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Mike. It was supposed to be light-hearted, a bit of fun.’ He didn’t seem to find it particularly amusing. ‘One of them had been living with his girlfriend for fifteen years,’ she said, a little desperately. ‘They had three children, for heaven’s sake. No one could say he’d been rushed to the altar.’

      That got his attention. ‘Why would they do that?’ he asked. ‘Live like that? Doesn’t the woman know how few financial rights she’d have? No right to a widow’s pension—’

      ‘Once an accountant, always an accountant,’ she said. ‘An accountant who asked me to move in with him, as I recall.’

      ‘That’s not true, you know. At least not in my case.’

      ‘What isn’t true?’

      ‘When I asked you to move in with me…’ there was a long pause ‘…I never intended the arrangement to be permanent.’

      Well, terrific! ‘More, till boredom do us part?’

      ‘No!’ Then he said, ‘I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.’

      ‘Maybe my couple weren’t thinking ahead either,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe it just got to be a habit. I really don’t know. But maybe they’re right. Maybe the big wedding is all just for public show. Maybe the piece of paper isn’t such a big deal.’

      ‘It is, Willow,’ he said. ‘You know it is.’

      ‘Do I?’ She looked up. ‘I know that if I’d moved in with you we’d probably be living happily together and I could have taken the job at the Globe without it being some huge deal.’

      He frowned at that. ‘Because you wouldn’t have felt the need to discuss it with me?’

      ‘No, because I would have just been your girlfriend. Not the consort to the high panjandrum of Armstrong Publications Ltd, on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with a house full of gold taps needing to be polished, with endless charity dinners to attend, good works a speciality. Because it really wouldn’t have been that big a deal.’

      She didn’t want that? It was the life she’d been brought up to expect…

      ‘Are you sure? You’d have been away five nights a week. Perhaps not always managing to get back at the weekend. What kind of relationship would that be?’

      ‘The kind where you’d have said, “Take the job if it makes you happy. It’ll make the time we have together truly special.”’

      He lifted his shoulders, pushed his head back as if easing a great weight of tension from his neck. ‘You’re right of course. I knew it. You should have your big break and I was too caught up in my own selfish needs to see it until it was almost too late. My loss.’

      ‘Is that why you walked away from our wedding?’

      He straightened, looked her in the eye. ‘It would be a comfort to think that my motives were wholly altruistic. But I’m not the man you think I am, Willow. I’m not the man my father wants me to be. I tried. I really tried. I thought having you would be enough to make up for sitting behind a desk all day, manipulating figures, when I had other dreams.’ He stopped. ‘Then I saw that you had dreams to chase, too. Really, one of us should have had our whole heart in the business, don’t you think?’

      ‘I think marriage is tricky enough if both parties are wholeheartedly committed,’ she agreed miserably. Just because they were right, she didn’t have to be happy about it.

      ‘Did you follow up those leap-year proposals? Do you know how many couples have finally made it to the altar?’

      It took a little time to swallow away the aching lump that had formed in her throat. For a moment she felt she’d come very near to what was driving him but, before she could ask him what his dreams were, the shutters had slammed down again. End of conversation. Change of subject. He didn’t want to talk to her about his problems, his concerns. He never had.

      ‘Two down, four to go. One of which, I have to admit, is looking very dodgy.’

      ‘Not the couple with the three children I hope.’

      ‘No, they tied the knot the same week. Got a licence and did it without any fuss. They just needed someone to give them a push. Sort out the details, handle the paperwork.’ Someone to find out what they had to do. She was good at that. Information was her trade. If you couldn’t get answers from one source, you found another. If Michael wouldn’t tell her his dreams, she’d find out some other way. There always was some other way.

      It might, in the end, hurt even more, but the feeling of having made a decision, having regained control, suddenly made her feel a great deal better.

      Then she realised that Mike was still watching her. ‘Eat up, Mike,’ she said. ‘Your chicken will be cold.’

      ‘Comforted?’ Mike asked when she finally put her fork down.

      ‘Much better,’ she assured him. ‘But I think I’m going to need something seriously wicked in the pudding department to complete the cure. What shall it be? Death by Chocolate?’

      ‘Sounds about right.’

      She got to her feet. ‘My treat. Coffee? Anything to drink?’

      ‘Just coffee. We don’t want to get lost on the way back to the cottages.’

      ‘Oh, I think we got lost a while ago, Mike. We were just too busy choosing wallpaper to notice.’ She sat down again. ‘What are we going to do about the house?’ It wasn’t something you could just parcel up and send back with thanks and a short note of explanation. ‘It’s in our joint names, isn’t it?’

      ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll just need you to sign the deed of transfer some time, so that we can give it back to my father.’

      ‘He’ll be so upset. He really loved that house.’

      ‘Yes.’ Then he said, ‘It was a bit big, don’t you think?’

      ‘I guess he hoped we’d grow into it.’

      That provoked a somewhat bleak smile. ‘We could have had a good time trying.’

      She reached across, covered his hand with hers. Then she couldn’t think of anything to say that could possibly help so she got up again and went into the pub.

      Walking home was a slower process than the rather breathless pace she’d set when they’d started out. It was deep twilight and Willow had no intention of racing on ahead, even if Mike had let her. But as she wove her way through the kissing gate, he caught her hand.

      ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait for me.’ And she waited.

      She wasn’t walking along that path, in front or behind him, on her own. There were too many unidentified noises, squeaks and scrapes and scurryings in the hedgerow. Maybe that was why she left her hand in his. Why she gripped it so hard, when away across the field where the ground rose to a small copse she heard a long, agonised cry that goosed her skin.

      ‘What on earth was that?’

      ‘A rabbit. The weasel eats tonight.’

      Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, that’s…’

      ‘The food chain in action,’ he said gently as she turned to him, buried her face in his T-shirt. Rabbits, beetles, one excuse was as good as another.

      Mike held her. It would be so easy to keep holding her, kiss her, forget the nightmare of the last few days. He sensed instinctively that, whether she acknowledged it or not, she wanted that too. They were close to the cottages. One kiss would be all that it took and then they’d be running for it, ripping off their clothes as they tumbled through the door. But then what?

      Beneath his hand, her pulse was racing, but no more than his own. Just to hold her, breathe in the scent of her hair, tightened the hot coil of desire, the need to have her in his arms, to possess her.

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