LITMIR.BIZ

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house Mike’s parents had bought for them as a wedding present. A huge red-brick edifice with five bedrooms, three bathrooms and half an acre of landscaped garden that would take every minute she could spare from cooking and dusting to keep it from reverting to wilderness.

      She and Mike hadn’t come to any decision about where they’d live. His flat or hers. They were both convenient, easy to run, perfect for a busy couple. Then—whammy. An invitation to lunch from Mike’s parents at a country pub with a route that just happened to bypass the house from hell. The kind of house that needed a full-time wife, not a woman with a life of her own and a career that was about to take off into the stratosphere. Or would be, if she wasn’t getting married.

      It was becoming clear that as Mike’s wife she wouldn’t have a life of her own.

      No more Willow Blake. She’d be Mrs Michael Armstrong, consort to Michael Armstrong, newspaper proprietor. In the fullness of time she’d become mother to the statutory two-point-four children, with a busy life as a champion of local good causes and all-round pillar-of-the-community. In ten years she’d have turned into every woman’s worst nightmare, a carbon copy of her mother.

      Oh, she’d carry on working for a while—quietly shunted off into the more ladylike stuff, the WI meetings, the garden club, local celebrities. Just until the babies came along. That house demanded babies to fill its echoing spaces. Mike’s father was already referring to bedroom number two as ‘the nursery’. As if the Peter Rabbit decor wasn’t enough of a hint.

      As for Mike, well she didn’t know what he was thinking any more. Suddenly he was more distant than the Khyber Pass.

      Which was why the letter offering her the job of her dreams was still in her bag, still unanswered. A lifeline.

      ‘It’s, er, rather a big house, Mike. Not quite your usual style. A bit different from the hayloft,’ Cal pressed anxiously.

      ‘That depends on your view of big.’ Michael Armstrong was eager to cut off any discussion about what his usual style entailed. Cal was his oldest friend, his best man, and he knew him far too well to be easily fooled. ‘Willow was brought up in a ten-bedroom mansion.’

      Mike had been working up to taking her to Maybridge, gauging her reaction to an alternative lifestyle; her excitement over the house had made him realise that it was going to be a non-starter.

      ‘Right. Well, I suppose if you’re both happy with it, that’s all that matters.’ Cal clearly wasn’t convinced, but let it drop. ‘When are you supposed to be moving in?’

      Mike dragged himself back from some place where he wasn’t expected to live to this monstrosity of a house which his father, with all his plans apparently about to be fulfilled, had sprung on them as a wedding present. There had been no prior consultation because his father had known what his answer would be. The cunning old fox had relied on Willow to do his dirty work for him. And since she’d clearly loved the place, he’d choked back the ‘thanks, but no thanks’. There was no way he could refuse it.

      Realising that Cal was regarding him with a look that suggested his face was betraying his innermost thoughts, Mike quickly answered, ‘The house is supposed to be ready when we get back from honeymoon.’

      ‘You don’t sound…’ his friend hesitated as he sought for the appropriate word ‘…optimistic.’ Mike ignored the underlying invitation to say what he really felt and kept quiet. ‘Ookaaay.’ Cal stretched out the vowels in acknowledgement that, as a topic of conversation, it was going no further. ‘I’m sure you and Willow can live without carpet for a week or two. And there’s no hurry to furnish the nursery,’ he added, in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, gesturing at the giveaway decor of the second bedroom. ‘Unless there’s something you’re not telling me? It would certainly explain the prodigal’s unexpected return to the fold—’

      ‘My father’s trip to intensive care provoked my return,’ Mike declared. ‘It was never my intention to stay in Melchester.’

      ‘Until you met Willow.’ Until he met Willow. ‘Does she know how you feel about stepping into your father’s shoes? I only ask because when we were having a drink last week, I got the distinct impression that she thinks you’re taking the fast route to businessman of the year.’ He waited. ‘That you’ve got accountants’ ink running through your veins.’ Then he added, ‘She doesn’t know about Maybridge, does she? You haven’t told her.’

      ‘Mind your own business, Cal.’

      ‘I’m your best man. This is my business.’

      ‘You’ve met her. She’s old money, centuries-deep breeding.’ Mike’s gesture conveyed unspoken volumes. ‘She was simply marking time, doing the social stuff at the newspaper until one of the local chinless wonders invited her to become his Lady Chinless Wonder and breed little chinless wonders.’

      ‘Excuse me? Have you actually read any of the stuff she writes? Listened—’

      ‘I have to live with the Chronicle, Cal. I’m not prepared to sleep with it.’ He held up his hands. ‘Okay, okay. If there was a prize for writing up the gardening club’s committee meeting I’m sure she’d get it. But you can understand why I haven’t suggested she move in over my workshop in Maybridge and live off what I make with my hands.’

      ‘What you wouldn’t do for your father, you’ll do for love? In your shoes, I have to admit I’d do the same.’ He looked around, then grinned. ‘Maybe the nursery should be a priority after all.’

      ‘This is my father’s idea of a subtle hint. He could give a steam hammer lessons.’

      ‘The heart attack hasn’t slowed him down?’

      ‘Heart attack? I’m beginning to suspect that it was nothing more serious than a bad bout of indigestion.’ But it had done the trick. Brought him racing home, full of guilt, to take over managing the Chronicle and its sister magazine, the Country Chronicle while his mother took the old man on holiday. A long holiday. He should have run then, smelt a rat the moment his holiday-hating father hadn’t objected to a six-week cruise. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being cynical. Whatever, it’s reminded him of his own mortality.’ He gestured at the wallpaper. ‘Hence the rabbits.’

      ‘That’s it? No other problems?’

      Mike dragged his fingers through his hair. ‘Well, I have to get my hair cut before Saturday,’ he said, making a determined effort to shake off a sense of doom.

      He loved Willow. She’d been the one bright spark in the darkness when he’d been forced to come home, take up the reins of the family business while his father convalesced.

      He’d walked into the office that first morning, his mood as black as the Chronicle’s headlines when she’d cannoned into him, her belongings scattering across the floor. She’d dived after her phone to check that it wasn’t damaged before rounding on him with a sharp, ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’

      About to put her right about who hadn’t been looking, he’d caught his breath and there had a been a small, still moment when everything, including his heart, had seemed to stop. Then she’d grinned and said, ‘Oops. Bad mistake. Memo to brain. Don’t yell at your new boss until you’ve been properly introduced.’ When he’d continued to stare at her, his tongue apparently stuck to the roof of his mouth, she’d added, ‘You are Michael Armstrong? There’s a photograph of you on your father’s desk—’

      ‘It’s Mike,’ he’d said. ‘And I’m not the boss. Just standing in his shoes for a couple of weeks.’

      ‘Oh well, hello, Mike.’ She’d stuck out her hand. ‘I’m Willow Blake.’ Then she’d given a little yelp. ‘And I’m late.’ And then he’d been watching her run for her car with a smile on his face that would have given the Cheshire cat an inferiority complex.

      He hadn’t intended more than a flirtation. A brief dalliance. Nothing heavy, nothing serious. She’d taken some catching,

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