over her hair. ‘It’s only a bit of coffee.’

She couldn’t help it—she knew it was meant to be no more than a comforting gesture, but the impact of being held so close to him, feeling the warm strength of his arms around her, breathing the evocative male muskiness of his skin, fuelled the fires of that fantasy she had been dwelling in, and she lifted her head, her lips softly parted, as if half expecting him to kiss her.

There was an arrested expression in those deep hazel eyes, as if he too had been taken by surprise, and for one timeless moment they hovered in uncertainty…and then with a faintly sardonic smile he let her go.

‘I’d better wipe it up,’ he said.

‘Oh…no, I’ll do that,’ she offered quickly, her heart pounding in painful embarrassment.

‘Perhaps you’d better not,’ he advised in mocking amusement. ‘You seem to be seriously accident-prone’

‘I’m not usually,’ she protested, not liking the clumsy, incompetent image he seemed to have of her.

‘Well, never mind. It’s soon done.’ He had taken a floor cloth from beneath the sink, and mopped the floor quickly. ‘I’ll make the coffee.’

She flashed a fulminating glare at his indifferent back, and sat down at the big scrubbed-pine table. He had retreated back into those arctic wastes he normally inhabited, and yet…somehow she was sure she hadn’t imagined what she had seen in his eyes just a moment ago.

Mind, it was so long since a man had looked at her with any kind of interest that she wasn’t sure if she would even recognise it now, she conceded wryly. But it had seemed, just for those few incredible seconds, as if he really was going to kiss her…

Impatiently she shook her head. It was dangerous enough to let herself indulge in stupid romantic fantasies about him, but if she was going to start imagining that he might be remotely interested in her she was going to end up making a complete fool of herself.

By the time he brought the coffee she had managed to reassemble some kind of mask of composure, and her voice was commendably even as she thanked him.

‘How’s the wrist?’ he enquired, sitting down opposite her.

‘Oh…not too bad,’ she responded with a flickering smile. ‘It still hurts a bit.’

‘You were extremely lucky,’ he reminded her.

‘I know.’ She risked a brief glance up at him. ‘I suppose I ought to report the accident to the police?’

‘I’ve already reported it. Jack’ll be down to talk to you about it when you’re feeling a bit better.’

‘Do you suppose they’ll charge me with careless driving?’ she asked anxiously.

He shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Apart from Bill Wickham’s ditch, you were the only one who suffered any damage. You’ll need to put in an insurance claim, of course.’

‘It’s on my husband’s insurance.’ She couldn’t keep the edge of bitterness from her voice. ‘Personally I don’t give a damn whether he makes a claim or not.’

‘Even so, don’t you think you’d better ring him and let him know where you are?’ he enquired levelly.

‘He won’t care,’ she asserted. ‘He’ll just be sorry I didn’t manage to kill myself—that would have saved him the bother of going through a divorce.’

Those hazel eyes were completely unreadable. What was he thinking? She hadn’t meant to tell him about her marital problems, but somehow it was a relief to talk about it.

‘Why are you getting a divorce?’ he enquired; there was a kind of empathy in the way he asked the question, and suddenly she was sure that he was divorced too.

‘Why not?’ She shrugged her shoulders, still trying to hide her hurt behind a pose of indifference. ‘He wants to marry his secretary, and who am I to stand in the way of true love? Besides, she’s pregnant.’

He looked surprised. ‘Did you know he was having an affair?’

‘Of course.’ She was trying to make her voice sound cynical and hard, but she suspected it wasn’t quite coming off. ‘He has affairs with all his secretaries—it’s just one of his endearing little habits.’

He laughed drily. ‘So why didn’t you leave him sooner?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted with wry self-mockery. ‘Habit, I suppose. And I didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

‘You don’t have any family?’

‘No—well, there’s my father, of course, but I couldn’t have gone there. I don’t get on particularly well with my stepmother.’

‘You could have got a place of your own.’

‘Yes, I suppose so…’ She looked down, swinging her foot in awkward embarrassment. How could she expect him to understand the way Colin had eroded so much of her confidence that she hadn’t believed she could manage on her own? She wasn’t at all sure that she could now—but at least she didn’t have to think about it for a few more days. She wasn’t well enough to leave Tom’s yet, and go to a hotel.

There was a long silence. She could still feel his eyes resting on her, and a kind of shimmering heat had started deep inside her. Was he aware of the effect he had on her? She was fairly sure he must be—he was far too perceptive to miss the signs that gave her away.