Page 66 of Wild About You

‘So you wanted to make me jealous?’

‘I didn’t think it was possible to make you jealous,’ he said. His eyes were fixed on the floor. ‘Look, can we get back to Stonemore? Can we get to a bed, Anna?’ He looked at me with such intensity that I felt my stomach flip with desire. ‘Then take it from there?’

Even taking a breath in was painful. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be as straightforward as that,’ I said.

We hiked down the hillside. Jamie had descended into silence, occasionally holding a hand out to me, but his gentleness felt like a stab in my heart. When I’d tried to explain to him that we should forget about what had happened between us, I’d made such a mess of it that he’d asked me to stop. ‘We can speak later,’ was the last full sentence he’d said to me before we reached the Upper Reaches. Callum was exactly where we’d asked him to be, and gave each ofus a cheerful pat on the back. We climbed into his Land Rover and carefully negotiated the route back to Stonemore very, very slowly as they discussed repairs and clear-up. As we descended, my phone started chiming with morning messages – Fi, Rose, my mum. I sent brief, cheery replies.

‘I took the wee boy Hugo home,’ said Callum to Jamie. ‘He was not impressed by your absence.’

‘Did he try and sleep in your bed?’ said Jamie, then we glanced at each other and both blushed. It was strange how I was thinking of us as a ‘we’, as though invisible threads had been spun between us. I had the feeling they’d been there for a while. It was just that I was only seeing them now.

‘Yes,’ said Callum. ‘But I chucked him out. No place for a dog.’

‘Er, quite right,’ said Jamie, and for a moment I was filled with the desperate need to laugh.

‘You look deranged,’ said Tobias, when I walked into the office. ‘I mean, like you had no sleep at all.’

‘You try sleeping on the floor of a bothy,’ I said grumpily, hoping that he didn’t notice my face turning seven shades of crimson.

‘No thanks,’ he said, stapling a sheet of paper.

‘Grab your stuff,’ said Callum, breezing by. ‘I’ll drop you home.’

‘I’ll see you later, Anna.’ Jamie was walking past me, not even a glance, just as though I was a stranger. But as he passed me, he brushed the back of my hand with his fingers.

It took everything I had in me not to follow him. In a daze, I gathered my stuff together. I knew I’d upset him by suggesting our night together might be just that. I’d got into the habit of pushing people away, both to protect them and myself. He could understand that, surely? But deep down, I knew I was kidding myself. As I walked past Tally’s desk to get my bag, I glanced at a framed image on the wall. I’d walked past it a hundred times. The family tree of the Mullhollands, stretching back four centuries – one unbroken line to the present. Dependent on one thing: children.

Suddenly, I found I was blinking back tears.

‘Anna?’ Tally was standing there, holding a mug of tea. She put it down.

‘I’m fine.’ I tried to steel myself. I wasn’t in the mindset to endure one of her lectures. But she didn’t lecture me. Instead she came to me and put her hands on my shoulders, in a stiff, but undeniably affectionate gesture.

‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she said.

And when she put her arms around me and gave me a squeeze, I found I was properly crying.

CHAPTER 20

I didn’t sleep well. I kept waking up, and when I did, the memory of Jamie’s touch made me cover my face with my hands. I lay in my bed in the cottage, listening to the sound of the trees rustling and the birds singing. I had been so uninhibited with him, had lost myself so much, and now I was blanking him, ignoring the three texts he’d sent me since we’d parted. What kind of slapper, my mother would have said, does that?

When he messaged me again, I messaged back.Please come. Even if it’s just for one night.

It was exactly 8pm when he pulled up in the car, parking beneath a knot of nearby trees (this I was grateful for – I didn’t particularly want my neighbours across the field spotting his car).

When I opened the door he was standing at the end of the garden path, looking around. The ox-eye daisies wereblooming, and in the twilight they seemed to glow, pale circles of light.

‘I don’t remember it being this beautiful,’ he said.

‘Imighthave scattered some seed here,’ I said. ‘I told you wildflowers were beautiful. Country people call them moon daisies, because they shine at night.’ But he was already striding towards me.

I only just got him in the door and closed it before he took me in his arms and kissed me. No whisky, this time, but it was just as dizzying, my skin tingling and my body melting even though I was tired and restless and completely sure that we were not meant to be together. Apparently there were parts of my anatomy that hadn’t got the memo.

When we broke apart, he took my face in his hands and gave me a questioning look with eyes so bright it hurt to look at them. ‘I’m trained,’ he said, ‘not to need anyone, or anything. Just to survive, lone wolf, all that crap. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve successfully kept at a distance. So why do I need you?’

I shook my head. ‘You don’t. This is just a temporary feeling.’

‘Anna, it’s not.’

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