Page 42 of Summer At Willow Tree Farm

‘I’ve spent the last four days working my butt off on that business plan. If you’ve got genuine concerns and are prepared to be constructive, I’m more than willing to listen to them. But instead you attacked and belittled me in front of everyone. Why?’

‘Because you overstepped the mark. You were supposed to be sorting out some paperwork, not coming up with ideas that could run us all into the ground.’

The derogatory comment, ground out through a jaw locked harder than granite, froze the lava in her chest. Emotions careered through her, scouring her insides.

‘How many times do I have to tell you,’ she said, struggling to regain her composure, her certainty, ‘it won’t run us into the ground.’

‘There is no “us”. Not for you.’

And there it was, out in the open. The hostility that had been riding just beneath the surface ever since she’d arrived. It shouldn’t feel like a blow, another cut below the knees, she didn’t need his approval. But somehow it did.

‘I’m as invested in this project as anyone,’ she said.

‘And yet you’ll leave at the end of the summer without a backward glance.’ The scorched earth gaze he levelled at her probably wasn’t a good idea with all the dry lumber around.

‘This isn’t about the shop, is it? It’s about me.’ At least he was finally admitting it. ‘What did I ever do to make you dislike me so much?’ she asked, finally through tiptoeing around the twenty-ton pachyderm doing backflips in the centre of the room. ‘When I came here nineteen years ago with my mother, I got the same reception. And I never understood why. Why you bullied me and made fun of me and went out of your way to exclude me.’ That the memories still hurt only humiliated her more.

He blinked, his face rigid. ‘I was a bastard. I admit it. But you took it too hard,’ he said, as if that excused the hurt he’d caused.

And it had got so much worse the day before she’d left, the day before her father had arrived. She had no intention of rehashing that scene again, and she certainly didn’t expect the apology she wasn’t going to get. But she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to rail against the injustice of his accusations.

‘Maybe I was oversensitive,’ she said. ‘I was fourteen years old, trying to process stuff I didn’t understand. But let’s be clear about the real reason I left with my dad that day. It was you Art, you were the reason, because you went out of your way to make me feel like shit that whole summer.’

‘You made a choice to break Dee’s heart,’ he said. ‘How the hell is that my fault?’

The low blow knocked her back on her heels, tapping right into the emotions she’d been determined to ignore.

‘My relationship with my mother is none of your business.’ She pushed back. She’d already let one man trample her self-esteem and her self-confidence into the mud.

But she didn’t feel particularly strong when instead of backing down, he stepped forward. ‘That would be the relationship you’ve ignored for the last nineteen years, would it?’

His gaze drifted up to her hair, as she breathed in a lungful of salty sweat and fresh sawdust, and the electrical attraction arced between them like a lightning strike.

‘Back off.’ She slapped a palm against his chest, feeling cornered.

Solid strength strained against the soft cotton, prickly with wood splinters. But then he swore softly and stepped away, his breathing almost as ragged as hers.

She looked away, the shot of adrenaline, the heady feeling of déjà vu unmistakeable. And all the more disturbing for it.

When was the last time she’d felt that basic, elemental connection? The sharp, insi

stent tug of desire? So long ago, she almost hadn’t recognised it.

She rubbed her stinging palm on her pyjama bottoms, feeling more exposed than she had nineteen years ago.

Fabulous, this was just what she needed, her libido to come out of hiding and start behaving like a lunatic. And not with any man, but with Art. A man she could barely have a civil conversation with. A man with whom she had a history. A man who had made it fairly clear he despised her.

‘I have nothing more to say to you,’ she murmured, suddenly desperate to escape that searing gaze which seemed able to locate every one of her insecurities and expose them.

‘Wait.’ He seized her arm. ‘We’re not finished here.’

His thumb touched the pulse on the inside of her elbow, and that heady shot of adrenaline careered round her system again. Panic soon followed.

‘Yes, we are.’ She shook off his hold. ‘This conversation is over.’

He held up his hands, but the dilated pupils suggested he’d felt that brutal shot of desire too. Which was so not good. ‘I’ve got something to say to you, and I want you to listen.’

She rubbed the inside of her elbow, where his touch had branded the skin. ‘Why should I?’

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