The Last Woman He'd Ever Date

She reminded herself that she was twenty-six. A responsible adult holding down a job, supporting her child. A grown woman who did not blush. At all.

‘I’m surprised you recognised me,’ she said, doing her best to sound calm, in control, despite the thudding heart, racing pulse, the mud smearing her cheek. The fact that her hand was jammed between his legs. Nowhere near in control enough to admit the intimacy of a name she had once whispered over and over in the dark of her room.

She snatched her hand away, keeping her ‘ouch’ to herself as she scraped her knuckles on the brake lever and told herself not to be so wet.

‘You haven’t changed much.’ His tone suggested that it wasn’t a subject for congratulation. ‘Still prim, all buttoned- up. And still riding your bike along this footpath. I’ll bet it was the only rule you ever broke.’

‘There’s nothing big about breaking rules,’ she said, stung into attack by his casual dismissal of her best suit. The suggestion that she still looked the same now as when she’d worn a blazer and a panama hat over hair braided in a neat plait. ‘Nothing big about hiding under the willows, tickling Sir Robert’s trout, either. Not the only rule you ever broke,’ she added.

‘Sharper tongued, though.’

That stung, too. The incident might have been painful but come on… She’d been chased by a donkey and every other man she knew would be at the very least struggling to hide a grin right now. Most would be laughing out loud.

‘As for the trout,’ he added, ‘Robert Cranbrook never did own them, only the right to stand on the bank with a rod and fly and attempt to catch them. He can’t even claim that now.’

‘Maybe not,’ she said, doing her best to ignore the sensory deluge, ‘but someone can.’ And sounded just as prim and buttoned-up as she apparently looked. ‘HMRC if the rumours about the state of Sir Robert’s finances are to be believed and the Revenue certainly won’t take kindly to you helping yourself.’

Buttoned-up and priggish.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, making a determined effort to lighten the mood, ‘I’ll look the other way, just this once, if you’ll promise to ignore my misdemeanour.’

‘Shall we get out of this ditch before you start plea bargaining?’ he suggested.

Plea bargaining? She’d been joking, for heaven’s sake! She wasn’t that buttoned-up. She wasn’t buttoned-up at all!

‘You don’t appear to have a concussion,’ he continued, ‘and unless you’re telling me you can’t feel your legs, or you’ve broken something, I’d rather leave the paramedics to cope with genuine emergencies.’

‘Good call.’ As an emergency it was genuine enough—although not in the medical sense—but if she was the subject of her own front-page story she’d never hear the last of it in the newsroom. ‘Hold on,’ she said, not that he appeared to need encouragement to do that. He hadn’t changed that much. ‘I’ll check.’

She did a quick round up of her limbs, flexing her fingers and toes. Her shoulder had taken the brunt of the fall and she knew that she would be feeling it any moment now, but it was probably no more than a bruise. The peddle had spun as her foot had slipped, whacking her shin. She’d scraped her knuckles on the brake lever and her left foot appeared to be up to the ankle in the cold muddy water at the bottom of the ditch but everything appeared to be in reasonable working order.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘Winded.’ She wouldn’t want him to think he was the cause of her breathing difficulties. ‘And there will be bruises, but I have sufficient feeling below the waist to know where your hand is.’

He didn’t seem to feel the need to apologise but then she had run into him at full tilt. She really didn’t want to think about where he’d be black and blue. Or where her own hand had been.

‘What about you?’ she asked, somewhat belatedly.

‘Can I feel my hand on your bum?’

The lines bracketing his mouth deepened a fraction and her heart rate which, after the initial shock of seeing him, had begun to settle back down, thudding along steadily with only an occasional rattle of the cymbals, took off on a dramatic drum roll.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ARE you in one piece?’ Claire asked, doing her best to ignore the timpani section having a field day and keep it serious.

If he could do that with an almost smile, she wasn’t going to risk the full nine yards.

‘I’ll survive.’

She sketched what she hoped was a careless shrug. ‘Close enough.’

And this time the smile, no more than a dare-you straightening of the lips, reached his eyes, setting her heart off on a flashy drum solo.

‘Shall we risk it, then?’ he prompted when she didn’t move.

‘Sorry.’ She wasn’t an impressionable teenager, she reminded herself. She was a grown woman, a mother… ‘I’m still a bit dazed.’ That, at least, was true. Although whether the fall had anything to do with it was a moot point. Forget laughing about this. Hal North was a lot safer when he was being a grouch.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s try this. You roll to your right and I’ll do my best to untangle us both.’

She gingerly eased herself onto her shoulder, then gave a little gasp at the unexpected intimacy of his cold fingers against the sensitive, nylon-clad flesh as he hooked his hand beneath her knee. It was a lifetime since she was that timid girl who’d watched him from a safe distance, nearly died when he’d looked at her, but he was still attracting and scaring her in equal quantities. Okay, maybe not quite equal…

‘Does that hurt?’ he asked.

‘No!’ She was too fierce, too adamant and his eyes narrowed. ‘Your hand was cold,’ she said lamely as he lifted her leg free of the frame.

‘That’s what happens when you tickle trout,’ he said, confirming her impression that he’d just stepped up out of the stream when she ran into him. It would certainly explain why she hadn’t seen him. And why he hadn’t had time taking avoiding action.

‘Are you still selling your catch to the landlord of The Feathers?’ she asked, doing her best to control the conversation.

‘Is he still in the market for poached game?’ he asked, not denying that he’d once supplied him through the back door. ‘He’d have to pay rather more for a freshly caught river trout these days.’

‘That’s inflation for you. I hope your rod is still in one piece.’

His eyebrow twitched, proving that he did, after all, possess a sense of humour. ‘Couldn’t you tell?’

‘Your fishing rod…’ Claire stopped, but it was too late to wish she’d ignored the innuendo.

‘It’s not mine,’ he said, taking pity on her. ‘I confiscated it from a lad fishing without a licence.’

‘Confiscated it?’

As he sat up, she caught sight of the Cranbrook crest on the pocket of his coveralls. He was working on the estate? Poacher turned gamekeeper? Why did that feel so wrong? He would be a good choice if the liquidators wanted to protect what assets remained. He knew every inch of the estate, every trick in the book…

‘Aren’t they terribly expensive?’ she asked. ‘Fishing rods.’

‘He’ll get it back when he pays his fine.’

‘A fine? That’s a bit harsh,’ she said, rather afraid she knew who might have been trying his luck. ‘He’s only doing what you did when you were his age.’

‘The difference being that I was bright enough not to get caught.’

‘I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.’

‘It beats the hell out of the alternative.’ She couldn’t argue with that. ‘I take it, from all this touching concern, that you know the boy?’

‘I imagine it was Gary Harker. His mother works in the estate office. She’s at her wit’s end. He left school last year and hasn’t had a sniff of a job. In the old days he’d have been taken on by the estate,’ she prompted. ‘Learned a skill.’