He grunted, duly chastened. “No wonder you don’t usually tell people.”
“I’m kind of glad you know. It’s a difficult thing for me to explain, and it’s a difficult thing for people to hear, so I try not to share. People never know how to react. You did, though.”
“We just established that I tried to fix you.”
“I mean, you hugged me. I remember the hug. In fact, whoa, my body is currently reliving it.” She looked down at herself and seemed to take some time to process, then met his gaze. “Poor you, though, getting a category-five emotional dump from a stranger.”
“I don’t feel like we’re strangers, Amelia.”
She blinked a few times. “Me neither,” she said, quiet and serious. “I know we don’t remember much of yesterday, but I know that hug… It meant a lot to me.” She sat a little straighter, as if remembering something. “I can’t find my keys!”
“Sothat’swhy you hadn’t left? You sex tourists, you’re heartless.”
“I am not a…” She grabbed something off the floor and threw it at him.
He caught it just in time. A grapefruit, slightly smashed. He didn’t want her to leave. He felt it as strongly as his conviction last night that she was the woman for him. But then, he didn’t want a lot of things to happen that were happening.
“In a hurry to get to the next stop on the Austen tour, are we?” he said, forcing a light tone. “Who’s it going to be? Mr. Knightley of Highbury? Colonel Brandon of Dorset? Captain Wentworth of…”
“No fixed abode?”
“Or perhaps Ed—” He stopped. He could hear a vehicle on the driveway. “Bollocks!”
“Tom?” Amelia spoke warily, like she couldn’t take any more surprises.
“TheUpstairs-Downstairstour.”
“The what?”
“A TV show—Edwardian, toffs and servants. Point is, it involves the kitchen.”
“Oh.” She looked around. “Oh,” she repeated, as the implications sank in. The place looked like… Well, it looked like two people who were off their faces cooked a meal, had a food fight, and then had hot sex.
“Obviously,I’mwell beyond giving a toss,” he said, throwing the grapefruit into the nearest rubbish bin, “but Xanthe’s hoping to keep the business going, trying to get some other tours started in the area, so I owe it to her not to tank her ratings.”
Amelia started gathering scattered crockery. “Is there a TV show you don’t do?”
“If there’s a buck—a pound—to be made…” He shoveled a clutch of bottles into the recycling bin with a brain-crunching clinking and smashing. “TheBrideshead RevisitedExperience in summer is my favorite—was my favorite. Croquet, backgammon, Dubonnet and gin. This estate is the cinematic equivalent of a gigolo. For the right price, it’s anyone’s. Any price, to be honest. I’ll go out and tell Xanthe to stall while I clean up a little.”
“Hopefully, we’ll find my keys somewhere in this mess,” she said, dodging past him to stack the plates in the dishwasher.
“What do they look like?” He grabbed his coat from the back of a chair.
“A basic metal keychain with the car key and a few others—padlock keys, the key to a B&B I forgot to return… Wait… Shit…”
She was staring at the bottom of his coat, still holding an armful of plates.
“What is it?” he said.
“I saw a man in a gray coat.”
“You mean when we saw the men carrying the rug—ifwe did?”
“No. Could have been the same coat though. I just got a clear image of someone running away from me, wearing a big gray coat. The hem was flapping. He was wearing boots.”
Tom placed a hand on her upper arm. “Any idea when? Where? Inside? Outside?”
“It was dark, so last night sometime. Inside. A long corridor.”
