‘Ellie? Did the doorbell just ring?’
Her mother’s thin voice quavered from the bedroom door which was just up the narrow stairs and mercifully out of sight.
‘Get in,’ she snapped at James, channelling him past her and towards the sitting room, into which he obediently vanished, leaving her to take the stairs two at a time, just preventing her mother from trundling down to see what the fuss was all about.
Five minutes later, she was in the sitting room, door closed, heart beating so fast she felt it was going to burst right out of her chest. She didn’t know what he was there for. He’d mentioned something aboutlove,but it was clear and always had been that he hadn’t the faintest idea whatlovewas.
The bottom line was that she had settled her mother back to bed after mumbling vaguely that nothing was happening, there was no need to come down—nothing to see here. But her mother’s eyes had been curious, and Ellie would have to dispatch James before curiosity got the better of sleep. Because, if her mother decided to see for herself what was going on, then all the hard work she had done building up stories of incompatibility, would have been for nothing.
In her mother’s mind, the very essence oflovewould be a guy racing hundreds of miles to be with the person he loved because he couldn’t bear to be apart from her.
She remained by the closed door, leaning against it, arms folded and eyes narrowed as she looked at him for a few seconds in stony, unforgiving silence.
‘Speak, and make it quick, James. I don’t want Mum coming downstairs and finding you sitting here.’
‘I can’t say what I’ve come here to say with you standing there by the door, like a prison warden waiting to escort a criminal from the building.’
Ellie sourly interpreted that to mean that he wanted her close, close enough to reach out and touch her. If he had come here hoping to scratch an itch that hadn’t conveniently disappeared as he’d hoped, then he would surely suspect that one touch and she’d be right back in his arms?
After all, she loved him, and love made idiots of everyone. Look at poor, deluded Naomi!
For the sake of voices not being heard, because noise had an irritating habit of travelling to all sorts of nooks and crannies in the small cottage, she edged closer. But, instead of perching on the sofa next to him, she adopted a stiff position on one of the chairs, from which she continued to look at him with jaundiced suspicion. It was an effort to keep memories at bay. She could feel them just there, waiting to surge forward to undermine all her barely-there resistance.
‘I’ve begun to explain things to Mum,’ she burst out fiercely, leaning forward. ‘I’ve begun to tell her that we’re very different people, too different for things to work out between us. I’ve begun tolet her down, andit’s notfairof you to justshow up hereso you can ruineverything.’
‘We’re barely engaged. How can our differences be rising to the surface so fast?’
‘Iknowyou!’ Bright patches of colour scored her cheeks. ‘Of course you were never going to fall in love with me. Do you think I haven’t seen the way you are with all those women you dated in the past?’ She looked away and her voice was low, bitter and honest. ‘No matter what they looked like, when it comes to women there’s only so much you’re capable of giving, and all of it can be summed up in two words.Good sex.’
‘Justgood?’
‘I’m glad you think this is funny,’ Ellie said sharply.
‘I don’t.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and leant forward, arms resting loosely on his thighs.
‘I’m not climbing back into bed with you, and if I was stupid enough to fall for you then I’m also smart enough to know how the ground lies.’
James gazed at the mutinous set of her mouth, the defiant glitter in her eyes, and marvelled that he hadn’t recognised what he felt for her sooner than he had. Surely he should have clocked that so much more had pulled him to her than some passing attraction?
She fired him up on every front. She was demanding, smart and had spent three years making him adapt to her without him really realising it. It was crazy that he hadn’t seen that for what it was—a slow drift to an emotion he only now recognised and accepted.
‘I don’t want you falling back into bed with me,’ he countered softly, and a shadow of bewilderment flashed across her features for a barely perceptible second or two.
He winced, thinking that those were the tramlines her thoughts were travelling down—that the only thing he could possibly have come for was sex. He honestly couldn’t blame her.
‘Good!’ Ellie said stiffly. ‘Because there’s no way I intend to do that.’
‘I wouldn’t ask you to, unless there was a ring on your finger.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I love you.’
Ellie stared. Her mouth fell open. Her brain moved back sluggishly half an hour, to recall his opening words when she had greeted him at the front door.
Had he meant what he’d said?That he loved her?
‘I don’t understand...’ She managed to breathe while her heart picked up frantic speed and her mouth dried up so that she could barely swallow. Joined up thinking was proving difficult.
