Realising she was about to lose her temper big time, she snapped her mouth shut and without another word she turned on her heel and marched back inside, slamming the door so hard it made the windows rattle.
Bloody Eric! Who does he think he is?she ranted silently. It was alright for him to have a love life, but the minute she showed any interest in a man, he was warning her off? And to think he had the cheek to use Taya as a way to get to her. Obviously Taya was going to find it hard to adjust to her mother having another man in her life: it was only to be expected. And obviously Beatrice would put her children’s happiness first. Her relationship with Mark was in the very early stages, despite their history, so it wasn’t as though she was moving him in next week. She was going to take it one day at a time, and if it didn’t work out, it didn’t work out.
But even as she was thinking it, Beatrice knew she was already in too deep, and that if their relationship ended for a second time, she would be heartbroken all over again.
Mark was bone weary when he walked into The Black Horse on Friday evening, his suitcase in his hand. He’d been on the go all day and he was knackered. But after he’d unpacked and collapsed onto the bed, his brain decided it was time to give him a slideshow of everything he’d done, said and seen today, and within a few minutes his mind was whirling and he was becoming increasingly restless.
A glass of water didn’t help, and neither did a long hot shower: he was still too wired to relax.
Maybe a walk would do the trick?
Dressing warmly, he slipped out the side door. It was only ten-fifteen, so the pub was still open, but he wasn’t in the mood to speak to anyone, and especially not to Dave.
Letting his feet take him where they wanted, Mark re-ran the meeting in his head, but he simply couldn’t pin anything down long enough to examine it properly. Every time he tried, his thoughts veered to Beatrice.
Should he tell her that he was planning on renting somewhere nearby? Was it too soon to be thinking along those lines? Would she even want him to make that kind of a commitment yet? Was he jumping the gun, and getting ahead of himself? Questions, questions… He had so many and he wanted to ask them, but he was too worried he would frighten her.
On the way to London, he’d pinged some enquiries off to a couple of estate agents in Thornbury, figuring that there was no harm in starting the ball rolling, and with less than two weeks to Christmas nothing much would get done beforehand. He knew it would take time to find a suitable property, and then there would be the rental agreement to sort out, the references and the finances, so he would probably be living out of a suitcase for a while longer.
There was also the Christmas period itself to contend with. He had promised to spend the festive season at his parents’ house in Bath, and he was looking forward to seeing them, but part of him wished he didn’t have to go.
Mark stopped outside a shop, the window softly lit by a twinkling tree, and as he imagined himself living in the village he was filled with a warm glow.
When his feet took him into Lavender Lane (of course they did: it had been inevitable), he noticed there was a light on inBeatrice’s living room, which meant she was still awake. Dare he?
Mark dared, but instead of ringing the doorbell, he tapped gently on the window and waited. After ten seconds – which felt like an hour – he tapped again. A little harder this time.
He was rewarded by the twitch of a curtain as it was pulled aside, and Beatrice stared out. When their eyes met and she smiled, relief washed over him. He had been worried she might be cross.
And when she opened the door and gestured for him to go inside, he realised just hownot crossshe was when she stepped into his arms. Her lips parted, her chin tilted, and her eyes drifted shut as his mouth found hers. His hands were in her hair as he kissed her urgently, and she snaked her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him.
Mark groaned and she let out a sigh. His blood was aflame, desire scorching through his veins, heating him from the inside out. As the kiss deepened, his hands left her hair and skimmed down her back to grasp her bottom.
He wanted her so badly, so very, very badly, that when she drew back, breathing hard, her cheeks pink and her lips swollen, it took every ounce of self-control he could find to release her.
She glanced at the dark stairs behind. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered, her voice husky.
‘I know.’
’I want to. More than anything.’
‘I think I should go, before we do something we regret.’He barely managed to get the words out.
The look in her eyes as she said, ‘I wouldn’t regret making love with you. Just not here, not now,’ made his pulse roar.
How he managed to tear himself away he didn’t know, and as he floated back to The Black Horse, there was one thing he was certain of – not having this woman in his life was unthinkable.
CHAPTER EIGHT
What do you do when you can’t think of anything other than the woman you almost made love to last night?
Mark tried to write, but that didn’t work and he ended up throwing down his pen in disgust. He tried to draw, but the stylus went the same way as the pen. Reading couldn’t keep his mind off Beatrice for more than two sentences at a time, and the programme he tried to watch just became a background buzz to his daydreams of her.
She dominated his thoughts, and he couldn’t think of anything else. His lips yearned to kiss her, his arms longed to hold her, his—
For pity’s sake, if he carried on waxing lyrical like this, he should seriously consider writing romance. And if he carried on being unable to come up with a storyline for the character that Pinkymoon wanted him to write about, then he just might have to!
Packing it in for the day, he shoved his feet into his boots, his arms into his coat, and ventured outside. This was the last-but-one Saturday before Christmas, and Picklewick’s main streetwas surprisingly busy. Mark assumed that Thornbury would hold greater appeal for shoppers than Picklewick, but apparently not, so he decided to have a proper look around the village. Despite having spent over three weeks here, he hadn’t had a good mooch around, but if he was going to be living here, maybe he should. Besides, he wanted to see if he could find a gift or two for Beatrice and the girls. And not only them: he had his mum and dad to buy for, as well as his brother and family. And so far, he had been too preoccupied to buy anything other than the box of soaps when he was at the farm last Saturday.
